Major science projects have extremely similar economic impact to military spending for the simple reason that they are extremely similar. The dominant companies

Major science projects have extremely similar economic impact to military spending for the simple reason that they are extremely similar. The dominant companies involved in high-end scientific projects, especially in aerospace, are the exact same companies that receive the most military spending. Essentially every major defense contractor is involved in JWST, and the prime contractor is a defense company (Northrup Grumman). The only parties with significant involvement that are not directly the military-industrial complex are university coalitions, which operate similarly to the university coalitions that defense R&D programs heavily rely on. NASA is essentially part of the broader US defense organization and operates in extremely close collaboration with defense agencies using largely the same methods, contractors, and funding. Major NASA projects are largely indistinguishable from major weapons projects, and most of the time the two are closely interrelated in that both use technology developed by the other. Sometimes this is more informal (since the same contractors perform both) but sometimes it is quite formal, e.g. multiple defense satellite systems have been developed in parallel with scientific systems so that the design effort can be shared.