One interesting thing about economics is that you're pretty much guaranteed to get a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio out of most any program once you start counting indirect jobs. Indirect jobs are the people who work for the prime contractors' suppliers, the people who run the sandwich shop in the prime contractor's building, and the checkout clerk at the grocery store where the prime contractor's employees shop, etc. Those are real benefits, but the cause and effects start getting really murky once you start looking at indirect effects. For example, would your employees stop buying groceries if they didn't have the job with the contractor? It's a big deal for the city/town the prime contractor is in, but probably not as big a deal for the nation as a whole.
I'm not arguing against funding NASA, but I think the people who wrote the article are (to mix a metaphor) cheerleading pretty hard on thin ice.