What do you think NASA is? NASA is so expensive because it's a jobs program. There's no other reason for Boeing to have factories in so many states for building satellites.

You're not wrong, and no one is turning down NASA contracts, but the scale isn't comparable.

NASA buys mostly highly specialized parts that can be pretty narrow in scope and utility.

OTOH the DoD will buy 150,000 aluminum water canteens, which is probably the only thing keeping the one decent job in Wagatah, Maine from closing. Which happens to be of only a handful of shops in the country with the tooling for this. Wagatah, of course, is not known for it's aerospace engineering. But thankfully water is pretty important for soldiers, and the new design is x% more efficient, so Wagatah gets another 5 years of work, the DoD gets to keep a domestic source of water canteens, and if NASA needs 5 space grade aluminum storage boxes, a company in Wagatah can make them.

OK so maybe they're both jobs programs, but .mil is bigger and employs more people (almost certainly at a lower per capita cost).