From what I can gather, they largely distribute money to lots of places in the USA, thereby pouring money into regions that wouldn’t have it otherwise, creating jobs that wouldn’t exist otherwise, and raise the baseline income overall. If anything, this should have a beneficial effect where more people can spend more, don’t require social services, slide into drug abuse or homelessness. Some part of the government has to do that; but instead of just handing the money out to poor people, they do it indirectly and keep folk in active employment. What would be bad about that?
This is a dangerous path (assuming it is the case, I don't know about NASA internals). If you want to improve people's living or help them; just do that and help them by putting money in their bank accounts no strings attached.
Most governments of the world would disagree with you here; wealth redistribution programmes are a normal and proven way to organise a state. You can help people in a multitudes of ways, and just handing them out money is not always the best option—people also need maintained infrastructure, schools, entertainment, parks, municipal services, and so on; and they usually also need purpose, which many people derive from their jobs. So having a large employer, or a project that builds on many contractors that employee people, is a good way to distribute wealth and achieve something beneficial in the process, like GPS satellites, space science, or just plain power display to other nations. All the people that are employed in the process pay taxes, care about their neighbourhoods, send their kids to universities, go shopping, and keep the economy alive.
I'm not to say this is the only true answer, other approaches exist, like the (so far unproven) unconditional basic income, or just social security services. But I would definitely argue that it has positive effects for an economy to keep people busy, to give them purpose and secure jobs.
Edit: Having said all that, of course I'm neither an authority on NASA internals here, but the strategy would make sense and definitely is applied in other areas and countries, too.
