As someone who just got out of one of the thousands of "new" startups to now be at a boring run of the mill software firm... i grapple with this a lot. 90% of the work I did was on defense stuff (i think you wrote about it before) but that 10% supporting NGOs or deforestation or ESA/NASA research grants always keeps gnawing at me to run back into the space. Its tough to tell if a RS company really has their money where there mouth is on stuff like that until you work there.