6 Operators who are responsible for the day-to-day pointing of the instrument, monitoring systems for health, etc. Some redundancy here so that people can take vacations, not be on-call all the time, etc.
3 Astrophysics post-docs who decide which proposals are worth spending telescope time on. (Need an odd number to break ties)
1 Orbit mechanics specialist (to make sure it stays aloft, etc)
3 Systems engineers who have a good "big-picture" idea of how the satellite works
2 X-ray instrument subject matter experts
2 programmers for firmware updates of the systems on the satellite
2 programmers for programming systems on the ground
2 I.T. support
1 data analyst
2 electrical engineers for electrical issues debugging on the satellite, etc.
1 RF/EE for the ground based and comms stuff
2 mechanical engineers for mechanical issues debugging on the satellite, etc.
2 thermal systems engineers, to make sure things are at the proper temperatures
2 more astrophysics Ph.D's for helping answer technical questions about the instrument from the principle investigators for each proposal accepted for telescope time.
5 managers
2 receptionist/admins
1 HR
1 head honco
Only thing I can think is the Chandra project is funding researchers (e.g Postdocs etc) from it's budget. Otherwise they're being really inefficient and could surely keep it running with a quarter of the staffing (but knowing NASA, that's a possibility...).
Also possible there's a lot of instrument specialists, but that's not a full time job. Perhaps they are including part time roles in that 180 job total.
You write that he has "some" valid points. Could you please elaborate which of the points in this article are not valid or maybe incorrect?
I don't have the time or inclination to point out every error in the article, but it especially annoyed me when he implied only NASA engineers know how to build space telescopes (false), when he implies Starship conops are simple (they are not), when he implies no progress has been made on NEO asteroid detection (NEO Surveyor is a follow-up to NEOWISE, not something that has taken "30 years" to develop), when he thinks the Europa Clipper MOSFET issue has been ignored (I know some of the people who worked on that over the summer, and I know the outcome), when he seems to think LEO re-entry materials can be used for high-speed lunar returns (no, that's not how this works), and when he seems to think a student project qualifies him to talk on demand for the SLS.
Yes, there are some valid points in all of those, but he is presenting them in an exaggerated and over the top style better suited for X than for a long form article that purports to find a better way forward (which, surprise, surprise, is simply "pay SpaceX to do everything").