The way I read the article was that we would cut NASA up into a number of rapidly iterating teams, each analogous to a small company. If you take this model and

The way I read the article was that we would cut NASA up into a number of rapidly iterating teams, each analogous to a small company. If you take this model and comparison to heart, and realize that there are actually /two/ levels of 'looping' that make silicon valley effective. One is competitive attrition, the other is rapid iteration. The attrition factor should be obvious, you have a large number of companies vying for success, and only the top few are even moderately successful. There would have to be a large enough margin that it doesn't cost NASA much to fail horribly on quite a few of its projects. Iteration is good because if you iterate rapidly enough, you are allowed a larger margin of error, because any errors in your previous version will be fixed relatively quickly in the next version. But here's the unfortunately reality: Sending anything into space is horrendously expensive. It is not like programming where releasing and distributing a patch is a tiny part of the overall cost of the program. When you screw up with a space ship, bad things happen (shit falls out of the sky, there is pollution to clean up), it costs money into the millions, and you have to fill out a TON of paperwork. Its not like a major error in a rocket you are launching can just be 'pulled from the website' after the rocket has exploded. Even if you /do/ go with cheap unmanned probes, you still have the massive pr disincentive of potentially failing every day for a month, and losing tons of money. NASA would become a joke.