It's also important to keep in mind that most of the projects that NASA works on/worked on like Apollo 11 aren't just software projects. They involve massive sc

It's also important to keep in mind that most of the projects that NASA works on/worked on like Apollo 11 aren't just software projects. They involve massive scales of cutting edge hardware that is developed by independent teams and needs to come together, operate in extreme environments and physical constraints, and all be complete and tested and ready for a relatively narrow launch window. Not to undersell the importance of the software component or the skills and talent of those who developed it, but it's usually only one part of a massive effort. Waterfall with intense requirements gathering and up-front design makes a lot more sense in that context. It's very different than developing software to run on commodity hardware to meet potential needs of a wide range of potential users who may have conflicting needs that they don't even understand themselves. In that case, time to market, extensibility, and the ability to iterate with actual user feedback and production data become much more dominant.