I don't really follow NASA's space program, but I do know from the radio that in the wake of its last two spacecraft failures, there has been growing internal criticism of NASA's recent radical change of how it develops new space technology.

This new means has been nicknamed 'Faster. Better. Cheaper' and it was a departure from the days in which NASA prided itself on being centralized and monolithic and almost paranoid in their attempts to create fail-safe spacecrafts. Mind you, they were safer because NASA always created a number of redundancies in the spacecraft's design. So, for example, if the space shuttle's entire computer system failed, there were two other identical systems to back it up.

There was evidence that the new change in direction was good for NASA. Last year's Mars Pathfinder was able to broadcast images back to earth without costly human cargo on board. But with two embarrassing public blow-ups, NASA is starting to reassess the situation.

Instead of "Faster. Better. Cheaper", perhaps NASA should have kept to the original vision: "Faster. Cheaper. Out of Control." From the book, Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World (which I recommend):

Space exploration should be more like biology.