Are there new ways of developing space systems?

Ever so often a space entrepeneur comes onto the media stage and announces that there is an entirely new way of building hardware for space - and NASA (especially) does not recognize this revolutionary new way of doing things. The space industry is an established industry and yet these ideas come up regularly. Why? In the airplane and car industry this syndrome does not exist.

I think the reaon is that we all (space enthusiasts) feel frustrated with the high costs of space transporation which sets the costs standards for spacecraft building. These high costs limit our dreams of boundless space flight. In real life space flight does not look like what we see in SF movies.

Also, space flight is largely managed by bureaucracies, private and public, and we have been taught (true or false) that they are, by definition, inept.

However, there is a quiet revolution going on that affects all branches of technology. It is about methods for designing electronics and software. Software is no longer an art, but an industrial activity with standardized, replaceable parts. Automatic code generation is bridging the gap between the functional specification and the actual code in one step. What used to be very complicated and difficult - like designing a three-axes stabilized spacecraft - is now not such a big deal. Fantastically powerful and cheap star trackers are another key to why it is relatively simple to design sophisticated attitude control systems. Simulation methods in software is making it possible to "fly" space missions on the ground with amazing fidelity.

All this happened in the last ten years. For example, in 1995 the attitude control software for Sweden's Odin satellite was hand-coded. Just five years later the same type of software for ESA's moon probe SMART-1 (developed in Sweden) was created by automatic code generation.

What is behind all this? The general advance of technology? Yes, but spearheaded by the mobile telephone industry - an industry in which software is king - reliable software that can be developed quickly to meet ever increasing demnds for shortening the "time-to-market".

What is next? Perhaps silicon-based microsystems? In any case, many places in the solar system are revisited by automated space probes orders of magnitude more powerful than the first probes going there. So, space flight that was regarded as a generator of new technology on a broad front now is the receiver of technology from other industry sectors. Is this a threat or blessing? Any thoughts?