Can NASA change in order to survive?

From the Los Angeles Times

Early this month, Hawthorne-based rocket venture SpaceX launched an unmanned version of its Dragon capsule into orbit, took it for a few spins around Earth and then brought it home with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

The total cost — including design, manufacture, testing and launch of the company's Falcon 9 rocket and the capsule — was about $800 million.

In the world of government spaceflight, that's almost a rounding error. And the ability of SpaceX to do so much with so little money is raising serious questions about NASA.