While that is true, the tradeoff there involves throwing 1,000 state of the art at the enemy, vs. throwing 5,000 cheap and adequate. (not sure if the multiplier is 5x but something like that) NASA does not have exactly the same situation.

There was a time when they were going to try to do more, cheaper, faster missions, which IIRC lasted until the first one failed, and then that policy was abandoned.