From Feynman’s “What Do You Care What Other People Think?”:
Most airplanes are designed “from the bottom up,” with parts that have already been extensively tested. The shuttle [Challenger], however, was designed “from the top down” – to save time. But whenever a problem was discovered, a lot of redesigning was required in order to fix it.
This could be used as an example for contrasting evolutionary design with planned design. The “parts that have already been extensively tested” part would suggest component-based development, though, which might be confusing. Of course, the “extensively tested” part could be linked to unit testing (test-first style) – but it’s important to emphasize that the parts aren’t universal, and that their interfaces are shaped by the needs of their actual, not potential, users.
(A few pages before this quote, he mentions NASA bullets again: “Mr. Lovingood got up and began to explain everything to me in the usual NASA way, with charts charts and graphs which matched the information in my big book [handed to him by Lovingood at the beginning of the meeting] – all with bullets, of course.”)