Your suggestion that NASA research could benfit from a more interdisciplinary approach, perhaps by folding it into the NSF reminds me of an incident related in the Houston Chronicle several years ago.

NASA had a research team working to develop flexible joints for space suits that would remain flexible with a 1 atm differential across the joint. One of the team members received a free entrance ticket to the Offshore Technology Conference and went to the huge trade show associated with it. There he discovered that the offshore service industry had long been using diving suits with joints that remained flexible with >100 atm differential pressure and they were available off the shelf…no need to spend megabucks to reinvent the wheel.

I suspect there are many similar examples to be found.