"We think about capturing knowledge in a way that is different and near invisible." She says when people connect in an open way it can be captured and shared while still having private spaces for conversation."We want to find people's expertise and we want to capture that. In the future, we want to model that knowledge."

The knowledge will be used to support ongoing and future projects such as robotic outposts on Mars, interstellar missions and permanent space colonies.

Booz Allen Hamilton is another convert to the powers of social networking. The company’s internal social network, Hello.bah.com, is providing easy access to key data and fueling employee collaboration that has broken silos formed among 23,000 employees.

Launched 10 months ago, Hello.bah.com has gone from just over 10,000 logins per month to more than 60,000 today and from 4,000 users per month to more than 10,000.

"We were blown away by the uptake," says Walton Smith, senior associate at Booz Allen Hamilton and leader of the project. "We've discovered that the enterprise 2.0 approach is a methodology and not a technology implementation plan. We had to be agile."