SpaceX’s speed to market is fast and getting faster. NASA… not so much.
Here’s the excellent Bent Flyvbjerg and Atif Ansar’s latest article, Speed-to-Market for SpaceX and NASA. Note that the efforts tracked by Bent include Falcon 1, […]
SpaceX
Starlink, Ukraine, and the challenges of a market economy going to war
Around 20,000 Starlink satellite units have been donated to Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February, playing an important role in battlefield communication for Kyiv’s […]
Discovering where programs are on the productivity-to-team-size curve
Here is former China Lakes and Sidewinder missile inventor Bill McLean speaking with Congress in a 1971 hearing: Only in listening to the problem of […]
Talent, resource allocation, and SpaceX
Here is an excerpt from entrepreneur and VC Daniel Gross talking with Tyler Cowen about their new book, Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and […]
Vertical integration to prevent exploitation by suppliers
Here is the conclusion from Kirk Monteverde and David J. Teece’s 1982 paper, Supplier Switching Costs and Vertical Integration in the Automobile Industry: Transactions cost […]
Can defense acquisition become highly reliable? Yes! Just add redundancy.
Is it possible to take a set of individually unreliable units and form them into a system “with any arbitrarily high reliability”? Can we, in […]
What makes SpaceX different?
Imagine if you had gone to work at Space X in 2005 and gotten in the ground floor of the Falcon 1 program, or imagine […]
NASA, SpaceX, and the development of extravehicular space suits
In 2017, NASA decided to design, test, and produce xEMU [Extravehicular Mobility Units] suits in-house. As a result, the Agency would serve as the prime […]
Revolutionizing manufacturing in the aerospace industry
This entire industry of aerospace and defense, especially the area in manufacturing parts, is dependent on this large and fragmented supply chain. Basically, mom and […]
George Mason University study on digital acquisition
How can DOD and commercial companies work together in the most efficient way possible? Discovering the answer is the yearlong quest of a study launched […]
Is continuous testing the key to SpaceX software success?
In modern space flight, mission critical systems are becoming increasingly dependent on software controls for performing critical functions. Unfortunately, software failures are one of the most dominant […]
Defense companies lose sight of product due to rules and regulations
Working with government requires understanding the ins and outs of the literally thousands of pages of regulations: intellectual property rules that are unique to government, […]
Could there be a SpaceX-style entrant in the world of fighter aircraft?
Such joint efforts and the use of digital engineering could allow smaller defense firms to focus on design work, whether for the whole aircraft of […]
Is SpaceX 50x more productive than usual government programs?
Here’s an example: five years ago, Elon Musk was working on his reusable rocket, the one that can take off and then land on the […]
NASA sets a model using high-level requirements and letting private companies innovate
The cost-saving success of @Commercial_Crew is based on @NASA establishing high-level requirements and letting private companies innovate. For the Artemis Moon base, NASA will establish […]