Conservatism and innovation in spacecraft design |
Conservatism and innovation in spacecraft design |
May 6 2014, 01:26 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 102 Joined: 8-August 12 Member No.: 6511 |
Would it be fair to say that we're in the middle of a fairly conservative period with regard to spacecraft design? By this I mean that we haven't seen major innovations in propulsion, communications, power sources, shielding or avionics in the last decade, and we're not expecting to see major innovations in these areas in the next ten years. We are seeing a lot of ongoing advances in mission design, in payload, and in instrumentation. But the spacecraft themselves are changing much more slowly, and their design is increasingly dominated by heritage technologies.
Would this be a broadly true statement, or is there actually a lot of significant innovation in these areas that's going underreported? I'm sincerely curious. Doug M. |
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May 6 2014, 08:56 PM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 706 Joined: 22-April 05 Member No.: 351 |
But the spacecraft themselves are changing much more slowly, and their design is increasingly dominated by heritage technologies. For many spacecraft functions, good solutions exist, so managers reuse existing designs to save money and reduce risk. The basic MRO design has been reused three times (MRO, MAVEN, OSIRIS-REx). However, as Doug E. points out, when there's good reason, managers use new technology and NASA has a pipeline of technologies in various stages of readiness for flight to support future missions. -------------------- |
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