[X] My Assistant

[Doug M.]

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.

[djellison]

By this I mean that we haven't seen major innovations in propulsion, communications, power sources, shielding or avionics in the last decade,

Last decade alone.....

Communications:
MRO transmitting at up to 6 Mbits/sec ( 40x the rate of previous Mars orbiters ) from Mars
MSL UHF relay at up to 2 Mbits/sec - 8x the rate of MER->ODY
LASER demo from LADEE at 620 Mbits/sec
OPALS about to be tested on ISS
Continued transition towards more Ka band 32Ghz DSN comms.

Power Sources
Increasingly efficient solar arrays enabling the first dedicated Jovian mission to fly with Solar Power ( Juno )
Development of the ASRTG ( currently on hold, but near completion )

Propulsion
Dawn's Ion engine has given it more than 6km/sec of Delta V - more than any other spacecraft in history -and may reach a total of 10km/sec
First interplanetary solar sail ( IKAROS )

Shielding
Juno's vault
Orion spacecraft student lead shielding experiment

Avionics
Transition from RAD6000 to RAD750
New avionics of SpaceX Falcon 9/Dragon (triple redundant with much COTS hardware)

Plus:
LDSD program including SIAD test program for increased EDL capacity to Mars ( potentially doubling the delivery mass of an MSL EDL like architecture )
Continued revolution in miniaturization. RACE scientific cubesat (among many, many others) , the INSPIRE cubesat BEO program.
HD color video from the surface of Mars. 1600 x 1200 MARDI movie.
Proven EDL performance increased from a 400lb rover in 2004 to a 2000lb rover in 2012


Is your statement broadly true? No. Not even slightly.