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You seem to be fairly knowledgeable about all this and/or have thought about it long and hard. Do you have any idea, how would one apply the same kind of proces
by tomp 8y ago
You seem to be fairly knowledgeable about all this and/or have thought about it long and hard. Do you have any idea, how would one apply the same kind of process to building a moon lander?
Also, do you have any further links to the kinds of organisational structure that SpaceX has, which I think is the main advantage over traditional organisations like NASA, Airbus, ULA (well, in addition to having someone crazy like Musk - it's been said that SpaceX has enough amazing engineers that they'd probably be flying and landing rockets even without him, but the probably wouldn't be landing them on water)? Like those YouTube interview you mention, or how they manage risks, etc.
Feel free to email me, this is a very fascinating discussion for me.
- hef19898 8y agoMaybe I can prvide some insight into Airbus (as a whole, not the civilian aircraft section). It is important to know that Airbus is an inherently political company. It was founded as the result of a political initiative. That resulted in, among other things, a rediculous work-share distribution between countries and within. Also the national entities are totally ad odds with each other. One example can be the A380 delay because they moved the toilets for one customer from one side to the other. The German design team that did so did not tell the French team responsible for the wiring and they did not use a common software. The reault was a couple of months of delay. Now imagine the same thing playing out on every level for every project. More relevant for SpaceX is Ariane Space. There it is Airbus plus every other ESA country. When you do the same thing without political interference you are faster. Another example is the A400M, Airbus military tranport plane. They almost screwed the program and ruined Airbus military aircraft business by insisting, politically, on a European developed turboprop engine. And this political incursions into design can be seen all over the place. EDIT: I just realized I talked a lot about aircraft. Seems I'm still confused by EADS now being Airbus and Airbus (EADS times) is now part of Airbus (old EADS)...
- tomp 8y agoThanks, I’ve heard before how utterly disfunctional EU/ESA/Airbus is. But that’s kind-of obvious, and I guess it’s not why e.g. NASA and ULA (Lockheed Martin + Boeing) are so inefficient - they sure are very political as well, but probably not so fractured (because it’s all US). What makes SpaceX better than them?
- hef19898 8y agoNow I'm just guessing obviously. First is focus, SpaceX is only building and launching rockets, the others are doing a lot more. Then you have programs like the F-35 (Lockheed) which is intentionally very international and thus political, even morw so than your average defence program. No matter how much everybody is talking about strategy and core technologies in the end the only questions governmants and politicians care about how much money is flowing into their home turf. The equivalent to EU politics in the US could be Congress and the Senate medling with budgets? But I'm just guessong here. In general being in a very protected industry, politically and by high barriers of entry, makes people lazy. And politics rub off, so even you don't want to you get political by working with politics for too long. Overhead builds over time, maybe SpaceX did have the time for that yet. And now the last, and arguqbly controversial point, I'm not sure if SpaceX is better by the degree it seems they are. Again, that is just my personal opinion. EDIT: What does ULA mean? I never heard of that acronym.