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> It is not possible to do "innovation" with megaprojects I generally agree but I think the are examples of some successful projects that did innovate. You cou

by 14u2c 6y ago

> It is not possible to do "innovation" with megaprojects I generally agree but I think the are examples of some successful projects that did innovate. You could probably consider Gemini + Apollo a single megaproject as they were designed to run consecutively, building towards the moon.

emteycz 6y ago
Now imagine Apollo was planned as a gargantuan Warp 6-capable starship with 500-man crew instead of the several smaller rockets progressively building towards an achievable goal.
satellite2 6y ago
Did anyone said CERN?
bserge 6y ago
It would probably be more correct to say there is no incentive. Gemini and Apollo had a nice one - the space race, more specifically, the fear of being bombed into oblivion from orbital stations without being able to do anything about it. There's just not much incentive today, it makes business sense to use that funding as long as possible.
japanuspus 6y ago
I think the key factor is not the size, but the type of management: Apollo, SpaceX (and the Manhattan project for that matter) all had technical leadership, and where headed by people who could basically have pulled the whole project off with a sufficient number of clones of themselves. ITER is under MBA/Political management. Even if the management team had all the time in the world, they could not complete the project on their own. Especially in ground-breaking projects, this makes a huge difference. With many options open, deciding on how to proceed requires cross-subsystem trade-offs and weighing many different risks and challenges against each other: things that will grind any non-technical leadership to a halt as they request piles upon piles of reports from their underlings.
- henrikeh 6y ago
  I don’t think it is fair to say that Apollo could have been pulled off by a few kind of people. It was a massive undertaking spanning almost all fields of science and engineering. Just read a book like _Stages to Saturn_ to see what an undertaking it was to just conceive, design, implement and _manage_ the Saturn rockets. But I’m more curious about your second statement. Could you back that up with some evidence? How is ITER’s management and leadership “MBA/Political”? Is it really different from the other projects’? Such a statement needs to be backed up with some evidence.
  - kaibee 6y ago
    > But I’m more curious about your second statement. Could you back that up with some evidence? How is ITER’s management and leadership “MBA/Political”? Is it really different from the other projects’? Such a statement needs to be backed up with some evidence. Maybe a bit conspiracy minded, but maybe the real purpose is to give nuclear physicists something to do, so that the brains to make nukes are still around in case we ever need to start doing that again?
    - kortex 6y ago
      This is absolutely an element at play at NIF. In fact not just the physics brains, but the experiments themselves, play a role in getting around test bans. To the point where nuke stewardship (ensuring aging warheads still will work) interferes with fusion physics.
    - Zardoz84 6y ago
      if that the case, a totemak fusion reactor it's totally unrelated to how a nuclear bomb works.

by 14u2c 6y ago

emteycz 6y ago

Now imagine Apollo was planned as a gargantuan Warp 6-capable starship with 500-man crew instead of the several smaller rockets progressively building towards an achievable goal.

satellite2 6y ago

Did anyone said CERN?

bserge 6y ago

It would probably be more correct to say there is no incentive. Gemini and Apollo had a nice one - the space race, more specifically, the fear of being bombed into oblivion from orbital stations without being able to do anything about it. There's just not much incentive today, it makes business sense to use that funding as long as possible.

japanuspus 6y ago

I think the key factor is not the size, but the type of management: Apollo, SpaceX (and the Manhattan project for that matter) all had technical leadership, and where headed by people who could basically have pulled the whole project off with a sufficient number of clones of themselves. ITER is under MBA/Political management. Even if the management team had all the time in the world, they could not complete the project on their own. Especially in ground-breaking projects, this makes a huge difference. With many options open, deciding on how to proceed requires cross-subsystem trade-offs and weighing many different risks and challenges against each other: things that will grind any non-technical leadership to a halt as they request piles upon piles of reports from their underlings.

henrikeh 6y ago
I don’t think it is fair to say that Apollo could have been pulled off by a few kind of people. It was a massive undertaking spanning almost all fields of science and engineering. Just read a book like _Stages to Saturn_ to see what an undertaking it was to just conceive, design, implement and _manage_ the Saturn rockets. But I’m more curious about your second statement. Could you back that up with some evidence? How is ITER’s management and leadership “MBA/Political”? Is it really different from the other projects’? Such a statement needs to be backed up with some evidence.
- kaibee 6y ago
  > But I’m more curious about your second statement. Could you back that up with some evidence? How is ITER’s management and leadership “MBA/Political”? Is it really different from the other projects’? Such a statement needs to be backed up with some evidence. Maybe a bit conspiracy minded, but maybe the real purpose is to give nuclear physicists something to do, so that the brains to make nukes are still around in case we ever need to start doing that again?
  - kortex 6y ago
    This is absolutely an element at play at NIF. In fact not just the physics brains, but the experiments themselves, play a role in getting around test bans. To the point where nuke stewardship (ensuring aging warheads still will work) interferes with fusion physics.
  - Zardoz84 6y ago
    if that the case, a totemak fusion reactor it's totally unrelated to how a nuclear bomb works.