It is often said that “space is difficult”. Space is a challenging environment for which to design and build equipment and it is difficult to make sure it continues to operate once it is in space. Here, the author looks at the space development mindset and suggests a methodology for improvement.
The space industry is a world where pain tolerance isn’t a virtue. For better or worse, it’s a way of life and the industry seems to thrive on a high pain-tolerance mindset. But it can be a double-edged sword, leading both to groundbreaking achievements and to emotional scar tissue that reveals itself as an aversion to risk. This is because design engineers have to overcome the extreme constraints placed on them by the space environment and wrestle with complex hardware development challenges with very little hope of fixing issues once their hardware is in space. This makes for a ‘pressure cooker of risk’.
We’ve all seen the movies and heard the stories about the creativity and sheer willpower needed to survive in space. Think Apollo 13, where creativity and perseverance were the heroes. In reality, the space industry is full of companies that push through adversity with an ‘at all costs’ attitude.
