Any SpaceX Engineers want to share some process advice with “old space”?

I work for what y’all would probably consider an “old space” entity and lately have been trying to figure out how to improve and sculpt our development and verification processes. Obviously SpaceX has been doing innovations in this regard, and in my opinion, is the distinguishing factor in their effectiveness. We have brilliant GN&C people, but if it takes 8 hours to run a sim when the dragon engineers have flight hardware on their desk, one of those teams is going to be able to test and improve ideas faster.

So here are some things I’ve sort of learned that I think spaceX is capitalizing on that others aren’t as much, fill in the blanks if you can.

• Using proven COTS products when possible

• When a proven COTS product is not available, build it in-house to reduce the chance of a garbage contractor burning you (we suffer from this a lot)

• A focus on modern software development practices and applying that attitude to the vehicle. SpaceX benefits from being in the field of launch vehicles, which can be tested more readily in the actual operating environment than say a Martian orbiter/lander. I’d say they probably focus more on getting compile time and sim time tightened up as much as possible as well but I don’t know that for a fact.

• Generally having less assessment time and more actually just make a decision and build it time to get it to the environment quicker. Again maybe not possible to extend as extremely to things outside of LEO but we’ll see. I know they couldn’t do this as much with dragon, which is closer to what I would want to emulate at my employer as opposed to starship.

What else am I missing? I don’t think there’s any great reason other entities can’t operate as quickly as SpaceX does, I really think eventually the methods used will spread and gain traction. Let’s speed that up a bit ;). If it makes you feel any better about spilling my employer is in no way competing with SpaceX, we only ever collaborate. Help us help you!

McLMark

I'm in "old space" right now, and I'm fairly young.

I've found so many things I'd like to change coming from an agile background. I'll keep my list short, though:

1. GD&T needs to go. If the prototype part works, it works. That's it. You can load test it, but if there's any reason you're not automatically assembling it after machining, you're doing something wrong.

2. Stop using drawings for assemblies and internally machined parts (NX Drafting). I've spent 90%+ of my time making a drawing correct when the model and notes themselves were perfect. It's just stupid. Document your work and design intent - but don't have such specific requirements for drawings that make you churn out 10x fewer components.

3. Stop holding "delegation" meetings. If you see something that needs to be done, do it. If you need someone to do something, add it to their backlog and talk to them about it. We don't need a 3 hour weekly meeting to discuss who is going to work on what for these few specific components.

4. Improve prototype manufacturing flow. If I want to test an idea, let me make a cheap (maybe scaled down) version of it without having to go through the typical release process (which takes months and multiple peer reviews).

5. Test complete assemblies more often. Continue to test individual parts, but if you put it all together and test it, you can pretty quickly find a bunch of issues - especially stuff like interferences and material property issues.

EDIT: edited point 1 to better express my frustration with GD&T for prototype parts.

GD&T needs to go. If the part works, it works. That's it. You'll load test it, but if there's any reason you're not automatically assembling it after machining, you're doing something wrong.

I hate doing GD&T as much as the next guy but this is absurd. Manufacturing processess are not infinitely precise or repeatable. Finding out the part doesn't fit isn't suddenly ok just because you test fit it immediately after machining. There are very few instances where a machined part can be immediately assembled without secondary operations anyway (is machining suddenly the only manufacturing process in existence?). And what about replacement parts? Without GD&T (or something like it), there is no guarantee the part will fit in every assembly.

You're basically advocating for reverting to a world of before interchangeable parts.

I can't talk about space but for comercial nuclear its very similar phenomenon from what I can tell.

Extreme reluctance to try new technologies. So much so people have to retire before upgrading.

Kids show up straight out of college and have to learn 1970s technologies or software. Like they could eliminate an entire wing of the building with an Audrino and 3 weeks programing but aren't allowed

Specs are treated like the Bible. If you don't know where it came from and often you don't you aren't allowed to change it. These were often just picked from a long list of suitable solutions or numbers in the 70s because the loudest person wanted it. Now risk adverse management and regulatiots won't change.

Implementing anything substantial requires you to convince your manager who then has to convince their manager on up to like 4 levels. The 4th level came from energy sales and has no respect for technical input or technical decision making. Once your 4th level management is approved they have to personally take the case to the regulator at some risk. The government regulator then takes 2 years.

Spacex apparently has few of these limitations. I don't think any amount of lower level process improvement will help until the whole system is overhauled.

n5321 | 2025年7月7日 23:46

SpaceX uses 3D printers and a process of relentless refinement to streamline its Raptor engines. In the Raptor 3, plumbing and wiring that had been on the outside were fused into the motor’s metal structure.

What is behind SpaceX’s success? According to one former top employee, it is something called “The Algorithm.”

Tim Berry, head of manufacturing and quality at blended-wing-body startup JetZero, spent a decade at SpaceX leading the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy family of rockets upper-stage production team. Berry also led the Dragon Crew and Cargo integration team and was head of additive manufacturing.

• How the Raptor 3 rocket engine was streamlined

• “Your requirements are definitely dumb; You have to find a way to make them less dumb.”

The Algorithm was “drilled into our minds,” he said at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Aviation Forum in Las Vegas in July. “It’s a five-step process for improving the design, making it ultimately easier to manufacture and finding ways to optimize along the way as well.”

Step 1 is: “Challenge the requirements,” Berry said. “Or as our benefactor used to say, ‘Your requirements are definitely dumb; you have to find a way to make them less dumb.’”

Step 2 involves deleting a part or a process step. “Really looking at the full value chain of what you’re working on and eliminating any unnecessary process steps while also finding opportunities to delete parts ultimately yields an overall optimization, whether it’s a reduction in labor or cycle time or anything like that,” he said.

Step 3: “Find additional opportunities to simplify the design or optimize it,” Berry said. “Make it easier to manufacture or eke a few more points of performance out of it.”

Step 4 is all about speed. “Find even more ways to go faster,” Berry explained. “You add more stations; you ramp up the manufacturing.”

And then, finally—Step 5—you automate. “Most people start with Step 5, and they automate a process that never should have existed in the first place,” said Berry. “It’s really important that you work the steps in order.”

After completing Step 5, rinse and repeat. “You’re never satisfied,” Berry said. “You’re constantly going back and finding opportunities to challenge your requirements, deleting more parts, simplifying, optimizing, going faster, and then finally, opportunities to automate, but only once you’ve really boiled down to the baseline process.”

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is keen on reducing engineering to its basics via first principles thinking. Aristotle invented the first principles method some 2,400 years ago in his Metaphysics, describing it as trying to understand “the first basis from which a thing is known.”

“The normal way that we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy,” Musk explained in a 2012 interview. “We’re doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it’s like what other people are doing. It’s mentally easier to reason by analogy rather than from first principles. First principles is a physics way of looking at the world, and what that really means is you kind of boil things down to the most fundamental truths.”

Musk often talks about competing SpaceX’s hardware against the laws of nature rather than other products on the market. That philosophy has driven SpaceX employees to simplify the Raptor rocket engine from something that looked “like a Christmas tree with how much stuff is on it” to a more spartan look, Berry said.

In August, SpaceX revealed the drastically streamlined Raptor 3 engine (see photo) and test-fired it. The company ditched a heat shield on the latest iteration of the methane-fueled engine by taking plumbing and wiring that was previously hanging on the outside and fusing it into the motor’s metal structure. To do so, SpaceX heavily relied on 3D printing, Musk wrote on the social media site X.

The sea-level variant of the Raptor 3 weighs 3,362 lb., compared with the 3,594-lb. Raptor 2, while generating 280 tons of force, compared with the current rocket’s 230 tons of force. The total weight of the Raptor 3 plus vehicle commodities and hardware is 3,792 lb. compared with the Raptor 2’s 6,338 lb.

“The amount of work required to simplify the Raptor engine, internalize secondary flow paths and add regenerative cooling for exposed components was staggering,” Musk said. “Getting close to the limit of known physics,” he added in another post.

n5321 | 2025年7月7日 23:40