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!