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Commercialization of Space Systems
Published in Mark W. McElroy, The Space Industry of the Future, 2023
Consider an example. Tremendous value was created by the US government through sending people to the Moon in the Apollo program. However, as Ozgur Gurtuna points out, Apollo was canceled in the end because the primary forms of value, prestige and political power, had already been obtained, and “without an economic basis for sustained flight to the Moon, there was little reason to keep the Apollo program running” [120]. One can conclude that for a given value creation activity in space (landing a human on the Moon in this example) if it were executed in the context of stakeholder intrinsic value creation (i.e., using the profit-seeking motive), more net value would be created and it would be created consistently over a longer period of time compared to if it were executed by the government. The catch is that only certain types of things are suitable for commercialization.
Innovation and tradition in human spaceflight architecture
Published in Mário S. Ming Kong, Maria do Rosário Monteiro, Maria João Pereira Neto, Creating Through Mind and Emotions, 2022
Glass box methods are systems of rationality that seek to establish progressive gateways to check for errors and safety hazards before allowing a design or project to pass through to the next step. System Engineering is the preeminent glass box method. Robert Machol almost single-handedly founded System Engineering in the 1950s and developed his Handbook as what Kuhn calls a standard text (Kuhn, 1970). NASA adopted, accelerated, and developed System Engineering further as the major enabling discipline for the Apollo Program and subsequent programs (e.g., Shuttle, Space Station, Orion, Artemis, etc.). The methodology of System Engineering is to make every aspect of a project explicit, knowable, and measurable, checkable and checked, testable and tested, so the people engaging in it can ensure a successful outcome.
Structure of the aerospace industry
Published in Wesley Spreen, The Aerospace Business, 2019
Although activities involving earth-orbiting satellites are the core of the space business, a relatively minor adjunct involves government-funded exploration missions outside the Earth’s gravitational field. The most spectacular of these missions were the manned expeditions to the moon as part of the Apollo program from 1969 to 1972. Equally fruitful from a scientific perspective have been earth observation satellites, orbiting telescopes, and unmanned probes sent to the other planets and moons of the solar system.
‘We were shot down!’: Earth observing satellites, data surveillance, and NASA’s 1982 Global Habitability initiative
Published in History and Technology, 2021
All of these threads plausibly contributed to what became Global Habitability, with UNISPACE ’82 providing the proximate catalyst for their coalescence into a project proposal. These threads fit with what Erik Conway, Neil Maher, and Kim McQuaid have described as NASA’s turn ‘back to Earth’ beginning in the 1970s. With the end of the Apollo program in 1972 and a widespread loss of support for major space ‘prestige’ projects during the Cold War détente of the 1970s, NASA required new non-Space Race priorities and was more susceptible to public criticism that called for the agency to undertake activities that could practically benefit the inhabitants of Earth.19 This turn ‘back to Earth’ meant that conferences focused on the peaceful uses of space science and technologies – like UNISPACE – were important venues where NASA officials could promote new priorities for the agency.