I had an illuminating discussion last night with a friend who works for another large aerospace company. It seems that this company is in the long-term process of positioning itself as a “system integrator”, rather than a manufacturer of space- and defense-related hardware.
To this end, this company is divesting itself of most or all of its manufacturing capability, intending to outsource all the “dirty work” and perform only final assembly in-house.
Even though it has only pursued this path for the past few years, the unfortunate results are already becoming visible. The lack of hands-on, close-up experience, opportunities for cross-discipline training, and intergenerational knowledge transfer is showing up as poor engineering judgement. Poor communication and ill-directed cost control is allowing an increasing number of bad decisions to slip through, mistakes which could have been identified early on through consultation with subject-matter experts.
There were many horror stories involved in this discussion, which I won’t repeat here. Suffice it to say that rather than learn from its recent lessons, this company continues down the same path — one which could eventually lead to its collapse due to technical incompetence and general mismanagement.
Which is not to say that this company is alone. From what I have seen, many of the major contractors suffer to lesser degrees from the same problems afflicting my friend’s company.
This makes me wonder if we are not on the verge of a major change in the industry. If the major players increasingly outsource their dirty work to small vendors and make no effort to retain their in-house technical competence, how long will it be before the smaller companies currently supplying them end up supplanting them? Particularly if they demonstrate greater innovation, shorter schedules, and lower costs.
While I’m not sure how well the metaphor fits, the state of the aerospace industry seems similar to the computer industry in the mid-1970’s. It may be that the Wangs of the aerospace industry are soon to die out, succumbing to their own inability or unwillingness to adapt and innovate, to be replaced by Apples and Microsofts
Of course, in the late 70s, there was a need for small computers that became obvious as soon as VisiCalc appeared. I can think of several, but I’m more curious in what you think: is there an analog in LEO? Not just potentially, but one that will make people sit up, take notice, change space-access treaties, and make a lot of people a lot of money?
Hm. VisiCalc, if memory serves, was a proto-spreadsheet application written for the small homebuilt computers such as Altair, which was so useful that it kickstarted a market for better small computers. What you’re asking is, I take it, whether there is something enabled by the launch startups which is itself so useful or desirable that it will feed back into the development of the launch market.
One possibility is space tourism. The suborbital players may be able to exploit a small market for expensive and exotic adventure travel through trips to the edge of space. Building on this, they might both enhance their service (through higher altitudes) and bring down costs (through higher flight rates and streamlined operations). Over time, reinvestment could result in orbital vehicles, then long-duration orbital vehicles, then space motels, then space hotels, and who knows what else. I think this is a long-shot, but it could happen with the right business decisions and a good dose of luck.
Another option is filling an underserved niche in the launch market, such as small satellites. Being able to build small satellites on the cheap does no good if it still costs tens of millions of dollars to launch them — just as having a useful computer program does no good if no one can afford to buy computers to run it on. Creating a launch service which erases the extreme cost disparity between building and launching small satellites will encourage more players to build more small satellites for the new service to launch (simple supply and demand…price goes down, demand goes up).
Not sure if that answers your question. What are your ideas?
I think just like the price of computers that dropped drastically these last few years – so will the price of satellites drop. But unfortunately – it will take still quite some doing.
Who knows maybe in the future the whole satellite industry will be revolutionized by more sturdy satellites (like from the moon) and then there won’t be a need for smaller ones?