Category: Space Done Wrong

This month’s topic is “fear!!1!” and how it dominates decisions in the space industry. In this bonus article we will look into one of these irrational choices. Let’s explore how the EC gave a mission to ESA that would have better be implemented directly by industry. And how ESA chose a satellite platform which is quite literally…

Where did the NASA MER rovers or the ESA Proba go wrong? Easy: They did what they did for 20x than what they were designed for. Wait, I hear you say: getting your money’s worth is a good thing. Well only if you ignore that this habitual exceeding the specification comes at a cost. It…

The topic of this main episode is “how to waste money and human ingenuity” in this bonus feature we will find evidence that the environment in which a mission is designs matters as much as the mission when it comes to cost and speed of implementation. Or how else it s possible that small satellite…

Episode 6 has the topic of “how to waste money and human ingenuity”. Today we will look at one of these cases on how if academia sets themselves targets that are not far enough beyond the state of the art then industry will overtake them in innovation to an extend that in the end they…

Episode 6 is about “how to waste money and human ingenuity”, this bonus article is a case study on how the habits on publishing – sometimes described as “minimum publishable unit” – actually hinder scientific and engineering progress. How this results in the waste of public money in government grants and how bright minds are…

Sometimes a look towards other industries can be eye opening. And I believe especially automotive can teach the space industry quite a bit. Normally, I would go and talk about serial manufacturing and the Henry Ford Moment but would you have know that luxury sports cars can be equally enticing? Let’s have a look. About…