Responsive Space: Concept Analysis, Critical Review, and Theoretical Framework

Customers’ needs are dynamic and evolve in response to unfolding environmental uncertainties. The ability of a company or an industry to address these changing customers’ needs in a timely and cost-effective way is a measure of its responsiveness. In the space industry, a systemic discrepancy exists between the time constants associated with the change of customers’ needs, and the response time of the industry in delivering on-orbit solutions to these needs. Increasingly, the penalties associated with such delays are becoming unacceptable, and space responsiveness is recognized as a strategic imperative in commercial competitive and military environments. In this paper, we provide a critical assessment of the literature on responsive space and introduce a new multi-disciplinary framework for thinking about and addressing issues of space responsiveness. Our framework advocates three levels of responsiveness: a global industry-wide responsiveness, a local stakeholder responsiveness, and an interactive or inter-stakeholder responsiveness. We introduce and motivate the use of “responsiveness maps” for multiple stakeholders. We then identify “levers of responsiveness,” technical spacecraft- and launch-centric, as well as “soft” levers (e.g., acquisition policies) for improving the responsiveness of the space industry. Finally, we propose a series of research questions to aggressively tackle problems associated with space responsiveness.

[1]  M. Holweg,et al.  Successful Build-to-Order Strategies Start With the Customer , 2001 .

[2]  Jami J. Shah,et al.  Developing Measures of Complexity for Engineering Design , 2003 .

[3]  Robert Bitten,et al.  The effect of schedule constraints on the success of planetary missions , 2003 .

[4]  S. Kaplan Bayes is for eagles , 1990 .

[5]  M. Tushman,et al.  Technological Discontinuities and Dominant Designs: A Cyclical Model of Technological Change , 1990 .

[6]  Karl T. Ulrich,et al.  Product Design and Development , 1995 .

[7]  Kim B. Clark,et al.  Architectural Innovation: The Reconfiguration of Existing Product Technologies and the Failure of , 1990 .

[8]  Oded Maimon,et al.  The measurement of a design structural and functional complexity , 1998, IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. Part A.

[9]  T. P. Wright,et al.  Factors affecting the cost of airplanes , 1936 .

[10]  G. Shotwell,et al.  Space Exploration Technologies' Falcon I Launcher: Towards Operationally Responsive Spacelift , 2004 .

[11]  B. J. Zirger,et al.  The effect of acceleration techniques on product development time , 1996 .

[12]  S. Lloyd,et al.  Measures of complexity: a nonexhaustive list , 2001 .

[13]  James R. Wertz,et al.  Space Mission Analysis and Design , 1992 .

[14]  Ron Willey,et al.  OSP-2 Minotaur Family of Space Launch Vehicles for Near Term, Low Risk Responsive Spacelift , 2005 .

[15]  Les Doggrell,et al.  Operationally Responsive Space: A Vision for the Future of Military Space , 2006 .

[16]  John Enright,et al.  Modularity and Spacecraft Cost , 1998 .

[17]  John K. Gershenson,et al.  Product modularity: Definitions and benefits , 2003 .

[18]  James R. Wertz RESPONSIVE LAUNCH VEHICLE COST MODEL , 2004 .

[19]  Karl T. Ulrich,et al.  Fundamentals of Product Modularity , 1994 .

[20]  Joseph H. Saleh,et al.  Highlights from the early (and pre-) history of reliability engineering , 2006, Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf..

[21]  John J. Webb ON-DEMAND SCIENCE MISSIONS , 2005 .

[22]  David A. Bearden,et al.  A complexity-based risk assessment of low-cost planetary missions: when is a mission too fast and too cheap? , 2003 .

[23]  Murray Gell-Mann,et al.  What is complexity? Remarks on simplicity and complexity by the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Quark and the Jaguar , 1995, Complex..

[24]  Evandro Agazzi,et al.  What is Complexity , 2002 .

[25]  Geoffrey Boothroyd,et al.  Product design for manufacture and assembly , 1994, Comput. Aided Des..

[26]  Hamdi A. Bashir,et al.  Models for estimating design effort and time , 2001 .