A new study that examined NASA’s space shuttle development argues that the agency’s design approach offers a template for creating breakthrough products that combine numerous interdependent features.
The study focused on how NASA generated internal knowledge for the shuttle programme between 1969 and 1971, when engineers had to balance performance, cost and reusability without an existing design blueprint. The researchers created a timeline of successive space shuttle designs based on an archive of 7,000 pages of books, papers and technical documents.
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They found that, rather than a straightforward sequence, NASA used a meandering knowledge-building process that process allowed it to systematically explore rocket features, both individually and together. ‘With breakthrough inventions, the number of combinations of possible features quickly explodes, and you just can’t test all of them,’ said Francisco Polidoro Jr, a professor of management in the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business. ‘It has to be a much more selective search process.’
NASA recognised that the high costs of its Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programmes were largely due to nonreusable systems. At the outset, engineers working on a solution identified a series of performance features to test, including the capacity to carry payloads of 50,000 pounds (22,680 kilograms); boosters with solid-propellant rocket motors that could be jettisoned and reused; and an external fuel tank with liquified oxygen and hydrogen that could be jettisoned.
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To achieve those goals, the researchers found, NASA engineers built new knowledge in two distinct ways that repeated and built on each other over time: oscillation and accumulation. With oscillation, engineers focused on achieving one specific performance goal. Then, they deliberately stepped back to explore alternatives, returning later to the initial goal with new insights. With accumulation, they steadily met more performance goals in later designs as they built up knowledge.
Past research has looked at oscillation and accumulation separately, Polidoro said, but it was the two processes working synergistically that drove the shuttle’s breakthroughs. For example, in its first design iteration, engineers discovered how to burn fuel efficiently using a combination of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Then, in subsequent designs, they temporarily reverted to an older fuel: kerosene.
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They used kerosene while they tested other features, including solid rocket motors and reusable boosters. Those features were incorporated successfully into later designs.
‘Stepping back and letting go, temporarily, of solutions that are superior creates a space for you to keep on accumulating knowledge,’ Polidoro said. ‘But that could be challenging, because technologists might be really proud of what they’ve achieved. It requires a humbleness to step away.’
Today, he said, engineers face an added challenge. Space technology innovation is spread across several private companies, not just NASA, making it harder to coordinate oscillation and accumulation.
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He suggested that companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin pay attention to how they split tasks around design and prototyping. ‘Try to define the boundaries of tasks or modules around the features that are highly interdependent,’ Polidoro said.
He added that oscillation and accumulation aren’t limited to designing rockets. They can apply to other kinds of breakthrough inventions, such as new drugs. A researcher may initially identify a promising compound that targets a disease pathway with precision, only to set it aside temporarily because toxicity issues arise. After resolving the toxicity issues, the team returns to the compound.
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‘But in the process, you may have learned something,’ said Polidoro. ‘A temporary retreat can become the foundation for the next leap forward.’
The research has been published in Research Policy.