
Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design - skmurphy
http://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html
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skmurphy
I found this looking for the source of "climbing higher and higher trees to
reach the moon" It's Mo's Law (#31 on Akin's list) 31\. (Mo's Law of
Evolutionary Development) You can't get to the moon by climbing successively
taller trees.

Some other good ones for software products:

    
    
       1. Engineering is done with numbers. Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.
       7. At the start of any design effort, the person who most wants to be team leader 
          is least likely to be capable of it.
       9. Not having all the information you need is never a satisfactory excuse for not 
          starting the analysis.
       23. The schedule you develop will seem like a complete work of fiction up until 
           the time your customer fires you for not meeting it.

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kristaps
I'm puzzled by #31, I can only interpret it as iterative development not
working.

What would be the intended interpretation?

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JanezStupar
More of the same is not enough to get you to some other faraway place.

Making a better car will not result in an airplane.

That does not mean that making a car first is not an worthy endeavor for
gaining experience to build an airplane - should you need e.g. machining,
metalworking and general engineering experience. But it won't give you ANY
aerospace background.

Or as Alan Mulally famously put it: "An automobile has about 10,000 moving
parts, right? An airplane has two million, and it has to stay up in the air."
(on being asked "How are you going to tackle something as complex and
unfamiliar as the auto business when we are in such tough financial shape?")

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dustyreagan
"When in doubt, estimate. In an emergency, guess. But be sure to go back and
clean up the mess when the real numbers come along."

This works well for financial forecasting too.

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surlyadopter
The three keys to keeping a new manned space program affordable and on
schedule: 1) No new launch vehicles. 2) No new launch vehicles. 3) Whatever
you do, don't decide to develop any new launch vehicles.

Sigh.

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dbrannan
Sounds exactly like trying to launch your new startup.

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rbanffy
In case of web startups:

1) no new web framework

2) no new web framework

3) whatever you do, don't decide to develop any new web framework

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ThomPete
From a design/user experience point of view I think this one is the most
profound.

2\. To design a spacecraft right takes an infinite amount of effort. This is
why it's a good idea to design them to operate when some things are wrong.

Designing for perfect means designing for perfect context. But perfect context
never exist. In most cases your customers are using your service/product in
sub-optimal circumstances.

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6ren

        > 14. "Better" is the enemy of "good".
    

Alludes to Voltaire's Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. Google Translate:
[http://translate.google.com/translate_t?q=Le%20mieux%20est%2...](http://translate.google.com/translate_t?q=Le%20mieux%20est%2..).
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire> (many thought-provoking quotes)

    
    
        > 30. Engineers always wind up designing the vehicle to look like
        the initial artist's concept.
    

I find it really helps to have a picture in my mind of what I'm building.

    
    
        > 34. Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.
    

Relevant for me this day, as it includes acknowledging my own inabilities,
lack of knowledge, low-quality of prototype code etc, then accepting that
that's how it is right now, and acting instead of hand-wringing.

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RyanMcGreal
> 28\. (Ranger's Law) There ain't no such thing as a free launch.

Corollary to Heinlein's Law:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch)

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younata
I think these apply more to engineering in general, rather than spacecraft
design.

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blahedo
Huh, cool. The Perlis epigrams go to outer space. :)

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GrandMasterBirt
I was going to say: An ideal spacecraft is not one in which everything is
perfect, but one in which it gets hit by something unexpected, everything
explodes, while all people manage to evacuate to some escape capsules, combine
into a giant robot and save the universe (note anything after "combine" is
optional as long as all people survive)

Was a fun read. Works well in software development, just know when to draw the
line at ensure it works (people might not die due to our failure, unless you
are writing pacemaker code)

~~~
Seth_Kriticos
..or spacecraft guidance and control software.

