Staffing the Space Assembly Line€¦ · Space Assembly Line MAKING LEADERS Space & Satellite Professionals International April 30, 2019 Free to members, $125 for non-members How

Staffing the Space Assembly Line

M A K I N G L E A D E R S

Space&SatelliteProfessionalsInternational

April30,2019Freetomembers,$125fornon-members

Howagroupofcompaniestackledthechallengeofcreatingatechnicalworkforceforaspacesystemsmanufacturing,establishingamodelforothercommercialspaceclustersacrossNorthAmericaandaroundtheworld.

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Contents EscapevelocityforHenryFord..........................................................................................................................3TheOneWebSatelliteschallenge......................................................................................................................6BuildingtheSpaceCoastprogram..................................................................................................................11Overcomingobstacles..........................................................................................................................................16Keytake-Aways.......................................................................................................................................................18AbouttheMakingLeadersseries.....................................................................................................................20

©2019Space&SatelliteProfessionalsInternationalResearchedandwrittenbyRobertBell,ExecutiveDirector,SSPI

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Escape velocity for Henry Ford Henry Ford became a business legend byturning a big idea into one of the mostsuccessful companies in history. The bigidea – mass production – was not his. Itbegan more than 2,000 years ago with theproduction of weapons in China. The firstindustrialapplicationstookplaceinBritaininthe18th Century. ItwasRaymondOldswhofirst began production-line manufacturing ofcarsinhisOldsmobilefactory. But Fordworked relentlessly to simplifyandstandardizethemanufactureoftheautomobile,andcreatedtheassemblylinesystemthat could produce it inexpensively in large quantities with consistent quality. He alsoinnovated in two other ways that would reshape the century. He pioneered in massadvertising to create demand for his products and in paying his employees double thegoingwage,reasoningthatprosperousconsumerswouldturnintohiscustomers. Introducedin1908atacostofUS$820(about$23,000today),theModelTblewopentheautomobilemarket.Itspricefelleveryyear,thankstoconstantinnovation,andjust10years later, half of all the cars in AmericawereModel Ts. By 1920, therewere over 8millionvehicleregistrationsintheUSandthenumberofregistereddriversnearlytripledto23millionbytheendofthedecade. It is hard today to appreciate what a revolution this was. Before the perfection ofassembly-line manufacturing, the automobile market consisted exclusively of wealthypeople.ManyofFord’sinvestorstoldhimthatmakingabettercarforrichpeoplewouldbehispathtosuccess. Thesmallsizeofthemarketandhighpricesdictatedhowcarsweremade – slowly, with much manual labor by skilled craftsmen – like the furniture andfurnishings thatgraced thehomesof thewealthy. Itwasanichebusiness thatattractedremarkableengineeringinnovatorswithnameslikeDaimlerandBenz,PuegotandDiesel,whoprizedperformanceandbuiltwithracedriversinmind. Andthen,withinonegeneration,itwasn’t.

FORD

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The new space race The description of the automotive industry before Ford Motor Company should soundfamiliar to anyone who works in the commercial space business. A niche business,certainly:communicationssatellitesprovideabout1percentofglobaltelecommunications,measuredinrevenue.Custom-builtbyskilledcraftspeople?Certainly,asanyonewhohasvisitedthehighbayataspacecraftmanufacturercanattest.Andexpensive?Youbet.ThetraditionalGEOcommunicationssatellitecosts$200-400millionallin,andhasausefullifeexceeding 15 years. So, it has paid to manufacture them very carefully, with no twosatellitesexactlyalike,togenerateagoodreturnonthatmassiveinvestment. And then, in the first decade of thenew century, it stopped making quitesuchgoodsense. It started with Iridium andGlobalstar, the first satelliteconstellations. When Iridium begandesigning a 66-satellite system andGlobalstar specified 48 spacecraft, thecompanies faceda completelynewneed:to standardize on a single design andproduce it in quantity. The companies’technicalsuccesswiththatgoal–andthemuch more daunting challenge of actually delivering a workable service – wasovershadowed by the spectacular bankruptcy of Iridium only months after its marketlaunch. In this century, O3B (now SES Networks) became the next company to build andlaunchaconstellation.Its20spacecraftoperatinginMEOwerealsobasedonastandard,well-established design. Then came OneWeb, which announced, funded and beganproduction of a constellation 10 times the size of Iridium, aiming to deliver internetconnectivity everywhere on Earth. Its first set of six satellites, designed to providetechnicalproofofconcept,weresuccessfullylaunchedinFebruary2019.Bythen,Iridiumhadcompletedthelaunchofanew66-satelliteconstellationcalledIridiumNext,capableofmuch higher throughput. And constellations were in development by Telesat, Leosat,SpaceX,Boeing,LeoSatandotheroperatorsbothlongestablishedandbrandnew.