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Pathways and Challenges to Innovation in AerospaceThis paper explores impediments to innovation in aerospace and suggests how successful pathways from other industries can be adopted to facilitate greater innovation. Because of its nature, space exploration would seem to be a ripe field of technical innovation. However, engineering can also be a frustratingly conservative endeavor when the realities of cost and risk are included. Impediments like the "find the fault" engineering culture, the treatment of technical risk as almost always evaluated in terms of negative impact, the difficult to account for expansive Moore's Law growth when making predictions, and the stove-piped structural organization of most large aerospace companies and federally funded research laboratories tend to inhibit cross-cutting technical innovation. One successful example of a multi-use cross cutting application that can scale with Moore's Law is the Evolutionary Computational Methods (ECM) technique developed at the Jet Propulsion Lab for automated spectral retrieval. Future innovations like computational engineering and automated design optimization can potentially redefine space exploration, but will require learning lessons from successful innovators.
Document ID
20150009162
Acquisition Source
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Document Type
Conference Paper
External Source(s)
Authors
Terrile, Richard J.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
June 1, 2015
Publication Date
March 6, 2010
Subject Category
Aeronautics (General)
Administration And Management
Meeting Information
Meeting: 2010 IEEE Aerospace Conference
Location: Big Sky, MT
Country: United States
Start Date: March 6, 2010
End Date: March 13, 2010
Sponsors: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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