Session
Technical Session I: Mission Metrics
Abstract
…In a food chain of a biological system, plants (or producers) fix energy from the Sun and use inorganic material to manufacture complex organic substances; consumers (e.g. birds, mammals) use the energy fixed by plants as their nutrients; finally decomposers (e.g. bacteria), break down dead organisms and release nutrients back to the environment for use by the producers… The Space Business can be seen as a class of ecosystems, where the producers (equipment suppliers) transform raw materials by using the energy (funds). Consumers (the users) use data and services provided by the satellites to release back the nutrients in form of need of better services and more accurate data: these products generate more funds. This chain creates a stable system. In Small Sat business the cost affects the design approach and the way funds are shared among all the actors. Producers and consumers live in symbiosis to minimize costs and improve their survivability. Design to Cost approach has been already used as design philosophies in small satellite missions, but this does not explain why some Small Satellites experiences give birth to a stable system, while other don’t. With some remarkable exceptions, many of the Small Satellites have been one-of-a-kind. Will the Small Sat approach become a self sustained ecosystem with a longer lifetime of products and consumers? The objective is to define a metric to evaluate the stability of a new programme. It also sees the small satellite in a wider perspective to help small satellite to enter other Ecosystems.
Presentation Slides
The Food Chain of the Small Satellites Ecosystem
…In a food chain of a biological system, plants (or producers) fix energy from the Sun and use inorganic material to manufacture complex organic substances; consumers (e.g. birds, mammals) use the energy fixed by plants as their nutrients; finally decomposers (e.g. bacteria), break down dead organisms and release nutrients back to the environment for use by the producers… The Space Business can be seen as a class of ecosystems, where the producers (equipment suppliers) transform raw materials by using the energy (funds). Consumers (the users) use data and services provided by the satellites to release back the nutrients in form of need of better services and more accurate data: these products generate more funds. This chain creates a stable system. In Small Sat business the cost affects the design approach and the way funds are shared among all the actors. Producers and consumers live in symbiosis to minimize costs and improve their survivability. Design to Cost approach has been already used as design philosophies in small satellite missions, but this does not explain why some Small Satellites experiences give birth to a stable system, while other don’t. With some remarkable exceptions, many of the Small Satellites have been one-of-a-kind. Will the Small Sat approach become a self sustained ecosystem with a longer lifetime of products and consumers? The objective is to define a metric to evaluate the stability of a new programme. It also sees the small satellite in a wider perspective to help small satellite to enter other Ecosystems.
