Case Study in Agile for Hardware: Aerospace Systems

Abstract This paper provides a case study in Agile for Hardware examining the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle program. It provides an overview of the program and graphical analysis of the launch and recovery successes of Falcon Rockets. Further comparison is made to the similar rockets in the same vehicle class. SpaceX provides an interesting case study. In less than twenty years they went from a start up to dominating the U.S. and global launch industry. They use non-standard development methods in iterative design and provide an informative case study on success in this market. The evolution of the Falcon rocket is covered, including all major variants from 2002 to 2018. Important technical advances are addressed. Graphical analysis shows how SpaceX applies failures to subsequent launches and generations of launch vehicles to develop revolutionary new capability in the recovery, and eventual reuse of boosters. A “knowledge curve” is proposed and applied to the Falcon rocket development. Similar knowledge curves are used to compare Falcon and Falcon Heavy rockets to Vulcan Centaur and NASA SLS rocket respectively. The time to first flight and iterations are considered. This analysis is informative for those in design research and application. The case is made that iterative development, which traditionally considered expensive and long, compared to virtual iteration, can be faster and cheaper.