Hamaker’s 17 Miracles To Reduce Space Project Costs*

1. Hamaker’s 17 MiraclesTo Reduce Space Project Costs* • All required technologies are mature and have been demonstrated in a relevant environment. • Off-the-shelf, or other high heritage flight hardware designs will be utilized to a large extent. • COTS software and/or software reuse will significantly reduce the amount of code that has to be developed. • The contractor and/or government team is very experienced, have well established working relationships, will hit the ground running and will avoid the mistakes of less experienced teams (the Lake Woebegone Effect where “all the children are above average”). • The requirements are solid and will not change. • Funding will be timely and stable. • Tests will verify that the design works and make-it-work changes will be minimal. • There is sufficient schedule slack such that the project will be completed on time without requiring extra shifts, overtime or schedule slips. • There is sufficient weight and power margin so that light-weighting and power reductions will not be required. • The vendors and subcontractors will perform as planned. • Government or customer GFE will materialize on time and work and will seamlessly integrate with other parts. • New project management approaches will increase productivity over historical levels. • Modern design, code development and manufacturing approaches will increase productivity over historical levels. • New acquisition approaches will hold the contractor’s feet to the fire. • The higher independent cost estimates were flawed, incompetent, naïve, biased, capricious, arbitrary and, worst of all, parametric. (Besides, the project wouldn’t sell at that number so it can’t be right). • Several inconvenient laws of physics will be found not to apply to this project. • Shit won’t happen. *make that “to reduce space project cost estimates”