- Akin’s laws of spacecraft design: This list is full of truth. Funny and great! :)
- Design is an iterative process. The necessary number of iterations is one more than the number you have currently done. This is true at any point in time.
- In nature, the optimum is almost always in the middle somewhere. Distrust assertions that the optimum is at an extreme point.
- When in doubt, estimate. In an emergency, guess. But be sure to go back and clean up the mess when the real numbers come along.
- The odds are greatly against you being immensely smarter than everyone else in the field. If your analysis says your terminal velocity is twice the speed of light, you may have invented warp drive, but the chances are a lot better that you’ve screwed up.
- Any exploration program which “just happens” to include a new launch vehicle is, de facto, a launch vehicle program.
- (alternate formulation) The three keys to keeping a new human space program affordable and on schedule:
1) No new launch vehicles.
2) No new launch vehicles.
3) Whatever you do, don’t develop any new launch vehicles.
- (Lachance’s Law) “Plenty of time” becomes “not enough time” in a very short time.
