Prototypes and refinement

My previous post forgot to mention the biggest off the shelf piece I took is in fact the Firefly model and its design. I reread today the Skytol specification and one major sentence struck me: The center of gravity will be where the engines are, when the ship is dry. Fuel is 80-90% of the mass too so we need to make sure that center of gravity doesn't shift much.

Subconsciously this is probably what struck me as most realistic when I saw Serenity.

I also realized I will need to carry more liquid H2 than the onboard O2 will burn. Simply because we will scoop the difference in the athmosphere.

What is at work here is already a process of refinement and the establishment of a workflow. Here of course only rough elements are tackled, but already I can say I base my development process on an evolutionary principle also inherited from software processes.

Prototyping is one major aspect of it. Rush to something operational using anything simple and already existing and mostly doing integration of 3rd party products. Then turning around and customizing and adapting incrementally.

Any complex project will fall under the 90-10 rule... 10% of it... mostly details, represent 90% of the effort. But if the 10% that provide 90% can be identified and done, things are way much easier.

For example most of the vessel will be 3 things: The engines and the 2 tanks. Yet it is all the rest that defines its functionality. First we will need fuel lines, then controls for the engines. Most of the elements that are then added are practical, need to be minimalistic, efficient. Then we can finally think of the paint and other NUMEROUS small details.

Things add up... soon we have a LOT of things to manage and put together. But the key is not be distracted.

This is where most projects again fail, where glorious abodes in the name of prefab-modern movement are exercise in vaporware (how do I know? I had grandiose plans when trying to rebuild my house destroyed by a wildfire... then I finally settling for the good old tried and true. Not the cute designs I kept seeing that required 10 X the monies just to get through the County's code, but I digress).

Why? because of lack of lucidity, of lack of concentrating on the 10% that matter the most and provide the cheapest way. Therein lies the talent and Art needed. But at the same time simple common sense can suffice.