Value-Centric Design Methodologies for Fractionated Spacecraft: Progress Summary from Phase I of the DARPA System F6 Program

Abstract

One of the most ambitious efforts in value-centric design of a military aerospace system undertaken to date has been the parallel development by four performer teams, headlined by major space industry primes, of design tools for fractionated space architectures under DARPA's System F6 program. The goal of the System F6 program is to replace traditional, highly-integrated, monolithic satellites with wirelessly-networked clusters of heterogeneous modules incorporating the various payload and infrastructure functions. Such fractionated architectures can deliver a comparable or greater mission capability than monolithic satellites, but with significantly enhanced flexibility and robustness. In order to design an optimal fractionated architecture, the potential cost penalties due to the overhead of such a design must be balanced against the value enhancement due to improved flexibility and robustness. The first, preliminary design phase of the System F6 program, simultaneously awarded to four competing industry teams led by Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Orbital Sciences, commenced in February 2008 and included a significant effort for the development, validation, and demonstration of a Value-Centric Design methodology and associated tool suite that can support the design of optimized fractionated satellite systems based on a net lifecycle value metric and a probabilistic distribution thereof. This phase concluded in February 2009 and the Value-Centric Design methodology development to date is documented in a series of papers by the industry performer teams. This paper, from the System F6 Program Office, summarizes the overarching objectives of the Value-Centric Design effort, details and rationalizes the requirements for the methodology, discusses the relationship between Value-Centric Design and the traditional industry-standard systems engineering process, and fills any gaps in the performers' own presentations of their efforts, tools, and results. 1 The views expressed herein are the authors' own and do not necessarily represent those of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government. Approved for public release. Distribution unlimited.

Aligning Perspectives and Methods for Value-Driven Design

“…1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13 Similarly, this trend has been observed in academic research. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] In industry, government, and academia, value-driven design is often portrayed as a response to more traditional (and historical) approaches for designing engineering systems, which rely heavily on requirements and/or cost-related characteristics of a system. Subsequently, these traditional approaches for engineering design, although originally intended to lead to the creation of useful systems, often end up falling short in delivering to their full potential, either by costing too much, or providing less capability than expected.…”

“…In the domain of space systems, this is evidenced by research in academia and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) System F6 (Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractionated, Free-Flying) Program. 3,4,7,8,9,11,46,66 …”

“…The result of this recent desire to pursue value-driven design has been the creation of what are commonly referred to as -value-centric design methodologies‖ (VCDMs) 4 ; these subsequently embody the synergy between value-driven design and engineering system design. Essentially, these VCDMs marry physics and cost-based system models with a valuation model, the latter incorporating value perception as part of the system model output, and thus providing system selection criteria based on derived system value.…”

Product Development in the Socio-sphere

“…Other methodologies did exist previously, such as Real options for flexibility (Saleh et al 2003) but just for a few of these aforementioned criteria. Later, Brown et al (2009) developed a Value-Centric Design Methodology (VCDM), which puts the emphasis on quantifying the value of flexibility and robustness. Nowadays, definitions and application of VCDM are closely aligned with VDD (O´Neill et al 2010).…”

Development of an Airline Revenue Capability Model for Aircraft Design

“…This includes both commercial aircraft and government and military programs. [1][2][3][4][5][6] The benefit of using a value based approach is that it can greatly simplify the design decision making process, a value approach meets the requirements posed by Von-Nuemann and Morgenstern 7 as value models inherently represent the utility of a design. 8,9 The challenge, of course, is the actual creation of the value model.…”