The art of stepping back: What NASA’s Space Shuttle can teach innovators today

A team of scientists from the US has analyzed the Space Shuttle’s design process in great detail, aiming to draw lessons from the world’s first reusable spacecraft for the present day.

In a new study published in the Strategic Management Journal, the team outlined NASA’s non-linear design approach. While designing the Space Shuttle, the US space agency often took a step back to consider several approaches, only to return to its original plan.

This approach proved to be highly effective, showing that sometimes the most effective way forward requires a deliberate step sideways. The team believes this approach could be applied to many fields today, including the space industry, the health sector, and more.

Analyzing NASA’s Space Shuttle design process

Though its record is marred by two high-profile disasters, the Space Shuttle broke new ground when it launched for the first time in 1981. It was the first reusable spacecraft in history, enabling lower-cost launches and routine access to space for satellite deployment and crewed missions to the International Space Station (ISS).

Now, in a new study, a team is comparing the development of this historic spacecraft to that of the iPhone. Both systems require a delicate balance between their many interconnected systems.

“Push one feature too far, and the phone becomes heavier, bulkier, or more expensive,” Francisco Polidoro Jr., a professor of management at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business, explained in a press statement.

The same principle applied to NASA’s Space Shuttle, a vehicle that had to balance payload capacity, reusability, fuel efficiency, size, weight, and cost.

In their study, Polidoro Jr. and co-authors reconstructed how NASA solved those problems between 1969 and 1971. The team pored over 7,000 pages of internal memoranda, technical reports, oral histories, and unpublished documents. They mapped every major design iteration that led to the shuttle configuration flown from 1981 to 2011.

Oscillation and accumulation

The team found that the Space Shuttle’s design was decidedly non-linear. Instead, NASA engineers relied on two intertwined knowledge-building processes the authors call oscillation and accumulation.

In oscillation, engineers focused on a single performance goal. They deliberately stepped back and explored alternatives before returning with fresh insight. Accumulation, meanwhile, meant steadily meeting more performance goals in subsequent designs, as they accumulated knowledge with each design.

Past research has investigated the two processes separately. However, according to Polidoro’s team, the Space Shuttle’s success was due to both working synergistically.

Early shuttle concepts, for example, achieved highly efficient combustion using liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Engineers then temporarily reverted to old-fashioned kerosene fuel so they could test solid-rocket boosters and reusable components without the complications of cryogenics.

“Stepping back and letting go, temporarily, of solutions that are superior creates a space for you to keep on accumulating knowledge,” Polidoro explained. “But that could be challenging, because technologists might be really proud of what they’ve achieved. It requires a humbleness to step away.”

The team behind the new study believes that emulating this approach can be beneficial across various fields today. Beyond rocketry, Polidoro points to pharmaceutical research, where scientists may set aside a highly effective compound because of toxicity, explore alternatives, solve the toxicity problem separately, and later return stronger. “A temporary retreat can become the foundation for the next leap forward,” he said.