Flight heritage? It isn’t what you think

In space procurement, there are few phrases that carry more weight than “flight heritage.” Once a supplier claims it, the rest of the room can relax. The hardware has flown, goes the thinking. It worked. The risk of using such hardware is vanishingly small, even absent.

This is understandable. Space is famously unforgiving, and if something has survived launch and operated on orbit then naturally it strikes us as far safer than if something hasn’t. The instinct to go with what has been proven itself outside of the lab isn’t wrong. The problem is that the term flight heritage is misleading. And when buyers fail to see that, it can lead them to make the wrong call.

In its simplest form, to say something has flight heritage is just to mean that it has been to space. So far, so good. But that isn’t how the term is typically used. In our industry, flight heritage is most often ascribed to something that is still on the ground. To say it has flight heritage is to say that it will work reliably in space because other units just like it have flown and backed up their developer’s claims.

And that “just like it” is doing a lot of work. Was the unit built from the same bill of materials? Did it come from the same production line? Were the same processes used in its manufacture? And was it tested in the same way, and qualified against the same criteria? If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” then flight heritage cannot be transferred cleanly from one unit to the next. As I say, space is unforgiving; and so it’s simply not enough for one product to have a family resemblance to another.

Of course, it’s normal and often necessary for a space product to fly first as a prototype. That first flight can be hugely valuable. It shows, among other things, that the basic design is adequate, and reveals weaknesses, actual and potential. This gives the manufacturer confidence and a greater understanding of what he or she needs to change.

But if something does need to change — and it nearly always does — then that first flight doesn’t confer flight heritage on the prototype’s successors. It’s a different product. Once you change the design, the materials, the manufacturing process or the test campaign, you’ve created something new. It may be worse, or it may be better. It may be a great deal better. But it is still a different product. And different products can fail in different ways.

Another trap that buyers can fall headlong into is confusing basic operation with demonstrated performance. Put more simply: “it switched on” is not quite the same thing as “it performed.” In electric propulsion, for example, the success of any mission depends on the product performing reliably for many thousands of hours. A short burn, a brief maneuver — these only show that the system turns on and runs. That’s a system check, not a record of performance.

And this is why buyers should be cautious. It’s tempting for founders to claim flight heritage before they’ve demonstrated full, on-orbit lifetime performance. They may have an outstanding product, but the evidence is incomplete.

None of this means buyers should be overly cynical about claims of flight heritage, nor avoid products without it entirely. Every space product starts life without it. You can’t have the chicken before the egg. What I do mean is that buyers should be careful about what kind of risk they’re actually taking on. A product that hasn’t yet flown, but was developed under a disciplined qualification program — with controlled manufacturing, rigorous ground testing and clear reporting — can in fact be a safer bet than a product that flew once but was made in a factory with poor quality control.

As we move into the constellation age, buyers might want to consider asking a set of different questions when searching for their next supplier. A rule of thumb is to focus less on what happened in the past and more on what can be repeated in future. Is the hardware built the same way every time? Are the processes involved documented and controlled? Can you show qualification data, not just flight anecdotes? And do you talk as confidently about manufacturing and factory standards as you do about product performance? In short: choose Manufacturing Readiness Level over Technology Readiness Level.

Flight heritage matters. I wouldn’t want to give the opposite impression. But it’s earned slowly — through the unglamorous but necessary work of building the same product, the same way, in such a manner that it performs as expected and again and again across missions and over time. That takes discipline and it takes patience. But in the end, it delivers the right result.

Getting your hardware into orbit is a big moment for any company, and it should be treated as such. By all means, pop the champagne. But it’s the starting point, not the finish line. Buyers who grasp that distinction will make better decisions and, ultimately, fly better missions.

Brad King is the co-founder and CEO of Orbion Space Technology.