09-08-2021, 10:56 AM
The space industry needs to hire more people who are less knowledgeable. Strange, isn't it? The pandemic that swept the world brought home to everyone just how important skills are to personal economic advancement. As states and countries tightened their borders, those who could perform high-skilled jobs from the comfort of their own homes benefited. Those whose jobs required them to interact with customers on a daily basis were at serious risk of losing their jobs as a result of the closure of their place of employment. Unless you were working in front-line healthcare, higher levels of education and skills were more likely to keep you safe. And unless you were one of those people, the pandemic became an opportunity to whine about Zoom fatigue rather than a painful reality you couldn't escape from. It was the greatest failure of unequal opportunity in our lifetimes.
It's called the Henry Ford Phase. Our industry is blessed with a large number of people who are highly educated and have a wide range of accomplishments. People who are capable of building rockets that almost never explode. Who has the ability to design spacecraft that will survive the trauma of launch and continue to operate for decades? Who has the ability to place a very expensive object into a precise orbit thousands of kilometers above our heads while the rest of us struggle to get the car into the driveway without running over the curb is beyond comprehension?
We have now entered the period of the space age known as the Henry Ford era. Instead of building single, pristine systems dedicated to a single mission, we are faced with the need to build many copies of the same system to meet the demands of a growing population. In order to save money, we are reusing rocket stages and 3D printing their engines from existing designs. We are not just building one satellite, or ten, or sixty — we are building hundreds of satellites, with thousands more on the way. Due to the large amount of material that is emerging from this mass production phase, it appears that we are finally prepared to address the impending crisis of space debris, which has the potential to deny us access to orbit for all of this amazing technology.
Assembly LineIt's called the Henry Ford Phase. Our industry is blessed with a large number of people who are highly educated and have a wide range of accomplishments. People who are capable of building rockets that almost never explode. Who has the ability to design spacecraft that will survive the trauma of launch and continue to operate for decades? Who has the ability to place a very expensive object into a precise orbit thousands of kilometers above our heads while the rest of us struggle to get the car into the driveway without running over the curb is beyond comprehension?
We have now entered the period of the space age known as the Henry Ford era. Instead of building single, pristine systems dedicated to a single mission, we are faced with the need to build many copies of the same system to meet the demands of a growing population. In order to save money, we are reusing rocket stages and 3D printing their engines from existing designs. We are not just building one satellite, or ten, or sixty — we are building hundreds of satellites, with thousands more on the way. Due to the large amount of material that is emerging from this mass production phase, it appears that we are finally prepared to address the impending crisis of space debris, which has the potential to deny us access to orbit for all of this amazing technology.
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In order to meet the demands of mass production, the skills that are most in short supply are not electrical engineering, systems design, or Artificial Intelligence (AI) programming. They are involved in advanced sheet metal fabrication as well as fiber composites production. The skills of CNC machinists and mechatronics technicians who work on a precision manufacturing Assembly Lines System are what we're talking about. Furthermore, they are in extremely limited supply.
Recruiting for the Assembly Line. OneWeb recently launched its 254th satellite into orbit, constituting one-third of the total number of satellites in its planned constellation. To get there, OneWeb Satellites, a manufacturing joint venture with Airbus, built a remarkable factory on the Space Coast near Cape Canaveral, Florida, as part of its preparations. Also in the area, it collaborated with other businesses, including Ruag Space, to develop an apprenticeship program for Assembly line workers. The company discovered, as it was planning and building its factory, that the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011 had resulted in a mass exodus of technician-level talent from which the region had not yet recovered. The decision was made to design and fund a European-style apprenticeship program in partnership with a community college in response to the fact that multiple companies were facing the same challenge.
A detailed account of this program was written by Space & Satellite Professionals International (SSPI) and published in a report titled "Staffing the Space Assembly Line," which was sponsored by OneWeb Satellites. It is not only a story of human ingenuity, but it is also a guide for any cluster of space companies whose demand for highly qualified technical talent exceeds the supply of available candidates. There are detailed descriptions of how the Space Coast Consortium, as it was dubbed, overcame the challenges posed by human nature, inertia, and the sometimes feckless rules of government that were in place at the time.
The following are the lessons learned by the members of the consortium as a result of the experience.
Predict that it will take some time to bring together prospective corporate members, gauge their interest, and come to an agreement on the next steps. When an agreement is reached, money must be put on the line – not only to fund the next steps but also to demonstrate a genuine willingness to cooperate.
Find a qualified educational provider to complete the coursework – and be prepared to wait longer than expected. Over a two-year period, OneWeb and its partners attempted to persuade educational institutions to participate in the training program from beginning to end. Many people were interested, but most were hesitant because they were concerned about state statutes. After a year of trying, a community college stepped forward to take over the project just as the consortium was about to give up and develop everything on their own.
State and local legislation can contain unintended roadblocks to progress. Colleges and universities in Florida, where the apprenticeship program was established, are required to waive tuition for apprentices. This was presumably intended to make it easier for people to obtain that training; however, the elimination of tuition means that the institutions receive no financial return on the money they have invested in developing and providing the training program. The rule effectively removes any incentive for them to establish apprenticeship programs. A creative solution was found by OneWeb's consortium, which is now lobbying state legislators to update their regulations while they wait for a permanent solution.
At the end of the day, the partners who put in the most effort found it to be more than worth it. Young people with technical aptitude are in high demand across a wide range of industries, and the space industry must go above and beyond to secure its share of the market. The development of training programs in collaboration with local businesses appears to be a very attainable goal in this case. Actually, when compared to the cost of developing and launching a spacecraft into orbit, it is a no-brainer.