As important as the technical approach is the management. Following the success of TopSat, Prismatic founders started the Zephyr Programme with very clear views win how to manage difficult, technical developments based on over a decade of small satellite projects. Whilst this started with the simplest premise that the team needed to be a co-located, small incubator (the definition of incubator being – if you were inside you were not allowed out, and if you were outside you were not allowed in), the management principles have been extended over the years to a set of “Rules”. Embodied in the “Small book of Management”, these rules – with additions and adaptations – still apply to Prismatic’s activities today, noting that such rules have to conform to their own Rule 14 and the Pirates of the Caribbean – “It’s more what you would call guidelines than actual rules.”
Bringing COTS back to aerospace
One of the key benefits of combining our experience of satellites and UAVs has been the opportunity to utilise the best of both domains in terms of technology and approach. In addition to bring spacecraft approaches to UAVs to ensure reliable, long duration and extremely efficient operation, we are now bringing Commercial off the shelf (COTS) technologies from the UAV, power and mobile electronics industries back to the satellite field. The huge volumes associated with these markets lead to highly reliable and consistent devices that, when carefully managed for the same environment, provide much more capable systems.