How Fast An Industry Can Change

How fast can a complex industry change?

In 2023, SpaceX doubled the mass they placed in orbit in 2022. They are reducing turn around times on rockets and improving launch operations. Once starship comes online, this will only accelerate.

This kind of change is not the first time its happened. There is there is precedent for rapid change in industries. The key is high volume manufacturing. One classic case study on this is Henry Kaiser's shipyards.

Within one year of starting high volume production of Liberty ships in 1941, those shipyards reduced the time to build a ship from 300 days, to an average of about 30 days. One ship was even built in an astounding 4 days. Build times were reduced almost 99% in just over 1 year.

It was not just time that was reduced. In 1941, it took between 1.25 and 1.75 million man-hours to build a Liberty ship. Within 3 years, the labor input was reduced to an average of 500,000 hours. This was more than a 60% reduction.

The result was an incredible increase in the pace of production so that between 1941 and 1944, 2710 Liberty ships were built [1]. This was an average of almost 2 ships built every day.

Until venturing into the air and space, the most unforgiving environment to design, build, and operate was the ocean. In very short time, high volume manufacturing was able to drop costs and change how ships were built. As the space industry matures, similar changes are happening.

References

[1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/318605