My mentor worked at JPL - he was a BS, MS, PhD from MIT - he got out of there so quick (i believe less than 2 years). He said the pace of work was so slow, he didn't feel like anything got done in his entire time there.
Depends on what you're working on and on if you're defining "getting stuff done" on a macro or micro scale. For large flagship missions, 2 years is nothing. The scale of work and level of verification required by these projects is massive and takes time. You've only got one shot to get things right with billions of dollars on the line, don't rush it.
High-assurance isn't really the culprit. It's more of a funding issue. If long NASA programs could save part of the first year's budget to use the second year, things would go a lot faster.
You might get hired into an overstaffed team and not do that much for a year until it's crunch time and then you're underfunded so it takes an extra year. Arguably you spent three years to achieve one year's worth of accomplishments.
It's pretty inherent in those types of projects. How long do big aerospace projects take? (And then they may be canceled when some other bidder wins the deal.)
Big hardware development has probably accelerated some overall--the development of new chip architectures and "big iron" computer systems was at least multiple years when I was a product manager, but especially safety critical systems or things you get one shot at still take slow deliberate process.
SpaceX is currently set to revolutionize the entire space industry (again) with Starship. The abstract idea of Starship was only first presented at a conference in 2017. By 2020 they had developed and were doing individual component flight tests. They just had their first fully fueled test of the entire integrated system yesterday.
Assuming they keep at pace, there will imminently be a static fire and it will be headed to space this year. And to emphasize it's not some evolutionary thing but a complete rethinking of rocket design, unlike anything before, that stands to once again completely revolutionize the industry should it succeed.
Going from spitballing to revolutionizing space, in 6 years (2 of those years being during a highly disruptive pandemic), on a private budget? I'm inclined to say the problem is government, but I'm almost wondering if that isn't just a knee-jerk. It just seems that in modern time that many "businesses", government included, just don't really have the capacity to move quickly - even when it's 100% possible.
Heard that here (?) how a senator insisted a project on reusing the components of an old programme and then become the administrator of that project. Hence overall you can say we have 40 years idea for the new moon landing project. Great for retirement.
This is a bit off topic but your comment reminded me of something I learned only comparatively recently: while these degrees are things we earn one at a time, they are sequential and the result is that your status (the degree to which you have climbed the academic ladder) does not accumulate, it only changes.
So at one point in time your mentor would have held the status / degree / title of Bachelor of Science. They were then promoted to Master, and then to Doctor.
That’s probably what you’re saying, and this isn’t really a correction. It’s simply something interesting that I wanted to share with everyone else.
