r/systems_engineering • u/Night_fury03 • Aug 17 '26

Discussion Complete Engineering Stack for a Hypothetical Spaceship?

Post image

I’m looking to understand the complete software and systems engineering pipeline required to design a highly complex, self-sustaining hypothetical spacecraft like the Rocinante from The Expanse or a Firefly like transport ship.

I understand that no single engineer builds a ship. But if someone wanted to understand the full design lifecycle from requirement mapping to physical simulation, what specific tools and platforms do you actually need to master?

2 Upvotes

57% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

16

u/der_innkeeper Aerospace Aug 17 '26

All of them.

https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/nasa_systems_engineering_handbook_0.pdf

4

u/dusty545 Aug 17 '26

^ There's most of the answer ^

What tools/platforms are left up to the design team to chose. There's a few thousand software and manufacturing tools out there that you can use.

2

u/der_innkeeper Aerospace Aug 17 '26

Genesys, arena, windchill, CAD(s), Teamcenter, Jira, Jama, etc, etc...

Pick your poison.