Ideas
Arguments about modular hardware, and the programs that build it
Essays on modular rover and satellite design, AI project management, mission architecture, and how systems serve load from a fixed budget. Each one states the opposing case before rebutting it, and ends with what would change my mind.
Featured
The essays carrying the main argument — control budgets, modular buses, and the program methods that keep both honest. Read these first.
What a Cell Knows About Staying Alive
ConceptRobustness behaves like a conserved quantity, so every resilience mechanism is a purchase that leaves something else fragile — and six other things biochemistry worked out about surviving your own machinery.
resilience · failure modes · control theory · biology
Read essay
What a Cell Knows About Throughput
ConceptControl over throughput is a fixed budget that gets divided, which is why most tuned systems have no bottleneck left to find — and five other things biochemistry worked out first.
Read essay
Deploy the Set, Not the Module
DesignTwo green pipelines can put a combination into production that was never tested anywhere — so the deployable unit should be the whole validated set of modules, not the one that changed.
Read essay
All ideas
Everything published so far. Filter by category, or page through the lot.
What a Cell Knows About Staying Alive
ConceptRobustness behaves like a conserved quantity, so every resilience mechanism is a purchase that leaves something else fragile — and six other things biochemistry worked out about surviving your own machinery.
resilience · failure modes · control theory · biology
Read essay
What a Cell Knows About Throughput
ConceptControl over throughput is a fixed budget that gets divided, which is why most tuned systems have no bottleneck left to find — and five other things biochemistry worked out first.
throughput · capacity · control theory · biology
Read essay
Deploy the Set, Not the Module
DesignTwo green pipelines can put a combination into production that was never tested anywhere — so the deployable unit should be the whole validated set of modules, not the one that changed.
micro-frontends · deployment · rollback · platform engineering
Read essay
Showing 3 of 3 essays
Also in progress
The topics below are drafted or planned rather than written. Each carries the register it is actually at — none of it is built or tested work.
AI project management for hardware programs
ConceptWhere machine assistance helps requirements tracing and interface control, and where it manufactures false confidence. Written from failure modes, not tool demos.
One-off rovers and what they cost the next mission
ConceptRovers are built as one-off vehicles, so nothing survives the mission that funded them. The argument for specifying the bus first, and the case against it.