Experience Concerning the Quality Management of Space Projects in a Planned Market Economy.

Abstract

From 1967 to 1991 research instituions in the former GDR participated in 73 space research missions with 160 scientific on-board experiments and some hundreds of supporting ground equipments. Only Soviet rockets and satellites could be used for launch, therefore, technical developments in this field had to follow national technical standards of the GDR and simultaneously the relevant specifications of the Soviet space organization. During the unification of both former German states in autumn 1990 the most important international space projects in cooperation with the former USSR could be saved and continued. This permits today interesting insights into the different approaches to project-and quality-management, which made in the past a succes of most space-missions in the East and in the West. This paper undertakes to elaborate some peculiarities in quality management which are dtermined by the different political and social structures in a planned and a marked economy. First own experiences in this ploitical and economic process of conversion of a society will be dicussed in the hope of establish a better understanding for the utilization of experiences of both economical systems especially in the quality-management of space projects.