Leo Talks Systems Thinking

Nov 4, 2026 · Fundamentals

Apollo vs. NPOESS: Why Architecture Is About Decisions, Not Diagrams

This article contrasts the Apollo moon landing's success with the NPOESS satellite program's $15B failure to reveal that true architecture lies not in diagrams but in early boundary-setting, conflict adjudication, and risk validation—decisions that define a system's possibility space and determine whether problems surface when they're cheap to fix.