Using lessons learned from the Department of Defense and the sub-sea industry’s rapid-prototyping activities, NASA created a management environment for the rapid development of several prototypes at very low costs. The philosophy was to establish a series of iterative design-build-test projects, built on the principle that NASA is at its best working with a clear, simple, and understandable vision and a limited amount of time to achieve that vision. The projects focus on producing functional prototypes of increasing fidelity so systems integration issues can be understood early through rigorous design, build, and human in-the-loop testing.

The project teams are multi-center, multidisciplinary groups of capable and motivated individuals working together virtually from their home NASA centers. Several systems were developed using this philosophy, including the Space Exploration Vehicle (previously the Lunar Electric Rover), a habitat demonstration unit, Robonaut 2, a portable communications tower, and an extravehicular activity suit port