Akin’s Laws of Spacecraft Design… though I think the application of some of these need not be restricted to spacecraft design:
- At the start of any design effort, the person who most wants to be team leader is least likely to be capable of it
- In nature, the optimum is almost always in the middle somewhere. Distrust assertions that the optimum is at an extreme point
- A bad design with a good presentation is doomed eventually. A good design with a bad presentation is doomed immediately
- Half of everything you hear in a classroom is crap. Education is figuring out which half is which
- You can’t get to the moon by climbing successively taller trees