Supply Chain, Manufacturing, and Hidden Infrastructure Bottlenecks
The space economy’s growth ambitions rest on supply chains and production systems often built for low-volume, bespoke programs. As demand rises, shortages in materials, components, test capacity, skilled labor, facilities, and qualified suppliers can delay missions before a vehicle reaches the launch site. This panel examines bottlenecks limiting scale across the aerospace industrial base. Panelists will discuss long-lead items, single-source dependencies, production readiness, supplier quality, cybersecurity, capital equipment, forecasting, and moving from prototypes to repeatable manufacturing. The conversation will explore how primes, startups, government customers, and lower-tier suppliers can share demand signals, invest in capacity, qualify alternatives, and strengthen resilience without adding unnecessary cost or bureaucracy. It will also consider where advanced manufacturing, automation, digital engineering, and regional production networks can create relief. Attendees will gain a practical understanding of which constraints are most urgent, why they persist, and what coordinated actions are required to build dependable industrial infrastructure behind higher mission cadence.
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