The A&E Firm's Guide to NASA and Commercial Space Contracts

Architecture and engineering firms hold more space-transferable capability than they realize. The gap is knowing how the contracts actually work.

Adapted from a keynote and board briefing Anastasia delivered in 2025.

Developed out of our capability-mapping work with a global engineering firm.

Where the work comes from

Space work reaches A&E firms through a handful of channels: NASA programs such as NextSTEP and the Human Research Program, Commercial LEO Destination RFPs from station operators, and dual-use technology transfer where a terrestrial capability maps onto a documented space need.

Each has its own language, evaluation criteria, and decision-makers. A proposal written for a terrestrial infrastructure client will not survive contact with a NASA technical review, even when the underlying competence is exactly right.

Capability translation is the real task

The firms that break in do one thing first: they map their existing competencies against the space taxonomy and find the three or four that genuinely transfer, then drop the rest. Structural health monitoring, closed-loop resource recovery, and advanced materials are common winners.

The most common mistake is entering broad and generic. The path in is narrow and specific: one qualified pursuit, matched to a named need, carried by someone who already knows the review pathway.

A story: nuclear expertise, quietly space-ready

One global engineering firm arrived convinced its core competency had nothing to do with space. Eighteen months of unsuccessful proposals had reinforced that belief. When we mapped their capabilities against NASA's technology taxonomy, three surfaced with direct transfer potential they had never considered — including power-systems work that maps almost one-to-one onto lunar surface needs.

Within the engagement they identified qualified pursuits they did not know existed. The capability was never the problem. The translation was.

That is the pattern with A&E firms again and again: the competence is real and already funded by terrestrial clients. What is missing is the map from what they do to what a documented space program needs.

Image: NASA