Text To Spaceship: Accelerating Mission Development With AI at NASA

CDFAM Computational Design Symposium — Washington DC 2026

Ryan McClelland · NASA Goddard

AI is transforming how we design and build space missions. At NASA, we’ve already shown that AI can take requirements and rapidly generate optimized structures that are lighter, stronger, and delivered in days instead of months. The Text-to-Spaceship vision scales this up through a secure, cloud-deployed ecosystem of AI-accessible design, analysis, and manufacturing tools. Language-defined requirements flow through these automated systems, accelerating mission development by an order of magnitude. In this talk, I’ll share how we’ve gone from balloon brackets to full payload designs and why Text-to-Spaceship is becoming a near-term reality that will redefine how we explore the universe.

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