A process for designing spacecraft structural elements (20, 30) that increases spacecraft structure intrinsic damping to relax stiffness design constraints that are necessary for precision pointing requirements. The process includes specifically designing the spacecraft structural elements (20, 30) to have a stiffness that is intrinsically not suitable to meet mission pointing performance requirements in order to reduce weight and volume. To overcome this deficiency, the structural elements (20, 30) are equipped with strain energy control elements (44) that sense strain in the structural elements (20, 30) from on-board and external disturbances, and provide actuation of the structural elements (20, 30) to counteract the sensed strain. The strain energy control elements (44) can be any suitable control element that senses strain and actuates the structural element (20, 30), such as piezoelectric electric or electrostrictive control elements. By reducing the stiffness requirements of the structural elements (20, 30), the control elements (44) can more readily provide a desired actuation for damping purposes in order to meet pointing performance requirements, and thus the weight and volume of the structural elements (20, 30) can be reduced over those known in the art. Relaxing the stiffness requirements of the structural elements (20, 30) allows the structural element (20, 30) to be made of materials having higher strength properties, instead of higher stiffness properties, thus allowing the structural element (20, 30) to meet the strength requirements to survive launch and deployment loads.