Main Engine Cut Off - T+102: November Q&A

Episode Date: November 30, 2018

This month for Q&A, we try to figure out what the hell is up with DM-1, hit a few questions about launch, and talk through a few space development topics. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 33 executive producers—Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Jamison, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Grant, Mike, David, Mints, Joonas, and seven anonymous—and 201 other supporters on Patreon. NASA program to send astronauts to space station facing more delays Secret Rocket Company Could Bring Jobs, Investment To Space Coast - Space - 90.7 WMFE PLD Space, after ESA input, doubles lift capacity of smallsat launcher - SpaceNews.com New Glenn Payload User’s Guide via NASASpaceflight Forums 50 - The Journey to Mars is Hyperbolic (feat. Mark Wallace) - WeMartians Podcast Email your thoughts and comments to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Listen to MECO Headlines Join the Off-Nominal Discord Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhere Subscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off Newsletter Buy shirts and Rocket Socks from the Main Engine Cut Off Shop Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

Hello, hello, all. It is the last day of November. So that means it is Q&A time here on Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo. Let's dive in. The first topic is the hot topic of the month, I guess. I don't know. We got two questions this month. One from Michael from Melbourne, Australia, as they like to say it, I think. And one from Chase that regard DM1, SpaceX's DM1, the uncrewed test flight of Dragon 2. And there's a whole bunch of stuff going on with this that I don't really know. We're going to try to make some sense of it because there's a lot of weird stuff going on. So first up, Michael's question from Down Under. Recently, I've been wondering about how many of SpaceX's Falcon 9 Block 5s have flown with the

upgraded COPVs. I seem to remember a NASA requirement of seven successful missions of Block 5 with the new COPVs in a stable crew configuration before putting astronauts aboard the vehicle. Are there still seven missions as a requirement? As the DM-1 mission continues to slip further in 2019 and SpaceX claims Crew Dragon is hardware ready,

no one appears to be talking about the implications of having Block 5 COPVs flight proven before DM-22 can fly i'd be interested to hear what your take is and all this uh and then chase's question well he had one question and then he changed he amended it to essentially be what the hell is going on with dm1 so let's break this down yes there are still there's still a requirement for seven successful flights of the crew configuration of Falcon 9 Block 5. Along with that, there's these requirements of successfully demonstrating fueling of these new COPVs and fueling of the vehicle with these new COPVs. Some of that, from what I understand, some of that has happened. Some demonstrations, they've done a bunch of testing at McGregor.

The booster that's going to fly crew spent a lot more time out at McGregor, their test site in McGregor. It spent a lot more time there than most boosters have spent there. It is out at the Cape now, I believe. So there is hardware in action for DM-1. None of the new COPVs have flown to my understanding. That booster would be the first one to fly with it they need to fly a new copv seven times before um crew actually boards the vehicle with spacex's flight rate if they are able to fly all of the missions in early 27 or 2019 with those new copvs they should be able to hit that number, right? Because that includes reflying the same booster.

So if they launch this, they launch DM-1, they land the booster and they fly that booster again on a different mission, that would count as two flights with that, right? It's not seven new boosters, it's just seven flights. So I think they should be able to hit it. It is very curious that nobody's really talking about that yet, and we've kind of just gotten all these words out of wherever the leaks come from

when a booster makes its way from Hawthorne to McGregor to Florida. We kind of have deduced that that is the first one with the COPVs. We don't know what other ones are built with those, how often they are intending to fly them, yada yada. We don't really know a lot about that yet, and that's maybe a little concerning, but maybe it's something that NASA and SpaceX are still working out. So, tough to say, but as far as I know, we have not seen any of them fly yet, and we're still waiting to see them fly, and they still need to fly seven times. Now, on top of all that, DM-1 got a date assigned to it as of a week or two ago.

January 7th was announced as a planning day for the press who was going to travel to DM1. Its slot has been assigned on the ISS schedule. That is a very tricky schedule to handle because you have to make sure that there is a port available for every vehicle that's going to come to the ISS. And it's a very tricky schedule to make sure that everyone's arriving when they need to be, that they're there as long as they need to be there, etc., etc. There's a lot that goes into it. So you would think that having a date picked out, alerting press of that date, knowing that the ISS has it reserved, the range has it reserved, it seems to be that that is a very good date that we could rely on. Well, this week, well, immediately after that date was announced, Bridenstine,

the NASA administrator, had this tweet that was like, hey, hey, hey, it's just for planning. Don't lock it in yet. And everyone was like, what the hell, man? Like, that's, that's the date that we just heard. Now, yesterday, there was this announcement of lunar partnerships. And there was a reporter roundtable before that took place with Bridenstine. And in that he mentioned, I'll read you a little quote here from the USA Today article. This is by Ledyard King. I don't know how to pronounce that first name. So I'm sorry if I butchered it. Probably did. I'm going to read a little excerpt here. Bridenstine's acknowledgement that January is a very low probability window is the first time the agency has publicly cast doubt on the timing of the scheduled launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The test flight of the SpaceX rocket and capsule is a key step in NASA's efforts to

resume U.S. transport to Earth orbit nearly a decade after the space shuttle was mothballed. They mean crew transport. The administrator attributed the delay to challenges with several components, including landing parachutes. Some of those systems could be tested without flying them on the initial flight. It's a matter of determining, quote, what configuration are we willing to accept as an agency and are we willing to waive certain items, and how do we test those items, end quote. Brinestein told reporters at NASA headquarters. But he said the test flight, quote, will certainly be in the first half of 2019, end quote,

a schedule that still would accommodate a crewed flight by the end of the year. So this is really an odd situation. I don't know how much stock to put in this yet. There hasn't been any confirmations other than this seemingly offhand quote from Beinstein. Maybe he's not super keyed into what's going on on the ISS scheduling. Maybe he's got different info coming through. There hasn't been any statement from another part of NASA. There hasn't been a statement by the ISS program. There hasn't been a statement by SpaceX. I have yet to see any other source other than Bridenstine with this comment. So that means one of two things,

either Bridenstine's misinformed, but knowing how serious he is about this stuff, that's hard to believe because he's very, very, very into space on a personal level and has always seemed to have his stuff in order when it comes to this kind of thing. The other thing is that NASA and SpaceX behind the scenes are still working a couple of issues, and we just haven't heard those yet. One thing mentioned here was parachute issues. I have heard over the last six months, maybe not that long, maybe three months, four months, I don't know, I'm not that good with timelines when I'm talking extemporaneously like this.

In some number of months, I feel like I've heard this little murmur of SpaceX parachute issues, SpaceX parachute issues. And it's hard to tell whether that is the same parachute issue that led to SpaceX way back, you know, two, three, four years ago, making a change from three parachutes to four parachutes for Crew Dragon. It's hard to tell if this is the same issue that led to that, or if this is a new issue that cropped up after the last parachute test.

I don't know. No one has said anything about it yet. There's just been this low murmur of SpaceX parachute issues. And it's possible that they do not have that resolved to the point at which NASA is willing to take the risk, and that they preemptively assumed that they would be able to clear this issue

before that launch in January, but there's an outside chance that they can't, and that NASA wants to see, I think from the last safety panel meeting, there was a statement that NASA wants to see the same configuration fly the uncrewed demos and the crewed flights, the first crewed flights. So that means if there is a change, that has to be made before DM-1, and that they have to fly in

exactly the same configuration that DM-2 will fly. So maybe SpaceX and parts of NASA were optimistic that they could get these things cleared before January 7th, but that another part of NASA thinks that there's a very good chance that they won't make that deadline. That sort of seems to be the way that the tea leaves are laid out. But man, I wish we knew anything else about these parachute issues other than just hearing this little rumor of a parachute issue, because there does seem to be something there. There's a lot of smoke. There's a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of smoke about these parachute issues, and I wish that we could see any bit of fire that is creating that smoke. But hopefully, this situation, as it is, obviously, we need a resolution between now and January 7th, so like a month.

So I think this situation might bring some of that to the surface and let us hear what the actual issue is. So to the best of my ability, that chase is what the hell is up with DM1. We've got a couple of questions about launch vehicles and a couple of different things so let's uh dive into it question from grant with sls being phased out when commercial options come online how plausible is it that sls gets dumped gifted slash congressionally appointed to ula ula has certain let's call them synergies so this is in reference to i think it was zerbukinuchen that was quoted recently by saying, yeah, when commercial alternatives to SLS come online, we'll take advantage of them and

stop making SLS. That got a lot of hype. I think mainly because there was very little news going on otherwise that week. I don't think that is a big... Number one, I don't think that's surprising. I think that's always been the line, at least for everybody except Charlie Bolden, who used to say that he didn't like commercial companies developing big rockets. That is the assumption that I've had. Everyone always says, what's the deal with SLS? And I always say, there needs to be an alternative that has proven not only that it can launch large payloads, but that it can be as politically viable as the SLS program is. So I'm not really surprised at that. And I don't see it very plausible that SLS would get shifted to ULA. It's pretty messy with the... I mean, yeah, ULA does... They own Boeing and Lockheed Martin joint venture. Boeing owns the core stage. Lockheed Martin owns Orion. Doesn, doesn't own them. I guess I shouldn't use that

word, but they, they, you know, Boeing produces the core stage. Lockheed Martin produces, um, the, uh, the Orion. ULA produces the upper stage. The only thing there that's, that's not produced by a company related to this ULA situation is Northrop Grumman, who makes solid rocket boosters. But I see it much more likely that SLS would just fade out in that scenario, that these other things do come online and can replace SLS. But I still have yet to see exactly how the politics of this are going to go down, other than it dragging on a decade longer than any of us would like in this scenario where these commercial options are legitimate options around SLS. There's just so much politically tied into

SLS that I still don't see the political world of SLS changing too much just yet. There has been a lot of shift in the last couple of years in Congress, and certain people have started to voice different opinions, but I still, at the end of the day, don't think that there's a motivating enough political situation that can replace SLS in the near to medium future. Ken asks, Do you have any guess what company this may be referring to? And this is an article from our good friend, Brendan Byrne,

down at WMFE in Central Florida. And this is about a secret company. There's always these secret companies hanging around that Space Florida is working to finalize a deal with that would bring 239 jobs to Brevard County, which is out in the Cape Canaveral region. Space Florida officials said the company is willing to invest 52 million dollars into the space coast this is reading from brendan bird's article

and that the florida department of transportation would provide up to 18 million dollars for infrastructure upgrades in return the company will create 239 jobs with an anticipated annual wage of 70 000 with benefits the company would manufacture its rockets at exploration park a facility south of the kennedy space center and launch from Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 20. The company was not named, but there's apparently a code name, Project Maricopa. I hope I'm pronouncing that okay. So I did a little digging on this. The only thing that I can figure out is that Maricopa is a county out in Arizona that's not too far from where Vector is located. So maybe it's Vector. I want to bet. I couldn't find anything else that

would be that would fit Project Maricopa. And that makes sense unless it's a brand new launch vehicle that we have not yet seen. I guess the other thing is out there is worldview. The, uh, you know, the strata light and strata balloon thing. Um, yes, it could plausibly be worldview. I think they're out in Arizona as well. Um, so I would say one of those two vector or worldview, uh, put it down as another prediction. Question from Eric, what is your take on the PLD Space Miura 5 launcher? I think it's Miura? Miura? So this is a launch vehicle that has had some recent changes. This is a European company. I think they're from Spain. And they were working on a launch vehicle called the Arion 2, A-R-I-O-N 2. Notice that sounds a lot like the Arion 5. So recently, they just changed the name from Arion 2 to the Miura 5, and they've completely changed the architecture. Previously, they were targeting a lift capacity, about 150 kilograms,

so very similar to, I think that puts them right on the Rocket Lab Electron payload capacity. Now they're going to target 300 to 500 kilograms to orbit, and that brings with it some new design features. So they arrived at these changes after working with the European Space Agency. They did a 10-month program with the European Space Agency to figure out what they would like, what they would invest in, because they were investing like 300,000 euros in PLD space. And these changes came out of that. I think these are good changes if you just look at them as these changes alone. I think 300, 500 kilograms is a much more useful payload. I think me personally, I'm more excited about the

1000 kilogram payload launch vehicles out there that are being worked on. But I think 300 500 is a more comfortable range, it does give you the opportunity to launch to 200 kilogram satellites, which seems to be a popular size of bus that everyone's kind of moving to. So it does give you that capability. But overall, I think my take on this is the same as every other small launcher out there. There's about a million. So I'm not going to spend too much time dissecting each decision by every little small launch player out there because there's just too many. So what's going to happen is we're going to watch these all develop. We're going to see which ones get close to the launch pad. And those are the ones that I'm going to start taking seriously and really start

looking into, you know, and it's just that's kind of the way that that I think we need to look at it. So once these companies have real facilities, real launch vehicles, real hardware, real launch facilities coming online, that's when things take the next step and become a major player. Until then, you know, I think if you gave me next week, you know, by Friday, I think I could assemble a team and get some funding to develop some small booster and name it after some cool animal or something and get a couple of million funding. Like that's kind of what everyone's doing right now. But it's that next step that really matters of getting to the real hardware phase, the real facility phase. And that's the part when things get serious. So they still seem to be in

study phase. I mean, they're drastically changing the design and architecture of their boosters. So they don't have a lot set in stone yet. So right now, I'm still at that same base level of small launch interest, which is like cool to see what they're working on. Can't take it too seriously yet until they take that next step. Question from Brad. Curious to hear your thoughts on the new Glenn payload user guide that was just released. Still planning a possible third stage. Numbers seem ultra conservative in terms of payload capabilities. Sandbagging or just overbuilt? So yeah, this came out this week officially, the new Glenn payload user's Guide. I did read through it. There's honestly not a ton of new info that we didn't have after the last New Glenn episode I did.

I guess I did that episode around the EELV selection. So we did have a lot of the info. We had rough numbers to payload to orbit, and those were just about dead on. So there wasn't a whole lot of new stuff in the payload user guide, unless I missed something. I would love to hear from you if you think I missed something in there. The possible third stage in the user guide sounded like it was maybe a future enhancement that they could get to at some point, but still nothing in the near term. So I'm not sure I'm really going to worry about that too much yet, because I think that might be more interesting when we see more of the Blue Origin architecture that's going out into the future. In terms of the numbers, I don't actually see these as ultra conservative. I think

the positioning of this is different. We have no idea what New Glenn could do to orbit if it was an expendable booster, because there is no expendable mode of New Glenn, right? There's only recovery mode. So when you look at that in terms of comparing to SpaceX or something like that, you're always getting numbers from SpaceX that are the expendable payload numbers, but the reusable cost numbers. So you're hearing that Falcon 9 can do 20 tons or whatever, 22 tons to low Earth orbit. Falcon Heavy can do 64 tons. Those are expendable numbers. But you hear that Falcon 9 costs $60 million and Falcon Heavy $90 million. Those are reusable numbers. So this is the important thing to put into context, is that if you were to compare the numbers here, you know, it would be that to GTO, Falcon 9 can do five and a half metric tons, and New Glenn can do 13. Right? And Falcon Heavy, the same GTO orbit, can do eight metric tons, and New Glenn, obviously, same 13. So when you put it in that way, it's very

different. It's a vehicle optimized for reuse of that first stage. So I kind of think that's a perspective thing. But there is always, in any good launch vehicle, there does seem to be growth over the lifetime as you learn the system, as you make upgrades to the system. So I wouldn't be surprised to see those numbers grow, but they definitely seem like they went in with a very specific target of being able to dual launch two very large satellites to GTO, and that's kind of where they're starting. Question from Dave, similarly related. What is the competitive edge of the new glenn versus starship which is the new name of the spacex thing versus omega rockets how should each be better than the other new glenn as i've maintained is a massive fair huge huge fair um they call it seven meter

fairing it's like 6.3 meters i think i i don't like that rounding up that they're doing there um i think it's a little disingenuous and that kind of bugs me uh so cool but that's still a big fairing it's still much bigger much more volume than you could do otherwise in a lot of other vehicles out there so you do get the extra you know we saw with um they they started working with harris and harris is going to develop antennas that can fit in that giant fairing that they couldn't fit in other ones. And that brings with it some interesting capabilities. So I think the fairing size of New Glenn is going to have a bigger impact than anything specifically. They basically can do dual launch to GTO of two very large geostationary satellites.

Dual launch is not new, but dual launch of GTO of two very large geostationary satellites. Dual launch is not new, but dual launch of that size is new, you know, because Ariane 5 does dual launch, but one can be full size and one has to be a little bit smaller. New Glenn can do two of the big premier geostationary satellites, couple that with something like Harris developing antennas that can only be flown in that big fairing. And I think you start to get a really interesting commercial opportunity there where you're locked into New Glenn if you want to fly something like that. So that's really interesting. And I got into that a lot in the last New Glenn show that I did. Starship, which is the SpaceX thing that is now called Starship for now, for the next year. I'm sort of done talking about Starship for a little while.

Like, not because I don't care about it, but because it seems to be such a moving target that I don't really even know what to make of it. The last time we saw it, we didn't see any cargo versions, so I don't even know if that's still planned, what it would still look like, what it would be capable of carrying, what the payload doors would look like. I don't know what the cargo side's going to be, if any. Maybe they just focus on it as a thing that can fly people and cargo and not just a cargo-specific thing. Maybe they're not interested in that. Maybe they don't see that as a big market. Who knows? They might just start with the human side because that's where they want to focus. And that's fine if so.

Omega is a weird one. That's a vehicle that I don't think exists if they don't get the additional Air Force funding that they're going for. It's very targeted at that national security space market where it can do a very large amount of payload directly to geostationary orbit. It is made with solid rocket boosters, which are important to national defense. So there is some sort of synergy there. If you're somebody who wants to see a large solid rocket boosters, which are important to national defense. So there is some sort of synergy there. If you're somebody who wants to see a large solid rocket booster manufacturer stay in business, it's lucrative in that way. But it is very specific for the market that already exists today. And I don't think it's necessarily forward-looking in any regard in the way that

New Glenn is, which does seem to be opening up new niches. We've got a bunch of questions about space exploration, development, policy, kind of a little smorgasbord left. But before we get into that, I need to say a very, very big thank you to all of you supporting the Main Engine Cutoff over at patreon.com slash Miko. There are 234 of you there supporting this show every single week. 33 executive producers produced this episode of Main Engine Cutoff. Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Jameson, Nadeem, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Grant, Mike, David, Mintz, Eunice, and seven anonymous executive producers. Thank you so much for making this episode possible. I could not do it without you

and the 201 others over at patreon.com slash Miko. I've been a little quiet on the main feed here the last couple of weeks because it's just not been a lot going on and I try to keep the signal to noise high here. So if I don't have any opinions to share, you're not gonna hear from me that week. But if you are a $3 a month or up patron supporter,

you get a show every single weekend with me running through the headlines of the week, small stories, big stories, giving you a couple thoughts on everything. So it's a great way to stay up on Space News, great way to hear from me, even on slow weeks. And I think it's one of the best parts of Main Engine Cutoff. So head over to patreon.com slash Miko and check it out if you have not yet. And thank you all for your support. Question from Gavin.

Why did Insight launch from the West Coast? This is a fantastic opportunity to plug the... When you're hearing this, it's probably the second most recent episode of Wee Martians. But it was an episode that... Episode number 50, The Journey to Mars is Hyperbolic. That's a great pun, Jake, our friend Jake over at Wee Martians. He did a show with Mark Wallace, who was the lead trajectory

analyst for Insight. And they got so deep into this that it is a deeper level than I will be able to get into this on this show. But it's awesome. You should go check it out if you're interested in this kind of thing. It's really, really an enlightening conversation. The TLDR version is that when you're launching from the Earth's surface to Earth orbit, the location that you launch and the direction that you launch to matters a lot because that dictates what orbit you're going to be able to get into. And it dictates how performantly... Is that a word? There's a word somewhere that means what I'm saying, but it dictates how efficiently you can get from your launch site into your orbit. So you don't want to be fighting the spin of the Earth too much to get to your initial parking orbit. When you're going

interplanetary though, it only matters so much which orbit you're in. What's important is that your orbit of Earth intersects the outbound trajectory that you need to get orbit you're in. What's important is that your orbit of Earth intersects the outbound trajectory that you need to get where you're going. So InSight launched from the West Coast because they had the excess capacity on the Atlas V. InSight was a very small vehicle relative to the lift capacity of Atlas V. InSight was based on an old lander that was originally designed to fly on Delta II. So now flying on Atlas V, they have a lot more capacity for lift than they really needed. So they chose the West Coast because they could use that extra capacity to fly out of a less congested range than Florida would be. So they had more of the range to themselves out West

than they would have competing with all of the launches happening out in Florida. than they would have competing with all of the launches happening out in Florida. So once you launch from the west coast, you're in a polar orbit. But at that point, all that matters is that you can get from that plane of orbit to the trajectory that you need to to go to Mars. So if you launch at the right time out of that parking orbit, and you head in the right direction, you will end up at Mars. Doesn't necessarily matter that you started out going a little bit more over the top of Earth than you would have coming out of Florida. It just matters that your plane can match the trajectory that you need to get out of Earth

orbit and to Mars from. So again, go listen to the Wee Martians episode. It is amazing and I love it. And you will love it if this is your question. We got a couple of policy questions from Mark. I was extremely skeptical when Jim Bridenstine was nominated to NASA administrator due to his statements on climate change. I have to admit, however, that he has completely won me over. He's saying and doing all the right things and I actually trust him. Do you agree? I've been a big fan of Bridenstine. I was always very supportive of his nomination. I think he has a personal passion for this in a way that you don't often see. He could always jump into a space conversation and speak like you or I would if we were hanging out talking about space. And I found that much more endearing than some others that we've seen in the past. He seemed to have a good understanding of where NASA was, where it was going. But that doesn't change. If you've listened to the show for a while, you probably have heard me be skeptical about

what an administrator can actually do overall. Congress has been very particular in space policy over the last couple of years. So I was nervous slash skeptical that a NASA administrator could have major effects other than organizing very awkward press events like we saw the other day. But all in all, I think he's doing a good job. I think he's saying interesting things that indicate a mentality change within NASA, or at least a willingness to change the mentality within certain parts of NASA that haven't shown that in the past. So that's a good thing. And I'm very curious to see how, you know, the other day they had this announcement

about the commercial lunar payload services, which we will be talking about on an upcoming podcast. And I'm very interested to see how that project goes because that seems like, if nothing else, that could be the indicator of how the Bridenstine NASA does, because that is kind of, you know, they canceled Resource Prospector that was heading to the moon, and they substituted this commercial lunar services thing into it.

They're going to break up those payloads and fly them on small landers. And I think, depending on how this goes, this could be a good indicator for how Bridenstine's NASA is performing overall. And the second question from Mark, not straying away from the touchy subjects. Do you think the US should cooperate with China on space missions or steer clear? We disagree with them on human rights issues, but their space program is showing impressive progress while Russia seems to be stagnating. Together, we could achieve something truly great. I don't necessarily agree that they're showing impressive progress. I think they are showing something. But there are... I am very skeptical of some of the things going on there now, because there's certain things that don't seem to be making progress at all within China. There's a lot of talk about new launch vehicles,

new programs, new this, new that, but they don't appear to have the money for some of these things they're talking about. And the human spaceflight program is incredibly slow moving within China and has always been. So I don't know that they're making impressive progress. They're still catching up to a certain extent.

They are doing some interesting missions, but overall, I don't know that they're showing a massive amount of momentum. Compared to Russia, yes, they certainly are, but that's because they're doing anything. Russia doesn't seem to be doing that much overall. The question of whether we should cooperate with them is an interesting one, always has been, because there's certainly security issues with China. You know, there's there's a lot of political drama over, you know, obviously both directions here. But there's like security issues that they're, you know, hey, they're trying to hack us. They're trying to hack them, yada, yada.

There's the intellectual property debate of like, is China stealing intellectual property from everywhere? If you look at some of their fighter jets and things like that, it's coming from somewhere. So there is that side of things. But the other side that I've always found a little more convincing than that is that if you do collaborate with them in certain regards, you start to build a better relationship. It starts to give you more soft power and more ways to influence them than if you have this really adversarial relationship. And that's something that is talked about in a lot of different

regards. So I do see the advantages to the soft power debate or the soft power argument in this debate. Um, and I think that would be interesting, especially now, as you said, they're trying to engage in space more. I think it would be interesting to kind of, you know, it would be an opportunity to learn a little bit more about what they're working on. And maybe we would have them open up a little bit and be able to dissect what's going on there. Because right now, it's a lot of inference from the outside, but we don't know how much money they're spending on things, how things are actually going internally. We just see the one face that they show us, and we don't really know a whole lot. So I think, you know, NASA seems to be indicating that they're

ready to start collaborating with them on certain science missions, maybe not human yet, but at least on certain science missions. A lot of Europe is already doing that. So we do see a model for that there. And I think that would be the best way to go. So I would fully support, you know, doing a couple of science missions with them and easing into that whole human thing. And maybe by the time we get our butts out to the moon, we're ready to actually fly in a vehicle with them as well. Question from Rob. Currently, there are three companies posturing themselves to build the commercial follow on to the ISS. Of the three, Axiom, with an A that is, NanoRacks, and Bigelow,

who do you think has the best chance of pulling this off? Is this market big enough for more than one entrant, and do you trust NASA not to fumble the transition off of ISS? Similarly, we had a question from Jordan. Do you see Bigelow and its B-330 playing a big role in the 2020s with the commercialization of space? So let's start with Bigelow. Very interesting case. They've got Beam up on the ISS, which seems to be doing really well. NASA has extended the mission for Beam. It's serving a very important storage role up on the ISS. Seems to be going great. Seems to be holding up really, really well. Um, but Bigelow, the company is really hard to even understand because I don't know what goes on there. Um, they, they have, they put out very little publicly.

We've seen images of their mock-ups internally, but I don't know how realistic that is. We don't know where they're at on these B330s that they're apparently producing. They said they were going to be ready to launch two of them in 2020 or 2021. They signed Atlas V deals, or at least a memorandum of understanding or whatever. But they don't put out a lot of publicly available info.

They don't show a lot of progress publicly. So it leaves us on the outside just to speculate and think that either everything's happening or nothing's happening. And I don't know which one is true. I don't know if they're making a ton of progress. I don't know if, you know, things are way slow. There's been a lot of talk about how weird the management of Bigelow is. And I can't imagine that that leads to a very stable team there. So if there's high turnover,

things slow down, and that's not super great. I do think that with the success of Beam, there's definitely something there. There's definitely some potential that we need to figure out if this is really going to work or not. But I just don't know how much progress they're making on B330s and how fast that's going and what their timeline even looks like. I wish we had more insight, but I just can't figure out what's going on internally there. Axiom, on the other hand, is the most boring of these. I think it is completely uninspiring because it's a handful of people

that worked on the ISS previously, I think it is. And essentially, I've heard a couple of things with them where it just sounds like, hey, we're gonna, you know, NASA needs somebody to come in. We're gonna take what's been working on ISS and essentially just roll it out. And it's like the same modules,

you know, let's try to make it less maintenance, but there's really not a lot there that motivates me to see any dynamism. You know, is there any change here? Or are you just essentially taking the same tuna can designs and rolling these out as part of, you know, a different ISS? And you're going to run things the same way. Maybe not the best solution, but definitely reliable. You know, it would be the most steady option because this is the closest to what we have now. So that has potential to work. It's just not that inspiring. NanoRacks is incredibly interesting. I don't think I need to tell you that I do have a bias towards NanoRacks. I've always found them very interesting and very inspiring. Their vision on the space station thing has always been as these kind of outposts that they could put in a couple of different spots

and do manufacturing on them, do deployment of small satellites from them, either uncrewed or crewed. Some of the stuff that they're working on with the whole wet lab concept seems to be changing a lot, where it's now, it's less of a off-the-shelf upper stage,

and it's more of an upper stage modified with some new modules, but can still fly as an upper stage. I'm a little confused about that, so maybe we're going to have them back on soon to talk about that. Maybe I should invite somebody to explain some of the changes

that have been happening there. But they do seem to have a vision for a very particular thing. They have a ton of experience in low Earth orbit. They've flown a bunch of payloads to the ISS. They've deployed a bunch of payloads to the ISS. They have a lot of experience operationally right now. And I think that helps build a vision for where they're going in the future. And I find NanoRacks, the leadership and the team there, to have a certain sense of grit. Like, we're going to figure out how to make something work here. Whatever it is,

it's that kind of motivation that I see that I like a lot, is that they're flexible on details, but stubborn on vision. I think that's a Bezos quote. I love it. And I think I'm always going to use it. And I think NanoRacks really embodies that in a lot of ways. So I'm very interested in what they're working on. So I think Axiom, while boring, could totally work. NanoRacks, inspiring future with great vision. Bigelow, I have no idea what the hell's going on there. Last question of the month from Dave from Morristown, New Jersey. Hello, neighbor. You're not too far away.

In the October Q&A, you mentioned a few projects like asteroid mining, which seem too long term to focus on right now. You have a favorite midterm startup that you would like to see working toward the eventual development of the moon or Mars. What area do you think might have the most impact? So yeah, while I think asteroid mining is too far and too long term to focus on as like an active company right now, I do think that resource prospecting, harvesting and production are very important to the future of space. And there's certain projects going on that I am very interested in. that just flew up to the ISS from Tethers Unlimited Refabricator, I am so excited about because that seems like one of those technologies that's just going to be standard kit for any human

spaceflight mission in the future. This is a thing that can take waste plastic from the ISS and turn it back into printable filament that can be used to produce other things. So you're very, you know, you're getting closer to that, that lossless, you know, life support system slash resource management on a space mission. It just seems like one of those fundamental technologies that we need to master to really do interesting things out beyond Earth. So that's one I'm particularly excited about. Made in Space is apparently doing, you know, not apparently, has obviously, Made in Space has obviously been doing a lot on the ISS. They've been doing a lot of production. They're the ones that have a lot of printers up on the ISS. I'm curious to see what

they come out with in the future. They just have momentum. They're tied into the right spots, and that's very interesting. Similar line, Relativity. I have no idea what's going on there. I've still got a lot of question marks about what they're doing, but their idea is to print entire rocket. It's weird, but, you know, kind of cool. Maybe they can figure out, make some breakthroughs that change the game a little bit. But that's still right now seems a little far fetched. But they are kind of in that same line of thinking. So I think that whole side of thing, resource prospecting, harvesting and production is something that is useful now, you know, as

we're seeing with Fabricator, uh, will be useful in the very near future if we're landing on the moon and can only be more useful as we go out from there. One thing I will say is that related to that, um, I'm, I'm really digging the small landers, small lunar lander program, um, that, that NASA's starting up right now. And again, we're going to talk about this a lot more on a podcast coming to your feed soon. But one thing I would go all in on, if I, you know, was like, all right, I'm ready to start my space company. I feel like I would go all in on sample return from the moon right now. Like if you went all in on sample return, maybe, you know, not a huge sample return from the moon right now. Like if you went all in on sample return, maybe, you know,

not a huge sample return, but if you went all in on small lander that could return a sample, number one, you can sell pieces of the moon for quite a lot of money, as we just saw in an auction last week or something like that. Something got auctioned off for like a million bucks. But that also can incentivize, you know, you could sell that to companies that are trying to work on resourced prospecting, harvesting, and production companies, people that also can incentivize, you know, you could sell that to companies that are trying to work on resource prospecting, harvesting and production companies, people that are working on that next step in space can sell it off to other resource research institutes. You have this whole business model here for people that want pieces of the moon to do research on.

Um, and it's going to be a lot easier to figure out how to extract resources from lunar regolith on the earth here. If we bring some back, than it is to send an entirely new experimental drill or whatever up to the Moon every single time you want to test something. You know, you can have a more rapid iteration if you do bring some samples back. You can learn a lot more with more samples. And I think, you know, not only could you land a payload on the Moon and do some scientific research that way and be paid for that, you can also return some samples, get paid for that on the back end.

You know, I would be all in. So Jake and I from Wee Martians have always said we might need to start a new Patreon reward level that lets you start investing in our sample return company. But I feel like somebody really needs to go all in on sample return. So we'll see if any of these small landers do it. But that would be another one that I think has major, major potential. All right. Well, with that, we're out of questions for this month. So thank you all so much again for sending in your questions. We're going to do this at the end of every month. If you like it, if you don't like it, start telling me you don't like it and I'll stop doing it. If you do like it, send me

more questions. Anthony at managingcutoff.com is the email or on Twitter at wehavemiko. Send them in however you can. Start sending them in now because I assume December is going to be light. It tends to be a month when a lot of people's attention drift elsewhere. So if you want to get a question in, this is a great month for it, as always. About any topic, send it all in. We'll do an AMA style one in December. So send in your questions, email or Twitter. Either one is great. Thank you so much again for listening. Thank you for support over at patreon.com slash Miko. And I will talk to you pretty soon.