Main Engine Cut Off - T+11: SpaceX’s LZ-1 Expansion, Dream Chaser’s UN Ambitions, China and ESA’s Growing Relationship

Episode Date: July 6, 2016

SpaceX printed a public notice in Florida Today on July 3rd outlining plans for LZ-1 expansion. Sierra Nevada Corporation and the United Nations signed a Memorandum of Understanding regarding future use of Dream Chaser by UN member countries. China solidified partnerships with The Netherlands and Poland, continuing the growth of the China-ESA relationship. Public Notice of SpaceX’s LZ-1 Expansion Plans - Main Engine Cut Off Sierra Nevada Corporation Enters Talks with the Un... | Sierra Nevada Corporation | SNC SNC works with U.N. on global space program Dutch radio antenna to depart for the moon on Chinese mission Poland signs space partnership deal with China, eyes increased industry cooperation - SpaceNews.com Email feedback to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

Over the weekend on July 3rd, a public notice was printed in the print version of Florida Today, the newspaper down in central Florida, and it was from SpaceX outlining their plans to expand Landing Zone 1 out on the Cape. Landing Zone 1 is what took the place of Launch Complex 13, and this is the landing pad that they successfully landed the Orbcom 2 booster at back in December. Here's the interesting bit from the public notice. This project involves increasing the number of landing pads at LZ-1 to land up to three first stage boosters from a nominal launch sequence of a Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. The current single pad would not be able to accept more than one returning single booster

stage." There was a little bit more to the public notice itself, but there weren't many details outside of what I just read. But what it sounds like is that they're going to expand LZ-1 to include a couple of more landing pads. but what it sounds like is that they're going to expand LZ-1 to include a couple of more landing pads. It sounds like they're building two more landing pads to be able to support three first stages but it's unclear if they're going to build four additional pads like we saw in the Falcon Heavy demo video. So there would be five pads total at LZ-1 and that would be capable of supporting

three cores at a time. They might have two smaller pads on each side, and they could choose which pad to land at based on the mission type, or maybe they have two pads that would be undergoing resurfacing or any refurbishments, things like that. They might want to have more than three pads in general, though only three would be active at any one time. This does indicate that they are planning a full return-to-launch site recovery of the Falcon Heavy, though it's unclear what type of mission that would be appropriate for.

You know, we've been assuming so far that the side boosters of the Falcon Heavy would be returning to launch site, just like the Orbcom 2 launch did, and like the upcoming CRS-9 launch will, where it deploys the second stage and then returns to the Cape to land and be recovered, rather than using the drone ship like we've been seeing with the GTO launches. And the center core of the Falcon Heavy would travel on to the ASDS, since that would be too far downrange with too much velocity and not enough fuel to make it all the way back to the launch site. So it would land on the ASDS like we've been seeing with the GTO missions. It's not quite clear what those missions would be, but it could be that in some cases,

a return to launch site recovery of a Falcon Heavy full three core recovery would be more economical and safer than going with a downrange ASDS recovery of a single stick Falcon 9. You know, maybe it's a higher energy mission with low margins, like we've seen with some of the Falcon Heavy, or sorry, some of the Falcon 9 failures on the ASDS so far, and they feel more comfortable about doing a higher margin return to launch site with three cores than they would with that low margin ASDS landing. Or maybe it's

something that, you know, the turnaround time is too long when they are using the ASDS, or they want to phase out the ASDS, whatever it is, there could be some missions that are better suited to a Falcon Heavy with return to launch site recovery than it would be with a single stick mission to the drone ship. So who knows how that's going to shake out. There's a lot of variables in that based on how Falcon Heavy performs when it actually does fly. But for now, at least we know that there are at least some missions that could be suited for a Falcon Heavy return to launch site, which we really haven't had indications outside of the demo video that that would be something we would see in the near future. To me, this seems like they're preparing these landing pads for the Falcon Heavy demo later this

year. I assume that we will be seeing the Falcon Heavy fly that mission in the two side boosters, return to launch sites, one center core to the ASDS mission profile that I was just talking about. I would bet they go with that for the demo mission, since that would closely match the initial flights of a Falcon Heavy, which would be taking those heavy military or other satellites to GTO. That's something that they're going to want to use the Falcon Heavy for a lot, so I would assume the demo mission makes use of that flight profile to show the full capability of the Falcon Heavy. It also seems pretty likely that the Falcon Heavy demo mission could be used to show

off their direct geo-stationary insertion, which is something that only is achievable right now through ULA launches. So that is something that SpaceX would want to show if they can do it with their current upper stage. And that would be a really good thing to show off in your demo mission to show that there's a whole new market you're opening up to, which is a direct geostationary insertion rather than a geostationary transfer orbit insertion like they do typically with the communication satellites they're launching now. All in all, this isn't too much to get excited about, but it is kind of interesting to watch this plan come together. And this is an indication that the Falcon Heavy flight is coming in this year,

or at least, you know, if it's not by the end of this year, it will be early next year. So it is getting closer and closer as we see these different signs of these plans moving forward. So it's good to keep an eye on this stuff. I know that out at Vandenberg, they have a couple launches coming up there. We haven't heard anything too much on the landing pad there yet. I know that plans were underway to construct that landing pad and use it eventually. They just haven't had a lot of Vandenberg activity over the past couple months, but that will pick up as we get later into the summer and the fall. So I'm interested to see how that landing pad comes together as well, if they're going to expand that pad out to three or five as we see with LZ-1. Maybe are they even going to

open up another landing zone on the Cape? Who knows what their plans are there? All I know is that LZ-1's expansion means good things for Falcon Heavy, and it should even help up their flight rate of Falcon 9, because right now that flight rate and recovery rate is limited by the fact that they only have one ASDS on the Cape and one landing pad. So they only have two locations to recover a stage at one time. So that's somewhat limiting to their schedule if they want to recover as many cores as possible. We'll see in the next launch, the CRS-9 launch coming up on July 18th right now, we'll see how quick they've gotten with getting those stages off of the landing pad once they're recovered, assuming that CRS-9 is a successful landing on that pad, and I would bet that it will be.

But it'll be interesting to see how quickly they process that stage on the pad and get it back into the hangar at 39A. They seem to have gotten that down pretty good with the ASDS. That seems to be a pretty smooth process now. But again, the schedule of the ASDS is really limiting to them since you have to get the ship out to sea, land the stage, drive it all the way back to sea, unload it, and then drive it back out before it's even ready again. And that's, you know, not even counting any refurbishment of ASDS they might need for any debris that's flying around or explosions or whatever else happens there. That timeline is really limiting to them. So more pads means a higher flight rate, means a higher recovery rate. This is all good things for SpaceX's recovery

plans. And I hope that we see the test firing of a stage pretty soon because all in all, this is just shaping out to be a great year for SpaceX in terms of recovery and reuse. So all these plans are good things. I will put the public notice image in the show notes at mainenginecutoff.com if you want to check it out in full. But for now, this is just something to keep your eye on. Switching away from SpaceX to focus on some international news for a little bit, there were a couple of things that I found very interesting over the last week. Nothing there that is, you know, a fully blown out story yet or something with a lot of detail around it, but a couple of interesting things that are indicators of what we may see in the next few years here. So starting off, Sierra Nevada Corporation, who builds the Dream Chaser

cargo vehicle, they did market a crew vehicle for a while. They were part of the commercial crew proposals, but they did not win that case. But they just won a cargo contract from NASA as part of the second resupply contracts. So they're building a cargo Dream Chaser, and they'll be using that to resupply the ISS in the future. But they signed a memorandum of understanding with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. And what this did was define different mission types that Dream Chaser could be used on to fly payloads from UN member countries.

So this would be a cargo Dream Chaser to start, though there were some indications that crew vehicles and crew modules could be used in the future. But for now, this would be hosted payloads flying on a cargo Dream Chaser from UN member countries who would need affordable access to space. Maybe it's a country that doesn't have a space program, or a country that does have a space program but needs cheaper access to space or extra payload space that they don't really want to deal with. This would be a way for Sierra Nevada to sell more flights on their Dream Chaser vehicle. Sounds like Sierra Nevada would define all of the mission constraints. They would say, we're going to fly at this altitude, at this inclination, for this duration. Maybe they would

change that a few times during the flight. It sounds like they would define the mission profile and then sell access to the Dream Chaser cargo space to UN member countries. Mark Serangelo, who is the corporate vice president for the Sierra Nevada Space Systems Group, talked to GeekWire with some additional information that wasn't in the Sierra Nevada press release. And from what he said, it sounds like the Dream Chaser could stay on orbit for periods of months at a time, and it would fly several dozens of payloads from different countries on each flight. So they would sell a lot of payload space to these different countries for these flights. And this is something that it looks like is a way to generate

business for the Dream Chaser, because as of right now, the only client they have for Dream Chaser missions are the NASA ISS resupply missions, which it's not a whole lot of missions. It certainly isn't enough missions to fully support a commercial vehicle or a commercially viable vehicle. So it's interesting to see Sierra Nevada making this move, showing that they're open to working with people outside the U.S. to fly on the Dream Chaser to drum up a little business for a Dream Chaser vehicle that looks pretty capable based on what we're seeing in the early days here. Sir Angelo even mentioned that the Dream Chaser could launch from pads

outside the United States entirely. So, you know, the cargo version has foldable wings, which fits it inside a five-meter fairing. So this could be a fit for the Ariane 5 or the Japanese H-2B. Those are the two that he mentioned, So this could be a fit for the Ariane 5 or the Japanese H-2B. Those are the two that he mentioned, though others would be a fit as well, assuming they could fit the Dream Chaser inside its fairing and lift it to its intended orbit. And that note, along with the note that this could land on any runway longer than 8,000 feet, were kind of interesting notes to make when you're talking about hosted payloads. They're talking about hosted payloads on missions defined by Sierra Nevada. But those two comments

to me are certainly indicative of thought that maybe they would be selling Dream Chasers someday to different countries. Maybe the Japanese agency or if ESO wants to buy a Dream Chaser for any of their missions, it certainly seems to indicate that they would be open to any relationships like that, that might not be, you know, just payloads from the U.S. soil back to the U.S. soil and dealing with all of that. This is something that might fly from elsewhere as well. So, seems like somewhat flexible plans here. But really, it's just interesting to note the tactic here from Sierra Nevada saying we are open to this kind of interaction and this kind of business because they need the business to make Dream Chaser a viable vehicle in the market today. We'll get some further details at the International

Astronautical Congress in Mexico this September, which is where SpaceX will unveil their Mars architecture. So, you know, that news might be a little overshadowed by such grandiose plans from SpaceX, but I'm sure we will talk about it again if and when we get more details about this relationship. But really, this is just another look at the difference between the two wings of NASA's operations right now. We have the NASA cost-plus contract-based Orion and SLS programs, which we've talked about at length, you've probably read a bunch at length about, is it a troubled program? Is it not? Is it going to be okay? Is it going to be the worst thing that we've ever done as a country? So there's kind of

a different look between that side of things, the cost plus based contracting side, and the commercially driven side, as seen with the commercial cargo and crew programs. These commercial companies are competing for contracts. So, you know, Sierra Nevada was left out of the first commercial crew program and the first commercial cargo program, but they found themselves with a contract on the second round of cargo vehicles. But these commercial companies are competing for these contracts, which means they're more incentivized to build and fly more hardware and to create a viable business for themselves outside of this handful of contracts that they're going to get from NASA

for these flights. Because like I said, there's not a ton of resupply flights in these contracts. And certainly as we look at the ISS potentially ending sometime in the next decade, it's not a thing that will hold a business up forever, these contracts. So they need to find a viable business outside of that particular contract for these vehicles if they want to stick around. And these contracts, they incentivize companies because the companies own their own creations. They own their own spacecraft or their own vehicles. They own these things rather than just contributing to NASA as a contractor. They're actually building products for themselves that they can market to other clients. They're not just marketing these to NASA.

We see SpaceX in the past is talking about Dragon Lab as selling space on a Dragon capsule up to orbit. We've seen this now with Bigelow talking about space stations in the 2020s. Even SpaceX as a whole, they've benefited greatly from these NASA contracts that kept them afloat over the years, but they're really blossoming into this very commercially viable company that's selling payload space up to different orbits. They're going to start selling payload space to the surface of Mars on their Red Dragon missions. Really, there's just these commercial companies that have been part of these contracts over the years that are flourishing because of all of the additional business that they're generating because they're incentivized to do so by the structure of these contracts. So if Sierra Nevada is able to drum up some business for Dream Chaser outside of these

resupply contracts, that'll be really interesting to watch because that turns it into a vehicle that has a higher flight rate than it would with the contracts itself. And if you remember from a couple of weeks ago when I was talking about the viability of the commercial cargo and commercial crew vehicles outside of the NASA program themselves, I was painting hard times for Boeing with their CST-100 exactly for this reason. They have not defined any market or missions for CST-100 outside of the NASA missions that are on the docket right now. They've sort of hinted at the fact that they would be part of the Bigelow Commercial Space Station in the 2020s, but really outside of that, there's no plan there for them to fly frequently or fly in any other manner other

than for NASA directly. So this is something that Sierra Nevada is doing right, in my opinion, where Boeing is kind of just, you know, seemingly not sure what to do with CST-100 outside of the initial contract they got. But, you know, we're seeing SpaceX and Blue Origin pursuing reusable launch vehicles as private commercial companies because it's incentivized to do so by the fact that they are commercially viable. And, you know, we're not seeing Boeing market CST-100 in the same way. We're seeing Sierra Nevada now market Dream Chaser in that way. We're hearing from Bigelow saying they're going to do commercial space stations

in the 2020s. Orbital probably could do that with their extended Cygnus module as a private space station. But as of right now, they've only pitched that as a government program to put a space station around the moon. So there's a lot there for these companies to market outside of what they're currently doing now. It's just a matter of, are these things cost-effective? Can they sell it for cheap enough that people will buy it? In SpaceX's case, it looks like they're going to be proven that people will buy payload space to the surface of Mars for the prices they're offering. In Blue Origin's case, will people pay for that payload space up to suborbital space? And when they get into orbital vehicles, they'll probably be doing a similar type of business model they are right now for suborbital.

So it's just interesting to watch these companies that have these contracts with NASA find these different niches to fill commercially in the market. They're marketing themselves in certain ways to provide certain products and services to other people. And there are certain companies that are doing that well, and certain companies that haven't even batted an eye in that direction, though they have the capabilities, you know, and specifically the CST-100 and the extended Cygnus. Those are two things that could be very intriguing to offer as a product or service outside of a contract basis, but we haven't heard anything about that yet. So I'll be interesting to watch how that comes together in the future.

Keeping the international focus, I want to follow up about some of what China is doing, specifically with their partnerships internationally. A couple of weeks ago on the show, I mentioned that China was opening up to the international community, specifically in terms of their space station projects. They had said to the UN that they would be willing to work with people on their space stations, both operationally, flying up to their space station, but also contributing modules to the space station itself. So definitely opening up to the international community. And this past week, they signed two partnership agreements with European countries. The Netherlands Space Office and the Chinese National Space Agency

signed a partnership agreement for a mission to the moon, which was all made possible by the memorandum of understanding that was signed by the two parties back in 2015. So just kind of, you know, jumping back to Sierra Nevada for a second, that memorandum of understanding that they signed with the UN is kind of like laying the groundwork in the way that these two agencies did back in 2015 that eventually turned into this partnership. It's just kind of a way to lay the groundwork for things to come in the future. So about this partnership specifically, a university and a couple of organizations in the Netherlands will be contributing to the Chang'e 4 satellite that is due to be launched in 2018. This is a satellite bound for Earth-Moon L2 in support of the Chang'e

4 mission, which is a lander-rover pair to the far side of the moon that would also take place in 2018. The Chang'e 4 mission hardware was built as a backup for the third mission. That was the mission that launched and landed the U-2 rover to the surface of the moon and operated for a while. That was a pretty cool mission to watch. So this one is the same hardware but going to the far side of the moon this time, which means that it will need a communication satellite to support the operation of that. And that is this satellite that we're talking about here that will be launched to Earth-Moon L2. And aboard that satellite, the Dutch instrument will be a radio telescope, which is putting itself in a really good spot for that kind of astronomy because the moon is

blocking a lot of noise from Earth. So it's a better environment to do the type of research they want to do. The specific instrument itself is, you know, it's a really cool thing that they're doing, but that's not really the interesting part here that I'm interested in. It's the fact that China is opening up such a mission that is so central to their national pride in their space agency. You know, this Chang'e 4 mission is going to be something that is really cool because we've never landed anything on the far side of the moon. So this is a really good mission for China. And they're, you know, they're including a country from Europe as part of that mission as a whole.

And they're hosting that scientific payload on the satellite that's headed for Earth Moon L2. So it's really cool to see China working this way with the Netherlands. And similarly, Poland Space Agency, or POLSA, recently signed an agreement with the Chinese National Space Administration to cooperate on research and monitoring and new telecommunication solutions. And it's, you know, they haven't done too much on that front yet. But the fact that China has signed two partnerships with ESA member countries is just extremely interesting, because you see this continued relationship between China and ESA. China is opening up a lot to the international community, but the United States right now is still shutting them out entirely, which, as I've said in the past, I think is a pretty terrible idea, especially as China shows so much effort to open up to the international community. These are relationships which are really still in the

early days between China and these European countries that they're talking with, but to see this continued effort to host European payloads on their satellites, to work with them on scientific research and observation of the Earth and all those different things that they're talking about. It shows that these two parties are getting a lot closer together, and the U.S. is being left out of that entirely. Russia and China are certainly getting closer as well. They're sharing a lot of technology and different education that they've had over the years in terms of space operation. And all three of these parties, China, Russia, and ESA, are all looking towards the moon

at this point. They're, you know, China's going to the moon with all these Chang'e 4 and Chang'e 3 missions and things like that. But they're also looking towards putting humans on the surface of the moon, just as Russia is. And ESA has been talking about a moon village for quite a while now. So you start to see these three groups of people looking to the same spot and doing a lot of these different partnerships together and working on different missions together and building a relationship, a working relationship in space. And you start to see that there definitely could be a mission that is a big joint mission between China, Russia, and ESA to land people on the moon, maybe even settle on the moon with that moon village idea that ESA has been talking about for so long.

So all in all, while a lot hasn't happened yet with these partnerships, it just kind of shows this trend of China opening up to these international partners, working with them closely, making them part of their own missions to the moon and things like that. So I really do think it's time for the U to wake up and start talking to China about space, start working with them, and just bring them into our community that we've been building with ESA and things like that, before we turn away ESA entirely by being, you know, somewhat isolationist, which is a funny thing to say about the US. But, you know, you see these partnerships develop and US just standing on the sidelines,

totally, you know, out of it. So, you know, in terms of national space policy, there's cooperation everywhere at this point, we're flying with Russia all the time up to the space station. And those they seem to be, you know, a big geopolitical rival right now. So let's do the same with China. Let's bring them into the fold or, you know, until we get to the point where they have to bring us into the fold. Before I'm finished for the week, just a couple of bits of meta news. Main Engine Cutoff is now a blog and a podcast. So if you've been liking what the podcast is, if you've been liking what I've talked about on the podcast, this past couple of months, you're going to love the blog because it's just, you know, the types of content I'm talking about

here, but a lot more frequently. So I'll be doing some longer form writing throughout the week, but I'll also be posting a lot of links throughout each day based on what I'm reading, what I find interesting, what I think would be interesting to share with the audience here. So please go check out the blog, mainenginecutoff.com. There are some RSS feeds there to subscribe to if you like that style of things, or follow at WeHaveMiko on Twitter, and you'll get the links as I post them. But please go check out the blog if you've been liking the podcast especially, because I think you're going to love what the blog will be. Relatedly, as I branch out into other areas with Main Engine Cutoff, as I put more time and energy into Main Engine Cutoff, I'm looking time and energy into main engine cutoff.

I'm looking for ways to support the show. So I started a Patreon account over at patreon.com slash Miko. Patreon is a way to support content creators every month. So I've got it set up that you can pledge any amount of money per month to support the show and the podcast. So your support will help me create a better show, a better blog, and really just keep doing what I'm doing now and expand out to other interesting areas. So maybe in the future, getting into live streaming, getting into videos or Google Hangouts from time to time, traveling different conferences and events, that would be good to get some coverage from and talk to people at maybe do some interviews at these different events and things like that. But I can't do any of that without a little bit of support since all of these things

cost time and money. So over at patreon.com slash Miko, I would really, really appreciate your support if you've been liking the podcast and if you like the blog. Any amount will do from $1 a month up. If you're liking what I'm doing, please help support so that I can keep making Managing Cutoff better and better and expand what I'm doing with this project. Thank you so much for listening, and I will talk to you next week.