Main Engine Cut Off - T+114: EM-1 Hot Drama with Eric Berger

Episode Date: March 13, 2019

Eric Berger of Ars Technica joins me to talk about the latest in SLS Hot Drama: the 2020 budget request and a Bridenstine appearance in the Senate that might just go down in history. This week, NASA has proposed flying the three prime missions of SLS on commercial vehicles, setting the stage for an interesting few months of politics and engineering, and introducing some serious questions about the future of SLS. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 37 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, Robb, Tim Dodd the Everyday Astronaut, Frank, Rui, Julian, and six anonymous—and 229 other supporters on Patreon. Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) | Twitter Eric Berger | Ars Technica New White House budget spells trouble for NASA’s SLS rocket | Ars Technica NASA to consider use of private rockets for first Orion lunar mission | Ars Technica MARS WARS: The Rise and Fall of the Space Exploration Initiative.: Thor Hogan.: Amazon.com: Books SpaceX completes a historic mission, crew flight possible later in 2019 | Ars Technica Email your thoughts, comments, and questions 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 Music by Max Justus

Well, Eric, welcome to the show again. It is certainly not the most boring day to be doing this. It is a pretty amazing day to be talking about space policy in the United States, that's for sure. Before we get into it, I need to hit this one button, because everyone will be waiting for it, and this is the time to use this. Okay. Hot drama. This is the hot drama alarm. I hope it came through Skype appropriately for you. Yes, absolutely. All right, so first, before we get into the theory of things,

let's recap the last three days here. So we had a budget request on Monday this week that included the requests for NASA to not fly Europa Clipper on SLS and to not fly Lunar Gateway elements on SLS. And then we had this morning, what could potentially go down in history as a very infamous Senate hearing in which Bridenstine floated the idea of not flying EM-1 on SLS. So this is the trifecta of things that have happened within the span of three days, or effectively two days. So where are we at at this point? Well, it's pretty remarkable. The SLS, NASA's big rocket, had three primary functions when you talk to people who supported it. One was to launch really big things to lunar orbit, so the cargo, the modules of the Gateway, maybe pieces of landers, maybe not.

maybe not. It was to launch crew to lunar orbit, and it was to launch big science missions on direct injections to Europa. And lo and behold, in two days, as you say, all three of those things have been taken off the table to the extent that NASA said that one way or another commercial rockets could perform these functions. It wouldn't be as straightforward always as the SLS, but the commercial capability exists to get this done. And I really thought that something Bridenstine said today was really remarkable to hear a NASA administrator say it. He said, we have amazing capability that exists right now that we can use off the shelf in order to accomplish this objective. He's talking about the exploration mission one. You know, that really was a significant moment for an administrator to state what has been pretty obvious in the aerospace community, that the private sector has gotten really good at building rockets.

But to sort of admit that and say, hey, we think we ought to be using these to their fullest extent was really, really significant. And I did like, he had a quote in there about, I guess the first question that really prompted all this was from the Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker. Senator Roger Wicker. And in that, Bridenstine's response to his question really focused on EM-1, the mission, not necessarily EM-1 as a shakedown flight of SLS or as a thing that proves out SLS. But he talked a lot about NASA's commitment on EM-1 is to fly astronauts and fly Orion around the moon in prep for flights with astronauts on Orion. And that was the first time I felt like anyone from NASA has stated it so clearly that EM-1 is about the mission of Orion, not this integrated shakedown flight, because that's the way it was always posed before. And I felt like that, while seemingly a minor shift, is something that is notable to see that phrasing be handled differently in the halls of Congress. That was pretty important to me. Yeah, I would say two things about that. First of all, I thought it

was a brilliant bit of framing on the administrator's part to say, look, we want to commit to the Senate, to the taxpayers, that when we set a launch date, we're going to stick to it. That was a pretty commendable way of sort of getting to the point of, look, we're going to stick to it. That was a pretty commendable way of sort of getting to the point of, look, we're going to look at all our options to try to get this mission off on time. So the second thing is to be really blunt about this politically. You're looking at a Trump administration that wants to show some kind of demonstrable achievement back toward the moon during the first term. And make no mistake, this is Vice President Mike Pence who's pushing this. And essentially, they're saying that, look, if SLS

isn't going to get the job done for us, we're going to go another route. And this sends a message to the SLS team that they need to really right their ship. And this also is a political statement of just having something to show for your first four years in office. Yeah, so the Pence thing is interesting there. I think a lot of people are like, oh, it's Trump with his first term ending and yada yada. But you've consistently written about Pence's influence in the space realm. And it's obvious from his public appearances and National Space Council stuff, which has oddly been very quiet lately. It's clear that he really cares about space, as weird as some of his quotes may be. He really does find it something that his

interests lie in. He finds it very important. So what does that kind of mean there that you're saying that Pence is the one that's putting pressure in this area? What does that effectively mean in terms of politics, but also how does that play out day to day within all this construct that we're dealing with? Well, first of all, I think there is going to be a user advisories group meeting in the next couple of weeks. I don't know that it's been posted, but they are going to be meeting and that's that arm of the National Space Council. And I think the message that will be delivered at that meeting is, hey, let's get back to space policy directive one, not to get too wonky, but that's basically let's get back to focusing on how we're going to get humans to the moon. And that really is, that really is a Pence thing.

You know, whatever your political persuasions are, he does seem genuinely interested in and curious about NASA and wants to see it do some interesting things. And, you know, he's learning about all of this stuff on the fly. I mean, let's face it, most Americans aren't space policy geeks. So, you know, he's kind of watched the SLS delays. And I think in the first two years of the president's term, SLS has been delayed three years. So he's probably sitting there scratching his head, wondering what's going on. Why aren't we, you know, Why aren't we doing this? We were promised a flight in 2018, 2019, and now it's 2020 or 2021. What's going on? And so he's

really driving this. It's clear that he has sent a message to Bridenstine. And I'm confident that when Bridenstine went for the Senate Commerce Committee today, he did so sort of with the backing of Pence. And that will help drive this forward, in my opinion. I also don't think this was a surprise to Senator Wicker that asked the question. I don't think a lot of what happens in those hearings is a surprise to anyone, either at the witness table or, you know, asking the questions. So I feel like there's probably a little bit of backroom discussions before this, or is that not your understanding?

of backroom discussions before this, or is that not your understanding? Well, clearly it was not a surprise for NASA, because yesterday some of the public affairs people sent out emails to people covering this saying, hey, you're going to want to watch the hearing tomorrow. Wow. Because on the first blush, it looks pretty boring, right, hearing Bridenstine show up just to talk about how NASA's, you know, he's given that speech a lot. Yeah, especially a quick editor's note here. We were talking about having this show for a couple of weeks in email, and we picked this date, and I said, hey, yeah, we can watch congressional sessions before. And just for the record, you did say yawn in those

emails. So I would like you to publicly rescind your yawn statement on the show. Is it a crime to be tired? I don't really understand where you're going statement on the show. Is it, is it a crime to be tired? I don't really understand where you're going with this, Anthony. So, no, it was, it was,

they, they were basically saying, you're going to want to watch this because something as interesting is going to happen. And then this morning kind of leaked out that a little bit that he was going to talk about SLS. And you were kind of left wondering what he would have to say that would expand upon the speech he gave at Kennedy space center just two days ago. Now, I don't know if Wicker was really in on it or not. It could have been something where NASA just asked him, hey, could you ask about the status of EM-1?

And then Jim is going to give a response to that. It seems to me like Wicker was somewhat taken aback with what Bridenstine said, but I don't know. I also don't know if he understands the full implications of it, given that his read of the question was like, it was the first time he read every word in the sentence as he was reading it out. So I'm not sure exactly how much history he's got there for the context of why this is such a big deal. Well, I think he gets it because, you know, Stennis Space Center is in Mississippi and he's a senator from Mississippi.

And, you know, that's where they green run test the SLS. And, you know, that's where they do all the space shuttle main engine tests. And so it's a significant NASA facility. And the fact that toward the end of the hearing, he said, well, we're, you know, we're. We'd love to see, you know, keep you on schedule, was interesting to me. So I think there have been at least some back-channel discussions in the Senate, and I would not be shocked if Shelby and other key senators don't oppose it. you know when you're thinking about the like short-term and long-term effects of this short-term it's actually really good for boeing and lockheed because they do have the potential to keep funding sls for finding it's terrible it's terrible for boeing sorry it's terrible

it adds to their really bad week they could but it does they are having an awful awful couple of weeks but you know they might get at least one and maybe two delta four heavy contracts out of it so there's something. Right, right. So it's not a total loss, I guess. But long term, if they're able to pull this off, this is a massive hit to the longevity of the program. I saw you tweeted earlier about the cargo aspect here,

that that's the thing that SLS has left on its plate of large-scale cargo missions. Where are we at with that? What's your indication there? Well, my thinking on that and from talking to some people is that if you show on EM-1 that you can launch a crew vehicle into lunar orbit safely, a two-step process, launch an upper stage, then launch a crew, have some kind of docking, and then go do your mission and come back. You've already proven that that's safe. It's much less expensive than an SLS launch. An SLS launch is what, at least a billion dollars? Yeah, with fuzzy math at that.

Yeah, extremely fuzzy math. And if you can do the commercial missions for half a billion dollars or less, depending on whether you're usingcon heavies or delta four heavies um you know you're saving a bunch of money there and you know it would free up the sls program if they did not have the constraints of having to launch orion if they could just focus on being a cargo vehicle i think that would help them in terms of their design and sort of finalizing it for performance and things like that. So my sense is that by opening the door to crew missions on commercial vehicles, and if you open that pathway and it works, you're never going back to launching crew on SLS. I mean, can you imagine kind of the negative coverage that NASA is going

to get if they try to launch crew on the maiden flight of the SLS rocket? I mean, it's really quite stunning, right? They required seven versions of the Falcon 9 final configuration before the first crew mission on Dragon 2. And so now you're going to say, well, we're just awesome. And so we're putting crew on the biggest rocket. It seems kind it's, it seems kind of crazy. Um, so I think there's that issue. And I, and I just get a sense that if, if the SLS has a path forward, it's being this really big rocket that can throw a lot of stuff directly into lunar orbit. Um, and if you've got to keep the program alive, it will be sort of as that kind of a vehicle, you know, maybe you can throw two or three elements of Gateway up there at one time or throw some landers and a bunch of fuel up there at one time or something like that. So how does that square up with this whole Block 1B delay where the exploration upper stage is essentially shelved and they're not going to pursue 1B?

Because I feel like if that was the route, you would want to scrap Block one and say, we don't need a Delta IV heavy upper stage on this. We need something that can support an 8.4 meter fairing, not a 5 meter fairing. So I feel like that's a little bit of the cognitive dissonance that I can't get my head around right now. Right. So the block 1B with the exploration upper stage is the critical question. I've been hearing for a long time that work on the exploration upper stage or EUS has been stopped. And it has. It's just way too expensive. Boeing

wanted way too much money for them. And NASA just said, fine, we're going to put this sort of on hold for now. And it's official in this budget the way to think about kind of the significance of this week i think is that on monday you know the white house opened up one front of a war against sls it basically said we're putting us on hold for the time being okay and so that's one fight that congress could have right right reinstalling funding for us and the budget and then two days later, they come out and sort of opened another front in the war on SLS and saying, oh, we're going to do crew missions on commercial vehicles. And so if you're Richard Shelby or someone who really

supports the SLS, if you're a Boeing lobbyist, you know, which of those battles are you going to fight? Are you going to try to fight both of those fronts? Are you going to kind of give up the crew one and sort of hold to get funding back in for EUS? That's really interesting. Yeah. So it's going to be fascinating to watch how that plays out. But I do think that if they don't fund EUS, if it does get deferred, which means it's delayed, which means it's pretty well canceled, that will be very detrimental to the long-term health of SLS. Because frankly, the rocket is not all that exceptional compared to, say, a New Glenn, even in terms of the fairing size.

So the one thing that SLS could do that New Glenn could not, New Glenn could throw about 20 tons to translunar injection, right? And Orion was about 27 tons. Is New Glenn that high? It has to be lower than that. Because they can only throw 13 to GTO. No, I was told it was 20 tons to tli whoa i like how you were told that because i like to assume where you were told that from that's

not what it maps to publicly so that makes me excited well okay about 20 tons to tli which is nice but it's not 27 tons so orion can't do, I mean, the New Glenn can't do Orion to the moon. Okay, no rocket can. SLS Block 1 can, theoretically. We haven't seen it do it, but that was the one unique capability it had. If you add the exploration upper stage, then that rocket is much more capable than anything on the market outside of the theoretical super heavy,

which may or may not ever fly. So if you take away EUS, then you're taking away kind of the super rocket capabilities of SLS. And if you take away crew launches to the moon on SLS, then it's got nothing. There's nothing special about it whatsoever. Right. So it's a two front war, I think. And we'll see which, which, you know, what happens. Man, that's a really interesting way to frame it because I mean, what would you do if you were Shelby? Would you go for the EUS route or would you try to fight both fronts? What's the, what's the deal there? Well, I'd try to get

this three-week study that is going to be done by my engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center. And I'd try to torpedo it and say that it can't be done. You'd throw up a lot of FUD, right? Just cast a lot of doubts on it

and that kind of thing. But I think if I really cared about the SLS program, I would be fighting desperately for the exploration upper stage and to ensure that. Because if you look at it from his perspective, if what you care about is the $2 billion a year in development for SLS, like that's $2 billion, it's coming to Marshall every year for rocket development.

Then you want the long horizon development. That's the exploration upper stage of block one B because that rocket's not flying until the late 2020s probably. Right. Yeah. You just, you know, a decade and then you get that development to keep rolling throughout and all as well.

So my, my sense is that that's why I don't necessarily think Shelby will oppose this commercial plan, or at least will not mount a severe opposition. And that's why, you know, it will be really interesting to see what happens. And I don't, certainly don't dismiss it as just kind of some kind of political stunt by Bridenstone. And do you think that that could still, you know, obviously there's, it would be a long shot to fly this mission by June 2020, even with two commercial launch vehicles. But, you know, given the layout of the land that you're talking about here, where you've got this decision between the long term and the short term, even for somebody who wants SLS to be the workhorse of NASA's, you know, future deep space operations, it seems like a more viable route to go the EUS way, even if it means delaying this iteration of EM-1 until 2021 or even later than that. Yeah, I mean, I think it's all about sort of how do you best sell your rocket?

Do you sell your rocket as the biggest, baddest rocket ever built? And if that's the case, it's got the EUS on it. Now, how much does the ISS plan play into this? Because Boeing is the prime contractor for ISS, and it certainly seems like the Senate is going to float ISS until 2030 as part of one of the next appropriations. So do you think that that has any... Obviously, that doesn't impact the Alabama contingent as much as the rest of Boeing, but Boeing is Boeing, so they would be happy either way. Do you think that has any play here? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, they're kind of related. I think ultimately ISS is going to get funded through 2029 for a number of different reasons. I think one of the reasons is that the

White House will do these studies of ISS commercializations and it'll come back not looking very good. But I don't see too much overlap between ISS, despite the fact that Boeing has the management contract. Yeah, man, this is going to be a really fun year. It looked like it was going to be a little boring, but everything totally changed around. Oh man, what else did we need to discuss about this? Do you have anything on, you want to talk about the nerdy stuff at all, like the actual architecture of flying EM1 like this? Yeah. Let's talk about that for a minute. So I have heard that the SpaceX has talked to NASA about launching an Orion on a Falcon heavy. Okay. That has happened, but it seems to me that if you

wanted to fly in June, 2020 or sometime in 2020, because politically you want to fly it before November 2020 not that this is going to swing any elections but I think just NASA's mandate is going to be get something done in 2020 that shows that we're on a path back to the moon um and so that would be a launch of a crew spacecraft you know obviously no, but sending a crew spacecraft around the moon a la Apollo, not Apollo 8, but just sort of like demonstrating a kind of lunar capability would be really significant. So how do you do it? I think the straightest forward path is to launch the Orion on a Delta IV Heavy, right? Because you did it without the service module back in 2014.

And so they've got a way to do that. And then you're probably looking at the ICPS, which was the upper stage that they were going to use on EM1. That is kind of just a modified version of the existing Delta upper stage. existing delta upper stage and so you've got to figure out how to how long you can put that in space before you dock it and then how you dock that with orion but i think you could launch that on a falcon heavy uh i did some very rough numbers not an aerospace engineer here so these these numbers could be wrong but i think that is somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 tons a wet upper stage okay so that's really heavy. But a Falcon Heavy could get that into lunar orbit

or to low Earth orbit, right? Would it fit in the fairing? I think so. I think it fits on top. I think so. In delta field, five meters? Now we're getting into the weeds. Now you're getting in the weeds.

But I think it could launch on're getting into the weeds. Now you're getting in the weeds, but I think it could launch on top of a Falcon Heavy. You can't get a wet upper stage on a Delta IV Heavy in the low Earth orbit. Right. Unless you launch the Delta IV Heavy completely with no payload and just left off the upper stage. You'd still have to get that upper stage into orbit, though. Right, but I'm saying if it's not carrying a payload, maybe they could do it,

but then would you have enough to get it to the moon? Delta four upper stage, a Delta four upper stage or Delta four heavy can't get 30 tons of payload in the low earth orbit. So I, I don't know. I just, my back of the envelope calculation suggests that they launch Orion on a

Delta four heavy and launched the upper stage on a Falcon Heavy. But I don't know for sure. I haven't seen those data. I can't wait to see the study. Hopefully they make it public to see what happens. But it's a huge ask to get that done by June of 2020 or even 2020 because Orion has been working for, what, 300 years to make its spacecraft compatible with the Space Launch System rocket. And so you're asking them now in 15 months to turn around and make it compatible with another rocket. Now, theoretically, you could do it. If you did it in 2014, you ought

to be able to do it. You know, I think that it's non-trivial to dock in low-Earth orbit between a crew vehicle and an upper stage, but we did it in Gemini 10 in the 1960s. So that's doable, but it's still a lot of work, a lot of paperwork. But what's extremely refreshing about this administration, and especially about Jim Bridenstine, give him credit. He has injected a sense of urgency into NASA that did not exist before or has not existed in a long time. He's like, let's get this done. You know, let's see what we can do. Let's open ourselves to new ideas. And, you know, here we are.

So I technically I don't know if they can do it. I mean, I think that they probably can. And there seems to be the political will can do it i mean i think that they probably can and there seems to be the political will to do it so i you know i'm it's it's gonna be really interesting and now they may come back in three weeks and say look we can't do it for this this and this reasons um but i'm not sure it would be floated if if they already knew that answer yeah i mean i saw a lot of people kind of feeling the same way about this as the can we fly crew on EM-1 thing back in early 2017, I believe that was. The same week that SpaceX was like, oh, we're flying around the moon next year as well. So that was the last kind of week of drama that there was for the program.

And I do sense a little bit of similarity in the vibe around it as that being it's a technical long shot that's going to have some study that we'll expect to hear the results of. But man, I'm just thinking about... Well, just think about this, though. Who was the administrator at that time? Was Robert Lightfoot? Sleepy Lightfoot. Well, I mean, he's fine, but he was an interim guy, you know, and he was just kind of keeping the lights on and trying to move the the programs forward he was a caretaker yeah and you know brianstein was brought in 10 months ago and and kind of people who knew him were waiting to see signs of change and and leadership and this is this is his moment he has shown change now it's going to take some leadership to push push this radical idea through the bureaucracy of NASA. But he's got, like I said, I'm confident that he's got Mike Pence and the National Space Council behind him. So, you know, I don't

necessarily think this is going to be a repeat of the 2017 study of putting crew on EM-1. Yeah, and certainly when you talked about the political angle of making it this decision between the long-term EUS or the short-term crew flights, that smacks of somebody with political knowledge and knowing the way that it works behind the scenes. And that's something you get out of Bridenstine. So I don't know, I'm not sure we'll be able to know how much of this had Bridenstine's thoughts in it, but certainly knowing the way that politics works is a huge benefit here, and this could really be the moment that everybody that was anti-apolitician being the head of NASA would have to walk back their statements a little bit if he's able to pull off something so smoothly like this. Well, some of us weren't anti-politician being head of NASA,

for the record. No, I definitely was not, yeah. He had the background to do this. You know, this is his moment, right? And we'll see if he rises to the occasion or not, I definitely was not. He had the background to do this. You know, this is his moment, right? And we'll see if he rises to the occasion or not. But I agree, sort of, he understands the politics of this. And he, my understanding is that he has sort of been itching to make the change. He's not happy with the status quo. I mean, how could you look at these programs and be happy with what they've produced? Especially somebody like him that has so much passion for it. You can just feel it spilling out of him when he talks.

I mean, how could you be happy with a program that spends in excess of $2 billion a year and the launch date keeps getting pushed back? And there was apparently a meeting at some point in recent weeks where Pence asked, well, if we gave more money, could you get EM1 done in June 2020? And he was told no. And so I think that was kind of a turning point, too, for their thinking on this. It's certainly been an interesting path to this point of discussion. I don't know if you can see my camera, but right behind me is this picture when I was at EFT1 waiting for launch this morning. And if you told me five years ago, standing there waiting for that launch, that we would be having this discussion to do that same

flight again five years later, I would be very confused as to what the last five years were. It's a crazy amount of stagnation if you put it that way. You were to take two snapshots. I remember being EFT1 and talking with James Dean and that we were hearing about how they were working toward a December 2017 launch. And we both said, yeah, right. So I figured that we'd be kind of here. But yeah, and let's be clear. There's been some talk about, well, this is just a repeat of EFT1. And that's bullshit.

It's not. EFT went up 400,000 kilometers, I think, or no. Like 3,600. Excuse me, 4,000 or 3,600 kilometers. Yeah. This is a much different mission profile, and it would demonstrate the capability to put humans in lunar orbit. It's hugely different because you'd have the launch of two rockets, not one. You'd have a docking, and then you'd have a burn out of low Earth orbit into lunar orbit.

That is substantially different. And if it worked, it would show that you could do moon missions with existing commercial rockets. And that is just mind-blowingly huge. It just is. I'm sorry. It's so much different than an EFT-1 mission where you're launching a crew capsule with a dummy service module

or whatever they put on it. I don't even remember, to be honest. It was just a thing shaped like it. It wasn't even anything useful. It was like a can or something. I don't even know. was like a can or something yeah i don't i don't even know i should know and sending that up 4 000 kilometers and bringing it back it's just there's no comparison and so i would disagree with anyone who just said wow

they're just doing eft1 again no i mean i meant more in that like you know this is what it would look like it's it's uh it's just, I mean, and from that perspective, I want to talk about tugs in a second. Um, but let's just pause for a moment and think about if this were to happen, the pure rocket geek joy that it would be to see a Falcon heavy liftoff from one pad and a couple miles down the road, a Delta four heavy liftoff for the same mission. This is like, if somebody was like like let me make a commercial space version of the armageddon launch this is that and that's ridiculous it's uh it it would be it would be totally awesome and i think i think nasa probably sees that like how cool would this be and i mean they're not blind they saw how how spacex amped up the cool factor with the Dragon launch, right? I mean, people were just as interested in that because it was a crew mission because SpaceX was involved.

You know, Boeing's launch is not going to get that same kind of attention. First of all, because it's going to be second, at least on the demonstration mission. And, you know, SpaceX has the cool factor and that rubs off on NASA. And so if they have a mission that combines sort of NASA with the commercial sector, they see the potential there. I mean, it would be, you're right, it would be pretty amazing. This would be a total kumbaya moment of NASA, new space, old space getting together to do this.

I feel like this would be a really good capstone on the last decade of drama that there has been. Well, you must not be a Boeing employee. Lockheed Martin certainly would be. Lockheed certainly would be happy. Hey, man, Delta's a Boeing rocket. They said that those astronauts will get to Mars on a Boeing rocket. They just didn't say which one. This opens a pathway for Orion, for sure. Yeah, definitely. All right, so tugs. I've been enamored by tugs in the last couple of hours to days, because everything that we're talking about here needs a tug. We've got

lunar gateway elements that no longer have Orion to fly them to lunar orbit. That needs a tug. We have this lander RFP that went out or is going out. I forget what state that's in now. The lander needs a tug to get from Gateway, as envisioned, down to the lunar surface. Orion at this point, the upper stage at that point would be a tug. So please convince me that we shouldn't cancel SLS immediately and start a tug program.

Well, I mean, you're preaching to the choir here. One of the things that... I brought the wrong guy in to convince me. ...has been so frustrating about SLS, the program, is just the fact that because you've chosen this Apollo-like approach with a monster rocket to do a direct launch somewhere, and it's not just the money, right?

It's the fact that you, by choosing this approach, you've set aside, you know, propellant depots, in-orbit refueling, in-space tugs, all these other things that are cornerstones of a reusable affordable sustainable space program right so something where you're not don't have one big launch a year or every two years but you have frequent launches and you're you know you're taking stuff from the moon and back you're using solar electric propulsion maybe or you're you know you're using reusing upper stages things like that i mean it's just there is a vibrant space economy out there to be had um but it involves things like tugs and that again is sort of the significance of this announcement is that it it would be a very symbolic return to in-orbit docking and multiple launch strategy, which a lot of people have been really banging on about for years.

But NASA has ignored in terms of funding and research and development because they've been focused on SLS and Orion as the key to going back to the moon and Mars. And so these are very important things. And if this approach is chosen and it works, then it opens up the door back to those. And that's very meaningful. I wrote a little quick blog post this morning. And in it, I mentioned the fact that SLS was born out of a program that had this exact architecture. It had a crew launch in low Earth orbit.

It had a big rocket launch and an upper-stage tug into low-earth orbit and joining up. That got canned. SLS took its place. And damn, if it doesn't seem like that's going to go the opposite way this time. It's really curious. And I think you hit on something important there, that this would be the lead-in to a new architecture of things. And I think you hit on something important there, that this would be the lead-in to a new architecture of things. And I think a lot of people in years past, when they're talking about cancel SLS for commercial alternatives, almost framed it as a zero-cost alternative, like there wouldn't be any money needed to go the new route. And that's not accurate by any means.

This would be something that involves big budget programs to develop an architecture to work amongst that. But it certainly seems like where we see the trend lines going, this is the more future-focused architecture and something that is more easily, you know, something that you can easily envision. Whereas the SLS, a chart that they've always showed, seemed like a pipe dream, you know, to a lot of us. Right. And oh, by the way, it's not just launched. There to a lot of us right and oh by the way it's not it's not just launched there's a bunch of companies out there that are have ideas and technologies that you could use for in-space propulsion or refueling or or you know you know depots i mean shelby shelby recognized

the threat um many years ago. Are we allowed to curse on this podcast or not? Yeah, I'll tell everyone to turn down the episode if you've got your kid listening, and then turn it back up in five seconds. Okay. Well, the message from Shelby to Bolden, Charles Bolden, the NASA administrator, back in 2011 or 2012, back when NASA was still funding propellant depot research, is there will be no fucking money in this budget for propellant depots.

And that was the end of it. That was the end of the program. Because if you have propellant depots and you can do in-orbit refueling, then you don't need the big rocket. And so it really did cut off funding for, for, you know, in space tugs and things like that. And so, so yeah, this is, you know, for a number of reasons, this, this change in posture from Bridenstine and it's just really hugely, you know, hugely meaningful.

Going to be a good couple of weeks. So we got, I guess, what did he say, a handful of weeks to do the study, and then we'll hear some more rumblings around this. How do you see it going from here for the next couple of months? What do you envision the path for this kind of thing being, whether that means internally at NASA or politically? Well, the Orion engineers didn't seem to know this was coming. And so it was really a small group. I don't know who knew and who didn't, but it was a relatively select few at headquarters because, you know, people really didn't see this coming beyond some kind of general announcement. I think there will be a quick study and then probably in about three weeks, Bridenstine and maybe Gerstenmaier will have a teleconference with reporters. Or maybe Bridenstine will have some big showy event. I don't know.

He seems to like to get up on a stage and talk. Hopefully it's less awkward than that commercial lunar one a couple of months ago. That was the most awkward event of all time. That was a little bit strange. So I think they'll do the study and they'll come out and they'll say, yeah, we want to do it or no, we don't. And then I don't know where we go from there. You know, it's really going to come down to who does the study, I think, and whether they have an open mind or not. I mean, because if you're at NASA and you want to kill an idea, you can. So what you saw during, you know,

the first George Bush, when he came out in 1989 on the 20th anniversary of Apollo, and he said, we're going to have a program to go back to Mars. And there was a study done at JSC, And there was a study done at JSC, and the agency at that time didn't want to go to Mars, the leadership or people there. And so they did a study and leaked the fact that in their estimate it was going to cost $400 billion to have a Mars program. There's a great book on this called Mars Wars, the rise and fall of the space exploration initiative that shows that NASA can kill things it doesn't like. And so you could get a study like that that shows, well, we could do this and do it in December 2020, but it's going to cost $4 billion and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that who does the study and how open and whether they really want to succeed or not will be, will be a big tell.

And I'd really love to know whether Gerstenmaier, Bill Gerstenmaier, the NASA chief human space flight thinks this is a good idea or not, because that would go a long way toward answering the question for me of whether of how the study will, will come out. And I just don't know. You did make him laugh recently.

So if anyone has a line in, I think it's you at this point. Gerst is not my biggest fan. I have to say, although I think he's, he's got an extremely difficult job and he, and he does, he's,

he's quite good at it. So. Yeah, he's going to be, it's going to be fun to watch whatever response this is it's gonna be a great time so i'm looking forward to that be sure to check be sure to check the twitter feed of the coalition for deep space exploration yeah be sure to check there'll be something good coming out the twitter feed of of nasa sls and be sure to check the twitter feed of boeing space over the

next next few days because the nasa SLS Twitter account is kind of fun because every day or two, they'll share a picture of an RS-25 engine test or some big engine segment. It's always just marching forward, moving progress. So it'll be interesting to see if that sort of message continues. I wonder if that...

I'm going to look it up real fast just to see what their last tweet was. You do that one. I'll do the Deep Space Coalition. Okay, so NASA SLS's last tweet was five hours ago. So that was 8.30 this morning, right before the hearing. Ten years ago, scientists thought the moon was arid. Now scientists observe the water and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So yeah, they haven't tweeted since the hearing this morning. And I doubt. Yeah, the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration is still applauding the administration's desire to lean forward to the moon. Well, they applauded the desire to lean forward, but then they didn't like the unnecessary trades of important programs. So that was actually a really critical statement from Marilyn Dittmar, who I have a lot of important programs. So that was actually a really critical statement from, from Maryland Dittmar. I don't want to have a lot of respect for, um,

is there anyone that works at the DSA's coalition except her? Yes, they have. I have no, I never knew that because it's only ever heard that's quoted. They have a communications person for sure. Um, and I,

I was, I'm sure they have other, other staff as well. Have you met them, or is it all Marilyn Dittmar with different names? This is my theory. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Come on now. Be nice to Marilyn.

I'm just saying that no one else is publicly known, so it's confusing. She was hired to be the executive director and the public face. She knows Gerstenmaier very well. I mean is she is very well connected oh yeah definitely and so she's and so she yeah she speaks for the or she speaks to the organization well it's going to be interesting i don't know if i have too much more on this particular topic um and i want to keep you around too long but dm1 has happened since the last time i did a show so maybe do we want to talk about that for a couple of minutes before we get out of here god that seems like a lifetime ago it does right a lot of that was in a week um a phenomenally successful mission i mean it really i think that you know symbolically dm1 was important because

it showed to people who maybe were skeptical about SpaceX that they could come in and sort of put pants on and button down shirts and fit within the NASA culture to meet NASA's stringent safety demands for crew launches. And they got to the launch pad first before Boeing, who clearly is much better at working with NASA in the way NASA is accustomed to and sort of meeting all their paperwork and regulatory issues and things like that. And SpaceX met them and did it and launched, and everything went off extremely well, right? The docking was great. The cabin air was fine. The mannequin survived. And then the reentry and splashdown, it all looked great. partnerships through fixed price contracts, this was really a big, a big moment. Um, and I, frankly, before the mission, I was skeptical of a human flight in 2020 or excuse me, 2019. But I think now it's, it's certainly 50, 50, if not a little better than it happened this year. So big moment, a big moment for SpaceX, but also, frankly, a big moment for NASA.

And it really was win-win for the agency and for the company. And it speaks well of both of them. Yeah, it was an incredibly smooth mission. It went so well, I barely have anything to say about it. It was just incredibly well done, well executed. Everything went smoothly. I think the last time you were on the show was right after the announcement of crew of crew assignments Okay, and that was the last time that I felt like there was a huge

Victorious win for the commercial crew program with all these good vibes around Right, so it's fitting that you're back on right after this one. Do you sense? Within the Houston area have you gotten any similar vibes about this mission? Or is there still a little, you know, hesitation because they still have a lot of work to go to get crew flying? Like, what's the inside the Houston area vibe right now? Well, I think JSC is very, very pumped up about it. I mean, it gets them back in the human spaceflight game. And the fact that, you know, they were able to, I mean, let's face it, right? Their job at NASA was to ensure that all of these milestones that the Dragon had to meet,

their job was to check all the fault modes and things like that and to make sure that the hardware was going to perform. And so the fact that the hardware did perform as they wanted it to is a credit to NASA to sort of back and forth all these years with SpaceX about changing this or doing that design or making this trade or requiring them to land in the water. All of those hard decisions worked. So I think they feel pretty good about it. And there's a lot of work to do to get that spacecraft ready for DM-2. The flight, the one that flew is not super close to the final, to the crew version.

So there's work to do. And I think that's one of the reasons why Boeing is taking longer. My sense is that they're trying to get their first flight of Starliner to be almost the same as the final crew version. And so the time between the first and second Starliner flight will be less than the time between the first and second Dragonflight. Yeah, that's an interesting mindset difference. And that's something that I think goes in a lot of SpaceX

and old Spacey kind of vibes where they do, you know, they'll fly something and then make tweaks as they go. And the old Spacey type is, let's make sure we nail it down. SpaceX is like, let's just go fly. Damn it. And then if there's problems, we'll fix it. Yeah. Well, Eric, thank you so much for being on. Is there any other bits that you want to share before we get out of here?

No, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty, pretty incredible day. Uh, it's hard, it's hard to really process it all, um, all so far. Um, and I guess, as you say say we'll see what happens over the next coming weeks but you know in terms of human space flight there's a ton of other stuff in the budget and i have like lots of thoughts and concerns about kind of that nasa is still trying to do too many things with with too few resources but all that was kind of blown out of the water by this this sls, which was just, you know, really a healthy exercise for the agency to undertake, I think. So good for them.

Well, all that other stuff that you're talking about, where should people go to follow along with you and read up what you're writing? They could go to arstechnica.com or follow me on Twitter at SciGuySpace. Fantastic. Thank you, Eric. It's always a pleasure talking with you. And I'm sure there'll be some more drama soon that we'll talk about soon. All right. Before we're out of here today, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who supports Main Engine Cutoff over at patreon.com slash Miko. There are 266 of you supporting the show. There are 37 executive producers who made this episode of Main Engine Cutoff possible. Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Jameson, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John,

Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Grant, Mike, David, Mintz, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, recent guest on Off Nominal, by the way, Frank, Rui, Julian, and six anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for making this episode possible. And if you want to help support the show, head over to patreon.com slash indigo and do it there otherwise that is it for today we've got another interesting guest coming up on the next episode of the podcast so check the main feed pretty soon for that and otherwise i will talk to you in a couple of days Bye.