Main Engine Cut Off - T+117: Q&A

Episode Date: April 2, 2019

This month we talk EM-1, Moon by 2024, the commercialization of LEO, and more. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 38 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, Lars, and six anonymous—and 239 other supporters on Patreon. 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

it is question time again here on main engine cutoff i am anthony colangelo we've got a bunch to get to today mostly surrounding the em1 commercial em1 moon by 2024 all of the nasa hot drama of late but we've also got some good stuff about communications uh satellite internet and all that kind of stuff so we've got a bunch to get to so let's get going first up from zane i'm trying to follow all the news on the possibility of using two commercial rockets for the em1 mission to the moon and there's something i don't understand there seems to be opposition to docking two vehicles in orbit because it is too complicated but won't the lunar gateway have to be assembled in lunar orbit?

What's the difference? And then he goes on to cite the fact that all the Apollo missions did that after launch and then back from the moon. Gemini did it with the Agena upper stage. He said, this doesn't seem to be an insurmountable problem, and I don't really understand the argument. And Zane, you are exactly right. There is, mostly I think this is the

case of wording concerns poorly. There are concerns about getting all of that stuff ready to go by the deadline, getting a docking system on Orion active and ready to go by the deadline, getting a docking system active and ready to go on whatever the upper stage would have been by the deadline. And I think that's the main source of the concern, not necessarily as much the actual docking operations, though it was worded in that way. And really, if that is the concern, then it is totally ridiculous. Because if you look at the plans for the Gateway, there's about 900 things that have to dock on the course of getting the Gateway built in lunar orbit. You've got the current plan right now of launching these habitats co-manifested of SLS, or I guess this isn't the plan anymore, but it was as of last year.

That would involve launching the SLS and then having Orion dock with that module and then tug it to the moon, then dock the entire thing with whatever the gateway is there and then undock and then a lander would dock and then the lander would undock and go to the surface and then with a tug. So tug and the lander would be docking, then the lander would go and then it would launch back up and it would dock with the tug again and then the tug would dock with the gateway and then it would, Orion would undock and fly back to the moon, Earth. So there's like literally 800 dockings that would happen all in lunar orbit. So if that is the main concern, it is absolutely ridiculous.

I don't think that is the main concern. I think they are wording the concerns poorly. Question from Lars about the new graphic that NASA is going to be using when they're talking about the path to the lunar surface. NASA is going back forward to the moon. This Swiss chart thing seems to be the new journey to Mars tentacle thing that everyone rallied around a few years ago. What do you really think of having, of landing a CLPS lander once every six months and having

commercial companies do all the development for a new human landing system? NASA's human landing system program seems to be really ambitious on this front. Is NASA really willing to let astronauts land on the moon with non-NASA hardware? So first, yeah, this chart thing, I'll have it as the album art right now if you check out your podcast player. This is the new graphic that you're going to see everywhere. Previously, we had the tentacle thing for Journey to Mars, and then we had the one with the gateway in there too. I think there was a, when we weren't going to land on the moon, there was a graphic that had the gateway and then Mars in the background. And there's like a new one of these every couple of years. Uh, this one has a bunch of stuff going on on the lunar surface,

starting with small landers in 2018 and then midsize landers in 2022 and then advanced exploration lander in 2026, eventually humans down that way as well. Uh, so it's kind of showing, you know, orbital assets and landed assets. Um, a new CLPS lander every six months. This is the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program, basically small cargo missions to the moon. Every six months eventually is a great goal. But I think there is a drastic, over-optimistic take on how ready all of these commercial landers are. They keep saying that, you know, there's a task order out now and we hope to fly by the end of next year. But every lander company out there is like, we are nowhere near ready in time for that. So I really, you know, I don't know if NASA is being over-optimistic or if they just are

talking that way. But internally, they know what the actual timeline is and they're just using it to apply pressure. But nonetheless, it doesn't really seem like we're going to have a commercial landing on the moon in this program until 2021 at the earliest right now. And that's obviously subject to slip as well. But in general, the idea with CLPS is to have these small missions that you could fly on a moment's notice and scout the moon, scout the lunar landing areas that you want to go to, or scout new areas of the moon or areas you've been to and you want some more info out about with a new payload. That kind of idea, that kind of architecture would be fantastic, and I think it is something that we need if we're

going to do extensive operations on the lunar surface. But right now where we are, I think everything's just a little over optimistic, especially with the 2019-2020 date on this chart right now. As far as the human lander goes, you know, I like the idea of building a human lander in the same way that Commercial Crew was built. Now, in that same token, I don't know many people that would say commercial crew to the ISS was handled in a light touch way by NASA. I think they were very stringent upon, you know, all the standards that they needed to meet to go to the ISS. Maybe it's getting a little better as we get into operations, but the development was plagued by a lot of, you know, oversight, maybe in some cases too much oversight. But,

you know, I think that's definitely the way that it would be for this lander system. And I think personally, that's the thing that I have the most skepticism about is NASA being able to handle the landers in the right way to meet this crazy 2024 deadline. I think, you know, rightly so, they're going to be very stringent in the same way they are with commercial crew. Now, they do have additional experience working through commercial crew, so maybe they can learn from that and improve things with this lander round. But if NASA's willing to let astronauts go to the ISS on non-NASA hardware, although they had a heavy hand in it, I think the same would go for the lunar surface. I don't see any indication that they're scared of that.

And the biggest thing they're going to have to get over is probably Congress and their own safety concerns. I think those are the two things that always hold NASA back. In some cases, that's a good thing. In some cases, it's a bad thing. That's just the cards they're dealt with the kind of organization that they are. But I don't see why commercial crew couldn't extend beyond low Earth orbit. Speaking of the ISS, Rick sent in a question, not practical, but perhaps fun to talk about. Always my favorite kind of questions. With the ISS funding constantly up in the air, what about sending it to lunar orbit rather than building a completely new gateway? How much Delta V is needed? Is it even possible? Yeah, this is the one that always comes up whenever we get into these conversations. Delta V is interesting because you need the same delta V

to get anywhere from anywhere to anywhere. The difference is how much mass you're pushing. So that means how much fuel you need to have the same amount of delta V. The ISS is absolutely massive. It is huge. It's enormous. It would require a massive amount of fuel. But honestly, the fuel isn't really the concern when you're talking about ISS as a gateway. There's a couple of things that are your problems. Number one, could the structures handle thrusting its way to the moon? Maybe, but probably not. Could the ISS itself handle the thermal conditions of flying to the moon and being in orbit around the moon? Almost certainly not. Could it handle the

radiation environment around the moon? Almost certainly not. And I think if you talk to some engineers, the thermal conditions on the moon are absolutely horrible to deal with. They are incredibly harsh. They require all sorts of interesting engineering to get around those thermal issues because of the environment that you're in. And the shielding side is something that NASA has been very concerned about. So that's another huge hurdle. So those two things kind of take ISS out of the equation entirely. Could we hypothetically build something that would give ISS the thrust, delta V, and fuel needed to get to the moon and into orbit? Yeah, absolutely. It's an engineering problem. But these other things are kind of not solvable

about the ISS in its current configuration anyway. Question from Ken. This may be too speculative, but I'd like to hear your thoughts. Again, my favorite kind of question. Do you think NASA seriously considered a private EM-1, or was it just a way to light a fire under the SLS program? Additionally, do you think that this administration slash NASA is looking for a way out of SLS. Um, so after hearing the town hall that happened this week, uh, it was Monday with Jim Bridenstine. Um, he had a town hall where he talked to NASA employees, answered questions, and he went into depth, some in-depth stuff about the study that they did for commercial alternatives to EM1. And, um, you know, the, the, the amount

of work that went into that, the amount of, you know, whether it was back in the napkin math or whatever, they've considered a lot of different flight paths to get EM-1 around the moon. And, you know, I don't think if you're just doing something to light a fire under the SLS program, you would do that much homework. But I do think that both things are true. I do think they wanted to light a fire under the SLS program, you would do that much homework. But I do think that both things are true. I do think they wanted to light a fire under the SLS program. And I do think they wanted to seriously consider all options. That definitely seems to be the case that both of those things can be true. And I think in both of those cases, they did what they needed. Now, the problem is that the lighting a fire under the SLS program, the prime target for getting schedule back seems to be the

green run test, which in a lot of cases, I think violates everything that NASA has said about the green run test up until now. And in that same way, you can ask, is the green run test even needed? You could ask, is EM1 around the moon even needed? If you're reevaluating testing, then you have to reevaluate all of EM1. So there's definitely still a lot of storyline left on this whole light and fire on the SLS thing, but I do think it was to do that, and it was also to see what other options that are out there. Another interesting note about Bridenstine's talk at the town hall, in talking about those

options that they looked at, they did say that the one viable option, though it would have been a lot of work and it wouldn't have beaten SLS to schedule, would be flying the whole mission on top of Falcon Heavy. He said that was possible, that was something that would be theoretically possible, and he's not counting that out as something that could happen into the future. So if we are two or three years down the line and we have some of this architecture in place they aren't counting out the fact that this mission this type of mission i should say should could be flown on falcon heavy and that falcon heavy could have a part in this architecture

so even the study that they did you know i don't think they lit all of those papers on fire after they were done i think they probably saved them somewhere that they could pull back out later if they really needed it if it's something that seemed like it would add to the program in a viable way. And saying that, leaving that stuff on the table, saying that that is an option down the road, and that they're not throwing those out, they're leaving that all on the table, I think that, while continuing to light a fire under the SLS, I do think that shows that they were serious about developing these options as realistic things that they could implement into the future. Now, whether they ever do that is an entirely different discussion,

but the intention there, I think, is notable. And the second part of the question, do you think this administration is looking for a way out of SLS? I don't necessarily think that they're looking for a way out of the SLS. I do think they're looking for a way out of the current rut that we are in. You know, the year over year delay, the year four year delay. We are in a weird rut. And it's very likely that at least for what is the current term of the Trump administration, it is likely that zero flights of Orion and SLS would happen. And I think that ticked some people off. And this, you know, at least it sounds like it did tick some people off in the back rooms. And they really want to see something happen in their time

here. And if they do get another four years after 2020, they want to see something happen there as well. So, you know, I don't I don't think they specifically have it out for SLS, but they do have it out for stagnation. All right. Last question about this whole EM1 Moon by 2024 thing from SpaceshipsFTW on Twitter. Question for the next show. With the five-year plan vaguely announced and New Glenn scheduled for 2021, what part, if any, can Blue Origin play in this Moon race, if and when it's actually funded? It's a good question and intriguing question because Blue Origin till now, you know, they do hold their cards pretty close to their chest. And with that, with the absence of clarity from them, they are sort of this blank canvas that we

know is funded with a billion dollars that we can paint anything onto that we can see. We can either see them floundering under their own technical incapabilities, or we can see them about to emerge with the most brilliant architecture of all time. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. I don't think either of those extremes are accurate. But when there's an absence of information, we'll fill the void with our own speculation. But from what we do know about Blue Origin and their plans for the near future, Blue Moon seems to be where they've put all of their effort recently and hopefully in the near future. I think they do see that as something that they can contribute to the current environment. I think they do see that as something that they can contribute to the current environment. I think they do see that as something that would be a

viable path forward for them to contribute in this way. And I think New Glenn itself could contribute in a big way. That's got a massive amount of, of mass that it can throw towards the moon. Uh, so I think that combination lets them get involved the quickest. I don't think, uh, they see the fact that, you know, NASA has its crew needs handled by way of Orion, Crew Dragon, and Starliner. So I don't think they see that as the thing that they could jump into and make a difference in right now. But I do think there's a lot of smoke still around the Blue Moon fire. There's some Space Act agreements that they have with NASA in by the way of that. That seems to be where all of the focus is, at least if we're reading the tea leaves from the outside. This could be all different inside. This is pure speculation from me. But that seems to be

the thing. If you're interested in them getting involved in all this, that Blue Moon lander, which is a, you know, multi-ton lander to the lunar surface that probably has some variant of crew lander in the future, that would be the thing to focus on if you're big on Blue Origin. A couple of questions left about LEO commercialization, about communication satellites, and even some politics in there. But before we get into all those, I need to say a very, very special thank you to all of you who support Main Engine Cutoff over at patreon.com slash Miko. There are 277 of you supporting this show every single month. And this episode of Main Engine Cutoff was produced by 38 executive producers. 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, Rob, Tim Dodd, TheEverDashNot, Frank, Rui, Julian, Lars, and six anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for making this episode possible. We could not do it without your support each and every month. So thank you all. If you want to help support the show, head over to patreon.com slash Miko. Or as I always like to say, just tell one friend about the show.

Growing the listener base really helps. So tell a friend. If you've got some space friends you're always talking about with, send them always like to say, just tell one friend about the show. Growing the listener base really helps, so tell a friend. If you've got some space friends you're always talking about with, send them a link to a show that you like. I would be hugely grateful of that. All right, back to the questions. We got one from James here. Have you talked about the 13 studies for the commercialization of LEO? I am particularly interested to hear about materials

that can only be manufactured in microgravity slash vacuum environments that could be commercially justified in on-Earth applications. I have talked about the existence of these 13 studies before, but we haven't had anything come out of it yet. Apparently, all of these studies have been sent into NASA, but NASA has not released any of the executive summaries or anything like that. So once those are started to be released, I think there would be stuff to talk about. But as of yet, we can just purely, you know, totally speculate on what each of these 13 companies sent in about their commercialization ideas for Leo. I would love to see some info out of that. But right now, it certainly seems like that is sidelined a little bit as we sort out all of this moon stuff.

I should mention, however, that there was some recent talk by Blue Origin about the fact that their study included studying New Glenn's upper stage used as a wet workshop of sorts. Jeff Faust wrote an article on Space News about this, and he mentions the fact that this was a study that they did. I think they worked on it for about half a year. It was a pretty long study, and it was all part of this commercialization effort. And I believe, you know, Jeff Faust had a tip on this, and I can tell you that it was likely true that they worked with NanoRacks about, you know,

NanoRacks has their whole idea of repurposing Centaur upper stages, and New Glenn would kind of do the same thing. But again, we haven't seen any output of those studies. So TBD, but when it does come out, I will certainly be talking about it. We had another question from James. I don't know if this was the same James or different James, I sort of forget. Because I just put first names in this little document here. But anyway, similar topic. I think I've heard you mentioned Axiom Space in passing, but would love more information about them from a source that isn't their website. And yes, I agree, James. I would also love more information about them from

a source that isn't their website. There's not a lot out there, but I think the key thing that you have to know here is that Axiom Space is run by a man named Mike Soffredini. He was in charge of the ISS for a very long time. He left in 2015, founded Axiom Space. And essentially, Axiom Space is, let's take the ISS heritage and commercialize it. And that's really it. There's no huge groundbreaking ideas there. They just see an opportunity to take the ISS heritage and run it commercially. There's no huge change-making ideas there, at least that they have put out there yet so it's one that i've not been particularly excited about because it seems fairly i don't know blasé might be the right word it's it's iss heritage commercialized that's it

a couple questions about communications stuff here one from joseph i would love to hear you speak to aws ground station lockheedge, thoughts on Amazon entering the satellite data communications business and space business more generally. These are things that I'm pretty excited about, though I don't have a lot of info about how they work, if they're good, etc., because I just am not a user of these things. So if you have opinions on that as somebody who is a user of these Ground Station products, email me. I would love to talk to you for a little bit. But essentially, I'm encouraged by products like AWS Ground Station, Lockheed's Verge, and another one I'll throw in here is Odyssey, A-U-D-A-C-Y. That is a company that's building a commercial version of essentially NASA's TDRS, the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System,

which would allow you to have your satellites communicate up to Odyssey's satellites that are in a higher orbit, and then they would talk to their own ground stations and provide you that link from you to your satellite. These companies and these products are things that I've been really looking for more investment in lately. There was a huge boon in launch investment recently, but I've been waiting to see some other businesses spring up that any of those customers of launch would need to use. And I was kind of using the existence or non-existence of those kind of auxiliary businesses as a marker of health of the industry, of whether this is something that's actually going to take

off or whether this is all kind of fizzle out in another bubble popping. And with big companies like Amazon and Lockheed getting into this, as well as these upstarts like Odyssey, that to me smacks of some real business there. So once again, I don't use these things, so I don't know how they are, how they perform, if they're good, if they're not good, what benefits they bring. But the existence of them gives me hope that that industry in low Earth orbit and beyond is actually burgeoning. And these things are going to be the crucial elements to space infrastructure in general, and people that are actually going to do interesting things in space, they need these kind of products to do that. So it's another thing that brings that

cost lower because if you don't have to build out your own whole ground station network, that's going to save you time and money. And you can pay Amazon or Lockheed to handle that side of things for you. That's a good thing that helps you get to market faster. And that kind of is a good cycle that the industry gets into. So these things are pretty encouraging just to see from the outside the existence of them. That's something that I'm pretty happy to see. Question from Owen. I had a question about your thought with the satellite internet wars and Project Loon in general. The more known players are SpaceX with Starlink and OneWeb. Another near space company involved is Project Loon, part of Google. Do you think they have a good product

or will they have trouble once Starlink or OneWeb come online? One thing to note is that Loon seems to be more focused on providing phone connections compared with other providing direct internet connections. So yeah, Loon started as this arm of Google X, which is like the research and development arm. I think last summer they rolled out as its own company. But man, Loon's been around for a while and I'm not quite sure how things are going with them. They haven't, they had a lot of PR hubbub in the early days, but then they kind of dropped off a whole bunch. I know they did some experiments during the issues with the Puerto Rican hurricanes last year, and I remember watching some maps as the Loon balloons kind of drifted off the island and weren't really providing any useful coverage.

But the idea here is that these are balloons that would be, I think, between like 18 and 25 kilometers was the figure that I saw last. And they would provide local area coverage of, you know, like we're talking about here, like LTE and stuff like that. So this would be an alternative to get, you know, areas that don't have a lot of infrastructure up and running. And we do see a lot of work in that area to bring the cost of a terminal down significantly. And if they can do that, then I'm not quite as confident in deploying an upkeep of a Project Loon type thing as I am about a Starlink or similar. And another thing I should mention is that I'm not a very big Google fan. I don't agree with a lot of things they do. I don't like a lot of their projects.

a very big Google fan. I don't agree with a lot of things they do. I don't like a lot of their projects. And as you can tell by the way that I fund the show, I am very averse to advertising. So my general bias is against Google, but don't at me. Last question for this month from Mike. It's about politics. I've been thinking about space states and the related politics. I think these were democratic back when President Kennedy aimed us at the moon, but are now mostly Republican question mark. I suspect most of these facilities are even now the most high-tech employment centers in their states. Is that, is there an accepted list of space states?

It's California now becoming a space state given SpaceX's private presence. Would you expect a new space state would have significant effect on policy and funding levels longterm? And then he asks about finally on the episode 10 of off nominal about the deep space network shannon's throne advocated building new 70 meter arrays is there a state where it would make technical sense to place such an array could that lead to another space state all right there's a bunch in here so let's knock it off um i don't actually so is there an accepted list of space states well it's a little bit trickier than that

because some of these are very specific areas but in general the list of space states well it's a little bit trickier than that because some of these are very specific areas but in general the list of space states that if you were going to make a list of them would be florida texas california colorado has a lot of space focused individuals washington state would probably be your first sweep of five is that five right what california yep five um so yeah those aren't all like I don't know about that whole the party thing that were they democratic back when President Kennedy and now are mostly Republican I don't think you would say that about uh California and Washington state um California has long been something you would consider a space state they are a huge aerospace

state uh going back way into the history of aerospace. So that's not a new thing with SpaceX. They are continuing that trend. And on your question about the Deep Space Gateway, the Deep Space Network arrays, Goldstone is already in California, and that is one of the three main Deep Space Network sites. So yes, that would be a good spot to put another upgraded antenna. There are sites in Goldstone, California, Madrid, Spain, and Canberra, Australia. And those are kind of distributed about a third of the way around Earth so that I believe once you get to 30,000 kilometers away from Earth, you are in view of one of those sites at all times. And so Goldstone itself would be a good spot to put that. Goldstone itself would be a good spot to put that. Overall, I think space states, you know, there's the common and historical term space state, and maybe something new that we're going to start to see in the near future. But historically, and through the current era, space states really means states with a lot of aerospace presence and significant influence on

their representatives and people in Senate. So you'll see in the Senate and House of Representatives hearings, you'll see questions being asked by Congressmen and women with these states next to their names. Both parties ask all these questions. You'll see Democrats and Republicans alike asking very pointed questions about space because it is big in their district. I think I left out Alabama in my initial flurry of space states, but that's obviously one in a lot of different areas of NASA politics and the Defense Department politics. Northern Alabama specifically is a huge area. So there are these little smatterings of interests around the country, mostly correlated to where NASA centers are. So you'll see a lot of

support out of Maryland from where Goddard Space Flight Center is. They typically push for space telescopes. Florida and Texas typically push for launch and human operations. California typically pushes for all sorts of its own needs. Washington will push for Boeing and Blue Origin, among all the others that are up there. So it's a collection of representatives that have constituents in these areas that will push for their own, you know, own interests. So that's historically what we're talking about with space states. And I don't know if we can make a sweeping generalization that Texas as a whole is a space state because there's certain parts that just aren't going to care that much about it.

Now, there is a new idea that is kind of floating around out there, and I haven't seen a whole lot of action yet on. But back in the early days of the Trump administration, when I think when the first budget proposal went out and they proposed canceling some Earth science missions, there's a lot of talk from California itself that they would start funding some Earth science missions as a California project. So there is that idea there that a state could spring up some sort of space initiative on its own. We've seen very little activity on that front, but that is something to keep in mind as we go into the future, that if a particular state got up and involved enough, they could really do something interesting in that way, and that could bring about a new version of space state. But up until now, it's mostly limited to the stuff

that we talk about here on the show with what representatives, what that could bring about a new version of space date. But up until now, it's mostly limited to the stuff that we talk about here on the show with what representatives, what senators are talking about, what issues in these hearings. So those are all the questions this week. Thank you all so much for sending them in. And don't forget, we do this every single month. So if you've got questions that you want me to cover, if you've got topics you want to hear about that I'm not covering typically, email them in anthony at mainenginecutoff.com or tweet them at me at wehavemiko is the Twitter handle. Once again, thank you all so much for your support over at patreon.com slash miko. Thank you all for listening and I will talk to you next week. Bye.