Main Engine Cut Off - T+124: Gateway Logistics Services, FY2020 NDAA, and Small GEO Satellites

Episode Date: June 20, 2019

NASA put out a draft RFP for Gateway Logistic Services, the House Armed Services’ Committee weighs in on the US Air Force launch contracting drama, and a new company building small geostationary sat...ellites has emerged. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 40 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, Heather, Tommy, and six anonymous—and 247 other supporters. NASA to seek proposals for Gateway logistics - SpaceNews.com House Armed Services’ space launch legislation revised in 11th-hour deal - SpaceNews.com The Search for the Small GEO Sweet Spot - Main Engine Cut Off Former ABS execs form small GEO builder Saturn Satellite Networks - SpaceNews.com Astranis lands anchor customer for its first small GEO satellite - SpaceNews.com Firefly’s Orbital Transfer Vehicle Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to anthony@mainenginecutoff.com 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 Like the show? Support the show! Music by Max Justus

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Starting point is 00:00:00 rarely a week goes by without some sort of gateway news and this week is no different so this week on main engine cutoff here with anthony colangelo we're going to talk about the draft RFP that went out from NASA this week for Gateway Logistics Services. This is essentially the cargo equivalent to the commercial cargo on the ISS program. This would be the cargo equivalent for the Gateway. There are obviously a lot of different constraints given the environment that the Lunar Gateway will be operating in. Remember, it's that weird near rectilinear halo orbit. It is a very elliptical orbit around the moon, so it goes very close to the lunar surface on one side and very far away from it on the other. So NASA released this draft RFP for Gateway Logistics Services,
Starting point is 00:00:57 and they are seeking industry comment on it by July 10th. Jaloon. That is a new month that I've invented between June and July. July 10th is when they want comments That is a new month that I've invented between June and July. July 10th is when they want comments in by. And next week, it sounds like there will be some sort of day down at Kennedy Space Center where companies can ask questions and talk about the RFP to give input on it. And there will be a final RFP later in the summer. I assume like the rest of the Gateway stuff that we've been hearing about, they're going to want a decision on this pretty quick. Wouldn't be surprised to hear about this by the end of the year, early next year. I'd expect this
Starting point is 00:01:28 to be a pretty quick process because of the haste of they want to land people on the moon by 2024 and build out from there. Now, I want to talk about some of the differences in the way that these flights are going to go. When you think of commercial crew for the ISS, you think of, you know, a handful of flights a year for each provider. They fly cargo up to the ISS that gets unloaded into the ISS. Maybe the vehicle hangs around for a couple of weeks on station, but eventually comes back down. And then the next mission is up a couple of months after that. That is totally different this time around for the Gateway. What they're looking for is a logistics vehicle, not just cargo delivery and then you, you know, leave and go to your own thing. This is a logistics vehicle, not just cargo delivery and then you leave and go to your own thing.
Starting point is 00:02:06 This is a logistics vehicle that would dock at the Gateway. And essentially, if you read all of this documentation, sounds like it's going to stay on station on Gateway for up to three years, they say, and support at least two human missions at the Gateway. So it essentially turns into the storage closet on Gateway. They expect this to be part of the Gateway for a long period of time, multiple missions, and use it for storage or whatever else, and then eventually go dispose of itself in some disposal orbit or some other acceptable orbit beyond that. So this isn't some really easy-to-fly mission like it is for the ISS. These vehicles are going to have to fly to the Gateway, dock autonomously to the Gateway, to any of the available docking ports, and stay there for up to three years, a very long duration mission out around the moon, and then actually go and dispose of itself with at least as much cargo as it brought. Now, given all of that schedule, the cargo requirements of this are pretty hefty. And that's really interesting when you consider, you know, what we're working with today on the ISS
Starting point is 00:03:08 and what they would want to see out of this in the future. And what they want to see is obviously colored by the rest of their gateway plans. So it's colored by how often they're going to fly humans, which is, you know, at once a year or so for between 30 and 90 days. It's colored by the actual types of missions they're going to fly, the types of things that are going to be docked to the Gateway. So there's a lot of opinionation as to what this logistics vehicle should be impressed upon it by the rest of the Gateway decisions. So if you want to have a problem with any of these particular requirements out of the logistics vehicle, you've got a problem with the whole Gateway
Starting point is 00:03:41 and the whole idea of it really. But let's dive into the first thing that is a big headline of this is how much cargo is required for these logistics vehicles. The draft RFP states that they need to deliver at least 3,400 kilograms of pressurized cargo and 1,000 kilograms of unpressurized cargo to the gateway. So comparing that to the current crop of commercial cargo vehicles that we have, Dragon, Cygnus, and coming soon, Dream Chaser, it's a little bit out of range of each and every one of those. Dragon can do about three tons of either pressurized or unpressurized cargo. They tend to get volume limited very quickly. So on the missions where they've delivered about a thousand kilograms unpressurized cargo, that's in the trunk of Dragon. They've done that a couple of times for missions that are attached externally on the ISS. When they have about a thousand kilograms in there, they might have
Starting point is 00:04:32 another, you know, 1,500, 2,000 kilograms inside of Dragon. They tend to max out a little bit under three tons inside of Dragon because, like I said, they are volume limited in there before they're actually mass limited by what Dragon and Falcon 9 can lift up to orbit. On the Cygnus side, the missions that they've done with Atlas V, they could fly about three and a half tons, that 3,400 kilogram of pressurized cargo, up to the ISS, but they obviously would need to work on some sort of bigger unpressurized cargo area for Cygnus to be able to fit these requirements of 3,400 kilograms pressurized, 1,000 kilograms unpressurized. Dream Chaser is probably the closest to supporting this kind of thing. It's cargo configuration. If you remember, it looks like the little mini space shuttle with a trunk attached.
Starting point is 00:05:21 Their stats that I've seen recently are about five tons of pressurized cargo with about 500 kilograms of unpressurized cargo outside. So they are obviously not the exact numbers that NASA's looking for in this RFP, but close to that mix. Certainly seems like the most plausible route to get there of all the other vehicles. It would seem likely to me, based on these numbers, that if you wanted to see a dragon fly this kind of mission, it would need to be a Dragon 3 or some sort of dragon derivative that is made more for this kind of mission. And on the Cygnus side of things, you might need to extend Cygnus yet again. You know, they've done that once in the past. We
Starting point is 00:05:58 started out with a little short Cygnus. Now we're up to enhanced Cygnus. They might have to extend that out one more segment of its... If you look at the Cygnus vehicle, it're up to enhanced Cygnus. They might have to extend that out one more segment of its, if you look at the Cygnus vehicle, it's kind of like a couple of tuna cans stuck together. They'd need to put one more can on it to get a little extra cargo and maybe have some sort of unpressurized cargo space in there as well. We've seen mock-ups of that in the past, so Northrop Grumman obviously has some ideas of how to get to this sort of configuration. On the Dream Chaser side, they look like they've got enough pressurized space, but they would need to figure out how to get a little bit more unpressurized cargo onto their vehicle
Starting point is 00:06:33 to the gateway from there for that to be a fit for this. Now, there are a whole bunch of other requirements that I might run through a couple of in a second, but just from that top line requirement, you can see that this RFP is asking for vehicles that are slightly outside the realm, and in some cases, significantly outside the realm of what we're flying now on ISS. Now, if they did handle this a little differently, if they didn't want these logistic vehicles to be a full-on module of the Gateway, if they did want pure cargo delivery to the station, we probably could fly the Dragon that we have today, the Cygnus that we fly today,
Starting point is 00:07:09 the Dream Chaser we fly today. A couple of modifications for flying out to cislunar space, but we probably could fly with that amount of cargo space and do more frequent flights. This would be a very low flight rate Gateway Logistics Services program, because if you're flying and you're attached for three years up the gateway, you're probably not flying more than one at once. So you're probably flying, you know, a very small couple numbers of flights up to the gateway, maybe a hand, you know, if they said that they might pick two providers for this as well. So if it's two providers, you might fly one and then have a two or three year mission. And then the next provider flies a mission for two or three years. You might fly once every four years if you're somebody doing logistics to the gateway. And that seems incredibly low flight rate. And
Starting point is 00:07:54 in some cases, I think certain companies would not be super interested in that anymore, given it's something so one-off and there's so many requirements around it. Sounds like something that SpaceX might not even be interested in at all. It is a lot of money. It could be a couple of billion dollars. So I'm sure SpaceX is interested in a couple of billion dollars. But if it is significantly outside the realm of what Dragon can handle, if it would be a significant deviation from what they're working on for the Mars missions, that sounds like something they might not be very interested in. Starship doesn't sound like it would be an option for this
Starting point is 00:08:29 because in this RFP, they say that the docked mass cannot be more than 14 tons on the Gateway. So that limits the high end of how big of a vehicle can do these kinds of things. So I don't think Starship's gonna fit in this. And I also don't know whether SpaceX would want to have in the early years, a single Starship sitting up attached to a gateway for three years when they could be flying it, getting flight repetition,
Starting point is 00:08:55 getting, you know, experience. It doesn't sound like something built for the dragons that we know today or Starship. So that's kind of SpaceX's deal. Cygnus and the Northrop Grumman sense, just to keep walking through our current providers, they seem very ripe for this. They've shown a million different ideas for how to evolve Cygnus into something that could be a gateway module. Same goes for Sierra Nevada with their Dream Chaser. We've seen a lot of their ideas for what gateway could be. And in all honesty, I would put my money on Sierra Nevada
Starting point is 00:09:26 pulling this one out, this Gateway Logistics Services thing. They will, I think, be at least one of the contractors picked for this mission, knowing not a whole lot else other than the cargo numbers and a couple of these other requirements. There are some requirements in here about how long it will take to get to the Gateway, that there's some optional stuff that people could build and offer fast transits to NASA if they want to get cargo there really quickly. There are some comments here about extended missions beyond the logistics of the Gateway.
Starting point is 00:09:55 So once that logistics vehicle is done its mission at the Gateway, it could undock and go on to an extended mission somewhere near the moon, very similar to what we see Cygnus doing today on the ISS. And the other interesting thing is that these will have to autonomously dock. So if Cygnus wants to be part of this, they will need to develop autonomous docking. Right now it gets grappled by the robotic arm and attached to the space station. They will need to develop the autonomous docking like we've seen from SpaceX
Starting point is 00:10:23 and also switch out what kind of docking port they've got on top of Cygnus. Another interesting part of that is that it sounds like the robotic arm is due to be delivered to the gateway on one of these logistics modules. So that presents its own constraints as well, because the robotic arms, the way they work on space station, the way they will work on the gateway, it's actually an arm with two identical ends that can attach to the different points that are on the station and actually walk across the surface. So you put one arm, one end of the arm down, attach it to one of the fittings that it's on the space station. The other one, you know, unlatches and moves to a different one on the station, and it essentially walks across the surface of the station. In this RFP, NASA says that the logistics module should deliver
Starting point is 00:11:11 the robotic arm, and the robotic arm should be able to walk off of the logistics module onto the station. So that would require having those different grapple points for these vehicles on there as well. So you can see how many requirements this thing starts to be. And it's not a crushing load like we've seen in some other NASA missions, but it is very specific. And when you see NASA put out an RFP for cargo figures that are above the current commercial cargo providers and a maximum mass below the super next generation vehicles that we see in development today, it starts to get a little bit frustrating when you realize how rigid the gateway architecture is and how it's asking for things that are so specific to it that it
Starting point is 00:11:59 can't take advantage of the other solutions that are out there happening in this kind of chaos theory of the space industry today. The rigid requirements around Gateway, while it makes sense given everything else that's going into Gateway, it does make it start to feel like that typical thing that we say with NASA is that they always want everything one-off. They're very rigid and they don't work well with the commercial industry. So of all of these requirements that are in this draft RFP, I'm interested to see which one the industry has comments about, which ones maybe get tweaked in the final RFP that gets released, because I'm sure something will change, right?
Starting point is 00:12:37 They put out a draft for a reason. So it'll be interesting to see what gets tweaked after talking with industry and to see who chimes in about what they want to see out of this and what's working for them, what's not working for them. But I wanted to put it on your radar as a story because it is interesting to follow. And I think we'll see an interesting development of this over the next couple of months that we can talk about while all the political drama that happens in the ensuing couple of months to years sorts itself out. I do want to talk about some of that
Starting point is 00:13:05 political drama in by way of the 2020 NDAA here in the US. But before we do that, I want to say a huge thank you to all of you out there supporting Main Engine Cutoff. Head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support if you want to help support this show. 287 of you are out there supporting this show every single month, and I'm very thankful for your support. This episode of Main Engine Cutoff was produced by 40 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, Heather, Tommy, and six
Starting point is 00:13:45 anonymous executive producers. That list is getting out of hand, but I thank you all so much for making this episode possible. Once again, mainenginecutoff.com slash support. This is an entirely listener-supported show, so if you like what you're hearing, support me a little bit and you'll keep hearing more of it. Thank you all so much once again. All right, so the National Defense Authorization Act has been marked up the past couple of weeks in the House and in the Senate, in the subcommittees that oversee these things, the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee. but there is something that is very relevant to the launch services agreements from the U.S. Air Force that we've been talking about on this podcast for quite a while now. Most recently, we talked about SpaceX suing the Air Force over the awards for those development contracts. They say that they weren't following the letter of the law and that they were wrongfully omitted
Starting point is 00:14:41 from those awards. The three development awards went to Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance, and Northrop Grumman. SpaceX is filing suit that says they either want those awards stopped while this thing gets investigated, they either want money awarded to SpaceX to kind of match and to even things out, or whatever else the courts deem relevant. Well, in the House Armed Services Committee this week, the chairman of that committee, Adam Smith, he's a Democrat from Washington, he put in a couple of different lines into the NDAA that is targeted at this one little piece of hot drama. So he had about four different proposals in the NDAA.
Starting point is 00:15:20 Two of them got taken out. There are two more that remain. One of those clauses was capping the number of launches that would be... Now, the clauses that he was putting in here are... They don't do anything to affect those development contracts, I should mention, but they do affect the upcoming launch contract awards. So later, probably in about a year, we'll hear who got selected by the Air Force to actually carry out about 30 launches that would happen between, I think it's like 2022 and 2026. We will hear about who got selected for those
Starting point is 00:15:52 launches. And when that happens, anyone who was not selected but did get development money will stop getting development money. So this is really a thing about going forward. Adam Smith took his hands off the current development contracts and said, well, you know, here in my position in Congress, I can affect the launch contracts that by the House NDAA. That's not the full House yet, which is another part of this that we'll talk about in a second. But the House Armed Services Committee NDAA version says that only 29 would be allowed. And after that, they would have to use competitive procurement for any launches beyond that. The other more important clause that he put in there was essentially worded so that if SpaceX were to win
Starting point is 00:16:49 one of those launch contract spots, if they were to get access to those launches, they would be given $500 million as part of a certification and infrastructure fund. So it's worded in a way that any launch provider that didn't win a development contract but does win a launch contract shall receive this award. SpaceX is the only one that fits that criteria.
Starting point is 00:17:10 So if they win their spot in that launch contract round, which I think that they are the front runners for, if this was passed in the NDAA, they would receive the $500 million that they're looking for to balance the scales against those development contracts. This would go towards, you know, among other things, maybe some more Falcon Heavy infrastructure on the West Coast, maybe some bigger fairings. And we did hear that they bid Starship for some late, you know, mid to late 2020s launches as part of this program. So that $500 million, we'll see what strings are attached to that fund. But that could go towards some of those future programs
Starting point is 00:17:45 if this does make it all the way through the NDAA. So you can see this is a little bit of politicking, firing back at all of this drama that's been going on. SpaceX is trying it with their lawyers, and now they're trying it from the other end with representatives in Congress. So the path to having this be an actual thing that exists. This was from the House Armed Services Committee. They were marking up the 2020 NDAA. That would have to go up to the full House. The same thing's happening on the Senate side. It has made it through its subcommittee. Now it is up into the full Senate. When the House and the Senate pass their versions, then they have to basically negotiate to balance out maybe the one side passed something that the other side didn't, or it's worded differently, and they have to kind of, you know, merge these two to agree on a common
Starting point is 00:18:31 bill that would eventually be signed by the president. So that is the full process. So this is a thing that bubbled up from that committee in the House. It still hasn't made it through the House yet, and it still would need to get, with the Senate before it's even signed. So it does have a long road, but it is an interesting factoid. If you like following this launch drama, and you like following this chess game, it's notable that these representatives from the states that represent SpaceX, Washington, they have a big presence up there. It's yet another one of those politicking in Congress kind of things, fiddling with the launch industry, the things that we like talking about and often complaining about. But it's interesting to see this worked from both ends like this. So
Starting point is 00:19:13 I'm curious to see if this does make it all the way through into law this year. That 2020 NDAA, that seems like the dumping ground for legislation this year because over on the Senate side of things, Ted Cruz and some others are putting some space legislation into the NDAA to be passed. Last year, they didn't get it done. He was working on an extension to the ISS until 2030. He was working on a couple other Space Frontier Act things, and those are getting lumped into the NDAA over on the Senate side, hopefully to be passed. You know, that's his intention. So it's weird to see the ISS extension bundled into this same bill that we're talking about, you know, this launch infrastructure with. But this year is going to be kind of nutty because the 2020 presidential campaigns are underway now, which means effectively all governing is basically shut down and we're just in campaigning season again. So I would say that this is the silly season of U.S. politics once again. And there's not going to be a whole lot of productivity out of Congress for about
Starting point is 00:20:14 another year, except for this one big bill that everybody loves to pass. So there's at least a couple of space things that might be happening here that we'll keep our eye on. One more little story that I wanted to update you on before I'm out of here for today. I mentioned when I talked about Firefly a show or two ago, they have this new orbital transfer vehicle that can put 600 kilograms into geostationary orbit. And on that show, I mentioned a company named Astranis
Starting point is 00:20:40 who is building these smaller geostationary satellite buses. They're about 200 or 300 kilograms. So the Firefly orbital transfer vehicle could launch two of those up to geostationary orbit all on its own. So these would be very small satellites for geostationary orbit. Typically, these things are in the thousands of kilograms range, three, four, even up to 6,000 kilograms operating out at geostationary orbit. And they're often, you know, really expensive. These satellites that get launched up to geo are typically some low triple digit millions of dollars. So they're, you know, $200 million, $300 million. They're huge investments. That's not even counting the
Starting point is 00:21:21 launch that you need a very big rocket to launch you up to that orbit. So they're huge investments. That's not even counting the launch, that you need a very big rocket to launch you up to that orbit. So they're huge investments. We've seen this general slowdown in geostationary orbit. There's not a lot of companies putting up new satellites there. There's a few investing in some new stuff. But in general, there are less geostationary satellites being ordered today facing the rise of these mega constellations in low Earth orbit, there's just kind of this hesitation from the geo operators to put a lot of money in to more assets up there. Also coupled with that is the fact that a lot of the geo satellites that are flying today are surviving past their lifespan, so they don't need to reinvest yet. They've still got their stuff up on orbit that is working for them today? Well, Astranis came along, and they are working on these much smaller satellites that would be cheaper to fly,
Starting point is 00:22:13 cheaper to launch. And then you see a couple of these other launch companies working on things that could get them to geostationary orbit. And it's very, very interesting to watch. Well, another one came along this week. This is called Saturn Satellite Networks. It's founded by Tom Choi, who used to run ABS, which is a fleet operator. So this is a new company that's working on satellites for geostationary orbit that would range between 600 kilograms and 1700 kilograms. So bigger than Astranis, but still significantly smaller than most geo satellites today. 600 kilograms on the low end, still enough to get launched by Firefly's orbital transfer vehicle all the way up to geo. So, you know, one of these
Starting point is 00:22:51 satellites or two of the Astranis satellites launched on a Firefly Alpha with an orbital transfer vehicle, you're looking at cutting the cost to get some satellite up to geo by like a full magnitude, you know, and obviously there's some constraints there. It's not going to have quite as much capacity as a giant satellite would. But if you need to fill some spots in your coverage, if you need to replace some coverage, if you want to expand into a different market, it's a much cheaper way of doing that than is traditional. So I wanted to mention this because it's just relevant what I've been talking about lately. And I'm curious to see who's going to jump all in on this.
Starting point is 00:23:28 Astranis has already sold a couple of buses. Saturn Satellite Networks say that they've got a customer already. So there does seem to be some movement in that direction. And I think this is the natural way for satellites to go. They used to be giant. They got very, very tiny. And now they're trying to find their sweet spot. On the geo side of things, they used to be giant. And now very, very tiny. And now they're trying to find their sweet spot. On the geo side of things, they used to be giant and now we're finding the sweet spot. But on Leo,
Starting point is 00:23:50 you know, we went from huge satellites to like CubeSats and now we're finding two to three hundred kilograms. Satellites are very useful. So there's all this kind of sweet spot finding happening out there in the space industry, both on the satellite side and the launch vehicle side. And it's what makes this couple of years a lot of fun to watch if you're somebody like me that nerds out over this stuff. So Saturn satellite networks. Wow, that's hard to say. Somebody to watch in the years coming up. But for now, that is all I've got for you. Thank you all so much for listening this week. Hope this little grab bag of a show wasn't too much to handle. But for now, thank you all so much. If you've got any questions or comments on the show,
Starting point is 00:24:32 email me, anthony at managingcutoff.com. Don't forget to check out the blog over at managingcutoff.com. Until next week, thank you all for listening. Bye.

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