Main Engine Cut Off - T+127: Gateway Habitat, Starhopper, and ABL Space Systems

Episode Date: July 28, 2019

I share some thoughts on three important stories from this week: NASA quietly announced their intention to sole source the Gateway habitat to Northrop Grumman, Starhopper made its first flight, and Lockheed Martin invested in ABL Space Systems. 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, Tommy, Adam, and six anonymous—and 253 other supporters. NASA to sole source Gateway habitation module to Northrop Grumman - SpaceNews.com NASA selects Maxar to build first Gateway element - SpaceNews.com SpaceX’s Starship prototype has taken flight for the first time | Ars Technica Lockheed Martin Ventures Invests in ABL Space Systems - Main Engine Cut Off ABL Space Systems Increases Payload, Cuts Price, Drops Ursa Major - Main Engine Cut Off 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 Like the show? Support the show! Music by Max Justus

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo. We've got a couple of stories I wanted to talk about today to keep us up to date, to talk about some of the interesting things going on in the industry. And I want to start with the Artemis news from this week. NASA posted a document earlier this week, or I guess last week at this point. And the idea here was to justify why they are going to sole source the habitation module for the Gateway to Northrop Grumman. So there's this document called the justification for other than full and open competition that explains their thinking behind it. It's something that we see a lot for other other projects out there. There's been a couple in the last couple of years from the Air Force saying that we're going to sole source this. And whenever that happens, whenever there isn't a big competition for a government project like this, There tends to be this kind of document that explains why it's going to be a sole source award that gives people a chance to, you know,

protest this. And I would expect to see that here. I would I would be shocked if we didn't see some other, you know, company that was in the Next Step program actually come out and publicly protest this and even file some documentation. We'll see if anything happens there. I would be shocked if something like that didn't happen. But the TLDR version of this is that NASA needs to acquire a habitation module for Lunar Gateway. They have already selected Maxar for the power and propulsion element. That announcement was back in May. So they did a firm fixed price contract to Maxar for $375 million to develop the propulsion element of the Gateway. And now they're doing a similar thing with the habitation module. Interestingly, in this document, it's referred to as the minimal habitation module. So that's kind of an indication

that they're making tweaks to the existing plan to facilitate this Artemis program, which is land on the moon by 2024. And instead of, you know, adding 16 modules to Gateway or whatever it was before they go for landing, they're going to do a minimum habitation module, try to be as slim as possible. So you've got power and propulsion element, minimal habitation module, and a docking module, which may be integrated with this habitation module. So overall, you know, this isn't a huge deviation from things that we already knew about. All of this stuff was laid out in budget years past. This was the plan for Gateway, you know, for as far back as you could think. Next Step 2 was the program that had six companies working on concepts

for habitation modules. So this stuff all existed. And at this point now, NASA is saying, part of their justification is that Northrop Grumman is the only one with an existing production line, very mature hardware, and is able to meet the schedule of launching in late 2023. hardware and is able to meet the schedule of launching in late 2023. So they're relying on the Cygnus-based nature of Northrop Grumman's habitat to justify why they are the ones that are being selected for this and why they could meet such an aggressive timescale. The other companies out there, Bigelow, Boeing, Lockheed, NanoRacks, Sierra Nevada, they all had a little bit of development to do on their prototypes. Some of them used hardware that was existing in the world or does have a little bit of

heritage behind it, but most of it needed some significant development on it. And the other thing is that one of the arguments NASA made, if they were to do this in an open competition style, that would add, they say, 12 to 18 months to the schedule because of all the different rounds that you got to do. You got to send out an RFP. You got to get proposals from the company. You got to work with those proposals. Then you have to make a selection. Somebody's going to probably protest it. It does extend the schedule quite a lot. So at that point, if they were to release that now and they're not able to make a selection until next year, then you're looking at a two, two and a half year development cycle before you got to get ready to launch this thing. So a lot of the justification in this document is hard to argue with. It is hard to argue that

they are wrong on these points. I think they are right on these points. But then that brings in some questions about, you know, why we're doing this, how we're doing all of this. some questions about why we're doing this, how we're doing all of this. I was originally supportive of the shift away from Mars back to the moon because I saw it as something that was more achievable for the government programs to take on while also being able to support an industry that builds up infrastructure around the moon. The kind of reassessment of this with the Artemis program to do it as quick as possible and then see where that leaves us, you know, you start seeing decisions like this get made. And Cygnus is really cool. And I think that they've got a lot of good ideas for what they're working on here.

And they've shown a lot of these, you know, Cygnus, six Cygnus flying around the moon together in a big habitat. I think this does take away a little bit of that building up infrastructure with strong ideas thing that I was going for there, where you've got people bringing their best ideas and making the best decision for the long haul in now there's certain companies that are likely going to ditch their program entirely, that they are no longer interested in building this kind of thing because NASA has shown such a clear indication that you won't be building that for 10 years, so you might as well backburner it and get on to other work. So there are certain points in this when decisions that are being made to hit a 2024 deadline impact what I was hopeful about, which was a focus on building up infrastructure around the moon. There are other really good things about it that are still maintaining that. And I would point to the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program,

which is we've got to send some scientific precursors before we're going down to the surface. So we've now cultivated quite a lot of commercial lunar landers that we're now going to start seeing go into development be built and flown and that side feels really good to me but it's this this human habitation side that i think might be the first indication of of maybe this is going to impact that infrastructure idea over the long haul and is that the best decision for the long haul i'm not totally sure now that said i think the cygnus side of Northrop Grumman, which was the orbital scientists, orbital sciences, then Orbital ATK, and now Northrop Grumman, they have always shown concepts around Cygnus and how it could be extended.

And they've done a really good job over the last couple of years of showing how flexible their hardware is, showing that they're working these concepts, showing what they're capable of. And I think that paid off here in the long run to show, you know, hardware flying up the ISS and here's what we could also do with it. Very SpaceX-y in a way, you know, they've got hardware flying and then they show, well, here's what we could do with it in these different areas. And that's that kind of side of Northrop Grumman that I always loved watching, is that kind of grittier side that doesn't feel as old-spacey as some of the other parts of Northrop Grumman. So I think that is a non-zero factor here, is what they've done with Cygnus, how they've

shepherded that forward, really sets them up nicely for these kind of programs. Now, the last thing I want to harp on again is the fact that this decision, and obviously this is not an official contract yet, this is the justification to sole source it. We're still going to have to see Northrop Grumman submit a proposal, get that approved, and then we'll hear the announcement for a contract. So we'll probably be back talking about this, I don't know, a month, two months from now when that actual contract is signed. But one thing I want to mention is that there's not a lot different here from what the plan was a year or two ago. I think the only thing different is calling this the minimal habitation module rather than the habitation module. Jim Bridenstine came in and I really like what he's doing overall, but there's not a lot

effective change here, especially because some of the bigger things that have to happen are that parts of these programs that are expensive and need a lot of funding have to be sold to Congress. The Gateway stuff was all budgeted for. That was in the budget going years back at this point at scales of hundreds of millions of dollars. So they have money for this kind of stuff in the budget already. And once something is in the budget, it's very hard to take out of the budget. So that seems pretty safe and secure for the next couple of years. So the power propulsion element, the habitation module, even if there's another module that they're going to fly here, not terribly surprising because that's been in the budgets. It's been the program of record now for the exploration systems.

And not a lot has changed on that front. So I say that not to knock this announcement or say it's not important, but a lot of times these announcements, the Maxar one, the Northrop Grumman one, those are positioned in the media space or even by NASA as momentum towards the Artemis program, when all reality, the first thing that we're going to have to see to really mark momentum towards Artemis is money for the lander. Until we see that, this is all momentum from the Gateway era, from years past. This is not momentum for the Artemis program yet. This is momentum for the existing program of record at the moon. And once we see money for the lander, then I think we'll see

actual momentum for Artemis. Right now, we are maybe quickening the schedule of what was already there, but this is not a new idea that we're selling to Congress. This is the thing that Congress already approved and appropriated for in past budget years. So that's really the big thing here. Let's see how this Lander stuff goes over the next year. If they give some money in the budget to it, then that's interesting. If they don't, then we're stuck with this program of record, or stuck if you feel that way about it, I guess. I'm showing my hand a little bit there, but I don't want to be confused that this is a sign of momentum for Artemis. This is the existing program, and that's an important thing to take away because

now we're lumping this all together. Hell, I started this segment saying this is the Artemis story, but I don't think this is the Artemis story. This is the thing that is already existing, and that's really important to remember. All right, now I do want to get into two different stories about momentum. We're talking about how this isn't momentum. I want to talk about some actual real world momentum. But before we do that, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who supports Main Engine Cutoff. Head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support if you want to help support the show. This is entirely listener supported. So if you like what I'm doing here, send a little support my way. 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, The Everyday Astronaut, Frank, Rui, Julian, Lars, Tommy, Adam, and six anonymous executive producers. That is a long list. I am so grateful for all of your support. And everybody else, head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support. All right, two big stories this week. The first one is a huge story. SpaceX has hopped Starhopper for the first time untethered. They did tethered hops before, but this is the first time they took tethers off, fired the engine, and this sucker took off, flew 20 meters or so in the air, landed back down safely after moving a little bit horizontally as well so a totally successful test for what they were

trying to do here it took a couple of days to get there a couple delays and now even at this point Elon Musk is talking about the next you know the next one they're going to do is a 200 meter hop he says in a couple of weeks but we'll see'll see how long it takes them to get to that point. This is a really big story, not because this particular test was huge, but just as a point in time to say, look at what SpaceX is doing with Starship. I think it's easy to kind of miss what's going on here because we're seeing so much in the open. We're openly watching them build all these different pieces of hardware out in the middle of a field or in the middle of a marsh and firing engines and things like that. So when you're watching it in the open like that, it's this slow creep of progress where one day you'll see,

oh, Raptor was fired last night on, okay, cool. And then the fifth Raptor was attached to Starship, and now the sixth Raptor is attached to Starship. And there's this slow creep of progress, so it's easy to forget how far they've come already on this kind of program and I think that's a notable thing in itself is that we're seeing it in the open so it makes you kind of forget what's going on there but when you take a step back and look at this this is pretty amazing to watch and a lot of people are going to look at Starhopper and say like that doesn't really look like a rocket I don't know what they're learning from that. How do you really learn anything from one engine?

And yes, it is essentially a flying test stand. But, you know, everything that they do, they are learning about their system. They're learning different aspects of their system and everything that they're building is going to have a different piece of hardware that they're going to use eventually. They're building Starhopper down in Boca Chica, Texas. They've also got a Starship prototype down in Boca Chica and a Starship prototype over in Cocoa, Florida. So they're showing a lot of different hardware, a lot of different momentum. And I just find it so interesting to watch because you think about the way that this program has gone the last three years. We heard the big announcement at IAC,

about the way that this program has gone the last three years you know we heard the big announcement at IAC I think that was 2016 and then the updates over the years and then they went to this carbon fiber direction and they had the whole carbon fiber tooling set up in LA we saw one piece of the hull and then all of a sudden that was scrapped and now they've had this explosion of hardware three different pieces of stainless steel being welded together, a bunch of different engines flowing through the production line. Raptor seems to be getting its legs under it. There's a lot of momentum in the last year that I think wasn't really there while they were still in the design phase. They were showing us all their designs, but they weren't showing us a lot of hardware. So it was easy to say, oh, it's still on the drawing board,

it's still on the drawing board. And you know, it's important to say after this hop, it sounds like we're going to get another design update from Elon Musk pretty soon. So we'll see what's changed there. But at a certain point, you start seeing all this work going in. Then you start thinking about the fact that they are funding this themselves with all their new investment they're getting. They are just doing this program and showing momentum. are just doing this program and showing momentum. And if they can sustain themselves now, that is incredible. But by openly showing momentum, support for them is going to build. People in Texas, people in Florida are going to take note, and they're going to build that support from the ground up to the point when they start doing interesting things, there's going to be people asking questions as to why NASA is not latching onto

this idea, even if SpaceX never proposed something to NASA, even if NASA never asked SpaceX for something. If SpaceX shows a sufficient amount of momentum, and this goes for anyone, not just SpaceX, there's going to be questions asked as to why NASA is not latching onto that idea. And that's something that is coming down the pipe, you know, in a year, two, three, four, five years, however long it is. That is a moment in time that is coming. And it will be very interesting when it gets here. But for now, it's fun to kind of sit by and watch the momentum build on its own. Watch a company just take these big steps on its own and learn every step of the way. And that's really exciting. So if you haven't been paying attention, pay attention to what's happening in Boca Chica. It is a good time to follow along. And there's other companies out there doing this kind of

thing, but not in the open. You know, Blue Origin is kind of the sleeping giant here where we know there's a lot of hardware in some factories somewhere, in some buildings somewhere that we're not going to get to see because they're very closed about those kinds of things. So there's different styles to this, but I think the, the idea behind it all is, is the same where it's like, we can do this ourselves. We can make a lot of progress ourselves. And if anyone wants to hop on for the ride, you know, get on board. So I know I haven't talked about it a lot because it's, you know, I typically do analysis on the show and there's not a ton to analyze when they're just working on all these details. Uh, so we'll do another big show once we hear the design update. Um, but pay attention down in Boca Chica

if you're not yet. All right. The last story I want to talk about is a smaller launch vehicle. It's this company called ABL Space Systems. They're working on a rocket called RS-1. Uh, and a couple of months back, back in February, they made an announcement that I thought was pretty interesting. They increased their payload from 900 to 1200 kilograms to low Earth orbit. They dropped their price from 17 million down to 12 million. And they, at that point, took on their own engine design. They were previously going to be buying engines from URSA Major. And with that announcement back in February, they announced they would be bringing their engine production in-house. Now, that's an incredible announcement overall, because I find that payload range really interesting, the 1,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit.

I've talked about that a lot. Those are the launchers that I think are the most interesting to watch right now, as they are not yet flying, and I'm very curious to see how they do. So ABL, Firefly, Relativity, they're all in that class that I'm kind of keeping an eye on right now. The price is very interesting as well, because $17 million was fairly high last time, but now $12 million, that brings it in range with, you know, the Virgin Orbits of the world, which is a much smaller payload. And it's a very interesting price. It brings it in line with relativity and what Firefly's announced. So they're all very competitive there. And the engine production in-house is something I find very important.

I kind of always adapt. There's a man named Alan Kay, who's very famous in the computer world. And he has this famous saying that people who are really serious about software should make their own hardware. And I've adapted that for launch vehicles that, you know, people who are really serious about launch services should make their own engines. There is so much that is driven from the engines. And there's so much that it really is the baseline of your vehicle is the engine's performance, the engine's cost. It's the real big driver of both of those things that are both's performance, the engine's cost. It's the real big driver of both of those things that are both the most important things in launch services. And now, ABL Space Systems has announced that Lockheed Martin's made a strategic investment

as they work through their test program, their development program, and all up to a first launch in 2020. Lockheed Martin made a similar investment back in 2015 in Rocket Lab. They didn't disclose how much either of these were at the time, but similar investment in that they were investing in a launch vehicle at the smaller end of the market. So Rocket Lab is the very small end of the market, and this is moving up the payload range a little bit. But Lockheed Martin has a tendency to do these strategic investments with people that are quite interesting. And if their Rocket Lab history is any indication, this would be a very successful investment as well. I think they know how to pick them. on, specifically from the Air Force. They've been fairly impressed with what ABL is offering. ABL is also offering a containerized launch system, so they won't have any particular launch pad, but they do have a mobile infrastructure, similar to what Vector has

been talking up. But it seems like they might have a little bit more momentum behind them. Vector's kind of always had a lot of talk, but not a lot of show. ABL's been a little bit the inverse, I think. So overall, I'm really excited about what ABL is working on. And I think we should really keep an eye on them. They say that they're going to have an integrated stage test in the second half of this year and a first launch in 2020. Schedules are schedules. You know how that will go. But the fact that they've made these three big announcements a couple of months ago, more payload, less costly, and their own engines. And now they're getting funding from someone like Lockheed Martin and, you know, little birdies from the Air Force say they're pretty interesting to watch.

Seems like a really good mixture here. And I'm very, very interested in what ABL will do in the future. So I wanted to give you a heads up that this is somebody really interesting to watch and showing a lot of their own momentum as well, just as SpaceX, but maybe not so much like Artemis. So for now, that's all I've got for you this week. If you've got any questions or comments or whatever, email me anthony at mainenginecutoff.com. And as always, head over to mainenginecutoff.com to support the show. And for now, thank you so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.