Main Engine Cut Off - T+13: SpaceX’s CRS-9 Success, Senate Hearing Recap, and US-Russian Plans for the Moon

Episode Date: July 20, 2016

SpaceX had a great night launching the CRS-9 mission, and it’s all good signs for their future. The Senate hearing, as I predicted, was focused on maintaining the status quo. US and Russian engineers and scientists have some ideas on the future of international space policy. Good Signs from SpaceX’s CRS-9 Success - Main Engine Cut Off Post-Launch Status of SpaceX Resupply Mission to the ISS - YouTube Elon Musk’s Post-Landing Tweet Senate committee seeks stability for NASA programs in next administration - SpaceNews.com Senate Committee Seeks Stability for NASA Programs in Next Administration - Main Engine Cut Off U.S. and Russian Scientists Are Making Plans to Go Back to the Moon Together US and Russia: Back to the Moon Together? - Main Engine Cut Off Email feedback to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo and I want to start off this week talking about the CRS-9 mission that SpaceX just launched earlier this week. And I want to talk about this mission because it's a good example of the progress that SpaceX is making here in 2016. They had a bit of a rough year last year with the CRS7 loss in the summer that set them back six months or so. And they did get back on track by the end of the year with that first recovered core in December, the one that came back to the launch site and landed. That was their first landing they had ever pulled off. So they ended the year on a high note, but it was a rough year overall, working through some bigger issues and some bigger political fallout

that they hadn't yet faced. So 2016 was an important year for them to kind of show that they could get into this rhythm, they could get back to normalcy after the loss of CRS-7, and that they could work on the areas that they needed to improve on over the year. And they're showing that in every way. There are three main areas that I keep harping on for SpaceX, especially in the year 2016, but really extending, you know, from here to the next five

years that they need to get better at. And that's schedule certainty, flight rate, and reusability. Now, schedule certainty is the one that I've talked about as the area where ULA is really beating SpaceX. If you're going to look at those two big players, you know, the other ones as well are kind of, they kind of have that schedule certainty built in because of their old style thinking. But SpaceX is the first, you know, big entrant from the new space category that kind of shook up the market. And the one thing that they were falling behind on, or not falling behind, but were always behind on, is that schedule certainty. When ULA says, we're going to have a launch on this day, unless there's weather, they typically launch on that day. And it's a certain amount of schedule certainty that ULA markets as their advantage,

where they're a little bit more expensive, but you know that they are going to be ready when you need to launch. And for a couple of weeks or months there, SpaceX was having a bit of an issue with that. They were having technical issues that were causing scrubs, mostly around the cooling of propellant that they needed to do for the newest version of Falcon 9, but they seem to have worked all of those kinks out. They haven't even had an issue like that that they've talked about

over the past few launches. They've really got this good streak of launches going where they're ready to hit the opening of their first window. So they've got most of the kinks worked out in the fueling procedure that we've seen so far. And they're beginning to get this schedule certainty up to the point when they set a date for the launch, they are hitting that first opening window that they have available.

So it's good to see that they're hitting the opening of the other windows, especially in cases where, you know, with the ISS launch, it's an instantaneous window. So if they miss that second, they're going to scrub until tomorrow or the next day. So it's really good to see that they are working through all these issues. They've gotten it down into a good rhythm now. They're ready for launch when it comes. You know, in the post-launch press conference of CRS-9, Hans Konigsman, who is the lead of flight reliability at SpaceX, said that there were some pad issues that they were working through leading up to launch,

but the pad team got them all sorted out and ready to go when that window opened. So it's not like they've had zero issues, but they are working through them better and quicker. And they're really, you know, they're not having any issues that are holding them up from launching at this point. So it's really good to see them working through those things and getting more reliable because that is the biggest area that they were behind ULA on is that schedule certainty. So as they continue through this year, I hope to see them, you know, hitting those openings of their windows because that conveys a certain amount of confidence in the customers.

And it's something that, you know, critics of SpaceX have pointed to for so long and say, yes, they're good. And yes, they're landing these things, but look at how bad at schedules they are. And that's, you know, that's reinforced a little bit with a Falcon Heavy schedule that always keeps getting pushed back and things like that. But, you know, at this point, it's kind of hard to say that they haven't gotten incredibly better in the last six months on that front. So I'm encouraged to see that overall. Now, where that schedule certainty pays off is in their flight rate. Now, they have a giant backlog of flights to get through. They've got, you know, they've sold a lot of Falcon 9 flights and Falcon Heavy flights for that matter, but they've got this big backlog to work through. They've got, you know, they've sold a lot of Falcon 9 flights and Falcon Heavy flights for that matter, but they've got this big backlog to work through. And, you know, every time

there's a delay that pushes the rest of the backlog back. So the fact that they're hitting these windows on their first try is going to help them get through this big backlog and get their flight rate up. SpaceX had said that they want to get their flight rate to a point where they're launching once every two to three weeks. And right now we're in mid-July and they have the next launch in the first half of August, as they say now, the JCSAT-16 mission. That's in the first half of August and AMOS-6 will be by the end of August. So they're getting pretty close over the next couple weeks here to that cadence once every two to three weeks. Beyond that, they haven't said much what the dates are for that, but they do have one or two CRS missions this year that will fly. Hopefully, the Falcon

Heavy demo would fly this year. The first relaunch of a booster would fly this year. So, you know, coming down the stretch of 2016, it looks like they could hit that cadence of once every two to three weeks and really work through their backlog and their launch manifest that they have in front of them. So if they're able to do that by the end of the year, both their flight rate and their schedule certainty, working in tandem there, that would say a lot to critics out there that look at SpaceX and say that they're still not there yet. If they are able to launch every two to three weeks on time, opening of the window, and they keep that up for a few months, I think that would go a long way to saying, we've worked out our startup phase issues. We are here, we are operating, we are a real player in this industry. And you know,

in arguably the leader in the industry, if they keep this up over the next couple months. Switching over to reusability for a few minutes, the landing of the CRS-9 first stage was picture perfect. I don't think it could have been a better landing of that stage. And, you know, again, it's a little easier to land things when you're going to low Earth orbit. Those missions will typically come back to the launch site. So this was another return to launch site landing, and everything went perfectly for it. And from initial inspections, per a tweet from Elon Musk after the landing, everything looks good with that booster.

It looks like it's going to be in a good shape to fly again. So, you know, as of right now, as it stands, this is the fifth core that they've recovered. The first one that they recovered last December, that will go to the headquarters in Hawthorne, California. It's already there, actually, ready to be put up on static display outside of their headquarters. The CRS-8 core, which is the first one that landed on the drone ship, that's going to be the first to fly again this fall. And then they've recovered the JCSAT-14 core. That was the one that came in a little hot, landed on the drone ship. And that's the one that they said would not fly again because, you know, it's so beat up that they're going to learn a lot from that core. They're going to use that core to teach them

how to make these things a little bit stronger, a little bit more, you know, instantly reusable, and not need as much refurbishment. They're going to learn from that and build those changes into their future cores, so that will not fly again. That's going to be a ground test unit, and then the TICOM-8 core, that's the one that landed on the drone ship, had the broken leg. I haven't heard what the status of that core is. If you have heard something about that, whether it will or will not fly again, please send me an email, anthony at mainenginecutoff.com. I've been trying to find the current status of that core, whether it will or will not fly again. I can't see why it wouldn't fly again. You know, the leg was broken, but

everything else looked pretty good in that case. But if you do know anything about that core in particular, send me an email, let me know. I'm interested to see how that would shake out. And then the CRS-9 core, that's the fifth core that they recovered, and that will fly again. So as of right now, the first core is on display. One is a ground test unit. Two are going to fly again. And one, I assume, will fly again. But again, not quite sure what the status of that is.. One is a ground test unit, two are going to fly again, and one I assume will fly again, but again, not quite sure what the status of that is. And this is a good track record of these cores being recovered. I'm interested to see how they go from here. They're supposed to, you know, refly when this falls, so we'll see what additional testing they do to these cores before

they do fly. But overall, the core recovery is going well. And, you know, just to touch on one other part of reuse that we haven't talked about yet, that's the reuse of the dragons. The dragon capsules that they send up to the space station come back and are recovered. And in the press conference after the launch, Hans Konigsman again stated that the first dragon pressure vessel to be reused would be on CRS-11. Now, this is something that's been rumored for, you know, over a year from sources on the inside talking about the reuse of Dragon pressure vessels. They certainly have reflown other parts of Dragon capsules. So, they've taken the minor bits off of Dragon capsules they've recovered and reused

them on flights already, but they haven't yet reused a full pressure vessel. So the rumors for the past year have been that the Dragon 1 production lines are already shut down, and everything from CRS-11 on would be reusing a pressure vessel that was already flown. There's no hard confirmation of that, but there's a lot of smoke around this rumor, so I have to believe there's some fire there, especially because the one caveat that we heard about Dragon reuse was that NASA wasn't quite comfortable reusing pressure vessels as part of the CRS missions. But when asked in the press conference,

it was actually the NASA official that said CRS-11 would be the reflight of Dragon. So it does seem that NASA is now comfortable with that reuse of pressure vessels, and we'll see that coming up in the next couple launches here. So, you know, it's starting to get that point when the only thing they're losing on a Dragon flight is the trunk and the upper stage. So, you know, we'll see how that goes, how much refurbishing it is needed. It sounds like they're going to tear it all the way down to the pressure vessel and rebuild it back up from there. But that's good overall to see them working on this

reusability, you know, beyond just the first stage. So all in all, a very successful night for SpaceX just this past week. And their next launch is again in a couple of weeks. So we'll see how that one goes. That's another geostationary launch with a drone ship landing. We'll certainly be hearing about Falcon Heavy soon. You know. They're starting to talk about the landing pad construction that we had talked about a few weeks ago on here. They're starting to talk about that now for real from SpaceX channels. So that construction is going to start happening. They're going to fly the outside boosters of the Falcon Heavy, at least on that demo mission, back to the Cape. The center core will probably be a drone ship landing, but who knows? Maybe they'll make good progress on the landing pads and want to do a full three core

recovery. But we'll start to see some more hardware from that Falcon Heavy over the next couple of months, and I will keep you updated as we see that come together. Changing topics a bit to that Senate hearing that happened this week. This is what I talked about last week on the show. I kind of projected what I thought would happen in that hearing. And after watching the hearing in full, I can say that I was right. This hearing was focused on maintaining the status quo at all costs. The hearing itself was incredibly boring and it was, you know, I wouldn't recommend watching this by any means. It was mostly the representatives from NASA and from the industry partners that are kind of the entrenched interests in NASA's current plans, really just repeating the same lines that you've heard a million times

if you follow this kind of stuff. You know, the course we're on is good. It's good for the country. We're doing the right thing. We need to maintain the course. We need to do this. You know, we can't have too much upheaval. We need to stay the course. That was the message from both Congress and from the panelists that were there, the five of them that were there. The one thing I was surprised about was that Constellation was brought up directly. I thought this would be something that was kind of, you know, implied that that's what this hearing was about, was avoiding the fate of the Constellation program, which was the program before SLS and Orion that got canceled at the beginning of the Obama administration. But this was brought up directly in questions from the congressmen on the panel. They asked directly, what did we learn from Constellation? How can we

avoid Constellation? What would happen if the SLS and Orion programs had the same fate as Constellation? And honestly, you know, I thought the response from the NASA representatives, who is Bill Gerstenmaier, who is the head of the human exploration programs at NASA, the response from him on those questions was very, very weak. He kind of fumbled around for a little bit about, you know, what could we do differently and what lessons were learned from the cancellation of Constellation, his answer was really, we're farther along this time. And that wasn't really a good answer at all to the question that was asked of, what did you learn from Constellation? What are we doing differently now? From his answer, the only thing that we're doing differently at this point in time

is that we've done more of it. And that's really not a great answer to that question by any means. You know, I don't think that's the best reason to keep doing what we're already doing at this point. It's, you know, it didn't get into any of the strategy, not that I thought it would get into the strategy, but it was just a very weak reply from the NASA side of things. And you could say that, you know, maybe that's because Gerstenmaier does not believe in the SLS and Orion programs, and that certainly could be the case. I'm not sure what his feelings are on it personally, but he's there to toe the NASA line. And even in that case, you know, you have to have been prepped for that question to be asked of what lessons did we learn from Constellation? And,

you know, the Constellation program was canceled for a lot of reasons that Gerstenmaier said were trivial. And again, that was another part that people had a lot of reasons that Gerstenmaier said were trivial. And again, that was another part that people had a lot of issues with, saying that the Constellation Program was canceled for trivial reasons when it had these major flaws in both the budget and the cost overruns and even the planning. You know, we were building a crew vehicle that was going to service the ISS, which was going to be deorbited by the time that crew vehicle was online. A lot of it just didn't line up with what reality had in store for it. But it was just kind of shrugged off a lot. And I thought that, you know, answering that more directly would have said that this is a good plan, but

not having an answer for that kind of shows that this plan might not be the most sustainable for the country as it exists now. I think what that showed is that, you know, we spend a lot of time coming up for rationales of why we're doing something rather than reasons to do it. And this is something that Robert Zubrin, who I've brought up multiple times on the show, he's the head of the Mars Society, the creator of Mars Direct. He says this a lot where, you know, the industry at this point, the political industrial complex that is space these days, oftentimes invents something to spend money on and then comes up with a rationale to spend money on

it, rather than coming up with a reason to do something and then fitting the programs to that reason. And I thought the kind of weak response to questions about Constellation directly really showed that that is the case, and it's something that you can't really hide from in that hearing at all. Now, the most disturbing part of the hearing to me was Bill Nelson's statement on the International Space Station, and he suggested that the ISS be extended beyond the 2024 end date that it has now, and he even said that it should be extended to the end of the 2020s decade. His quote was, I will predict that shortly, in the next few years, if not immediately, you'll see an extension even on out to the end of the decade.

Even as great as the ISS is in terms of, you know, an engineering marvel that is orbiting the Earth up there, and it's just a huge laboratory that we built up there, I don't think extending that to the end of the decade really serves the exploration purposes that NASA needs. If NASA really is on this journey to Mars, they can't afford to have that International Space Station stay up there till the end of the decade, especially not on the NASA budget. It's a huge budget item. The fixed costs are pretty high. And it's really just taking up a lot of money at this point that could be used to put towards the exploration program that they're talking about wanting beyond that.

They're talking about the ISS as a place to learn what they need to go on and do things in the future. But that really can't happen if the ISS is lingering around spending billions of dollars a year in operating costs and fixed costs and the missions that are going up to it, the contracts they need to resupply it, the launches they need to get crew up there, everything that goes along with it becomes very, very expensive and takes away money that could be used for exploration plans beyond that. So, you know, if the ISS does get extended to the end of the 2020s, you could really just say that the NASA journey to Mars, you know, that's a thing that people always joke about this journey to Mars thing that it's a hashtag, not an actual plan. But you know, if ISS does get extended to the end of the 2020s, you could go ahead and say the

journey to Mars is dead. Because at that point, you know, that's pushing it out another five, another 10 years, beyond what it already is. And it's a plan that's not very stable, we're going to have an SLS flying, and we're going to have this space station that, you know, is kind of unrelated to that entirely. So we're going to have these two giant budgetary programs with huge fixed costs that are going to be taking away from each other's capability. And, you know, we're kind of half-assing both sides at that point. If we want to do the space station, let's do the space station and put the money into that. If we want to do exploration, let's do exploration and put the money into that. Splitting it is not going to help because both sides have pretty gigantic fixed costs. And that's kind of shown with the end of the shuttle days,

what happens there and how much of a budget take that is. So, you know, we'll see what happens if what he's talking about will actually come to fruition in the Congress, but that would be pretty much the end of the Mars plans as they exist today. In a similar vein, I want to talk about this Popular Mechanics article that outlines some plans from US and Russian engineers and scientists about future moon missions that the countries could do together beyond the ISS. These plans outline orbital space stations, some surface missions, things that we could do together at the moon, you know, in a decade or so in the future. The plans are put together by people from Boeing and Lockheed Martin on the U.S. side. On the Russian side, it's Energia and Khrunichev,

who you can kind of think of as the Boeing and Lockheed Martin of Russia, you know, not exactly, but giant contractors. Khrunichev makes the Proton and Rokot rockets. Energia makes the Soyuz and Praga spacecraft, as well as manages the Russian segment of the ISS. So these are both big contractors in Russia, the same way that Boeing and Lockheed Martin are. And to that extent, these are four companies that would, you know, benefit greatly from these kinds of governmental space program missions if there were to be enacted. Now, these are missions that are kind of still theoretical. These are things that they're kind of promoting as what the country should do beyond the ISS. So these are mission designs intended to sway political decisions in the future. They're kind

of things that are saying, here's what we would do if we were going to do the moon together. Here's what we would use. You know, it even touches on things like the SLS rocket and the Orion capsule, some of the things that Russia's working on as well, probably the Federation spacecraft and some of their other space station core modules. Now, we've talked in the past about things like Orbital ATK's plan to put a Cygnus in orbit of the moon and Lockheed Martin's plan to do Mars Base Camp, which is an orbiting station around Mars. They're these kind of plans that are put together and presented as what we would do if given the government money. So this is in the same vein as that. But, you know, now is the time that you're going to see that kind of stuff because we have big political change coming up here in the U.S. in November.

We have a presidential election, which brings in a whole new NASA administrator, a new administration, probably will do a review of the plans that we're doing right now, as much as that Senate hearing is trying to avoid that. But these are the times that you're going to see these kind of missions floated. And here's what we could do. Here's where we're at now. Here's what we could do. And they talk about the SLS, which I find interesting, because this is something that I've talked about in the past as, you know, the SLS is here. It is here now. We have it. It's about to fly. It'll fly within the first two years of the next president's administration. So it'll fly in that next president's first term. And, you know, NASA is going to need to figure out what to do

with SLS from here on out. We have this rocket. we don't have any missions yet for it, we have a few to find, but not very clearly, and there's still some issues with budgeting for the exploration upper stage, things that need to be there for those human missions. But all in all, we need to figure out what to do with this rocket. And this type of exploration plan is something that I could see gaining a lot of political sway. You have China looking towards the moon, ESA's looking towards the moon, Russia's looking towards the moon, everybody's looking towards the moon except the US in terms of governmental space policy. SpaceX is looking towards Mars and other people are trying to do other missions, but the governments of the world are kind of coalescing around the moon right now. And I could very easily see somebody coming in needing to lay out a plan

for the next decade or so and, you know, deciding that Mars is going to cost too much. But with the help of ESA and Russia and, you know, potentially China, with the help of people that are already focusing on the moon, why don't we put our efforts towards that in the spirit of international cooperation? So this is something that I could see getting a lot of political sway over the next few months. And it's something that I could see the governmental space program pulling off. I don't think we're in a state where the governmental space program, run as it is run today, could handle a mission out to Mars. I don't think that we have the consistency and stability and long-term view of things enough to handle a mission out to Mars. The moon is a much easier

to achieve target politically. It's something that, you know, the lifespan of is shorter where, you know, missions are going to take, you know, weeks instead of months or years. And it's something that is much more achievable quickly that, you know, politicians and voters could see happening. And the support could be there. The timelines are short. All in all, I think the moon missions that are proposed in plans like these are attractive to politicians and governments. It would give all the people that are pushing SLS,

it would give SLS a reason to exist. Again, getting back to giving a rationale for what you're building rather than reasons to build something. But that's the state of things that we're in. We have this rocket, we need to use it. And I see missions like these as something that could be achievable. So even though this is, you know, companies lobbying for their governments to spend money on them and their plans, it's still interesting to watch because we're at a moment of change in the industry where we're kind of at this inflection point where we need to figure out what

is next in terms of governmental space programs. And this is something that is politically attractive. It lets everyone have a piece of the action. You know, Lockheed, Boeing, Orbital ATK, they would all keep that money flowing for these missions. On the Russian side, as I talked about, the same kind of contractors are at play there. So unless the presidential candidate who ends up winning is particularly swayed by SpaceX's plans in September, this is something I would see happening in the next decade or so. SpaceX's plans for Mars when they are unveiled could change a lot of things because we are in a political environment right now where large government programs for space are not getting a lot of money. And certainly on the

scale of human spaceflight programs, on the scale of human spaceflight programs that NASA has been doing over the last decades, those are big budget items. So if SpaceX comes out and says, you know, here's what we can do, we can do it for this amount. And they start, you know, figuring out how to fund that. I could see a president or a Congress jumping at that in terms of, you know, funding it because it is less than the fixed cost of other programs. And who knows, there's a lot of lobbying that will happen there. We'll see when we get to September, when we get to November and find out who wins the presidency.

But, you know, just kind of saying, keep your eye on this stuff because we're at this inflection point when things are going to change, plans are going to be made. And I think it's interesting to keep up on what those things could be. That is it for me today.

Thank you very much for listening. You can help support the podcast over on Patreon, patreon.com slash Miko. I'm doing this listener supported, no ads. I'm not going to take any ads out from Boeing and Lockheed and force me to read out their mission manifest for their lunar colony or anything like that. I'm doing this listener supported, so my opinions are always untainted. I can always say whatever I want on this show, and that's what I love about it. So help support the show and the blog over at patreon.com slash Miko. If you have any feedback for what I talked about today, if you've got any ideas about what SpaceX's plans are for the next year, about what could happen in the political

realm in terms of what SLS is going to be flying over the next decade or so, send me an email, anthony at mainenginecutoff.com. Read the blog over at mainenginecutoff.com or follow the Twitter account at WeHaveMiko. Thank you very much for listening and I will talk to you next week.