Main Engine Cut Off - T+133: Kurt Klaus on CLPS

Episode Date: September 17, 2019

Kurt Klaus, Chair of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group’s Commercial Advisory Board, joins me to talk about NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, and the wider potential for commercial flights to the Moon and beyond.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 39 executive producers—Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, 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, Sam, and six anonymous—and 271 other supporters.Mr. Kurt K. KlausLunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG)Commercial Lunar Payload Services | NASANASA Selects First Commercial Moon Landing Services for Artemis | NASANASA Selects 12 New Lunar Science, Technology Investigations | NASANASA Selects Experiments for Possible Lunar Flights in 2019 | NASAEpisode T+129: Steve Altemus and Dr. Tim Crain, Intuitive Machines - Main Engine Cut OffEmail your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOListen to MECO HeadlinesJoin the Off-Nominal DiscordSubscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhereSubscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off NewsletterBuy shirts and Rocket Socks from the Main Engine Cut Off ShopLike the show? Support the show!Music by Max Justus

Welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo, and I've got a special guest with me today, Mr. Kurt Klaus. How's it going, Kurt? It's great. It's nice to be here. Thank you. going, Kurt. That's great. It's nice to be here. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us. I'm excited for this conversation. I'll give a little background in a second how we got here, but I would love to hear from you first, your bio, your work, your background, anything else that's relevant in the space realm from your side of things. Sure. I would be doing my lunar scientist friends a disservice by claiming that I'm a lunar scientist. I know that's how I was introduced to you, but I'm probably more accurately categorized as an exploration scientist. I started my career in exploration geophysics and oil and gas in the early 1980s.

I started in aerospace, I believe it was 1988, was hired by McDonnell Douglas in the space station program. They didn't hire me because I was a geologist. They hired me because I knew my way around computer systems. But over the course of the 27 years I was there, I convinced them that there was value in my exploration geology. I ended up getting a master's from U of H in planetary geology. So I'm a planetary scientist more than I would call myself a lunar scientist. more than I would call myself a lunar scientist. And while at Boeing, I worked on virtually every program from the early days of Space Station Freedom all the way up to proposals for planetary missions for the SLS and all of those sorts of things.

I retired, I think it's been about three years ago now, and my main activities related to space these days are I'm the chair of the Commercial Advisory Board for the Lunar Exploration and Analysis Group, or LEAGUE. I think that pretty much brings us up to date. Yeah, so the way we got introduced, about a month ago, I had Steve Altimus and Tim Crane of Intuitive Machines on the show. We were talking about their work in the way of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program. During the course of talking about their Nova

Sealander, we mentioned, you know mentioned it would be cool to have somebody come on from the perspective of somebody interested in the payload side of that program, not just the engineering side, to talk about the effects that that might have on the environment of exploration at the moon, but also beyond that, potentially. So Tim hooked us up as somebody that could potentially talk to that side of it.

So I'd love to hear from you if you've been following along with that clips program so far, what you make of it thus far, the'm going to call it CAB from here on out, was formed, I believe it was 2015. Clive Neal, who was the league chair at that time, asked me to put together or see if I could put together a group of commercially minded folks. At that time, there wasn't a program. The Google Lunar XPRIZE was probably as close to a program as we could call it. And NASA had what was called the Lunar Catalyst. And there were three companies involved in that, Masten, Moon Express, and Astrobotic. So we formed the cab out of the Lunar Catalyst awardees and as many of the Google Lunar XPRIZE people as we could get together. or XPRIZE people as we could get together, along with some academics and some NASA, I would call them customers, people that were interested in ISRU, people that had been paying

attention to mining off the planet, like Leslie Gersh and a fellow at Caterpillar. So that was the beginning of the CAB. Since then, CLPS has become an actual program, and most of the CLPS providers are also members of our CAB. It would be hard for me to say how influential we were in getting that program going, but the fact that it's here is pretty great. So two of the people that are actually, or two of the teams that are actually flying payloads in 2021 are also members of the CAB. That would be Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic. members of the cab, that would be Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic. So maybe along, I thought it'd be worthwhile to give a little bit of background as to how we got where we are today.

I think Clips has the potential of being huge if it continues to stay funded and once success is demonstrated, and I have no reason to think that these companies aren't going to be successful. They put a lot of their own money and expertise and testing into these vehicles. So I think it's going to be quite huge. I just gave a talk at the CAPS fall meeting in Pasadena last week and was approached by MEPAG who were asking, that's the Mars Exploration Group, who were also interested in perhaps forming a cab for Mars. So I don't want to put the cart before the horse. Whether or not that happens, I don't know.

And I'm not, well, I'll stop there. I hope I've answered your question. No, absolutely. The context there is really good to hear. There's a lot of times when it feels similar to the way that the commercial cargo and crew programs started on the ISS, where there's precursors and people talking about the potential for a different kind of program. And then when commercial cargo, you know, got rolling, people started realizing that it could really work out. And that's when the commercial crew idea came along as an actual program, not just some development contracts. And I sort of see a similar relationship there between CLPS

and something that could look out towards Mars as, you know, CLPS is an attainable first step for this kind of model, because it really is a model shift. You know, it's a mindset shift in how we fly to the moon. But if it works out, I definitely see there being a lot of space for other planetary destinations. So it's cool to hear that even some of these different groups in the industry are thinking about it already. You mentioned that there's two people signed up to fly payloads already. There was a third that has now kind of fizzled out. So I'm curious if you had any thoughts on the way that we've already seen some shakeups within the providers that have been selected from NASA, if that was something

that you had talked about the potential for and designing a program to be ready to accept, you know, good successes, but also some failures along the way as well. Yeah, so I had nothing really to do with how CLPS was set up, but I've heard them speak about it, and they do expect there will be some risk involved. And they're, at least at this stage, willing to accept some more of that risk. They've also talked about creating on-ramps for more companies. So there are nine companies awarded right now. I shouldn't put it that way. Maybe there are nine CLPS providers in the current queue. And the first round of task order was simply to get this list together, and being on the list gives them the right to propose for actual missions. So the task order two had three awardees. One has since dropped out, but that's how all that's working. To go back to something you said earlier, I saw Rick Tumlinson give a talk, oh goodness,

it's been a long time ago now, but it was about commercial space. And he was maintaining that once a domain is understood like Earth orbit, it's time for the government to step out of the way and let commerce come in and provide the services. So that's really what happened for commercial crew. And well, commercial crew hasn't happened yet, but commercial cargo certainly. So a question might be asked is, are we ready, ready for that to be the case on the moon? And I would maintain that we're pretty close to that. There are things like heavy lift vehicles that maybe are still government, need to be government provided because of the cost. But I think the commercial launch providers like Blue Origin and SpaceX, they may be able to provide that service as well. From the payload side of things, you've got this experience at the Commercial Advisory Board. I'm curious if there's any people that have been talking to you about how to interact with these new services in terms of payloads, coming from the old world where it was a government-run

program every once in a while. We haven't really sent anything to the moon in quite a long time, so maybe there isn't any current experience with that. But are there any kind of mindset shifts from the payload provider side that you've been talking with over the past couple of years as this kind of commercial opportunity has come about? Yeah, so a couple of things in that regard. This first set of missions will be, at least initially, the payloads are provided by NASA. Now, that's not to say that the launch providers can't and intuitive machines are carrying other payloads other than NASA. So that's a shift. The next round of proposals, the payloads will be provided by academia and the commercial sector. Those payloads have been selected. You can find that information online to see what they are.

I don't know that that's necessarily different because the providers are the usual suspects. Academia, NASA, I think they're well let's see NASA couldn't provide payloads for that second round they were coming from outside of NASA so what happens beyond that I'm not sure once it's proven that these

providers can go to the moon and land safely and carry and operate the payloads, I think that door will be swung quite wide open. I don't know how big the market is for non-NASA payloads, but I'll bet the providers have some idea of that. It's interesting to me to note that Astrobotic has DHL as a partner, so their vision is to become the DHL for payload deliveries to the moon.

Yeah, I like that. I like that they can slap the sticker on there and look like just another delivery service. Yeah. That's another thing that comes up is the frequency of access to the lunar surface in comparison to what we've had historically. That has potential to be a pretty big shift in the market as well. And whether that means, like you're saying, maybe there isn't a huge demand for the number of companies or organizations interested in sending something to the moon. But the fact that they could do it over and over again with a much higher frequency than before. Do you have any thoughts on how that might change things in, you know, maybe the launch and landing market, but also the payload side of things as well for universities or other organizations? Well, it sure isn't going to hurt.

There's a whole lot of the moon left to explore, a lot of questions that could be answered by these small landers. Some of the scientific low-hanging fruit could be done by sample, sample return or in-situ sample analysis. I think, although they haven't proven a launch capability back from the lunar surface to the Earth, that's just a matter of understanding the requirements and doing the engineering. I have no doubt that they'll be able to do that. Another thing I think these little landers are well-suited for is delivering things like small rovers for prospecting. And I'm talking about prospecting like it's done on this planet. For oil and gas, companies don't just go out and stick a hole in the ground and claim success. There's a lot of work that goes into exploring the, I'll say, ore body or the resource. So for the moon, looking for volatiles, that would be, you know, grids of several kilometers, not just a single point analysis.

Now, it's yet to be proven that the country or NASA has the will to go into that level of prospecting, or NASA has the will to go into that level of prospecting. And there's a lot of work that has to be done before we even take that step, like characterizing the deposits. Curious you bring that up, though, because the resource prospector was something that NASA was going to be working on. That got canceled, I think, last year. But they've said that the payloads are supposed to be divided up among these early missions. So, you know, there is some interest there from the prospecting side. Well, so to me, that's not prospecting. It's a science experiment,

and it may give some ground truth, but it's not prospecting. Prospecting to me would be a fleet of rovers like that doing a detailed analysis, getting ready for the first test of production on the moon. I believe NASA is working on what they're calling a prospecting rover, but I don't have a lot of details on that. It's tricky because there was a lot of drama around that one, so I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Well, yeah, and some of the people involved in that have spent their entire careers on developing those payloads and trying to get them to fly. And it's a shame that it was canceled. Sooner or later, those payloads are going to, whether it's those payloads or something like them.

Yeah, derivatives of some sort. Yeah, one of these days we'll do it. That's for sure. The one thing I'm struck by with Clips so far is, you know, this list of nine companies, I guess eight now, that is quite a selection of companies and ideas and architectures to land on the lunar surface. And when you compare it to something like launch services here on Earth, NASA doesn't have quite as long of a list when they're trying to get something up into orbit. And that seems like an area where, you know, maybe it's a little bit of that built-in

shakeout period from NASA saying, well, we know not all eight are going to be successful or all nine as they've already proven out. Do you think that has potential to, is that a good thing that there are so many providers on that list? Or do think maybe you know having a more slimmed down list in the way that the u.s air force does or even nasa nasa launch services do you think there's benefits with a smaller more focused subset well that's a that's a pretty interesting question um and just to go back to what you were saying about there being eight providers there there are still nine providers. I don't think we can write Orbit Beyond off just yet. They dropped out of the first award, but they didn't drop out of, I don't think they've dropped out.

That's a good point. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. So what will happen, you know, businesses typically absorb other businesses. So I think it's way too early to tell, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's some consolidation of these companies as the market establishes itself and successes come together. All the companies offer different things. They're definitely not the same. The service, I suppose, is the same, but their landers aren't all the same. Some of them have rovers that they've developed. That was part of the Google Lunar XPRIZE.

They have a rover do some level of task. And so some of them have rovers. But like I said, it's way too early to tell if or when that consolidation will take place. I'm curious if you have any particular hopes in the CLPS program or any particular fears in what this kind of program might present us in the near future. Well, my hope is that they show early success. Like I said earlier, I have no reason to think that they won't. I think they're going to get to the surface of the moon before NASA is, and I think

that's a good thing. My fear, maybe that we lose the will to do these kinds of things, we as a nation, but I don't really think that's going to happen either. I think the market will step up and fill in the void. There isn't really a good model yet for doing commercial science. As an example, let's say NASA doesn't really want to or can't afford to do the sample return missions. What if there's some other kind of funding that's available for that, and that's done another way? To me, that would be pretty awesome, but whether that will happen, I don't know. It's also possible that there would be someone or a company that would be interested in selling lunar samples. Bringing back would be for non-scientific reasons. Yeah, but certainly we've seen those kind of material samples sell for quite a bit on auctions or other ways that they've been out in the market. They've sold for quite a lot of cash.

Right. So there would or could be a market for that. I'd really rather see the science questions addressed because there's still a lot to do and will remain a lot to do. There's still a lot to do and will remain a lot to do. And a lot of it can be done with simple, simple landers and grab-and-go samples. You don't necessarily need a detailed analysis at each and every site. One of the best, maybe a blessing in disguise for Eclipse from where I'm sitting is the fact that it is kind of the smaller, younger sibling of the Artemis program right now, which is getting all of the headlines. And that's where a lot of the focus is going politically in the media and everything like that. And it lets clips kind of fly under the radar in a certain way, because the monetary

figures look pretty low in comparison. There's not a lot of pressure on them from the public scrutiny aspect. So it does give us a nice couple of years here to let this develop out of the spotlight in a way. And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about the interaction between those two programs and whether it's a benefit or a drawback that they are kind of in this relationship that they are right now? Yeah, I think it's a benefit way more than a drawback. The upcoming fall league meeting, our annual meeting, is late October. And one day of the meeting is going to be focused on the Artemis program, along with how CLPS dovetails into that. We're going to have a presentation by the two people who are actually flying, and then a panel discussion by all or most of the CLPS providers as part of the under the umbrella of the Artemis session. So I'll know a whole lot more after that.

You know, if I have any fear, it's to the cost of the Artemis program as it's laid out. And again, whether the nation is going to have the will to continue to fund that. I think that remains to be seen. But with or without it, I think CLPS can and will go on. If you had a piece of advice, you know, when you're in these meetings or discussions, if you had a piece of advice for three different groups, one for the actual people flying these missions, one for NASA and their handling of CLPS, and one for the outside of NASA payload providers, what would that piece of advice be for those three different groups? ponder that a bit, but something we've fallen short on, I think, in our thinking and in our exploration is paying closer attention to economic geology. And that's the production of, I guess, resource exploration and exploitation. I guess, resource exploration and exploitation.

Not always necessarily ISRU, but ISRU is surely a big component of that. When I was in oil and gas in the, I think it was the late 1970s, there was a SEG conference in New Orleans. SEG is Society of Exploration Geophysicists. And NASA was there to talk to the conference on the subject of, you know, what's geology or what are geologists going to be doing in the next 25 years? And the thrust of that really was economic geology. They were going to be exploring off-planet for resources and mining, and likely that work would be done by the major energy producers like Shell and ExxonMobil and things of that nature. Well, 25 years has come and gone. Things of that nature. Well, 25 years has come and gone. It seemed like a long time, but nothing along those lines has been done.

And to further, I don't know that that kind of thinking is happening yet. It's going to, whether it'll happen in my lifetime or in the next 50 years, I don't know. But at some point, it's going to happen. Yeah, and there had certainly been a couple of companies that sprouted up and then have now either moved business models or shut down entirely, focused on resources out in the solar system. resources out in the solar system, it did always seem slightly premature from my perspective. And it seems like we would want to have this kind of CLPS program up and running before we're really able to start thinking about those sort of missions. So, you know, maybe there is one of these providers on this list that has an intention towards that, that are using CLPS as kind of a springboard, which would be pretty interesting if that is the case. Yeah, and the model that seems to work on this planet, whether it's for oil and gas production or mining, is a small company will prove the claim, prove the potential, and then a larger company will buy them. So perhaps that's how these major companies get involved.

I had an opportunity to talk with some folks at Shell Research and Development. There was a panel discussion in 2017 on a completely different topic. But at dinner afterwards, I had a chance to ask them if they were looking at at off-planet resource and energy production and uh they looked at me like i was from the moon but but they thought you know maybe i i don't think they thought it was a completely crazy idea but i did learn that they're not doing it. The only company I'm aware of, and this isn't an area I've spent a lot of time researching, but I did work with a fellow at, like I said earlier, at Caterpillar, and Caterpillar was

spending some of their own money on excavation and operating machinery on the surface of the moon. And I found that to be pretty interesting. I feel like they're... Aren't they partnered with somebody in the Eclipse program? I feel like I've seen their logo on some press release in the recent time here. You know, that may be. I can't say for sure. Yeah, I can't place it in memory,

but I feel like they're somewhere in this mix of things that we're talking about. And I always thought that was cool that a company, because it makes a lot of sense for what they do here on Earth, that they would be interested in, you know, the time that we are moving out to other planetary surfaces. It makes a lot of sense for them to be involved and interested. And I was very happy to see something like that,

that wasn't, you know, some futuristic company talking about how many trillions of dollars are going to be made in mining but it's much more closer to reality in terms of well you're going to need an excavator if you're going to do anything interesting on another surface yeah i i agree they've uh they on this planet they've got a commercially available telerobotically operated excavators and haulers, so they already know how to do it. Yeah, they just need to make it work a little farther from home. It's the question of having somebody that wants to pay for that. One of my last questions here for you,

before I let you get on with your day out there. Have you watched in the last couple months, there's been a couple attempts to land small landers on the moon in Israel's Beresheet and then just last week, India's Chandrayaan-2 and Vikram. Have you followed along with those missions and you have any thoughts on, you know, they both ended in apparent failure at this point. Do you have any thoughts on how that played out for those nations and how seeing two small landers might impact things back home with the CLPS program? Yeah, so I'm a geologist, not an engineer. So I always think these things are engineering problems. And I've been told by my friends in engineering at Boeing when I was

working with them, the things that I always thought were simple are not all that simple. So I think it's just been proven again that, you know, even landing on the surface of the moon, though we've done it a number of times, is still not all that simple. I didn't really follow those programs other than to hope for their success and then feel their disappointment when it didn't happen. It feels like a nice setting for Eclipse to me. The message has been sent from members of NASA that not all of these missions are going to work out. There's going to be some hard times up on the moon. So, you know, having the setting of two nations that didn't quite make it to the surface, I feel like, you know, it sends home that message a little bit and might make things a little easier for the messaging side of NASA. Maybe, maybe. It would be a bad day

if these CLPS missions don't succeed. But I don't think that's going to happen. I admire your confidence. And I really hope, that is the case when we see it play out in the long run. Well, I was just going to say, I've been working with, um, all of these groups for a number of years and there's, there's a lot of, uh, talent, um, and a lot of hard work that's going into them. So, uh, I would be more surprised if they didn't succeed than I will be when they do. That is a great place to leave the conversation, Kurt.

Is there anywhere on the internet that you would like to send the listeners to follow along with any of your work? I think the League website, I can't throw out the... Well, yeah, the URL is lpi.usra.edu slash leag. And there, everything is posted from the league meetings,

from the CAB meetings, the CAB membership, charters, things of that nature. I think that's probably the best place to go. Awesome. I will put that link in the show notes so everyone can check that out. And hopefully when a couple of these missions start flying, we can have you back on to celebrate the success of the first couple of Clips missions. Yeah, that would be great.

And I would, you know, you ask a question about Artemis and Clips, I would definitely pay attention to what's going on at this year's league meeting to help clarify those things. Awesome. Well, Kurt, thank you so much for coming on the show, joining us for a little while this morning. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Well, you too, Anthony.

Thank you for inviting me. All right. That'll do it for us today here on Main Engine Cutoff. Well, you too, Anthony. Thank you for inviting me. was produced by 39 executive producers. Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Nadeem, Peter, Donald, Lee, 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, Sam, and six anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for your support

making this episode possible. Once again, if you want to help support the show, join that list. Head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support. If you've got any questions or thoughts for me or for Kurt or whoever, email them. Anthony at mainenginecutoff.com is the email or on Twitter if you would prefer that,

at wehavemiko. And for now, thanks again for listening. Thanks for all of your support as always. And I will talk to you next week. Bye!