Main Engine Cut Off - T+14: The Post-EM-1 Roadmap for SLS, and Potential Uses for SpaceX’s BFR

Episode Date: July 27, 2016

Before Mars and exploration-centric talk, I talk about Orbital ATK’s agreement for exclusive use of LMP-103S. Then I take a hard look at the post-EM-1 roadmap for SLS, and theorize some potential uses for SpaceX’s giant Mars-bound rocket—lovingly referred to as the Big F…alcon… Rocket (BFR). Orbital ATK and ECAPS Sign Agreement for Exclusive Use of LMP-103S - Main Engine Cut Off Orbital ATK News Room EM-1 Still on for Late 2018, SLS’ Second Flight Still A Mystery - Main Engine Cut Off First SLS mission on schedule for fall 2018 launch - SpaceNews.com Battle of the Heavyweight Rockets – SLS could face Exploration Class rival | NASASpaceFlight.com Email feedback to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

Welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo, and before I start the show this week, I just wanted to mention real quick up front that if you are enjoying the blog or the podcast and the topics that I focus on here, please go over to Twitter and follow at WeHaveMiko. I've been posting links to the blog and the podcast throughout the week, but I am linking to other places as well and doing some just general Twitter things about spaceflight and things that we talk about here on this show. So if you're enjoying what I'm doing here, please go over and check out the Twitter account at WeHaveMiko. It's also a good place to send feedback if you've got thoughts on what I'm talking about on the show, what I'm writing about on the blog, or if you find some interesting links that you would think I might be interested

in writing about or talking about here on the podcast, feel free to send them over at WeHaveMiko. So with that business out of the way, let's dive into the topics this week. And I want to kind of follow up on a topic that we had talked about a few weeks ago here on the show. I had Logan Campershire on to talk about storable propellants and the current state of them, the near future of them, interesting projects that were going on in that space. And one of the main things we focused on during that show is the push to use greener alternatives to hydrazine and those older fuels that have been in use for decades at this point. He brought up two projects that were currently underway. There was one by the US Air Force, which is due to fly on Falcon Heavy in 2017, though we haven't heard much about that in the recent months. And the other one was out

of Europe, a fuel called LMP-103S, which is a very memorable name. But this was a fuel that is worked on by a European company. And this week, Orbital ATK signed an agreement with ECAPS, this company I was talking about that is working on that fuel. And this agreement is for exclusive use of LMP103S. Now, if you remember back to that conversation I had with Logan, we were talking about the fact that hydrazine-based fuels are very toxic. They're very hard to work with because of that toxicity. And these greener alternatives are not only easier to work with and less toxic, but they're also significantly denser with a higher specific impulse as well. So they're much more performant than hydrazine and the

hydrazine-based fuels that are out there. And they bring the added benefits of this low toxicity, this environmentally friendly, or at least not as environmentally harmful kinds of chemicals. And they also are very much more performant. So this is a huge gain for upper stages or general use of these storable propellants and things like that. So what OrbitalATK did here is get access to one of the most promising types of these fuels, so I'm very interested in how this will progress from here. It's a little bit of a bummer that it is an exclusive agreement, so it sort of locks out anyone else from using LMP-103S or even experimenting with it in any way, but if you look at the players who are kind of involved in the industry right now and

making the biggest waves, it does make sense that this goes with Orbital ATK. They're a company that focuses very much on storable propellants. They are the company that develops a lot of the solid rocket boosters that are used both for SLS and for shuttle. They have a lot of heritage even making the solid rocket boosters for some of the ULA rockets and things like that. So they are a big user of storable propellants. So if that's where their market is, and that's the things that they're focused on, that they're good at, it does make sense for them to be looking to the future of storable propellants for things like these alternative fuels that could provide them huge gains in the future on their market that they're focused on. You know, they're not the company that's innovating on reusability

like SpaceX or Blue Origin. They're not really, you know, in the not the company that's innovating on reusability like SpaceX or Blue Origin. They're not really, you know, in the market of those heavy lift national security payloads like ULA is. They don't really have a horse in any of those races at this point. So if they, you know, if they need to focus on storable propellants, it is fantastic that they've made this move, you know, at this time and where these things are still in development, but they are really diving in. And I hope they put the amount of resources behind this project that is needed to get something flying in the near future. I hope this doesn't just kind of, you know, they got this agreement and it kind of withers on the vine. But I'm encouraged because it does seem like a natural fit for what Orbital ATK focuses on. You know, if you look at what the other companies are focused on that I mentioned,

SpaceX is focused on reusability and they're focused on Mars. Blue Origin is focused on reusability and lowering the cost to access of space, specifically around the Earth. They're not really focused on Mars or anywhere else for that matter. They're really just focused on Earth. ULA, if you look at what they're focused on, national security, high reliability, and even look at their future upper stage, it uses hydrolocks, which they've been using for a long time at this point. They have no interest in these types of monopropellants or storable propellants by any means. They're innovating with ACEs in other ways.

So Orbital ATK is the right fit for this kind of thing, and I hope to see a mission fly with one of these fuels over the next few years. Now I want to switch focus over to NASA's so-called journey to Mars. This week was the meeting of the NASA Advisory Council. From Monday to Wednesday are the committee meetings of the NASA Advisory Council, sort of focused on one particular aspect with a couple of different people there to talk about them. And then on Thursday and Friday are the full meetings of the full council. So those will certainly be interesting to watch. They kind of encompass everything that NASA is working on. And, you know, plans are talked about and the future is talked about. And so that'll be great

to watch and see what comes out of that. And I'm sure I will talk about that next week on the show. And we'll be writing about it throughout the week on the blog over at mainenginecutoff.com. But I wanted to talk about what happened on Monday at the NASA Advisory Council. And Monday was sort of focused on the human exploration plans, so specifically SLS and Orion. So there's not much of an update in terms of EM-1. They say that that's still on target for a late 2018 launch, though there are some pretty massive sounding delays with the European service module. Somebody did mention at one point that it was a 10 month delay from what was originally planned. Right now, they're not expecting to get that until April instead of January when they were expecting it. So we'll

see how that comes together. But you know, that's a pretty big delay, it shouldn't impact the launch at all. But just, you know, interesting to note that the European service module, which they kind of, you know, gave that to Europe to prevent, you know, canceling SLS and Orion very easily, since you're sort of bringing in that international interest. But now it's, you know, potentially holding up the schedule for the launch. So that'll be interesting to see what comes out of that as well. But nothing that interesting on EM-1 out of this subcommittee. What was interesting was what they were talking about beyond EM-1. Bill Gerstenmaier, who we've talked about recently on the show

as the person heading up the Human Exploration Directorate at NASA, he talked about the fact that they need a lot of funding for the ground systems at Kennedy to support upgrades to the exploration upper stage, which is the newer upper stage that would fly on SLS on every mission beyond EM-1. So EM-1's using that same interim cryogenic propulsion stage that was used, you know, sort of the Delta IV derived system. But the missions beyond EM-1 will use an entirely new upper stage. And the ground systems need a lot of work to reconfigure them for support of that upper stage. You know, it's a bigger upper stage, it's both wider and taller overall. So there's a lot of changes that need to happen to support that

on the ground. And Gerstenmaier said that they do need an increase of funding to be able to have that ready by a launch of August 2021. He said that very specifically, you know, that we've got to get started in 2017 to be able to make sure that we have a launch date of 2021 or late 2021. So, you know, they're still pushing that 2021 date as the next launch of SLS, but there seems to be some confusion as to what that launch actually will be. There are some representatives still saying that EM-2 would be the launch that happens in late 2021, and others are really not saying one way or another whether that would be EM-2 or not, whether it would be another flight. And I say that specifically because the Europa missions, the lander and the orbiter, those missions that were originally supposed to fly on one booster now may be separated to two boosters.

on SLS and to be launched no later than 2022. So at the SLS launch rate right now, where, you know, it's kind of looking like once every five years at this point, that Europa mission would take that slot in the 2021-2022 time range. So there seems to be a little confusion whether the second flight of SLS will be EM-2 with Orion and the Exploration Upper Stage, or whether it will be another mission, be EM-2 with Orion and the Exploration Upper Stage, or whether it will be another mission, specifically the Europa mission, which is mandated to fly in that same time range. So I don't know whether they would have, you know, two SLS stacks ready to go in late 2021 or 2022. I doubt that heavily. But you know, who knows what they're planning there. But what it seems to be to me is that certain members of NASA are sort of couching their estimates in the foresight that Europa hardware might be delayed a bit. And the funding for that Europa hardware has been pretty unpredictable at this point.

And there have been some budget shortfalls in certain areas that are pushing that date. There's been years when they've gotten huge amounts of funding for Europa research and years when it seems to be in a little influx. So I'm wondering if the people in charge of the SLS program are sort of expecting that hardware to be delayed beyond 2022. I guess we will find more out about that as we get later in the year and we actually get a 2017 budget from Congress. But to me, that confusion seems to be a little concerning because here's what happens. Let's say that the Europa missions are delayed a bit, let's say two years. So they're delayed instead of no later than 2022, they're no later than 2024. At that point, they would have an SLS stack ready to go in late 2021, early 2022 for the second mission of SLS. It would be the first mission with the exploration upper stage. So if they were to make EM2 hit that time slot instead

of the Europa missions, which would get the one two years later, we're expecting at that point that SLS would be on a once every two years-ish schedule. So, you know, if there's a launch in late 2021 or early 2022, the next launch would be 2024, maybe, you know, fall or winter 2024. So let's say that that's the case, that EM-2 is going to fly in 2021 and Europa is going to fly in 2024. EM-2 at that point could not fly with a crew. And that is because the astronaut office has put a requirement in place that no crew shall fly on any variant of the SLS rocket in which a major propulsion element was flying for the first time. So that means if the Exploration Upper Stage is in place for that EM-2 launch in 2021,

which is the current plan, they would not be allowed to fly a crew because the Exploration Upper Stage had not yet flown in space. And that is why the ordering of missions in the other way made a lot more sense because you could fly Europa mission in 2021 or 2022, and that would test out the Exploration Upper Stage for EM-2 that would launch in 2023 or 2024. So, you know, in that case, you would have that test to be flown. You could fly crew on EM-2. But the way that it's shaping out with, you know, this kind of weird mixed message around what that launch is in 2021, it seems that EM-2 might fly uncrewed

and then the Europa missions in 23 or 24. And that means that the first crewed launch of SLS Orion would not be until 2025 or 2026. So right now, we're looking at the very real possibility that there would not be a human launching on SLS for another decade from here, from 2016. It would be another decade until we may launch a human on SLS, which just seems absolutely unsustainable and, you know, ripe for cancellation if that's the point. There's a lot of things that are tied into the SLS. We've got mandates for the Europa missions. We've got mandates for these crew vehicles and the launch vehicle. There's a lot of weird politicking that's going into all these things and sort of tying it all up. But if we're looking at another decade without flying humans

on this rocket, that is huge problems. You know, that would put it almost beyond, actually, it would put it beyond the next president's administration to even fly a human, let alone any other exploration plans. There wouldn't be a human in flight for another complete administration. So another president would have to come in, another NASA administrator would have to come in, believe so strongly in these programs that they're willing to go their entire presidency with, you know, really no progress in these launch vehicles. We might send the Europa launch. We might send another uncrewed Orion. I'm not sure where that would go at that point. But, you know, it would not be the

best look for NASA to go another decade from here without flying a human. I'm not sure how well that would work out for the longevity of the SLS and Orion programs. I don't want to see the hardware go to waste for a 2021 launch of SLS, but flying EM2 uncrewed would be a giant mistake. You know, it's not like I just want to throw away that booster, but I don't see what we get out of flying EM2 uncrewed when we're already going to do that with EM1. And just using EM2 as a way to test the exploration upper stage seems kind of careless to me, that we would just fly a mission with one piece of different hardware, kind of doing a repeat of EM1, not gaining that much out of it,

and certainly not gaining enough benefit out of it to warrant the cost of that entire launch vehicle, of the entire launch campaign, of everything that would go into that. That would seem like a big black mark on these programs. And I'm not sure that that kind of roadmap is survivable for SLS and Orion. So I'm very interested to see what comes of these Europa missions and to see, you know, how these two launches in the early 2020 timeframe kind of play into each other. Now, let's just play with some hypothetical scenarios here for a bit. And let's say that, you know, I happen to be

in charge of NASA in the next administration. I don't think that's likely. But, you know, here's what I would think, you know, here's what I would suggest if I had a say in the matter. When the new president comes in and they do their whole reassessment of the program, you know, looking at what is possible with the programs we have in place now, to me, everything that I've seen, all of the most interesting missions that SLS could be a part of, consist of SLS flying something else other than Orion. And I don't mean flying a secondary payload with Orion. I mean the cargo SLS launching some major component of a mission that then could be used by crew to do something, whether it's, you know, sending a habitat

to the lunar orbit area or beyond even that, and flying crew up to take part in that, whether it's, you know, a couple of Cygnus modules attached to each other, whether it's a BA-330 or bigger, flying on the SLS. The most interesting plans for missions that I've seen make use of SLS to fly the cargo portion of the mission because the SLS payload capacity is so much bigger than anything else that's close to flying at this point. Falcon Heavy is going to fly a little bit over 50 metric tons. The initial version of SLS is going to fly 70 metric tons, and that's only going to fly once until it gets bumped up beyond that. So the payload capacity certainly is huge on the SLS, or at least huge in comparison to what we're flying today. So the most interesting

missions I've seen use it for cargo and get the crew there differently. A lot of these plans seem to make use of a second SLS to get the crew up to whatever it is was launched by the cargo SLS. But that doesn't seem likely to me, given the flight rate of SLS. You know, we're certainly not going to be able to launch two SLS rockets very close together time-wise. Maybe you could pre-deploy, you know, the Cygnus modules one year and fly the crew up the second year, but that seems pretty slow-paced to me. So, if I had my way, I would cancel the Orion program. I would cancel that capability to have that crew capsule, because we see how well the commercial crew program is going. You know, we can say,

well, they're delayed. They're not flying until 2018, but those programs have been severely underfunded in those early years that led to some delays and pushed things out a little farther. But all in all, we're getting pretty close to seeing crews fly on those capsules, both the Boeing Starliner, the CST-100, and Dragon 2. And those will be flying crews before SLS even takes off the ground. I would guarantee that SpaceX flies a human on Dragon 2 before the initial SLS launches. So in the timelines we're talking about, commercial crew will be flying people before the SLS will be flying people by a lot, by a long shot at that point, if we're going to compare them that way. So really, the Orion capsule does not offer a huge enough benefit over the other options available, the much cheaper options available, specifically

when you're talking about, you know, SpaceX launching Dragon 2s on reusable rockets. That's going to be a whole lot cheaper than building one Orion capsule every once in a while. And, you know, Orions aren't going to be reusable. Dragon 2s are going to be reusable. And, you know, flight rate wise, Dragon 2 is going to have a lot more time on its hands than anything else. And Starliner will as well, if they're going to fly missions up to the commercial space stations that Bigelow is planning and things like that. The two commercial crew capsules right now, and you know, you can look ahead and say maybe the Dream Chaser will have a crew version by then. But I think the crew versions available of these capsules would be

more than capable of carrying crews up to these potential missions, like I was talking about that make use of SLS as cargo space. So if I had my way, I would cancel the Orion program and say, there is a good benefit of having this super heavy lift rocket, there is a benefit of having this giant rocket that's capable of putting huge payloads into low Earth orbit, or sending exploration missions out to the outer planets in much quicker trajectories than we've been doing up until now with the Atlas V and Delta IV and things like that. So there is a benefit in having that giant payload capability in the SLS, because specifically, there are no commercial entities that are publicly building something of that scale. Falcon Heavy is going to be able to

get 50 metric tons or a little bit more than 50 metric tons to low Earth orbit. SLS is going to be much bigger than that in even its initial stage. So there is a benefit in having the SLS. And, you know, we already are, you know, I said last week, the sunk cost fallacy of, you know, we've already spent this many billions, but we already are bending metal in, you know, terms of what the SLS is going to fly with on its initial mission. So the rocket itself is pretty close to launching. And it seems like that's a little too useful to throw away whole hog. And certainly when you look at, you know, how NASA's programs get constructed and get funded, we're not going to get SLS and Orion both canceled unless something radically different happens in November that I'm not seeing coming down the pipeline right now, to be honest. So canceling the Orion program would free up the

SLS to launch specialized cargo, big long duration habitats, maybe even specialized payload, you know, to the surface of Mars or Moon or wherever we set our interests as a national space policy. SLS would be freed up to use its payload capability for cargo rather than you know for crew which we've already got a little bit of redundant capability with in cheaper capability with with the commercial crew program so this would be a nice way to kind of meet the exploration directorate of NASA with the commercial directorate of NASA these kind of two forces that have been pushing pulling each other for control over the NASA plans in general, this might be a nice way to support both, where you've got SLS to fly some of these bigger

payloads for exploration class missions and supported with crew launches from the Starliner or Dragon or whatever may come about in the future. Now, the way that the political winds are blowing and the people that are in charge of the purse in the U.S., I don't see any of these programs being canceled at this point. I don't see SLS or Orion getting the axe this November. If they do, I would be extremely surprised just given who's funding these programs. You know, Senate was the one that kind of rammed through these programs in general. So I would be very surprised if there was enough change of heart of the people in Senate who cared about these programs to actually, you know, change up the plan again. Again, the crew vehicle

and the rocket itself both survived a cancellation from the beginning of this decade. You know, we had the cancellation program and we pretty much salvaged the crew vehicle and the launch vehicle, though slightly modified in each case. We sort of salvaged those out of the crew vehicle and the launch vehicle, though slightly modified in each case, we sort of salvaged those out of a cancellation already. So I could see that happening again, maybe it gets canceled and the name gets changed, but we still have, uh, this hardware largely intact. So what gets interesting at that point, if we still have SLS and Orion around, and we are on this type of roadmap that we're seeing laid out for us over the next, you know, 2020s decade and even beyond a little bit. What gets interesting at that point is the possibility and even, you know, ever more likely possibility based on all the rumors that are out there of the giant rocket that SpaceX is working on. They're working on this huge rocket that's going to be able to land, you know, the

latest rumors are 100 metric tons of useful payload on the surface of Mars. That's on the surface of Mars, not to low Earth orbit. Like I said, SLS is going to fly 70 and 105 metric tons to low Earth orbit. This SpaceX rocket and launch vehicle system would be capable of landing 100 metric tons on the surface of Mars. So this is going to be a giant launch vehicle in general. But with that possibility out there and being not too far off, we'll hear more this September, and the possibility that SLS will be flying once a year or so with

crew and cargo, the two get very interesting when you put them together. You know, if the most interesting missions that SLS could take part in consist of lifting a bunch of payload mass up separately from the crew vehicle, you know, a dedicated cargo vehicle launching a big habitat or a big lander or whatever those other payloads would be that would support the mission. If those are the most interesting things that SLS could take part in, and SpaceX brings on the capability to have a huge amount of mass into orbit, I could see NASA saying, let's take advantage of this in a way that we've done commercial cargo before. Instead of commercial cargo to the space station, maybe we do commercial

cargo to the lunar orbit area, or maybe to the lunar surface, or whatever it may be. They do some sort of deal that brings in the capabilities that SpaceX is developing. Right now, they are the only ones I know of developing heavy lift in the terms we're talking about, hundreds of metric tons to orbit. But, you know, others may follow if there's a market for that. You know, I could certainly see some sort of giant rocket being developed by others if it shows that there's a government contract for that, since that's the typical route that we get launch vehicles over the past decade or two. But you know, looking ahead, if SLS needs this giant amount of payload, and SpaceX is working on something that can lift a giant amount of

payload, I could see these things sort of coming together in an interesting way when you consider the fact that SpaceX would only need their giant rocket, which would be a reusable huge rocket, they would only need that a few times every Mars launch window, which is every 26 months. So there's maybe a few months where those launch vehicles are sort of tied up doing SpaceX Mars related plans. And the other months are available for contracting, maybe for launching giant satellite constellations or whatever it may be. And NASA could tap them to say, you know, launch a giant habitat to lunar orbit or something like that. So just sort of looking ahead here, as I see some of this confusion over the future roadmap of

the exploration plans, these are the types of things that I'm looking ahead to. How does the SLS fit into exploration plans? How does it become useful? Because right now, it doesn't have a lot of use to fly these types of missions when they can only fly once every year or two, and they can only fly either cargo or crew. They cannot do them at the same. They can do them at the same, but it's not a huge secondary payload at that point. It's maybe only 10 metric tons of a secondary payload instead of, you know, an entire launch devoted to cargo to do something interesting out there once you get out to the lunar orbit area or

beyond. So that was a whole lot of hypothetical thinking. But you know, summer is slow in terms of space news and things that are interesting enough to analyze deeper than just the headlines. So I hope you enjoyed this kind of hypothetical talk. I'm just, you know, I heard some of this SLS talk from the NASA Advisory Council, and I started thinking about what the roadmap would look like, what SLS could take part in. But I would love to hear from you and any ideas that you have about what the roadmap could look like, either on the NASA side or the SpaceX side, or this kind of merged exploration plan side of things. I would love to hear your thoughts on any of that. Send me an email anthony at mainenginecutoff.com

or tweet at wehavemiko if you've got something shorter form like that. If you're enjoying the show or the blog or the topics that I bring up and focus on on either of those platforms, I would hugely appreciate your support over on Patreon. Patreon.com slash miko is where you can go to support the show and help me make this thing better. You know, I'm not going to take advertising. If I took advertising from Lockheed Martin, I don't think I could come on here and say, let's cancel the Orion program. They might have a word with me after that. So I'm doing this all listener supported. So if you're enjoying what I'm talking about, please help support the show over on Patreon at Patreon.com slash Miko. Thanks very much for listening, and I'll talk to

you next week.