Main Engine Cut Off - T+140: Launch Protests and Lander Hopefuls

Episode Date: November 27, 2019

Blue Origin successfully protested the US Air Force’s RFP for the National Security Space Launch program, which will have big implications for the way the current round of contract awards plays out. NASA added five new providers to the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, including SpaceX and Blue Origin, and I’ve got some thoughts about the inclusion of those options in what is quickly becoming my favorite NASA program.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 38 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, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Adam, Sam, and six anonymous—and 310 other supporters.TopicsAir Force to revise selection criteria for launch procurement in wake of Blue Origin’s successful protest - SpaceNews.comRedacted GAO Decision (PDF)New Companies Join Growing Ranks of NASA Partners for Artemis Program | NASASpaceX Starship suffers testing setback - SpaceNews.comCommercial lunar lander company terminates NASA contract - SpaceNews.comNew VIPER Lunar Rover to Map Water Ice on the Moon | NASAThe ShowLike the show? Support the show!Email 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 ShopMusic by Max Justus

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I'm Anthony Colangelo. My apologies for being a couple days late on this show here, and my greater apologies for how I sound. I am very sick, so I had lost my voice over the weekend with a bad cough. And therefore, thank you all to everyone out there who supports the show. With your support, I can buy things like a mute switch, which is going to be very helpful today as I hide my coughs and sniffles from all of you. So all you'll get here is the really good content. And we've got a couple of stories today that are MECO classics, I would say. We've got launch politics to discuss. I'm going to explain some things going on with the US Air

Force's contracting round that they're still figuring out. And then we're going to talk a little bit about lunar landers, which has been the hot topic over the last couple of years at this point. A couple of really good stories to break down today. So let's start with those rocket politics. The US Air Force has been running this program called the National Security Space Launch Program for a while. The bids are out for these launch contracts that are extremely lucrative. So the Air Force is looking for two providers to launch a ton of launches over the next five, 10 years. I forget exactly what the timeline is. And it is a very political happening area right now. There's a lot of people in Congress that are kind of putting little bits of policy in where they can

to favor the people in their districts. Classic space politics stuff happening here. But one of the very important things that has happened is a protest that was filed back in August by Blue Origin. They protested a little bit of the language in these contracting awards as being unclear, as being misty in a way that would create confusion among the providers, that harm the clarity at which they can bid an appropriate thing that they have a good idea of, you know, could we win this? Could we not? Is it clear what we're going for here? And this past week, the Government Accountability Office sided with Blue Origin on at least one of those complaints. And that's going to be a big impact on what will be the outcome of this award in the future. So I want to explain that,

as well as a couple of complaints that the GAO didn't side with Blue Origin on. They threw out a couple of complaints as not really being relevant or not being a good argument on the Blue Origin side. And those things are a little more obvious why they were put in there by Blue Origin and a little more obvious why they were thrown out by the GAO. So we're going to talk about all those things right here. So the complaint that was agreed with by the GAO was something that I have long heard as a point of concern from people within the Air Force and people within the launch providers, something that was so obviously not, it would not stand any of these protests, that it was shocking it was in there in the first place. And it's kind of weird to get your mind around. So it comes down to these two words that were put into the

request for proposals, which is when combined. So the RFP made clear that the US Air Force expects to select two providers, two offerers, but not the ones that give the two best proposals. But per quoting the RFP, that when combined represent the overall best value to the government. So what this means is they weren't going to do individual trade-offs between the four different bidders, which in this case is SpaceX, Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance, and Northrop Grumman. They weren't going to say, which of these two are the best and let's go with them. They're going to say, how do A and B go together? How do A and C go together? How does that compare to how A and B goes together? And so on for A and

D, B and C, C and D, etc. So they're pitting these combinations of offerings against each other, which sounds reasonable if you were going to make a selection for two things. But for people bidding on this program, they have no idea what the other companies are going to bid. So how can Blue Origin write their proposal in a way that matches up with proposals from SpaceX, ULA, and Northrop Grumman that they have no idea about, and they literally can't know anything about, or else it would be illegal and they would be thrown out of this program. So it was that murkiness, the inability for offerers to know what each other is providing

to this request for proposal, and that they would be judged upon that the GAO agreed with Blue Origin was not right and needed to be thrown out of the RFP. So in response to that, the Air Force is going to take those two words out of the RFP and instead select the two best offers for this program. And then between them, decide which would get the 60% of the launches and which would get 40% of the launches, because that's the style. We pick two offers and then one gets 60%, one gets 40%. Best offer gets 60%, second best offer gets 40%. Now, I strongly agree with the decision here by the GAO and with the protest by Blue Origin,

and I think Blue Origin had the most to lose with this clause, maybe other than Northrop Grumman, because of the way that it would have played out. The when this clause, maybe other than Northrop Grumman, because of the way that it would have played out. The when combined clause, it creates that murky criteria, and it makes it easy for the Air Force to shut down any arguments or protests after they were to award the two launch providers, because they could say these were the two that when combined provided the best value to the government. And that is totally something that isn't fact-based, really. It's based on their decisions and their assumptions and all the things that they value that are inherent to what's in the head of the decision makers at

the U.S. Air Force. It's not something that you can write down. It's a reasoning that you're coming up with in the decision process. So the process to get to what is the best value is pretty subjective at that point. So Blue Origin likely and rightfully saw this as one of the biggest ways that they would lose out to SpaceX and ULA, because which two offerers go better together than the ones that are already reliably flying missions for the U.S. Air Force? And in that case, you reliably flying missions for the US Air Force. And in that case, if I were the Air Force, I could say, well, SpaceX and ULA are the best value because SpaceX is now a very reliable provider and they are incredibly, incredibly inexpensive

compared to ULA. And ULA complements that well because they are a little more expensive, but they have vehicles that can do things that others can't, and they have a track record of reliability that is unmatched. That's something that I could hear coming out of the Air Force's mouths. Now, that is not really protestable because, again, it's inherent to what the Air Force decision makers feel about this. It's a subjective thing. So now that this is going to be thrown out, Blue Origin has their work cut out for them. They have to create an offer that's compelling, that clearly puts them in the top two of the offerors, and they don't get to deal with this murky situation with the Air Force in which they can kind of thumb the scale and say, well, when combined, ULA goes

better with SpaceX than SpaceX and Blue Origin go together. Which I think if we cut through all this, that's really what this protest is. Is Blue Origin being worried that SpaceX and ULA would have been the winners outright because of that murkiness? Because SpaceX and ULA go together well, and SpaceX and Blue Origin, when combined, do they offer the best value? Well, it depends what you think value is. If value is price, yeah, I would say that's probably the case. So this is much clearer for Blue Origin now. But there's a couple of things that were thrown out in this were things that obviously favored Blue Origin over everyone else. So one of them was the fact that Blue Origin wanted to see three providers selected instead of two because they said that without that, they want to be... How do they word this? It was odd. It was like, without selecting three, it is not clear that the third who is left out of the two selection

would continue on in a commercial capacity. Essentially, trying to argue that if it was SpaceX and Blue Origin, that ULA would close up shop. But in effect, what I think that was, was Blue Origin realizing that because Omega from north of Grumman is a hot mess, this would be an instant pass for them into the program if there were three providers selected. Now, what the GAO said was, no, that's not relevant. The two-provider thing fits what the Air Force needs. It fits the constraints that they need to handle, and it matches with what I've heard from internally at the Air Force is two providers is better because it limits the amount of complexity and communication, and you get better cost savings by having more launches for less providers, as long as there

are at least two providers and not a monopoly like we had previously. So that was thrown out by the GAO. There's still going to be two providers selected. The other thing Blue Origin wanted was that they wanted to see two-year award cycles rather than five-year award cycles. And this would be the case that they might pick SpaceX and ULA in these two years, and they could bid on the launches that happen in those two years. They might pick SpaceX and ULA in these two years, and they could bid on the launches that happen in those two years. But then two years after that, they would re-bid.

And Blue Origin, I think, would kind of seize that as their opportunity to say, well, we're going to have a way better shot at winning when New Glenn is flying. And that would be at least two years from now than right now in which it hasn't flown. So if we can get to these two-year cycles that repeat however frequently the Air Force needs, we have a better shot at winning ones down the line than instead, in this case, being locked out of these awards for the next five years. That was thrown out by the GAO for similar reasoning, saying five-year awards based on the cycle and the timelines here with the Air Force kind of matched with what they need. They need that little bit of a longer timeline because of how long things take. Look at how long this process is already taking.

And also that they can get better costs from the providers when they have this five years of certainty to kind of predict what's going to happen and deal with the ebbs and flows of the industry over those five years. So now with all those other clauses thrown out, and the when combined clause being taken out of the RFP, all that is left here is for some good old fashioned hard work and good offerings. Blue Origin needs to continue to show that they're doing great work. They need to have an attractive offer. If they put one in already, they obviously did. And on the ULA side, they need to buckle down and make sure that they are the second best offer.

I think SpaceX is at this point going to be unmatched for the first best offer. Um, ULA needs to make sure that they have, you know, for their case, the second best offer here because the path is not as easy now as it was for them before. As it was for them before, it was a very political process in which Boeing and Lockheed excel, uh, as in which the incumbents excel. But now they really do need to buckle down. And there's much greater scrutiny on the Air Force after this successful protest, which doesn't happen a lot. That doesn't happen a lot that the GAO agrees in this way with somebody who files this kind of protest. So there's going to be a lot more

scrutiny on this decision. And obviously, we're going to be still stuck in this lawsuit cycle. No matter what the award is, there's going to be another round of lawsuit. So the Air Force needs to be careful to make sure that they dot all their I's, cross all their T's, and get everything exactly right. And for ULA, they need to make sure that they've got that in mind as well as they go forward down this path. So this is a huge moment for this National Security Space Launch Program, and really only the start of the litigation story of these protests and these awards and everything else that's going to happen. So we'll be cycling back. But for now, this is a big, big news item for Blue Origin here in the way of this National Security Space Launch

Program. And I still would be shocked if it was not SpaceX and ULA chosen. But today, it's a lot tougher for ULA to win than it was the day before. And that's important to follow along with. Before we get into some commercial lunar payload services announcements, I want to thank everyone who makes this show possible. If you want to help support the show, head over to mainenginecutoff.com support there are 348 people supporting this show every single month and I could not do without their support like I said at the beginning I can buy hardware for the show I can pay hosting bills and everything else that needs to happen to make this show possible and it's really a huge huge huge help to the show. And it makes it possible to keep

running this long. And this particular show was produced by 38 executive producers. Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Grant, Mike, David, Mintz, Yunus, Rob, Tim Dodd, the everyday astronaut, Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Adam, Sam, and six anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for your support. I could not do this without you and everyone else who is supporting the show over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. Thank you all. Sorry for being sick, but I'm here for you. All right, a little bit of updates here on NASA's CLPS program, the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. Back when this was originally announced, NASA selected nine providers for these missions. And the way that it works, just to refresh your memory, is that they basically approve these

providers to bid on missions that come up later. So that list of nine were able to bid on the first couple of task orders that came out. Intuitive Machines, Astrobotic have won task awards. Orbit Beyond did win a task award, but later pulled out because everything went to hell in a handbasket. So when another task order comes up, they could still bid hypothetically. It doesn't seem like they will, but that pool of nine would bid on each task order. Well, NASA always left the option open to on-ramp more providers later, and they've done just that with five different companies this time, bringing the total to 14 providers. So they've added SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, Tyvek Nano Satellite Systems, and Ceres Robotics.

In this announcement from NASA, there are always a couple of mock-ups. The two from Tyvek Nano Satellite Systems, that one looks like a pretty small lander in the typical fashion that we've seen from most other providers at this point. Sierra Nevada Corporations looks like a slightly larger lander, pretty tall though. And the Series Robotics concept image that they proposed had some sort of lander there and then a big rover. The rover was kind of the main feature of their little concept art that went along with this announcement. So those kind of all fit in the realm of things that we have heard of and know from other Clips providers in the past. And the two elephants in the room here are Blue

Origin with Blue Moon and SpaceX with Starship. So these are officially on-ramped as providers for Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program. That is amazing news. It's really good to see Starship. So these are officially on-ramp as providers for commercial lunar payload services program. That is amazing news. It's really good to see this kind of support from this section of NASA. I continue to think that CLPS is the most exciting program going on at NASA right now. It is something that I cannot wait to see these missions fly. It is something that because of all of the politicking and big headlines out of the Artemis program, which is the human lander side of the Lunar Explosion Initiative from NASA, because of how much attention that is taking, Eclipse is kind of under the radar, doing its thing, and I believe would be a really big boon to space in the near future.

So the fact that Starship and Blue Moon are in this program now is amazing news, and it's huge for those two different concepts to show that they have NASA support in some fashion. Now, don't get too excited about the addition of these two clips, because like I said, Orbit Beyond was on the list, they won a task order, and we saw how that turned out. So this merely being added to this list is not a huge thing to celebrate. But what is important is that Viper, this upcoming rover from NASA, NASA announced this back at IAC, is the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, Viper. This is a much bigger rover than other landers that are in Clipse could carry right now. So even back at IAC,

Jim Bridenstine said that Viper would not fit on any of the current Clipse providers, so they would need a bigger lander for this kind of thing. So I see this right now, given the way the cards are stacked, as a contest between Starship and Blue Moon. NASA wants to fly this thing by 2021, I think, Viper. Let me just check that to make sure. It might be 2022. And it certainly is. It's 2022. So for a big payload going to the Moon, that is an aggressive timeline. NASA is going to want to get this bid out really soon. So it's hard for me to see another big lander coming along and really contending for this contract. Surprises are always happening in space, but I really see this as a Blue Moon versus Starship task order.

So in that realm, let's just kind of play with that thought a little bit. I would personally be shocked if Blue Moon did not get this award. And here's why. That's not a knock on Starship. I want to explain that a little bit. Starship itself is incredibly exciting. that a little bit. Starship itself is incredibly exciting. It blew its top off down in Boca Chica last week. They were doing some pressurization tests and the top bulkhead blew off of the Mark 1 Starship prototype. That turns out it wasn't going to actually fly up to the 20 kilometer mark. It was going to be the Mark 3, the newly welded Mark 3 that's going to make that initial hop flight. So it doesn't impact SpaceX's timeline for prototyping that too much. But Starship is already in work. That is really,

really cool to see. It's going to be flying soon. It's going to be doing these landing tests soon and orbital tests just a little bit beyond that. So Starship is happening. But it's going to take a lot of time for most of the industry to get their head around the operations of Starship. for most of the industry to get their head around the operations of Starship. So for something like Viper, right, we're going to put all this in context of Viper, not any other mission. In order for Starship to fly that, it needs to be able to be doing its multiple on-orbit refuelings. The industry itself needs to believe in these giant 40-meter cranes because the image for Starship in this Eclipse press release shows a giant human rover being lowered down to the surface from nearly the top of the Starship,

which is 40 meters in the air or something like that. So there are these complexifiers of the mission that the industry needs to get comfortable with in order to award missions to Starship. I'm not saying that those things are technically impossible, that SpaceX won't pull them off. I'm certain that they will. But for someone like NASA, who ideally makes this decision in the next couple of months, are they going to have what they need to be convinced that SpaceX is going to have all that worked out by 2022 in order to be able to carry out this mission. Multiple on-orbit refuelings, which means, as we've discussed before in the show, SpaceX has to have operations up and flying consistently and doing these big refuelings

at a quick enough pace to fly this kind of mission. They've got to have this big rover crane deployment system worked out that comes from the top of Starship. They've got to have all these things ironed out, not for just 2022, but in enough time to convince NASA that they've got this, that they aren't still developing this. And we know how SpaceX works. They iterate on things.

They fly things, they test things, they iterate. It's probably going to look different when it lands on the surface than this concept art, which is the best part of SpaceX. That is what we love about SpaceX. But when you're thinking about Viper, do you think that that's going to be at the point at which NASA would be able to say, you know, thumbs up, fly Viper to the moon? Or conversely, you look at the Blue Moon prototype, it's much more conventional, right? It fits on a rocket that is going to be flying pretty soon. It fits on other rockets

that exist right now. It is a very conventional-based landing system. They've already hot-fired those engines, so they've got a lot of the engines behind this design as well. And in the design, there was this kind of very simple crane system to lower over to the surface that's only coming from 15 feet know, what, 15 feet off the surface, 20 feet off the surface, down to the lunar surface of that Davit system that they showed in their original mock-ups. It's very likely that this Viper and Blue Moon go together perfectly,

and in a much more conventional fashion. And conventional is not a dig at Blue Moon, nor is it a dig at Starship to say that Starship is unconventional. Everybody says it's delightfully unconventional. It does seem like the future, but when you're talking about a thing that's going to fly to the lunar surface by December 2022, it's hard for me to see a world in which NASA does not pick the conventional route. You know, both are not developed yet. Both still have a lot of runway to go before they're able to get to the launch pad and get to the lunar surface. But in an architecture that doesn't need refueling, that doesn't have these 40 meter cranes, that

doesn't have all these aero surfaces and all the other development that we know has to happen for what SpaceX wants out of Starship between now and then, it seems like an uphill battle for SpaceX to win this one away from Blue Moon. So I strongly believe that Viper will be the first contract for Blue Moon, and we'll probably hear about it pretty soon. I wouldn't be shocked if we hear about it early in 2020 so that they can really get to work on this concept. They can finish out the rover, finish out the lander, and get this thing flying. It's an exciting mission. And again, I don't want to just say like I'm slamming Starship here. What I'm saying is you have to think about the way that Starship is positioned in the market in terms of decisions that need to be made and the timelines

of their decisions and the way that SpaceX iterates to solutions. I have no doubt that Starship is going to be a very attractive offer for things like Viper in the future. out that Starship is going to be a very attractive offer for things like Viper in the future. Is it an attractive offer for Viper in April 2020? I'm not so sure just because of the mental gymnastics the industry has to do to get comfortable with those things. So that's an important aspect to all this that I think is worth remembering. And I thought it was worth bringing up here on the show as well. But for now, as my voice is failing me, that is all I've got for you this week. Thank you all so much for supporting the show. As always, mainenginecutoff.com slash support. It's huge, huge help to the show and everything that happens

here. So thank you all so much and enjoy the holiday week here in the US. And until next week, I'm Anthony Colangelo. I'll talk to you soon.