Main Engine Cut Off - T+144: 2019 Impacts

Episode Date: December 31, 2019

A look back at 2019 through the lens of “Who actually did something that matters this year?”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 325 other supporters.The 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 am Anthony Colangelo. It is December 31st, 2019 as I record this, so I wanted to take a minute to look back at what happened in 2019, but not in a typical, like, you know, just doing a show to do a show kind of way. If you remember last year, which is a long time ago at this point, I was doing Q&A episodes occasionally. I was trying some things out with that. And this time last year, I got a question in from Lars, who asked, he said, What are the top 10 space companies who did something impactful this year, meaning 2018? No points for having good ideas or getting funding only for accomplishments that

were a big deal. So I really liked that question. And it was in my head that it could be something interesting to do in the future. But I want to expand that out a little bit. I want to expand it to include not just companies, but other organizations, maybe even entire countries who did something impactful this year. I thought it's a cool way to look at, you know, we talk a lot about announcements and different things that are talked about in the industry, but looking at who actually did stuff this year and things that not just did stuff in general, but things that are actually going to be impactful in the long run. So I've got a little list here. This isn't ranked in any way because it's kind of hard to compare apples to oranges in some of these cases. So I just wrote down a bunch of thoughts and then I picked the 10 that

I liked out of that list. So let's get started. If I keep doing this in future years, it'll be notable when the first one on my list is not SpaceX because they have just continued to kill it in 2019. It was a big year for them. They started the year early with DM-1, the first demonstration mission of Dragon 2. That went totally successfully. We ended up, you know, seeing that capsule get exploded on the test stand, but they're recovering well from that and they've got an inflatable abort coming up. But to start the year off with DM-1 being a success was big for SpaceX. And then throughout the rest of the year, in the Falcon family of rockets, they had a great year. They continued the reusability of Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy. They had a couple flights of that. They even started reusing fairings this year as well. So a great year for Falcon, even though the flight rate was

a little bit down, but the actual achievements were still there for the Falcon family. And then on the Starship side of things, early in the year, they fired up the first full-scale Raptor, and then they've got a whole host of them now in Texas. And then obviously all the Starship things happened. So they had Starhopper that made a couple of hops, one up to 150 meters. And then we saw a lot of the Starship development work where they're actually welding things together, making progress there. So it was a big year for them in terms of launch. But then you even look at the Starlink side of things, and they've already got a ton of satellites up in orbit now for Starlink. And they're just a handful of launches away from operating the biggest constellation of satellites that anyone has ever done. So they just had a crazy year from, you know, the crewed missions to Falcon family rockets to Starship to Starlink to even their

commercial cargo missions that they're still flying, all around an amazing year for SpaceX. So they were still top of mind when I'm thinking about who was impactful this year. Keeping it on the launch side of things, because that's the way my brain works, Rocket Lab also had an amazing year this year. They increased their launch rate quite a bit. They did six launches this past year, including flights for DARPA and the US Air Force. They did plenty of other rideshare missions as well. And then later in the year, we saw them begin their reusability program. On their last flight, they tracked the stage all the way back down to the ocean.

So they're working in that direction already. They also completed a launch site down in Virginia that they'll be launching from next year. And then just here at the end of the year, they snuck in that they begun work on their second pad in New Zealand. So all around incredible momentum there for Rocket Lab. I'm really interested to see what they do in 2020 with all of these launch sites up,

with their launch cadence rising, and whatever else they're going to get into in 2020 that we haven't heard about yet. The last one that's worth mentioning for the launch side of things is Blue Origin. Obviously, they had three New Shepard flights, but that's not really why I put them on this list. They had a great year for their engines. They hit full power with BE-4. That will be the powerhouse behind New Glenn and Vulcan coming up. Now, that was a long

time coming. This list isn't about who did things on time, because none of these people would be on this list, except for some of the planetary missions that we'll talk about. But hitting full power with BE-4 is a really big deal, And that's going to be something that's going to make a lot of impacts in the coming years. So that deserves a spot on this list. But that wasn't the only engine that they worked on this year. BE-7 also fired up. Now this is the engine that they'll be using for Blue Moon, their lunar lander. We obviously heard a lot of announcements about Blue Moon this year and the big partnership that they announced at IAC northup grumman and lockheed and draper um but be4 full power be7 firing up uh all good signs for blue origins engine work there last we heard on be7 was in the

summer that they were up to a cumulative uh six minutes of firing i'm interested to get a status update on that how that's going haven't heard a lot lately, but it could be related to the fact that they're in the bid process for the NASA human landing system that everyone's kind of being hush-hush about what they proposed there. But the two engines that Blue is working on there made a lot of good progress this year. So they are on this list as well. Looking outside of the US, China had an incredible year for everything that they're working on. They started off like the first week of the year, they landed Chang'e 4 on the far side of the moon. The Yutu 2 rover was part of that as well. And that's continued

operating all the way through the year. A ton of launches as is typical of China this year. They were the top of the leaderboard. They had 32 launches this year across all their different lines of vehicles. The US had 27. They also completed the deployment of the third generation Baidu satellites that they have been launching nonstop for the past two or three years. And then, you know, in addition to launching as they typically do, they started experimenting with grid fins on some of those launches, which is to prevent stages from landing on villages and exploding in people's houses, as they have done for so long now. They've begun some experiments to get away from that in the future. And then they closed out the year on a really high note, the Long March 5. They returned to flight with Long March 5. That last flew in July of 2017. They had issues with

the turbopump. They had a launch failure. And this vehicle is key to all of their big plans that are coming up. Their space station, their Mars mission that's slated to launch this summer, and their lunar sample return mission that they've been talking about, Chang'e 5. All of those things rely on the Long March 5, and now it is up and flying again. They had a successful return to flight launch just a couple of days ago. So that's a hell of a way to close out the year for China. So all around, big missions on the moon, a lot of launches happening, big satellite deployments, and return to flight of one of their most important launch vehicles. Great year for China in all those departments. their most important launch vehicles. Great year for China in all those departments.

Keeping it international, Jan Werner and ESA had a great year as well. They had a big ministerial meeting just a couple of weeks ago. I guess it was about a month ago now. And this is the big thing that ESA does every three years. They meet to talk about budget. And because of the way that ESA works, right, it's this conglomeration of nations, they do budgeting on a little bit longer of a time period than is typical. So they do three-year chunks with five-year plans in place as well in case there's some delays in getting into the next ministerial meeting. So this was a lot of talk at IAC was all this ESA ministerial stuff. Then around Thanksgiving, they went and actually had that big meeting, and they came away with just about every single dollar or euro that they asked for in the budget.

So that is huge for ESA. It keeps a lot of their programs moving in a good direction. It's going to be big things for ESA in the next three years. And it also shapes some of the lunar ambitions that NASA has because they've begun to show what they're willing to contribute to when it comes to the lunar gateway and some of the landing stuff. It also extends their interest in the ISS out to 2030, which clears up some of that. So all in all, big impacts there to really hear where ESA stands, what kind of scientific missions they're going to be backing in the next three years, and what kind of political things they're going to be playing with ISS, with Lunar Gateway, all of the international relations stuff there as well. Good signs for ESA, good result for

their budget. So I think that deserves a shout out here for 2019 impacts. Now before we move on to the rest of the list, people that have impacted me here personally in 2019 is the 363 of you who are supporting this show every single month over at mainenginecutoff.com support. Thank you all so much. It really keeps this show moving. It keeps it going in the good direction, keeps it supported, makes us be able to do things like go to IAC, go to launches or whatever else we're going to be going to in 2020. So I can't thank you all enough for supporting this show. It is entirely listener supported. So if you like what you're getting out of this, head over to managingcutoff.com slash support and join these fine group of people. This show was produced by 38 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, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Adam, Sam, and six anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for your support as always. It really means a lot and it was a great year for MECO. And I hope 2020 is just as good. So get in there to support if you want to help out for 2020. It is a huge boost to all that I do here. So thank you all so much. All right, we're halfway through this list. And now we're going to turn towards some science stuff that happened this year. NASA

Planetary Science in general had a great year. So I'm grouping that all together. I know it's a bunch of different agencies, it's a bunch of different people, teams that are working on these missions, but collectively they had an incredible year. So let's just go over some of the things they got up to this year. And there's obviously plenty more than I'll talk about right here, but these were the big headlines of the year that really meant a lot. The first week of the year we had new horizons flying by aracoth uh out in the kuiper belt that was like first thing of the year that happened um osiris rex a year ago today december 31st they entered orbit of benu um so they've spent the whole year

orbiting benu figuring out what's going on there. They have recently talked about this weird particle event stuff that's been happening at Bennu, where they occasionally see Bennu releasing a bunch of particles into space. They have now selected their sample site. So they're going to be going in to collect a sample and returning that to Earth. So great year for OSIRIS-REx out there at Bennu. We also had InSight doing stuff on the surface of Mars this year. They deployed the seismometer. They've already had some discoveries of Mars quakes coming in from that. They also deployed the mole this year, the heat probe. That did a bunch of stuff. It got

stuck. It got unstuck. It started drilling again, and then it popped back out. So a tough year for the mole itself, but they're making good progress on that already and it seems like they're they've almost got it under the surface again um so insight has been doing well regardless of all its other problems we also had the dragonfly down select this year for the next new horizons mission um and that was a big decision out of the planetary science uh department of nasa uh and juno keep kept on doing its thing including they And that was a big decision out of the Planetary Science Department of NASA. And Juno kept on doing its thing, including they have worked out an issue that was going to cause the death of the spacecraft if they didn't catch it soon enough. This was related to the fact that it is in a bigger orbit than was originally planned.

And it turns out that they were going to enter a really long eclipse that was going to kill the spacecraft. and it turns out that they were going to enter a really long eclipse that was going to kill the spacecraft. They found out early enough and in the fall they did some preemptive burns to get around that. So those were some of the big headlines from NASA Planetary Science. Like I said, they've got plenty of other stuff still happening. Curiosity is still doing its thing and all the other missions that are out there doing their things are great, but these were the big headlines for 2019 that we will remember. The next two are the big science news this year that you really can't miss mentioning. First, JAXA. They had an incredible year with Hayabusa 2 out at the asteroid Ryugu. They blasted a couple of holes in Ryugu. They went down to sample Ryugu two different times, I think it was, and now they're

returning home with samples in tow. So they had an amazing year with everything out at Ryugu, and Hayabusa 2 has just been doing so well. I'm excited to see that come home, and they're on their way now, so that was definitely worth its spot on the list for 2019. And then we had the Event Horizon Telescope. This was the project to capture a photo of a black hole. The work took place over the last couple of years, but this year they published and released the results, which included the first ever photo of a black hole. This was a really cool project that was a collective of telescopes that were all observing the same spot in the sky to pull this together.

I thought it was a really cool story. It was one that made its way into the mainstream this year. You know, that was front page of the newspaper kind of stuff when that was announced, which is always cool to see something break so far out of the space bubble. And obviously huge, huge results there for Event Horizon Telescope. So definitely deserves a spot on the 2019 list as well. Next up on the list, this is number nine here, Iridium. They started the year with the completion of their new constellation. That was very early on. But really why I have them on this list is, and I had them on the list last year for deploying their new constellation. I have them on the list this year because they showed such good stewardship by actively deorbiting all of their functioning

satellites of their old constellation. You know, it could have been easy for them to say, we'll keep them up there until their fuel reserves run out and we'll use them as part of our constellation. So we have this double the size constellation for a while, or they could have found something else to do with them in space or to sell them to other people. But showing the good stewardship of taking them out of orbit to prevent any debris issues. And obviously that's a little bit selfish of them because they don't want debris issues to impact their own constellation.

But like I said, there was a lot of ways to get some more revenue out of those satellites, whether it was by sale or by using them in different ways than they planned originally. But the fact that they've just said, nope, we're going to deorbit them all to keep this space clean for us, that was really cool of them to do. There's even been some talk recently of they've got like, I think something around 19 satellites that are dead in orbit. And those were ones that have been up there for a while that have failed either right

when they were deployed or since then. And they really can't do anything about that. Saw some talk recently about them being good targets for some orbital debris removal missions and what they would pay for that. There's a whole thing going on there, but the good stewardship that they showed this year is really worthy of a hat tip on this list

as far as I'm concerned. And finally, number 10 on my list. I feel like I have a knack for doing this sort of thing, but to preface this a little bit, last year on the list, I included Swarm. That was the company that launched four satellites that were really small, and they launched them without having their paperwork really completed and approved by the FCC. And I put them on the list because when you're thinking about impacts, it doesn't always have to be necessarily positive impacts, but things that impact the future of space and the industry at large. And so I put them on the list because it was really going to push us to determine, can we track satellites that small?

The answer was yes. We've got active tracking on them all year long since those were launched. And these were 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters by two centimeters. So very small compared to what is typically thought of as trackable, which is 10 centimeters cubed. But turns out we can track the space bees as their products are called. And since then, in the past year, they've gotten approval from the FCC to launch more satellites. So it turns out that, you know, it was a good gamble that they made there to launch more satellites. So it turns out that, you know, it was a good gamble that they made there to launch those satellites. I'm shocked in the way that it turned out that they were able to get approved so quickly for more satellites. But I

think that that stands to reason that I made a good decision by putting them on my list last year. So this year for number 10, I'm doing something similar. I'm giving a spot on this list to India's Defense Research and Development Organization for Mission Shakti, which was their anti-satellite test that happened about nine months ago. Now, this is not a good thing. This is really quite horrible. Just today on the blog, I posted an update from Marco Langbroek, who was, he's keeping an eye on all the debris pieces and how they're coming down over time. Originally, India said everything would be down within 45 days. That was not accurate. There are still, I think it was 18 pieces of debris, large debris fragments

in space still. Nine of them have apogees above a thousand kilometers. All of their perigees are below 300. Um, but it's like a ton of debris that's still up there nine months later. So I'm putting them on this list because it had been a while since we really had a huge impactful debris incident, uh, or especially an anti-satellite test. It had been almost 12 years or maybe even over 12 years since we had an anti-satellite test like this. And I think it forced a lot of interesting conversations politically and from the industry at large. And I think it's going to continue to have impacts in the future as this debris stays up there longer and longer. It's going to cause more of those conversations to happen to figure out what can we do about this kind of thing in the future, to figure out how that changes the relationship with India and other countries in international politics. It's going to be an impactful event that we will still talk about years and years from now.

And hopefully nothing bad happens over the next few months as the last remaining debris pieces deorbit. But there is also that chance, right, that something major could happen between that debris and some active satellite, or worse, some inactive satellite in orbit right now. So it deserves a spot on this list because of the impacts it will have in the years ahead. So that's my... I feel like now I've got to have one negative impact on the list every year. So we'll keep that in mind for 2020. But those are my list of 10. So I'm interested to hear what you think about these. If there's any that I missed, I'm sure there are. I went through

all of my headlines of the year that I do for the headline show that the supporters get. And these are the ones that I pulled out. So if I'm missing something that you think deserves a spot on this list, let me know on Twitter at WeHaveMiko or in email anthony at mainenginecutoff.com. But for now, that is all I've got for you for 2019. Thank you all so much for listening. Thanks for a great year here on the podcast and over on the blog. Looking forward to 2020. We've got a lot of fun things coming up. So until then, thank you all so much. Have a great last day of the year and first days of the new year, and I will talk to you soon. Bye.