Main Engine Cut Off - T+147: Mike Suffredini, President & CEO of Axiom

Episode Date: February 13, 2020

Mike Suffredini, President and CEO of Axiom, joins me to talk about their recent announcement: Axiom has been selected by NASA for access to an ISS port. They will build out Axiom Station as an expansion of the ISS, and eventually operate it as a free-flying space station. Before Axiom, Mike was NASA’s ISS Program Manager for a decade.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 37 executive producers—Brandon, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, Mike, David, Mints, Joonas, Robb, Tim Dodd the Everyday Astronaut, Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Adam, and six anonymous—and 328 other supporters.TopicsAxiom SpaceAxiom Space - Overview and TeamNASA Selects First Commercial Destination Module for Space Station | NASAAxiom selected by NASA for access to International Space Station portAssembly Sequence: Watch the Axiom Segment of the ISS constructed module-by-moduleNASA Selects Axiom for ISS Node 2 Expansion - Main Engine Cut OffEpisode T+120: Dr. Mike Baine, Axiom Space - Main Engine Cut OffNextSTEP K: Commercial Destination Development in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) Free Flyer | 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 am Anthony Colangelo, as always with you, and I am really excited about today's show. A couple of weeks back, NASA announced officially that Axiom Space was selected to access the forward port on Node 2 of the International Space Station. some of what the ISS is providing to commercial companies to prepare for the future in which NASA doesn't have a giant program like the ISS to really be living and working in low-Earth orbit, and try to initiate some commercialization of that area of space. So this has been going on for a little while now, and back in May, we had Dr. Mike Bain, the chief engineer at Axiom, on to talk about Axiom's plan for this sort of thing. And now it is official. Axiom does have access to that port, and they're going to begin the build-out of Axiom's station at the ISS, and then eventually as a free-flying station, all in its own right.

So this is a really big piece of news news and something that I'm really excited to see progress because it feels like such a distinctive 2020s program, something that could only happen in the decade of the 2020s. And something that, you know, if it pans out like it seems that it's going to, is a project that we will remember in the long view of history because it does seem to be placed at such a pivotal point in time where the ISS has all this inertia, but we know that it's not going to be there forever and we need to figure out what's next. So if things go well, this will be a project that we look back on pretty fondly, I think, in the way future episodes of Main Engine Cutoff.

But today we've got a really amazing guest here with us. We've got Mike Soffardini, who is the president, CEO, co-founder of Axiom Space. For about a decade before his time at Axiom Space, he was the program manager for the ISS at NASA. So he's got quite a history here with really everything that we're going to be talking about today. But today we're going to focus on what Axiom is working on and where things go now that they officially have been selected to access that port and to expand the ISS in quite an aggressive fashion if you look at their roadmap. So I can't wait to talk to him in a second. But before we do that, I need to say a huge thank you to everyone who makes it possible for me to get guests like Mr. Suffredini here on

Main Engine Cutoff. There are 365 of you over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support who help this kind of thing happen. And this episode was produced by 37 executive producers. Brandon, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Nadeem, Peter, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, Mike,

David, Mintz, Eunice, Rob, Tim, Dodd, The Everyday Astronaut, Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Adam, and six anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for making it possible. If you like me being able to talk to people like this on the show, all of your support is critical to that. So thank you all so much for making this kind of thing possible. And without further ado, let's get Suf, as he's called, on the line. All right. Well, thank you so much, Suf, for joining me on the show. You are a legend when it comes to the ISS here.

So it's pretty exciting to be able to talk with you a little bit today. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. I don't know about the legend part, but I've spent a lot of time with the ISS. And I'm proud of what it's done and what it represents to the world. And I'm happy to have been such a big part of it yeah and certainly now you know leading into the future uh we've got a lot of expansion to talk about today that uh it seems like a pretty big time over there at axiom you know we we had uh

dr mike bain on the show back last may i believe it was um to talk a little bit about the architecture you've been working on and really things leading up to what we heard about just a couple of weeks ago with the selection that you officially got access to that forward port on Node 2. So I would love to get a little update, you know, what the team has been working on, maybe up to that selection. And then now that that selection is official, how did that change the workflow, you know, from that moment forward? selection is official, how did that change the workflow from that moment forward?

So, yes, Mike did talk to you about the overall architecture. Of course, since that time, NASA did put out a solicitation, which we responded to. Along the way, we have been, I'll say, modifying our design a little bit, not so much the systems as much as the overall layout as we attach to ISS. So you might remember the drawings of our first station view or one of our first station views. It shows us attached to the forward port. We have a node, and in line with that, we have a HAB module. On the nadir port is this beautiful Earth observatory. And then we had our research module off to the left-hand side as you're facing forward.

the left-hand side as you're facing forward. In some of our kinematic analysis, we've determined that the better location is on the zenith port of our node to put the research manufacturing module. So if you look at drawings today, you'll see it's a significant difference, but it really was based on kinematics and the fact that we planned to put the power tower there. So we've made that move. Visually, that's really probably the biggest change you'll see. But we have been doing other things to fine-tune our design. We're in what's called a pre-preliminary design phase.

And we've been working on that along with our proposal. We submit our proposal, but we're still working on our design. And then now with the award, we're sitting down. We've negotiated our new contract with NASA, which hopefully is signed today, and we'll get on with the process of now bringing NASA in officially, working through the interfaces and the things they need to see, and their side of the interface that they have to confirm with us, and then we'll settle on what our systems requirements review looks like.

This is really the requirements that lead to your preliminary design. So now we're bringing NASA on. We kind of back up a step, gather them up with us, make sure we both understand both sides of the interface and what the system requirements are, and then we head to PDR together after that. So the next little while we'll be focused on catching NASA up to where we are and then, you know, building our, putting our systems in place so we can work together

and then moving forward with the work necessary to get NASA where we are with regards to our system requirements so we can head towards PDR. So that's kind of where we are today. And I want to talk a lot more about the modules themselves, obviously, but in some of the releases that you had around the announcement, there was a mention about precursor missions before that first module actually goes up, which right now you have slated for 2024. It sounds like those are pretty similar to the guidelines that NASA posted, I believe that was last year, on private astronaut missions that could happen two times a year or so based on their initial guidelines. Are there specific plans for that, or is that more of something that you see as a good way to pave the way for, you know, the operational side of things once you

are up on orbit? What's the deal with these precursor missions here? Really, it's the latter. So NASA did put out their guidelines recently. We've been working on these precursor missions since well before NASA put out those guidelines. And to really overall, the thought process early on when we started working on our station design, which was two and a half years ago, I guess we got our SpaceX agreement done with NASA, summer of 2017, what's that, two and a half years ago? No, yeah, two and a half years ago, roughly speaking. Yeah, two and a half years ago, roughly speaking. We knew from the early conversations with NASA that it looked like since we can house eight crew,

we kind of agreed between us that it would be really good if we started doing missions early on to get sort of a cadence, how we operate with NASA, how we're going to take care of our crew, how that affects the ISS. And so we had agreed early on that it would be good for us to probably do some early missions. From that was born the idea that there's probably a demand for missions to ISS and a likelihood that NASA would treat that idea favorably. And so NASA went off to work their side of, you know, can we accept them? You know, people want to fly to ISS. Is this possible? And we started working on the business end of it and the advantage it had to us for getting, like I said, our operational cadence in place before

our first assembly flight, our first node showed up. So we've been working this for some time. It works out based on what we think customer demand to be that we'll fly a couple times a year. We fly short duration flights, which are about eight days docked to ISS. Typically, this is for what we call private astronauts, and these have also been known as tourists. And whenever we fly a flight like that, we always fly it with an Axiom professional astronaut as well. So the professional astronaut is trained like the same rigor as NASA astronauts, and they can do the same things NASA astronauts can do on ISS. And that way we don't put any burden on the ISS crew when our less trained astronauts show up. And then the other types of flights we do are to support countries who want

to fly to space. And that includes countries that today don't have opportunities to fly to ISS as professional astronauts to spend a significant amount of time doing research and other things that benefit that country. And also countries that fly on ISS today, but because they don't have a lot of opportunity, they want to invest in opportunities to fly to gain more experience. And for those types of cases, we provide the professional astronaut training, and we fly flights catered to them, which are today they start off as 60-day missions, and they'll grow to

very long lengths once we have our own modules on orbit. And it's only in those particular flights, we only fly with professional astronauts. The whole group of individuals are professionally trained astronauts. And we, not only in this case, then are we flying them to orbit like we do for our private astronauts, but private astronauts are very limited on orbit in terms of time. So a lot of it's about the experience and recording the experience and talking about the experience and promoting philanthropic types of events. But for sovereign astronauts, they want to fly and do research and early manufacturing and things of this nature that benefit the country and their university systems and national

health initiatives. And so those individuals, not only do we fly them for 60 days on orbit, but we also provide research opportunities for them as well, both early on on ISS through National Lab and then later on our modules as well. So that's a long-winded answer to the question, but we believe the demand is there. We show it as about two flights per year. We don't do that as two flights a year because NASA said two flights a year. This is what we think our demand is. Now, we circle back with NASA.

NASA says two flights a year. Each flight, we have to sit down and say, okay, we think we want to do this flight. NASA asks us certain criteria we have to meet in order to hold that flight. And so we do each of those individually. And then NASA will look at that on the whole. And I suspect that, you know, if there's three flights in a year, if it kind of worked out they could fit them all in, that'll be okay as well. I don't think NASA's cast that number in concrete. be okay as well. I don't think NASA's cast that number in concrete. So in each of these cases,

are these dedicated space flights, or is this like buying an extra seat or two if available on commercial crew flights, or is that not really an option? No, no, no. We procure the entire flight, so it's our mission. So we don't rely on the government having flown something. We don't rely on subsidies from the government. We go directly to the commercial providers, and we negotiate a price for that flight, which includes the seats and the max amount of cargo that vehicle can carry. And then we get the crew trained. The provider, the launch provider, trains them for that vehicle. We train them on orbit and provide all of the logistics and everything they need on orbit,

including the research like I talked about. It's a really turnkey mission for our crew, and we put all the crew on the vehicle, get them taken care of, and basically own that entire flight. It's really incredible that that is part of what this announcement is, you know, because I think either each half of this announcement would be a massive piece of news, if taken alone, right, that there's this serious of a program to fly these private missions to the ISS, and a second news item of also we're building a space station. This is a massive amount of work that is announced

as a singular program obviously there's a good through line through this whole thing but i'm curious how those two pieces obviously they you know they connect in a lot of ways but where did your head start on all of this as a roadmap was it more towards the crew flight side and increasing the frequency of that or more towards building a space station and therefore we need crew flights? No, I tell this story occasionally, so I'll tell it to you and give you the Reader's Digest version of it. But the individual who owns the company with me, his name is Dr. Cam Gaffarian. And Dr. Gaffarian started a company called SGT. And SGT, until very recently, was the company that trained NASA astronauts and operates the International Space Station for NASA.

And he just recently sold the company. So when we got together about four years ago, When we got together about four years ago, he was talking about opportunities. Maybe I'd like to come to work at SGT. We weren't finding anything that we both thought was really a good fit for me. Finally, he asked me one day, well, what do you want to do? Which I found as an interesting question. You would have thought that I would start that way, but I wasn't really searching for a job at the time. And so I said, well, that's a good question. Let me go think about it. And I did agonize over

it for a while. And I called him back the next day or so. And I said, you know, Cam, I think really the only thing I know how to do is build and operate a space station. So I think I'll just wait. Eventually some commercial company will want to do that and then I'll perhaps have a job with them. And Cam said, okay, well, let me think about that. And I had no idea what that meant. But the next day he called me, he said, okay, I'm in. And I said, well, what do you mean? And he says, well, let's go start a company that you manage, and let's go build the commercial space station because there needs to be one, so we may as well do it.

So we did start this company, and we can connect a lot of dots. We both do it for the same reason. It really is the benefits to humanity and us as a species are really important to us and drive everything we really do. And we can talk volumes about why we think having a space station in low Earth orbit is always going to be necessary for us as a species, really, but let's start with us as a country. And so that's always been our drive.

We said we want to build the world's first commercial space station, and from there we put together a plan on the best way to do that, and here we are. But to go back now and answer your other question, space stations, it's a platform on orbit to provide services to multiple types of users. And we identify those as six different types of users. And you need to provide a platform and utilities. And just because of the way it works, crews tend to be, crew time tends to be part of the utilities that you end up having to provide because it's a lot cheaper for a researcher to fly his research

than it is to fly the research and the researcher. So what we always knew was that we were going to have to have the crew. We were going to have to manage the crew. We knew there was a good market for crew, both private and professional astronauts, as we call them, which is a little different than the way NASA calls it, by the way. And what we always said was, since we have to provide, that's one of the quote-unquote utilities that we need to provide, we need to assume that's our responsibility. So we always

knew that in order to have a space station operated correctly, we'd have to have our own crew. We always knew that in order to have a space station operated correctly, we'd have to have our own crew. We just thought that there's a great crossroads between the crew we would have to have and individuals that wanted to fly. So the way we look at the whole structure is some crew have to be trained to operate the Axiom station. The majority of the crew can be there and are there to work on everything else that needs to be done, meaning research and stuff. So if we build the station right, we could probably only have one Axiom crew member on our vehicle at any time. on our vehicle at any time, but other work can be done by other sovereign astronauts that are flying and want to gain that kind of on-orbit experience. And private astronauts that fly, even for short periods of time, they all want to participate in the activities of what's going on on orbit.

So it's a great synergistic thing. And so we'd always planned to have a crew, and it wasn't until we sat down with NASA, and NASA said, ooh, you know, if you fly up to eight crew at any one time, you know, there's only six or seven on the ISS at any one time. That's a major impact. We should practice that a little bit. That's what got us started thinking about it. And then as we looked into it, we thought, you know what, there's probably a market there we can serve if NASA is willing to let us fly to ISS. There's probably a market there we can serve early on. So to let us fly to ISS. There's probably a market there we can serve early on. So that's the genesis of how we ended up here. And the Port

Award has nothing to do with the crew flights. It just turned out when we started talking about the Port Award and what we plan to do on orbit, we started talking about these flights. But we will be announcing our first flight here imminently. It's really, you know, an impressive roadmap overall, and it shows the seriousness that you're coming at the problem with, and it's really got to be one of the most exciting things going on in and around the ISS region right now. So it's cool to hear a lot more on that topic. I want to shift focus a little bit to the modules themselves. In your announcement, you also referred to Team Axiom, as it was called there, that included Boeing, Thales Alenia,

Intuitive Machines, and Maxar. I took a guess over on the blog a little bit back of what they would be doing, just kind of pulling out of past announcements of programs that they've worked on that are a little bit similar. But I'd love to hear if there's more detail on what each of those partners will be bringing to the table for Axiom Station. So I can tell you what category they fall into. Each one is in a different state of our teaming arrangements. Some of them are written so we say, now, okay, once we get to go ahead, we're going to start figuring out what the systems are specifically, what kind of system we use, what kind of engineering we're going to use, what are our criteria. And then we're going to sit down with the companies and say, okay,

you know, these are the things Axiom is going to do. Here's the things we think you're good at. You know, what is it going to cost to get this, this, or this? And we want to build this way, not the way they traditionally build space things, but areas where we think there's significant savings while still maintaining safety. And then we walk through those scenarios. But big picture, so it's yet to be agreed to in some cases. But big picture, KBR does ops and training for NASA,

and we have a contract with NASA to utilize their facilities for the training that we have to do on site, the ISS training in particular. And so we have that agreement with NASA, and so we have our agreements with KBR so they can help us do the training. So the same people that train NASA astronauts train ours in the same facilities. Meanwhile, the early design of our station has always included the operators to make sure we're building an operationally efficient vehicle. And so they continue to do that job for us.

And in the future, they'll help us stand up our operations arm. So that's KBR. Tazi has built, this is Talos Alenia Space Italy. OZI has built, this is Talos Alenia Space Italy, they've built 40% of the module shells that are in orbit today on ISS. And it made a lot of sense to us that since they understand how to manufacture the most critical part of a spacecraft that lives in orbit, which is the pressure cell. They know how to do that. They've been doing it for years. To NASA standards, we felt that was the best people to have build ours, and they're already tooled in doing it.

There's a lot of companies that know how to do it, but they're not really tooled to it. So we thought TOSI was best for that. And they can do other things for us, but their primary role is to build the shells and help us build the EO, the Earth Observatory. The shells, once the shells are built, they're shipped here to Houston, and we basically build them out here in Houston, but the shells are made by Tazi in Italy.

Boeing is, of course, Boeing can do almost anything in human spaceflight, and we're proud that they're a team member for us. And they're one of those that we're going to spend a lot of time with them once we define the roles and responsibilities over the next couple weeks when we've got the contract done. Then together we'll agree on what work they want to participate in, and we'll get them lined up for that. Intuitive Machines, also co-owned by Dr. Cam Gaffarian, also provides us engineering support,

and they'll probably provide specific systems to us, and we're sorting that out amongst us now. And Maxar specifically was brought on to provide a robotic arm. They've got quite a bit of experience in spacecraft, smaller spacecraft with arms, but have been doing work in larger arms. And until recently, they owned MDA. That's apparently changing here in the near future. But that was what their teaming arrangement was about. Now, in all cases, in order to keep our costs down, our teaming arrangements state that as long as they're still cost competitive, then we continue to use them. So we're not, we're, our main drive is to build a safe vehicle

that's cost competitive. And so we kind of drive that into all our teaming arrangements. We have to all be sensitive to cost throughout the whole build process. Now, your timeline is fairly aggressive as well. You've got the first module slated for 2024, and then essentially a yearly rollout from there. I'd love to hear a little bit about the thinking behind that. If it's, you know, you've got a couple of years here to get that first module and probably all the others designed and built to specification and then a pretty quick rollout but you're also you know up against the back end there at least right now the ISS is is supported through 2028 but likely that will move to 2030 or even

later than that and I'm curious how you're approaching that sort of situation where, you know, eventually you are going to roll off of the ISS and be a free flying space station of your own whenever the ISS sees its day come to an end. But how do you feel that that impacts your plans on the back end of that schedule as well, if there's any delays or anything like that, and you've got a real big situation there to deal with before you're done building out, the ISS is having trouble, what that kind of risk posture is like for you? in Congress and around NASA about the date. We actually prefer the 2028 date because that's what the vehicle is certified to, and we think it's a little early to decide to go beyond 2028. Of course, if they go a little bit beyond 2028, we're not going to fall on our sword.

We're not going to fall on our sword. But our build is we build our first two, of the first three modules, the first one is an MPLN that exists at KSC today. So the shell is done. We have to do a mod to it. And then we ship it here to Houston, get started working on it.

The two modules, the node and the hab, will be built to the same criteria and be built in a row. So one pops out, then the next one is right in line, and it goes next. And if you look at the schedule then, the way we have it work is we begin work on the node here in Houston, and Tazi begins building the shelf. I'm sorry, we begin work on the research and manufacturing module, which uses the MPLM shelf. Meanwhile, Tazi's responsibility then is to build the other two modules for us. We can get started on the research and manufacturing module, which will give us a leg up on how we build the internal runs,

and this is one of these things where we're going to build all the components to go inside, outside, and then install them as sections inside the vehicles when they show up. So we're going to gain a lot of experience with the research and manufacturing module early on and do all the layouts and begin construction of the internal pieces here in Houston while Tazi is building the shell. So it's not a serial thing. So we'll deliver the modules here to Houston when they're done, and we'll populate them here in Houston and test them and check them out and then close them up and ship them to the launch site to be launched. and then close them up and ship them to the launch site to be launched.

So that all sounds, you know, really fast, and it's not really fast. It's four and a half years for the first module. The second module is right behind it. The sequence that we say today will launch is Node, HAB, and then Research Manufacturing Module on six-month centers, and the schedule supports that. But we can do it a little bit differently if we have to. We could choose to fly the MPLM, I mean, sorry, the research manufacturing module a little bit earlier if we want. We could fly the node and then fly the research manufacturing module if we need a little more time on the HAB.

So we have some flexibility. So we feel pretty good that we can get these first three flown within about a year of the first one we can have the other two done on orbit. And then we are going to build the research, I'm sorry, we're going to build the power and cooling tower based on when ISS is going to be retired. So if NASA starts talking about 2028 in earnest, then we'll start working on a power cooling tower in about a year and a half from now to make sure we're ready to launch it about a year before ISS is retired. We don't want to have it too soon because ISS solar arrays are a unique and challenging part of the management of operation of the International Space Station. And we don't want to add another, you know, large solar array for NASA to have to mess with until towards the end. But we do have to fly it within about a year before departure so we can check it out.

If it has any problems, we can fix our problems so that we're ready to separate and fly standalone when ISS is decommissioned. So that kind of drives the plan. So we got a little bit of an eye towards when NASA makes a decision. If we get to the point where NASA's staying on orbit longer, I mean, at some point, NASA could end up staying, or NASA, I keep saying NASA, really the ISS partnership, could agree to hold the ISS on orbit longer. If it's much longer than we're ready to depart, then it starts to eat into our revenue because each of those countries represent also users. And so we wouldn't want it to stay on

orbit too long, but it's really too early to worry about that. So we're just talking about this sort of phased approach, which today we could support as early as the 2028 departure and the vehicle's already certified to that. So we kind of think we have a look at 2028 with a plan towards in the next couple, three years, take a look at everything. Where's it going? How are we building? What's going on in orbit? And say, okay, now, should we go beyond 28? And if so, how far? So that's the way we look at that whole situation. And so that power tower is really the gating element to when Axiom Station could fly free by itself. If that's a requirement, and really, up until that point, it's attached to the ISS or nothing?

No, we have a contingency scenario. So at any point in ISS's life, if something happens, we can separate and fly standalone. The reason why that's possible is all of our modules can fly themselves. We don't use second stage. We get deposited in low-earth orbit, and then the module itself has all the systems to fly itself to the ISS, and then we attach it. So if you look at our module design, you'll see that the upper half of our modules are solar arrays.

The bottom half are really cooling panels. And so we can produce enough power when we fly standalone and can fly solar inertial. If a bad day happens on ISS, we have an automated capability to close the hatch and separate and fly standalone. What we're limited in, then, is how much crew time can we do on orbit. There's probably work we have to do. We'll be minimally effective or not. We'll be less than optimally able to handle all of our customers at that point, but we can survive the separation and operate standalone until the power module shows up. So we can operate without the power module, but we're not full-up crewed and all that sort of,

those sort of things. But we can protect the users and get temporary crews up there until our power tower shows up. So that's a long-winded way of telling you that the power tower is what we need to do all the things we plan to do, but we do have a capability in case we need to, to separate and fly without the power tower until it shows up. And these mock-ups here, obviously the modules will as well, not just the mock-ups, but you've got quite a lot of birthing ports and docking ports shown that are free, even when you've fully built out the system. So I'm curious what your policy will be, you know, as you're at ISS, are those ports up

to be used at your discretion if there was another company or organization that wanted to dock or berth something there? Or is that part of your deal with the ISS that, you know, if you're adding ports to the ISS, they could be used by the partners overall? We do not have to, but we have told NASA have to, but we have told NASA informally that those ports can be made available to users. We just need to work with them if they have users that want to. So those ports are really there for us to evolve over time to handle other user needs as different users come up or as we grow. And until we need those ports, they're certainly available for whoever needs to use it. But we fill them up.

They're pretty full when we leave. When we leave, we only have one node. It's after we separate that we add the second node, and that's when all those ports become available. So we basically, while we're attached, we'll have one port available until we get to about the last year when we populate the, we bring the PMM over. I don't know if you're familiar with PMM. So we grab, we would like to have the PMM. I know you'd like, why the PMM? We could talk about that. We'd like to have the PMM and that'll take up one port and then the power tower. I'd like to have the PMM, and that'll take up one port and then the power tower.

We'll move the research and manufacturing module from the Zenith port to the port port, and then we'll put the power tower on the Zenith port. So about a year before we leave, we'll fill up all those CBM locations. But we would love to support other users if they have a need during the period when they're vacant. So one of the most interesting parts of this is that there is a kind of parallel program going on with this whole ISS commercialization push from NASA. And it was talked about a little bit last year. I'm not sure the exact status, so this might not be something that you can really comment on, but there's this free flyer, you know, kind of request out there from NASA that's, I don't know how parallel that is in timeline, but we did hear some other people commenting on, you know, this award that they're looking forward to that free flyer announcement

from NASA. How does that interplay with these plans? Is that something that you would look to also contribute to, or would that be something that would be kind of outside your interest, given that you've got a full workload here with this Axiom Station plan overall? Don't take anything off the table until you have to. So that is still on our table. It will depend on what NASA ultimately releases for what you referred to, which is Appendix K of the broad area announcement. However, as you said, and we agree, our path has always been this path. You go to the ISS. You work together with the partners.

You build up your station. When ISS is ready to retire, there's a whole lot of work that's going on at ISS at that point that you don't want to throw away because the market will be there, but it'll still be a very nascent stage. So many of those users won't survive the cost of building and relaunching their hardware to orbit. So it's a natural progression then to move that stuff over. And a lot of countries that are part of ISS now will have been comfortable with how we operate and know what we do. So when we separate, we hope that they make good customers for us as well. So that's always been our plan.

FreeFlyer is a great opportunity because you can build really whatever you want. And that's a very liberating thing to be able to do. However, in the end, ultimately, we're building what we want exactly the way we want to do it. We like CBMs. The interfaces to ISS are not a big issue for us. The safety things they worry about at NASA, we worry about as well. The way we solve those worries will be different, but we'll certainly address them all. So to us, it's part of our DNA.

So attaching the ISS is not a big impact. But if you're not real familiar with what NASA does, or even human spaceflight in general, having the liberty to build your own spacecraft exactly the way you want to and not worry about all that is very compelling, I'm sure, to some folks. So I think I like it also because it represents more providers in low-Earth orbit, which to me, a robust economy in low-Earth orbit is important for us all. Certainly.

And obviously, if there's more people buying crew flights up to low-Earth orbit, ideally that would be bringing prices down, which would positively affect your business needs as well. So, you know, the more the merrier to some extent with the given the low flight rate we have right now for humans into orbit. That's an important part. There's been a lot of talk about what's going on in commercial space. But commercial space today, when you think about humans, are about launch vehicles or suborbital flights. It's not been about a long-term platform in space that will be available like ISS is today

that really is key to those commercial systems built to serve low Earth orbit having something to do. commercial systems built to serve low Earth orbit having something to do. So this is a very unique part of the commercial space, and that's why this port announcement was such a big deal, because it does allow us to officially be in that space where nobody is today. We know it's going to grow, but nobody's there. And so commercially speaking, when people look at manufacturing, they don't know where they're going to go after they do their demonstration on the ISS. Now they can look to orbit.

It completes the whole picture. The providers of services to low-Earth orbit know what their future is. They know we're going to be there. We're going to be big. The commercial guys that are building things on ISS, practicing manufacturing on ISS, know that once they get to the point where they can manufacture and make money, they can't work free on, subsidize on ISS. They've got to have a place to go. And we turn out to be that place. So this is a really important piece of the puzzle that's finally been identified because of this Port Award.

The last question I have for you is a little bit of historical context, just from, you know, your experience with this program. You've obviously spent many years with ISS, as we talked about, and through a really transitional time period as commercial cargo and crew were in the works, came online, and things in the industry changed a lot. So, you know, if you were to wind your mind back 10 years or even longer than that, what did your view of history for the, or the view of the future at that point for the ISS look like? And how much does this map to what you had in your head way back when? Yeah, I've asked, I've been asked that question before, and my answer is less than exciting,

My answer is less than exciting because really what we imagined ISS was for has evolved dramatically in the last, you know, since we started flying ISS. You know, we started off saying, hey, governments need to learn how to work together in space and we need a platform first in low Earth orbit to get started. We got research we want to do. It's the first step towards exploration. We've got research we want to do. It's the first step towards exploration. We've got a bunch of countries together. The government's attitude was very unique, which got the countries that are together together. And we built this thing thinking, wow, the hard part is going to be, can we put these pieces together on orbit and have them work when none of them will see their partner, at least physically, on the ground?

And we were doing this all as sort of, we've got to build this thing together. It's for the betterment of the governments. They all have their needs. We're going to serve all their needs on orbit. It's very government-oriented, very next-step human spaceflight-oriented. It wasn't until we started to get ready to fly that we even thought commercial and started imagining the future beyond this. And so over time, we've evolved from not only is this an important step for the governments, but it's really become this, okay, but in order for governments to go beyond low-Earth orbit, we really probably need to commercialize every step away. It's just like in the old days.

You know, you had explorers, and then you had pioneers, and eventually you had settlers. If you don't do those things, then you can't take the next step. Explorers can only go so far and be so effective. So we really realized that this was a first step in a broader picture and that you had to, as the explorers went out, you had to backfill with the settlers. And the commercial effort around that is what brings the quote-unquote settlers to space. And so the whole thought of what a space station would do and how it would serve whatever the goals that were has evolved as time has gone by.

So, you know, about 2008, we said, hey, we really need to get commercial providers to help us with ISS. And so was born, that was probably a little before 2000, it was 2005. So was born the idea of a commercial cargo vehicle and then commercial crew vehicles. And now we're talking about, you know, platforms that can replace ISS so the governments can move on, so commercial can take hold, governments can move on, build infrastructure for exploration, and become users in low-Earth orbit, which helps humanity. for exploration and become users in low-Earth orbit, which helps humanity.

You know, we talk about the big step is when we separate and humans remain permanently in low-Earth orbit, because that to us is really the big first step of humanity off the planet. So it's kind of evolved over time. It's not, to me, was never just sort of a clear picture from the very beginning kind of discussion. Well, it's really exciting to hear about. And, you know, I'm sure there's plenty here to unpack that we'll be following over the next couple of years as you start flying these missions up to the ISS, and then we start seeing hardware. So I'll be following along closely. Hopefully,

I can come down and visit sometime and see some of this stuff in flow. And thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for all the info. this has been a real pleasure to talk with you thank you very much for your interest in your time and we look forward to having you down here and showing you around sometime awesome thank you so much thanks again to suff for coming on the show that was an amazing conversation with a lot of good info in it that uh is not talked about too much but is low-key one of the most exciting uh missions really overall that is happening in low-Earth orbit today. We've got talk of private astronaut, professional astronaut missions outside of the ISS's typical schedule, starting in just a couple of years, quickly followed by a build-out of a commercial space station.

It's really an amazing program overall, and I'm really hopeful that this will come together in the way that we all hope, and it could be one of the most exciting things to follow along with. So we will keep tabs on it here on Main Engine Cutoff as we've already been doing. We'll stay on it as things evolve. So thanks again to Suf and thanks to Bo over at Axiom Space as well. He has been a huge help booking some of these guys to talk. If you liked this interview, if you liked the one with Dr. Mike Bain a couple of months ago, and if you liked having Steve and Tim from Intuitive Machines on the episodes that we've done with all of them, you can thank Bo for that. He's been a huge help. So thank you so much for everything, for lining this all up, for dealing with scheduling. But for now, that is

all I've got for you. I'm sure I'll be back with you pretty soon because there's just been a massive amount of space news to sort through this week. I'm still thinking about a lot, hoping to hit record again pretty soon to break some of that down. But until next time, head over to mainenginecutoff.com for the show notes and for the blog. If you want to help support the show, mainenginecutoff.com slash support. Thank you all so much. I will talk to you soon. I'm not a fool