Main Engine Cut Off - T+15: More SLS Roadmap Details, and Landed Falcon 9 Static Fires

Episode Date: August 3, 2016

The roadmap for SLS got a little murkier this week thanks to some additional details in the GAO report regarding its cost and schedule. SpaceX test fired a landed core three times in three days last week, paving the way for reuse of the CRS-8 core. GAO Report Indicates EM-2 Plans to Fly Crew - Main Engine Cut Off U.S. GAO - NASA Human Space Exploration: Opportunity Nears to Reassess Launch Vehicle and Ground Systems Cost and Schedule NASA updates status and timetable of ambitious Asteroid Redirect Mission | NASASpaceFlight.com MSFC propose Aerojet Rocketdyne supply EUS engines | NASASpaceFlight.com Landed Falcon 9 First Stage Test Firing - YouTube SpaceX Conducts Full-Duration Static Fire of JCSAT-14 Core - Main Engine Cut Off SpaceX test fires returned Falcon 9 booster at McGregor | NASASpaceFlight.com Next Space Station Cargo Launch From Virginia Targeted for August | NASA Email feedback to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo and this week I want to follow up a little bit on our topic from last week, which was the roadmap for SLS beyond EM1 in 2018. Now, I posted a little bit about this on the blog over at mainenginecutoff.com throughout the week, but I want to talk about it a little more in depth here because it only gets weirder as you investigate what's going on with the roadmap for the SLS. There's been a lot of talk about SLS and Orion because of the Government Accountability Office reports that came out last week, but also because the last two days of the NASA Advisory Council

were last Thursday and Friday. So there's been a lot of talk about these programs, about what they're working on now, where they're headed, and honestly a lot of talk about what kind of trouble they're in due to funding shortfalls or schedule delays or different things like that. But there's just been a lot of focus on them in the last week or so. Now, the main thing I was questioning last week was the fact that there was a requirement in place that limited the ability to introduce a new propulsion element on SLS when it is flying with crew. So, for instance, on EM-2, NASA hopes to fly the Exploration Upper Stage, which is the upgrade from the ICPS that's flying on EM-2, NASA hopes to fly the Exploration Upper Stage, which is the upgrade from the ICPS that's

flying on EM-1. There was a requirement in place that would prohibit them from flying crew on that mission because the EUS was a new element of propulsion. But based on the GAO report, I had some time to go over it in full, and there's a line or two in there about the fact that they may fly EUS on a human flight without flying it on an uncrewed flight first. So this stuff is all very confusing and weird, but let me just read you an excerpt from this GAO report. NASA officials told us that the agency intends to have the exploration upper stage complete for EM-2. They also stated that they are currently developing a test plan, which includes examining the risk of performing only ground testing of the Exploration Upper Stage, because current plans do not allow for a separate flight test of the stage prior to EM-2.

So that right there is referencing that requirement that was in place previously. Now it sounds like there's some battles going on inside of NASA that would push to only do ground testing of that EUS before they actually fly it. Now, it's very unclear whether that is the decision, whether they are going to fly the EUS on EM-2 with crew, but it says that they're developing a test plan to figure out if they can do that. So it doesn't seem fully resolved yet, though some people seem to be saying out there that they are flying EM-2 with the EUS with crew, but this report makes it sound like that is their intention, but they're not fully there yet in terms of the test plan. Now, the one saving grace for this stage is that it seems likely

that the EUS would be using four RL-10 engines as their engines on that stage, which are engines with a lot of heritage. They've been flying for, you know, well over half a century at this point. They've got a lot of heritage behind those things, and they're even going through crew rating for flights of the Boeing Starliner, which would be flying on top of an Atlas rocket, which of course uses the Centaur upper stage with the RL-10. So those engines are going through crew rating now. That may give them a bit of a leg up to fly EUS before they've actually flight tested it. But just kind of wanted to bring up that line of the GAO report, which is a little bit unclear still on whether that is the decision or whether it's just the intention as it states. But we'll keep an eye on that because, you know, this makes it seem like

we would see crew on EM-2 if everything can be resolved internally to NASA, because that's where that requirement came from. It was all internal NASA reports were that it was from the astronaut office that was putting that requirement in place. Now, if they figured something out that the astronaut office is comfortable with, and they would fly that without flight testing it and with only doing ground testing, then we could see crew fly on EM-2. Now, looking at the schedule

for SLS and its flight rate and what it may fly in the early 2020s, that's where things get a little bit more weird. If you remember from last week, I was talking about the fact that there is this Europa mission that is congressionally mandated to fly on SLS no later than 2022. So right now, NASA is saying that they would get EM-2 off by 2021, though the GAO report says they're only 40% confident in that date, and it would likely slip to 2023. So I was talking about the chess pieces that are the schedule in these flights, where the Europa mission would fly in 2022, and then EM-2 might fly after that, or there's some kind of weird alignment there.

That is until some additional announcements were made about the asteroid redirect mission, though that's still a terrible name. They're only grabbing a boulder off an asteroid. They're not redirecting an entire asteroid, but that's still what they're calling it, the asteroid redirect mission. So in an article on nasaspaceflight.com about the schedule updates for the asteroid mission. Down towards the end, it said that the launch vehicle for the robotic element of that mission, the thing that would go out to the asteroid, grab the chunk of it, and bring it back to a distant lunar orbit, the launch vehicle has not yet been chosen for that robotic element. They do note that the target launch date for that robotic piece has moved at least a year to targeting December 2021 as of right now, and then it goes on to state that they have not yet picked a launch vehicle, but there are three choices as of right now. Now, they didn't

specifically say which three launch vehicles would be the candidate for launching that element of the mission. But some people seem to understand that being SLS, Falcon Heavy, and the Atlas V. Now, if that is the case, if those are the three candidates, I don't really understand why SLS is even being talked about as something that would launch the robotic element of this mission. Because look at this logjam that's happening in this schedule in the early 2020s for SLS. We have EM-1 right now, or sorry, EM-2 in 2021. That is only 40% confidence level that it would fly that date, but NASA is targeting 2021. So that kind of, you know, that throws out the ability for SLS to launch the asteroid mission in December 2021. Then there's a congressionally mandated Europa mission in 2022, potential EM-2 in 2023. There's so much packed into the early 2020s for SLS that it gets to be very confusing.

Now, the reason I find this all very confusing, how much they're putting into the early 2020s for SLS, is because in the past, NASA has said that SLS could fly at most once a year. And that would be, you know, with pretty generous funding levels that they could get at most once a year. And that would be, you know, with pretty generous funding levels that they could get to flying once a year with SLS. I think they had said, you know, if the budget ramps up significantly in support of Mars missions or something like that, they might be able to go to two launches a year. But it seems like their average rate would be about one launch every one year. But it's long been understood that that wouldn't really kick in until the mid-2020s. But then you look at what's being proposed as an SLS roadmap,

and you see they're trying to plan for once a year of launches. And they haven't said whether that's feasible for them to build that many core stages and that many solid rocket boosters and all the hardware that would be needed for those launches. They haven't commented in a long time about whether that's realistic or not to build that many SLS hardware pieces in that short amount of time. They also haven't commented on the congressionally mandated launch of the Aroba mission on top of SLS in 2022 or earlier. They haven't commented on that in a long time. That is part of the most recent budget that has been passed for NASA. So I'd be interested to see when the 2017 budget, if and when, that actually gets passed for NASA. I would be looking in there specifically for a comment about that Europa launch,

because maybe something's delayed and they just haven't said that officially. They don't want that extra piece of info out there. But something is up there. They haven't talked about it in a long time. And to me, that would be a big piece of focus for the SLS roadmap in the early 2020s, since that is the only thing mandated by Congress to be launched by a particular date on that rocket. So that seems like a very curious thing that they're leaving out of all of this talk about the roadmap for SLS in the early 2020s. Now, on top of all this confusing schedule

orientation that I'm talking about, you factor in things like NASA not requesting funding for work on the exploration upper stage and Congress saying, no, no, you have to have this amount of money put towards that project. Things like that make you really wonder what's going on with this rocket internally. Do people, you know, want to see this thing get off the launch pad? Are they kind of fighting it in hopes that something else would come about? Maybe plans would change? It's hard to tell. But the fact that NASA left out the EUS funding entirely from its budget and Congress stuck it in there to kind of force them to get that thing ready for launch, that's a little bit scary to me, especially when you say that, you know, we're only five years away from a launch of a human on that rocket with this entirely new're only five years away from a launch of a

human on that rocket with this entirely new piece of propulsion. It's a little bit funny, and something's a little off there. Maybe NASA was just thinking that it's not yet time to focus on EUS, we need the funding elsewhere. And that would make sense, but they never really cleared up why it was left out of the budget and why Congress had to stick it in. But you know, all of this is to say that, yes, it's very confusing. Yes, there's a lot of uncertainty, but that doesn't seem like a good sign for these programs, especially heading into a November where we're going to have political turnover, we're going to have a new administrator, we're going to have a transition team.

All of these things are kind of coming together in a perfect storm of things that, you know, plans are going to change here. And I'm not sure if everyone's going to be happy about what happens because of the state that these projects are in. And this is all, you know, separate from the fact that the technology side of these things are very good. I mean, the rocket itself would be a good rocket. It would be capable of a lot of missions. It would open up a lot of territory for us to operate in space and a lot of different mission profiles that we wouldn't have had previously. But they're just in this weird state right now where things are coming together in a very weird way. There's a lot of uncertainty and confusion around the plans for the SLS, for Orion,

for the payloads that would fly on top of these. And I'm just not sure that they're in the best spot they could be coming up on an election in November. So that was a lot of ranting about, you know, all of these hypotheticals that people are throwing around, both within NASA and outside of NASA. But if I can summarize, the GAO report says that EM-2 may fly with crew with the EUS while it has not yet been flight tested and just underwent, you know, more extensive ground testing. The SLS launch manifest seems to be a lot of hypotheticals, nothing really locked and hard in stone right there for the early 2020s, beyond the 2018 launch.

There's a lot that's possible with the SLS, but nothing has really been locked in yet. And the one thing that has been locked in, which is the congressionally mandated Europa mission, has not been commented on in a couple of years at this point. So there's just a lot of uncertainty here, a lot of confusion in a couple of years at this point. So there's just a lot of uncertainty here, a lot of confusion, a lot of sleight of hand, you know, people bringing up certain topics, but not mentioning other topics, requesting funding for one thing, but not

requesting it for another. So it's hard to tell what's going on internally there right now. There's a lot of smoke in the way of seeing clearly about, you know, what's going on with these programs. smoke in the way of seeing clearly about what's going on with these programs. So it's going to make for a very interesting fall here in the United States as we have this political turnover and as these plans get put under a microscope. I would be very interested to see what is exposed about these different topics that I'm bringing up here when they get looked at more in depth by whatever transition team comes in later this year. Moving on from all of that political talk for a little while, there wasn't a whole lot else going on this week, except for something very interesting happening down in McGregor, Texas.

McGregor is where SpaceX has its testing facility where they test all of their engines, all of their first stages and second stages before they are flown on a mission. first stages and second stages before they are flown on a mission. And on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of last week, they had the JCSAT-14 core on the test stand for full duration firings three days in a row. Now this core was the one that launched the JCSAT-14 satellite up on a GTO trajectory and came back and made a landing on the ASDS in the Atlantic Ocean. And this was the core that came back through very significant re-entry heating, did a three-engine landing burn, and took what Elon Musk called max damage on its way back to the ship. And it was stated that this core would not

be flying again, though, of course, as I pointed out on the podcast, that doesn't mean it couldn't fly again, but it was specifically going to be used for ground testing to verify all of their other cores for flight. Since this one took the most damage, this was the most beat up. If they could test this and really put this one through the ringer, there are other cores that came back from less harsh environments, either LEO launches or better landings from GTO with less re-entry heating, maybe a more lofted trajectory. If this one would work out for those kind of things and be reusable, then the other cores would be as well. So three days in a row this core was on the test stand, did full duration static fires of all nine engines,

and was only taken down off the stand because the core for one of their upcoming flights, the AMO-6 launch coming up in the next few weeks. That core arrived from the Hawthorne factory, arrived at McGregor for testing before it will be sent on to Cape Canaveral. So once that core goes through its testing and is sent on its way to the Cape, I would expect the JCSAT-14 core to be put back on the stand for additional testing. It seems like they're going to put this core through a lot of testing, very extensive testing. It seems like they're going to put this core through a lot of testing, very extensive testing. I'll be interested to see how many times they actually do fire this core before they declare the other cores reusable or anything like that. But it is interesting to note that in the video that SpaceX posted, the interstage that it actually flew with on the mission that it flew for

JCSAT-14, that interstage was missing. It was replaced by either a static test article of an interstage or a new interstage or some other kind of thing that was kind of the placeholder for the interstage, maybe an adapter for the hold down mechanisms they were using for this test to kind of, you know, simulate different loads or anything like that. But I wouldn't be surprised if that interstage itself was off being dissected in another place to kind of see how that fared through re-entry, through stage separation, that ignition of that Merlin vacuum engine kind of, you know, put a lot of heat and load on the interstage for sure. So I'm sure that part's being tested separately,

but it looks like, you know, all things are being tested out for these cores, and I'll be interested to see what they say coming out of these tests if they are fully comfortable to fly the CRS-8 core again, the CRS-9 core again. We still haven't heard about TICOM-8's core, but all in all, things seem to be going really well. I would guess that, you know, three times in three days, that quick turnaround say that everything went well in those first tests, and seems like they're kind of testing out that rapid turnaround of these cores, but, you know, if something went wrong in the first test or the second test, you wouldn't have seen them take it all the way to the third test. So this will be very interesting to watch as they keep doing this.

You should definitely check out the video. I'll post it in the show notes over at mainenginecutoff.com. Go there, check out the video. It is worth watching for sure. Moving on from SpaceX, the only other thing I wanted to bring up this week was looking ahead a little bit. We're getting pretty close to the return to flight for Antares, which is Orbital ATK's rocket that flies out of Wallops in Virginia. Right now that is scheduled to fly on August 22nd to send Cygnus up to the space station again,

though that doesn't seem like a hard date. They haven't locked it in yet. It might slip a day or two, maybe a week max. We should know pretty soon if they're going to lock that date in or not. But I wanted to bring it up because I found out for sure that I've got my media pass for that launch. So I'll be headed down to Virginia for that launch to see a little bit about the work on Antares that went on, the engine upgrade that they went through, all of the pad infrastructure that's been changed out and repaired and everything like that since their failure back in October of 2014. So getting excited to go down and see that launch and see what they've done there with Antares since then. I just wanted to bring it up because that is something that's going to be happening pretty

soon. And I think that everybody should be following along with that as they get ready to fly again. And if you're going to be down at that launch, let me know. Send me an email, anthony at mainenginecutoff.com, because I'll be down there for a few days surrounding that launch, and I would love to meet up with anyone else who's in the area. I know we've got at least one, maybe two down that way that are going to be there for the launch, so let me know if you are too. I did also want to mention that I have a very, very interesting interview coming up soon for the show. In about two weeks, I'll be interviewing someone that you'll find very, very interesting, I'm sure, especially if you're somebody who's interested in Mars and human missions to Mars and things like that over the next decade.

I think you're going to love this interview. So now is a great time to hop on board the Patreon to help support the blog, to help support the podcast, to help me improve things here. And if you support at the $5 a month or more level, you will get access to the people that I am going to be interviewing. You'll find out early who that is. You'll be able to send me some questions or topics or different things for that interview. And you'll get early access to it as well. I'll probably post a couple of snippets here and there for the patrons over at patreon.com slash Miko. As little as $1 a month will help

support the show, and I would really, really appreciate your support over there. If you've got any feedback, I would love to hear it. Email me anthony at mainenginecutoff.com or tweet at wehavemiko, or just follow along on the blog throughout the week over at mainenginecutoff.com. Thank you very much for listening, and I will talk to you next week.