Main Engine Cut Off - T+157: Blue Origin, Dynetics, and SpaceX Win NASA Lunar Lander Contracts

Episode Date: May 5, 2020

NASA announced three contract awards for the Artemis Progam’s Human Landing System—a Blue Origin-led team, Dynetics, and SpaceX’s Starship. I talk through some thoughts on each landing system and what the future might hold for NASA, regarding both politics and decisions.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 37 executive producers—Brandon, Matthew, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Mints, Joonas, Robb, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Adam, and six anonymous—and 363 other supporters.TopicsNASA Selects Blue Origin, Dynetics, SpaceX for Artemis Human LandersNASA Names Companies to Develop Human Landers for Artemis Missions | NASABlue Origin's HLS National Team Mission to the Moon to Stay with NASA - YouTubeDynetics Lander Infographic (PDF, 5.1MB)SpaceX on Twitter: “A lunar optimized Starship can fly many times between the surface of the Moon and lunar orbit without flaps or heat shielding required for Earth return”House members criticize NASA lunar lander awards - SpaceNews.comEpisode T+152: SpaceX’s Dragon XL Wins Gateway Logistics Services Contract - Main Engine Cut OffNASA Announces Industry Partnerships to Advance Moon, Mars Technology | NASANew Companies Join Growing Ranks of NASA Partners for Artemis Program | 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

huge news this week long-awaited news to talk about here on main engine cutoff i'm anthony colangelo last week we heard the official announcements that nasa has awarded the first of the contracts for the human landing system for the Artemis program. This is the program that NASA is working on to take astronauts back to the lunar surface by 2024 right now, with the longer term plan beyond that. A lot to be determined about exactly how that plan will shake out, but one of the biggest unknowns was who was actually going to be building the lander contracts. So NASA last fall put out a call for proposals on this with certain constraints around it and certain restraints removed in terms of like, did they have to use the gateway?

Did they have to launch on SLS? It was pretty much a wide open propose what you can, but you got to get us there by 2024 and have a longer term plan for sustainability, as they call it, which would factor in some reuse and things like that on the longer term side of things in hopes that instead of kind of doing an Apollo, you know, four years and out sort of moon program, this would be something that could last a lot longer than that. So the announcement came in and it was Blue Origin, who is leading a team of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper. Dynetics, who is leading a team with about 25 subcontractors, the biggest of which Talley's Al Northrop Grumman, and Draper, Dynetics, who is leading a team with about 25 subcontractors, the biggest of which tallies Alenia and Sierra Nevada, and SpaceX for Starship.

Those are the winners for what NASA's calling the base period, which is a 10-month period of study contracts. Between now and February, they'll be doing studies, design, development, refining their plans overall, and then we'll talk about what happens after that longer term, because there's a lot of political implications as well as actual engineering implications of that as well. But let's dive in on what was awarded here. It was $967 million total for the next 10 months. The Blue Origin team took the most of that, $579 million. Origin team took the most of that, $579 million. Dynetics took $253 million, and Starship for SpaceX got $135 million. Interestingly, in the source selection statement, which is a PDF about 16 pages that explains why the three were chosen, it sounded like up front they weren't sure they

were going to have enough money to select all three of these proposals. So apparently, the five proposals came in for this lander contract. There were the three that I mentioned, and then there were two proposals, one from Boeing and one from Vivace, which I don't know that anyone knew before this. But those were thrown out really early on as not going to be a good fit for the program for whatever reason. Boeing, of course, is the prime contractor on SLS core stage, having tons of problems with that. And NASA over the last year, or even maybe more than that, has expressed a lot of, I don't know what word would be right, whether it's resentment or grumpiness or just general disapproval

around the way Boeing is handling that program. And then just a couple of weeks ago, we did a show about Gateway Logistics Services, which is the commercial cargo program for the Lunar Gateway. SpaceX was chosen for that, and Boeing got kind of torn apart in the similar source selection statement that talked about why SpaceX was chosen. Boeing had a terrible proposal for that, apparently, and there was really cutting statements in that document about Boeing's general proposal and management of it and all that kind of stuff. So this is widely seen as another one of those moments where Boeing is losing out on these big contracts, and they didn't go into exactly what it was in this

landing contract that threw them out so early. But apparently by February, it was already decided these three contractors, Blue Origin, SpaceX, and Dynetics, would be the three to go forward with the landing program. Now from there, they said they didn't have enough money for the amounts that were requested by these three teams up front, because that's part of this, right? You're proposing what you're going to do, but also how much money it would take. So in February, NASA requested some modifications and changes to the proposals sent in by those three companies. With that came a little bit of budgetary management, and then they entered negotiation phase,

and eventually got these numbers down to the point where they could fund all three of the landers here. So the monetary figure, you know, it's easy to look at and say, well, they're favoring Blue Origin, look at how much they gave them, and they're shortchanging Starship. But these numbers were up to the companies to propose and then negotiate. Starship. But these numbers were up to the companies to propose and then negotiate. And certainly a lot of this comes with the fact that Blue Origin has a ton of backing, so they're investing heavily in their own platforms. SpaceX specifically is investing a ton of money in Starship. That was even called out in this document, that that was one of the benefits of SpaceX is that they're investing so much of their own money. And $135 million is quite a deal to have

10 months of work on what could be a really capable landing platform for NASA in the future, which I think is widely why SpaceX was chosen for this, which we'll talk about in a minute. But overall, it's interesting to see how they're managing this budget because they don't really have the budget allocation for this landing system right now. The budget request that was submitted in February includes extra money for developing these landers, but that hasn't even been close to being talked about in Congress. We're dealing with an election year and a pandemic that's keeping everyone busy, so it's unlikely that they don't even have a real budget, maybe not even at all this year. So that might have some longer term impacts in terms of

what the actual route is beyond this. But before we talk about the politics and everything like that, I'm just going to give some general vibes on the three chosen for this program. The Blue Origin team seems like an easy choice. Back in October at IAC, Jeff Bezos was there and announced this national team. And at the time, you know, I even talked about here in the show that it just seemed like an obvious shoe-in for the Human Landing System Award. You've got Blue Origin, who, like I said, is investing a lot of their own money in this, and it's a big priority for them internally. Lockheed Martin's building the ascent stage largely based around what they're doing with the Orion spacecraft, which is what

would carry the humans to this landing system. So that's something that NASA really would like is that they can reuse a lot of that Orion work. They're already comfortable with it. They have a good working relationship with Lockheed. Lockheed knows the other side of the interface. They know how they've got to approach and dock and everything else that's involved with bringing those two together. So that's a huge benefit for them. Northrop Grumman is building the tug stage, and that would largely be based on what they've done with Cygnus, and even maybe some of what they're doing for the habitation module of Gateway, which they are going to be the sole source, a winner for that Gateway thing. So they've got a lot going on that is directly relevant to this

program. And then Draper is the company that is building the guidance and navigation for the Blue Origin team, and they did that back in the Apollo days. So there's, you know, like almost every aspect of this is perfectly tailored for being of interest to NASA. So I would have been shocked to see this proposal not selected in this. Obviously, the money was a big factor here. In the source selection document, they did say that Blue Origin's price came down $300 million during the refinements in the negotiation phase. So they originally were, you know, $879 million or something like that, which is a ton of money for a landing system. But you've got four big companies working on

this thing. It's not an insane amount of money, but certainly to do that for $579 million is kind of shocking, to say the least. But overall, I think it's an obvious choice for this. It's exactly what NASA wanted. Originally, NASA was only looking at three-stage solutions for this, which would be the tug stage, the descent stage, and the ascent stage. That was the architecture when Gateway was in play. stage, the descent stage, and the ascent stage. That was the architecture when Gateway was in play. None of these proposals are going to use Gateway for the 2024 landing. In fact, Gateway might not even exist at that point. But this does have the capability for all of that, whether it's from Gateway, whether it's from Orion, whether it's flying on its own. The launch side of this is interesting because it's going to rely on New Glenn, Vulcan, something like that existing at that point.

And they can launch these three independently and then bring them together in space. That's a part that I'd be curious to see how NASA feels about now. There is some, we'll talk about this with the Dynetics proposal, because they're proposing a single vehicle. So there might be some weariness around having all those different components assembled in space rather than on the ground. Could be a chance that, you know, maybe the descent and ascent stages are assembled on the ground and launched by a new Glenn, and then the Northrop Grumman tug meets up separately. There could be some complexity like that, and I think that might be one of the things that's going to get sorted

out over the next 10 months or so, is what the ideal profile is there for Blue Origin. One of the things NASA said they're concerned about in this document is some propulsion system complexity and the complexity of the Blue Origin power system on the surface, which I think is referencing the fuel cell system on Blue Moon, the descent stage. Unfortunately, the document only has about that much detail. They're very vague. I think they don't want to give too much away of anyone's proposal. But those are the things that they say they're concerned about.

So that's really up to Blue Origin at this point to prove out over the next 10 months is that they've got to show that they can get that propulsion system and the fuel cells up to where they need to be for NASA to be comfortable with them by next February or so. And certainly with Blue Origin having delays on almost all of their programs at this point, that's something that factors in in people's mind is that, you know, BE-4 was behind schedule for a while, might be on target now, but was behind schedule and delayed both Vulcan and New Glenn to some extent. New Shepard is not on the timeline that it wanted to be, which is curious to know what's going on there between that and the BE-4 program. And New Glenn is behind schedule quite a bit now. It doesn't look like that's going to launch until

2022, which could be a factor overall if that is something that they're going to rely on for launching this, right? If the first launch isn't until 2022 and it doesn't get its shakedown until 2023, how comfortable is NASA going to be saying that's the thing we're going with for the 2024 launch? Now, the last bit that's interesting about Blue Origin is that they proposed a flight demonstration of the descent stage, at least I think it's just the descent element here, for 2023. And that would go to the same landing site as would be selected for the 2024 human landing. 2023 is the same year that Viper, the rover that NASA is working on, would go to the moon, and that's part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which is the cargo

landing side of things. That rover is supposed to go in 2023, and it would go to spots that would be of interest for human landings, so that could be a nice, you 2023, and it would go to spots that would be of interest for human landings. So that could be a nice, you know, the descent element for Blue Moon, for the cargo lander, and for the human lander. They are different so far as we've seen. I guess they could achieve, you know, one or the other with some sort of commonality, but it does look like right now that those are two different things. So I don't know if this 2023 demonstration mission is talking about what could be that Viper landing if Blue Origin does get chosen for that launch and landing, but overall it does seem like they're targeting a one year ahead of time landing of the descent stage, which would be a big confidence boost in

their overall platform since nobody seems to be quite worried about Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman in this case. They're worried about Blue Origin because they don't have that track record, historically, of flying hardware and carrying out missions like this. Shifting over to the Dynetics lander, this is a really interesting one. So, whereas the Blue Origin one is a three-stage lander, descent, ascent, and tug stage, this is a single lander that has drop tanks. So it's interesting in that NASA even notes in this document that it's interesting because it groups the complexity into one vehicle. So it has a really complex human habitation vehicle that would actually

be the ascent stage. But then it's got these two drop tanks that are lower complexity, right? They basically just have to worry about the fuel system and being able to drop those tanks safely. But the descent and ascent are achieved by the same exact vehicle. That's a pretty cool landing system overall. And the other nice thing is that between the three proposals, this keeps the crew really low to the lunar surface. It's, you know, even closer to the ground than the Apollo limb, whereas the Blue Moon lander is like 20 meters or something like that.

And the Starship is something crazy as well. Maybe not 20 meters for Blue Moon, but it's high. It's a high ladder. So it seems like NASA likes the fact that it's a very low-profile landing system and that that complexity is all rolled up into one single vehicle. Another interesting part about Dynetics is they are based in none other than Huntsville, Alabama, which is a classic stronghold for NASA policy, specifically regarding the human spaceflight program. It's a very key demographic in congressional matters for NASA to play up, so Dynetics certainly has that going for it as well. It's very close to the rest of the SLS program down there. It does need to launch on something

like Vulcan, something with a really long fairing, because this is, in fact, the graphics of this show it launching on SLS with the Exploration Upper Stage, which right now isn't slated to be developed in time for this landing. But it does need a really long fairing because it's a very short lander in height, but it's a very wide lander because of those two extra drop tanks. So it needs something with a really long fairing, whether that's Nukeland or Vulcan. So again, much like the Blue Origin proposal, this is relying on vehicles that haven't yet flown, and by the point at which this would be decided upon, wouldn't have flown or even been close to the launch pad when NASA needs to give the thumbs up here for the 2024 landing. But overall, it does seem like it's a... NASA is really interested in

this one for a couple of reasons. One, like I said, it's bundling the complexity into a single vehicle, which, when you're under the gun for the timeline here, could be a lot easier to manage programmatically. The other thing that they go on at length about in this document is Dynetics was proposing to have a significant amount of NASA insight into the program. NASA would be in a lot of their meetings and they would be in, you know, embedded in the team in some extent. And that wasn't mentioned in the other team's sections of this document. So I don't know if that's something the others aren't doing or if it's something that NASA liked about the way Dynetics proposed it. But that does seem, again, when you're under the timeline gun like this,

it does seem like something NASA would be interested in to make sure that they have the oversight of what's going on day to day, especially in light of what we're seeing over on the commercial crew side of things, where as we've got closer to launch, NASA's needed to bring in more and more oversight. Another good example would be James Webb. Significantly complex programs that NASA had been hands-off on up front and then got increasingly oversight-y as they went forward, if that's a word. Some good things about the subcontractors that Dynetics is working with. Taliesin Alenia is the subcontractor for the pressure vessel of this lander. So that is very similar to the way that they build the Cygnus pressure vessel. A lot of the pressure vessels up on ISS today.

And they would be building the pressure vessel for that habitation module out at Gateway. So there's a lot of heritage there that NASA always likes to impress upon. And Taliesin Alenia makes great pressure vessels overall. So that's a really of heritage there that NASA always likes to impress upon. And Tally's Linea makes great pressure vessels overall. So that's a really strong aspect of their design. They're also working with Sierra Nevada, who is a cargo supplier to the ISS, coming soon. So they've got a good relationship with NASA. And then the other interesting thing was that Dynetics and Astrobotic talked about how they could fly commercial lunar payload services payloads, the smaller cargo missions to the moon, they could fly payloads on this Dynetics lander. And that partnership is

something that is kind of deeply integrated because Dynetics is making the propulsion system for the Astrobotic lander. That is a small cargo lander that'll be heading to the moon in 2021. And Astrobotic could now put payloads on the Dynetics lander. So they seem to be quite integrated, which NASA might like the capability to put some of those payload missions over onto this Dynetics lander. And that might not be super unique to Dynetics because Blue Origin and SpaceX are both in that payload services program. So they could obviously, you know, Starship's got plenty of room for cargo. So they could put whatever they want on there. But to have that called out in the proposal was something that NASA liked especially.

And then we're down to Starship. We talked at length about Starship on this program here. So I don't need to go super detailed on what the Starship situation would be here for SpaceX. here, so I don't need to go super detailed on what the Starship situation would be here for SpaceX. But I do think NASA likes the fact that this was a relatively small investment to keep them up to date on what Starship is working on. And this is one of those things that SpaceX didn't request a lot of money here. So NASA could see this as a small investment that could have huge payoff, because if Starship works out, the capabilities that NASA would get out of that are just massive. It's a huge upside if Starship works out. It does seem like NASA is a little bit weary of the Starship concept of operations overall, meaning they're going to have to have

a ton of refueling flights. They're going to have to have operations down to be able to launch that many Starships and do refueling. And in this case, they're using a Starship lunar variant, which would stay in space. It would go between the lunar surface and lunar orbit, maybe even Earth orbit. They didn't really clarify there, but that would be refueled and used many times over and over again, which does get NASA what they want long term. It gets them that reusability, the sustainability phase. But they do have concerns about hitting the 2024 date with Starship, given all of the constraints, given the state of Starship right now, where it's in this phase where they're iterating it on very quickly. They haven't developed a lot of the systems yet, and there's a lot of risk between here and 2024, though they see it as a really good investment for the long-term program overall. really good investment for the long-term program overall. Now, over the last year or two, NASA has shown a lot of interest in Starship, much to people's surprise. They have two different SpaceX

agreements. I think it's just two. It might be more than that. They've got one about refueling, so they're going to do some sort of refueling demo, which is a key part to everything that SpaceX wants to do with Starship. If refueling doesn't work, nothing in the Starship infrastructure really works except for launches to LEO or GTO. They also have another one about the plume interaction of the Raptor engines with the lunar surface. In this visualization, we see what look like engines up way higher on Starship

that would be used for the final descent to the surface to probably avoid kicking up so much lunar dust. Raptors are huge. engines up way higher on Starship that would be used for the final descent to the surface to probably avoid kicking up so much lunar dust. Raptors are huge. They would dig a gigantic hole in the lunar surface if you burnt them that close to the surface. So it does seem like they're working on some sort of propulsion system that would be the final descent engines when they're on their way down to the lunar surface. So that's really cool to see. You know, it might be interesting for NASA's side of things to see that in a proposal that is directly tied into other work that they have going on with SpaceX elsewhere in the agency. That kind of thing would probably, you know,

it would show a lot of confidence in the fact that SpaceX is able to take that partnership with NASA and turn it into useful stuff for their proposal in such a big program like this. So I think that's really the rundown on Starship here. NASA sees a lot of complexity and a lot of risk between here and 2024, but they see a huge upside in the investment in Starship overall. And I think this really speaks to something that has kind of gone unsaid for a while, is that NASA is not going to sit on the sidelines if and when SpaceX gets Starship flying, gets it going to the moon, gets doing all these really high tech complex missions that SpaceX is promoting. NASA is not going to sit on the sidelines and watch that happen. They're going

to use whatever programs they can to stay in the loop on Starship, to stay involved with Starship and be ready to jump at any opportunities that are there as SpaceX works towards the future. And much in the way of the SpaceX agreements, which don't come with any money, they just are NASA collaboration, you know, this is a small investment from NASA's side that, like I keep saying, has a huge upside. And I think that's an interesting strategy for NASA to take because of the political ties right now. NASA is tied to the space launch system. NASA is tied to Orion. They're trying to innovate on these lander systems where they can, but they can't just go and throw out SLS and say we're going with Starship. But what they can do

is keep their foot in the door, keep interested in Starship, and keep some investment going to keep SpaceX moving to make sure that what they need, SpaceX can provide and be ready to jump on any launches or landings that would happen in the future. And that's kind of the sense I'm getting here overall for Starship's inclusion in this program. And like I said, if you're investing a billion dollars and they're only asking for 135 million, you would be kind of stupid to not give them that money and see what happens over the next 10 months, especially considering what we're seeing right now down in Boca Chica. There are new tanks being welded every single week. They're doing all this iteration. They're really pushing the design down there. So when

they've got this very critical 10-month period to get flying, it's really worth it to have some open line of communication, some investment in that system as it gets developed. some open line of communication, some investment in that system as it gets developed. Now, that is an interesting part about SpaceX here, both in the lander contract, but also in that gateway cargo contract that we talked about a couple of shows back. SpaceX seems to be doing this thing lately where they want to be involved in any NASA program. And if they have to create these derivatives, they will. And this is kind of the main point of my show that I did about Gateway Logistics Services. They are building things to contract more than I would have expected them.

Dragon XL, which they're doing for the Gateway cargo, doesn't have a lot of resonance with what SpaceX, what their plans are long term. But they are building it because it's a huge program for NASA and it comes with a lot of money if it doesn't in fact fly. Now here on the Starship lander front, they obviously need a lunar landing variant of Starship to do what they're talking about even on their own plans, but this is building a very special one-off variant of Starship. It doesn't have aero surfaces, it doesn't have a lot of the systems that would be needed here at Earth like heat shielding. It is built specifically to go down to the lunar surface, back to lunar orbit, to get refueled, and do it all over again. That's a really cool spacecraft. But up until now, we haven't heard that from SpaceX as the plan. We heard that they are going to build starships that can do everything under the sun, which was a point of confusion for a lot of people that, you know, there are a lot of

people saying, well, you don't want to take wings all the way to the lunar surface. Why would you do that? So this was maybe expected from some people. But it is interesting to note that SpaceX seems to be building the contract a lot more for NASA than they would have, you know, talked about in the past. So that's sort of the rundown on where I'm at on these different landers. I want to talk about what each team has to prove out in the next 10 months. And then I want to talk about the political wrangling that NASA has to do long term to see any of this stuff come to fruition. But before we do that, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who supports Main Engine Cutoff over at mainengincutoff.com slash support. There are 400 of you. We hit the 400 mark this week supporting this show every single month.

And this episode was produced by 37 executive producers brandon matthew chris pat matt george brad ryan nadim peter donald lee chris warren bob russell john moritz joel jan grant david mince eunice rob tim dodd the average astronaut frank julian and lars from agile space tommy adam and six anonymous executive producers thank you all so much for making this episode possible. If you want to join that crew, head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support. So the next 10 months are very critical for this program. That is the base period that we're covering here with these contracts. And each team has some different things that they need to focus on. For Blue Origin, they, like we talked about, they need to

show that they can get that propulsion system and the fuel cell system up to spec to have confidence from NASA's side that it'll be ready to go by 2024. There's also the significant challenge of making sure that they can manage the three separate components of this landing system, both technically and programmatically. They need to make sure they can manage that to get to the end date and be ready to launch in 2024. If any one piece of that is delayed, the whole thing kind of goes out the window. So they've got three spacecraft they have to build here, whereas, you know, Dynetics and SpaceX, SpaceX has to build a couple different variants of Starship, both Tanker and the actual Lunar Lander, but there's a lot more commonality there than there are between the descent, ascent, and tug stage for the Blue Origin team. Now, they do have the benefit of

making sure that they're working with people that have done this before in Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, but that is a significant risk. If NASA sees any one of those going off track or if they're concerned about a particular component, that might not be ideal to get them to that 2024 landing date. They also need to show that Vulcan or Newt Glenn is on track for a launch in Vulcan's case in 2021 and Newt Glenn's case 2022. That's going to be tricky by next February, by February 2021, to be able to say, well, Vulcan's only three months from the launch pad or Newt Glenn is 12. That is a big important point though, because if neither of those are flying, I'm not sure they have a way up to space for that 2024 landing. And if Blue Origin wants to do that

descent element demo in 2023, they've got to have Nuke Glenn flying and flying operationally to be able to do that in 2023. On the Dynetics side, they need to be able to show a similar thing as Blue Origin. They need to be able to show that they're managing, they've got like 25 subcontractors here. They've got to show that they're able to manage that programmatically to be able to make sure that everyone's doing their own job to build this very complex vehicle. And that's one of them. Maybe that's the main concern is that they have a very very complex vehicle that is the the single element of this approach they have fuel system with drop tanks that they need to develop as well and that's one of the areas that nasa is concerned about but really they've got a incredibly complex spacecraft to develop in like three years if

they get the green light maybe even two years overall if they want to do any sort of demo mission and that's a huge challenge especially for a company that isn't building this kind of complex spacecraft right now. They have a lot of complex programs at Dynetics overall, but they're not building this kind of spacecraft. So to be able to get up and running and build something as complex as a single element that can do all these different phases of flight in just two years, that is a huge jump that I'm not sure NASA is going to be comfortable making. Now, on the other hand, it's a single vehicle to manage. It's not three vehicles like Blue Origin. It's not a booster and a couple of variants like

SpaceX. It is a single vehicle. And the simplicity of focusing on a single vehicle might be not a bad trade-off for the complexity of that single vehicle, especially when you've got so many political ramifications of this decision. You've got the Alabama thing at play for Dynetics, which could be a huge boon to the policy side of NASA. So there's a lot going for Dynetics there, but they really need to show that they can manage all of this complexity within the next 10 months. Now for the SpaceX side, they've got a ton to work on in the next 10 months or so. Whereas the other two companies might be showing a lot more on paper, SpaceX is going in hardware rich. They are focused on having hardware, having iterations of Starship

underway. They're going in to say, we are working on Starship day to day. It's working, it's flying, here's what we're showing you. Whereas the other two might be documenting a lot more of this, as is typical of the SpaceX split and everyone else. But by 10 months from now, they need to be showing serious progress on a full-up starship, not the welding tanks together in a field, you know, filling them, static firing them, flying them 100 meters. They need to be showing, like, full-on actual starships with all of the systems integrated that they would need to make orbital flight to orient in orbit to come back from orbit to be able to launch the booster they need to be making serious progress on all these different areas especially when they say in their proposal that by 2022 they're going to be having low earth

orbit flights reflights of Starship beyond low-Earth orbit flights, and a lunar landing demonstration in 2022. That is in their proposal. That is such a short timeline here, especially we're at May 2020, and they are still at the welding tanks together phase. That is a ton of progress to make in 18 months. Because that doesn't just mean building a lunar landing capable starship. It means building many different starships, both the lunar landing capable starship as well as the tanker variants, building the boosters, having the launch infrastructure in place, having the infrastructure to launch many starships over time to do refueling regularly,

predictably. They need to have all that done by 2022 to meet their timeline. Now, you know, timelines are timelines, so everything shifts right always. But to be talking that up, that is a massive amount of infrastructure. I'm not saying they can't do it, but it is a massive amount of infrastructure to build between now and 18 months from now. And to be able to have launches operating that quickly and regularly would be kind of shocking. You know, to have these tanker variants that are launching multiple times per lunar flight and doing all the proximity operations, rendezvous docking, refueling completely, coming back to land. There is so much complexity there for SpaceX to work out. And if they're going to show that off in 2022, I would expect if I'm NASA

making the decision in 2021, that they would be showing off a lot of this stuff underway already. The good news is NASA is interested in refueling here. So that is a big benefit. But the bad news is for SpaceX and their infrastructure, it's not a single refueling flight. It is a fleet of tankers that they need to be launching for these lunar landing missions. So let's talk about policy and stuff that NASA is going to have to consider next February, and then maybe even a little bit of what I would expect to see in 10 months time. Important stuff to note about this year. We are in an election year. We are in a year with a pandemic. We are in a year where nobody is focusing on NASA.

Nobody is focusing on congressional budgets. Everything is weird this year. So that is a significant barrier to NASA and their plans overall. Like we talked about a little bit ago, there's not a budget for this year yet. There was a budget request, but who knows when that's going to come up in Congress, if ever. NASA could very well be on continuing resolutions through this year, which just means they're keeping last year's figures the same. But what's interesting about the timing of the whole February end date, February 2021 would be beyond the inauguration of a new president or the second term of President Trump. So whatever the situation is would be kind of stable at that point. The other thing is that election years also mean significant changeover in the Senate and in the House. So the new alignment of what the House and Senate look

like would be in place next year. And that is important because right now there's a massive disagreement between the House and the Senate. The House authorization bill that was passed, the NASA authorization bill that was passed back in like January, I think it was, strongly wanted a NASA owned lander that launched on SLS. The Senate seemed to disagree entirely. They never even got around to passing a NASA authorization bill. So nothing happened on that authorization bill front. But it shows this huge disagreement between the House and the Senate. How much of that is because the House and the Senate are divided in which party is leading it, that's to be determined.

But there is a huge congressional disagreement in the way that they want NASA to approach these landing systems. If that is the same in February, or if it is different, would change the trajectory of this landing program overall. And NASA would be able to make those decisions with that stuff in mind, which is an important aspect to getting any of this stuff done, is knowing where the politics fall. The other part of that is that if it is still President Trump, Jim Bridenstine will still be NASA administrator. He knows how to play the politics game because he was a politician previously, still is because NASA is a political position. If it is not President Trump, if it's a new president, there could be a new administrator.

There could be an acting administrator by February. There could be a lot of changes in the way that NASA wants to manage this program. And February 2021 really sets them up to have all of that information in mind as they make this decision. other thing is that February, if it is President Trump's deal, would be when the budget request is due for that following fiscal year that would be enacted in October 2021. So that could go along with the decision here is, you know, how much money NASA is requesting for landers could map to what they want to do here with this decision in February 2021. So there's all of that politics at play that would dictate the long-term outcome of this lander program. The other aspect is the way they want to manage this. NASA has said that they're kind of keeping their options open here. The ideal would

be in February to pick which lander would get the slot for the 2024 mission, and then would pick another lander, or maybe maybe even two that would be the long-term sustainability approach for NASA. So they're going to try to narrow in on one lander for the 2024 mission, but then keep their options open long-term with one or both of the competitors. I personally think it's a toss-up between Blue Origin and Dynetics to get that spot for 2024. I personally think it's a toss-up between Blue Origin and Dynetics to get that spot for 2024. I think it's going to come down to, as I mentioned previously, whether NASA is more confident in the single complex vehicle that Dynetics is proposing, or whether they're more confident in the three components that Blue Origin's team is working on. Two of them already having much confidence from NASA in Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, really up to Blue Origin to bring it home on that descent element there. My bet would be we see one of those two picked for the 2024 landing,

and the other two, I would bet both of them get, you know, kept in for that sustainability phase, especially SpaceX. NASA harped so much on the fact that this would be huge upside long term for the moon landing program that it would be shocking to see them not continue on that thread. And it could be one of those situations where they choose Blue Origin for the 2024 landing, they give Dynetics a significant amount of money to continue developing their lander, and they give SpaceX yet another small bit of money to keep NASA invested in Starship, but let SpaceX continue to develop the program overall, and then, you know, circle back a couple of years later to check in and see what Starship is up to. Now, there's one

other element, though. You know, all that budget stuff that I was talking about could make funding these landers really, really tricky. So, at that point, if it does seem like it's going to be a real threat to get this through Congress. I would see Blue Origin and SpaceX having the advantage because they have serious funding from their own internal company that could keep these programs going through any budget shortfalls that happen on the landing program. Both of them obviously want these landers to exist long term. I don't know that Dynetics is the same. I don't know that without this program, Dynetics would be building the lander. I expect not. This is a lander that is built for the NASA Human Landing System program,

not the other way around. And I think Blue Origin and SpaceX, they're working on their plans long term anyway. So if I'm NASA and I see budgetary hard times coming up for the lander program, I'm going to be picking Blue Origin or SpaceX. So there's a lot of ways it could go. It's going to be a really interesting year because of how many things are at play here, not only engineering from what we're seeing on these landers be developed, but also politically and how much, you know, uncertainty there is in the next year or so with everything going on. So it'll be a fun time. We'll check in on it, you know, all the time, I'm sure. But until next week, thank you all so much for listening.

As always, email me, anthony at mainenginecutoff.com or hit me up on Twitter at WeHaveMiko if you have any questions or thoughts. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.