Main Engine Cut Off - T+158: Doug Loverro Resigns, and a Bit About the Artemis Accords

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

The head of human spaceflight at NASA resigned last week, just before the most important crewed launch the agency has seen in a decade. However, it appears as though the resignation is related to the Artemis program and its landers. I give some thoughts on the implications of the departure, and also cover a recent development in international space politics—the Artemis Accords.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 371 other supporters.TopicsNASA human spaceflight head Loverro leaves agency - SpaceNews.comHere’s why NASA’s chief of human spaceflight resigned—and why it matters | Ars TechnicaDoug Loverro Resigns - SpacePolicyOnline.comHead of NASA’s human exploration program demoted as agency pushes for Moon return - The VergeEpisode T+126: The NASA Ousters - Main Engine Cut OffEpisode T+157: Blue Origin, Dynetics, and SpaceX Win NASA Lunar Lander Contracts - Main Engine Cut OffNASA Artemis AccordsNASA Unveils “Artemis Accords” - SpacePolicyOnline.comThe 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

Welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo, and we've got some big news to break down today. It's been quite a week watching some dust settle over in NASA land, but I would be remiss to not start this episode with an alert that we are dealing with some grade A hot drama. The alarm is back out. The hot drama alarm is out because last week,

NASA's head of the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, Doug Lovero, resigned, surprisingly. Nobody was ready for this. It was not hinted at. It was not rumored about. As these things tend to go, it just happened. And this is kind of the norm for the way that things have went in NASA land over the last couple years, especially at the leadership level. back in July it's shocking to me that this is only July that this news story happened but back in July

the couple of heads at NASA Bill Gerstemeyer being the number one of them he was the old head of the Human Explorations and Operations Mission Directorate was surprisingly ousted after appearing in Congress like hours before this was announced so this kind of surprise

change in leadership is not something that NASA is not familiar with in recent years. But this one was surprising because of the positioning of this. But first, some context. Doug Lavero came in just about six months ago. He was brought in to lead this side of NASA. He was the NASA Associate Administrator for Human Explorations and Operations Mission Directorate. It's a long title, but it means the head of human exploration and human spaceflight in general. That includes ISS stuff. That includes all the Artemis stuff that we're working on. It includes the landers that went out just a couple of weeks ago. It includes the crew flight that's coming up. As I record this, it's coming up on Wednesday. So it is a really big job, especially with everything that NASA is working on right now.

It is a huge job. And he resigned the week of the flight readiness review for a crewed flight, which he was going to lead. So he was going to be leading it on Thursday and Friday last week. And he resigned May 18th. It didn't come out until Tuesday the 19th. So it was really close to that day. Not only that, it wasn't even hinted at the week before when there was a NASA Advisory Council

meeting. That was the Human Exploration and Operations Committee, so it was the Advisory Council for the committee of the side of NASA that he was leading. And on Tuesday morning, there was a National Space Council meeting with the vice president there. Whole bunch of pomp and circumstance. Jim Bridenstine was speaking and nobody mentioned it at all. So it was totally shocking to everybody at NASA. But why did it happen? Well, it came out that I think right away everyone was worried that the flight readiness review was coming up, which essentially was the go-no-go decision for DM-2, SpaceX's flight, with two astronauts aboard coming up next week at Kennedy Space Center.

He was going to be the one to give the go-no-go out of that flight readiness review. So the initial jump to conclusion was, for drama purposes, was that he maybe didn't want to say that they're go for flight, and other people did, and he got ousted for a disagreement. It eventually started leaking that it was related to the Artemis side of NASA's human exploration stuff, specifically the procurements around human landing systems. Doug Lavero put out a statement to the team internally at NASA, but it obviously got leaked out in the press,

and he had one little passage I want to read to you. Throughout my long government career of over four and a half decades, I've always found it to be true that we are sometimes, as leaders, called on to take risks. Our mission is certainly not easy, nor for the faint of heart, and risk-taking is part of the job description. The risks we take, whether technical, political, or personal, all have potential consequences if we judge them incorrectly. I took such a risk early in the year because I judge it necessary to fulfill our mission. Now, over the balance of time, it is clear that I made a mistake in that choice for which I alone must bear the consequences. And therefore, it is with a very, very heavy heart that I write to you today to let you know that I have resigned from NASA effective May 18th, 2020. So that's a pretty dark statement there to say that I alone have to bear the consequences for my mistake.

statement there to say that I alone have to bear the consequences for my mistake. But that was kind of corroborated with some reporting from Eric Berger, who has the best sources when it comes to this kind of stuff. And it seems to be that he, it was about the procurement of those landing systems. When I first heard that, I was worried that it was going to be that he was favoring the ones that actually won, Blue Origin, Dynetics, SpaceX, because Lovero has a history over in the national security side of space to favor some of these new entrants. Specifically, he was pretty crucial in SpaceX's earliest national security missions being funded, and he was doing some fancy work with funding around those missions. So I thought, oh, here we go, it's kind of one of those things again, and I was worried that that might put at risk the contracts that went out for those lander

systems overall. But from what Berger reported here, after talking with people and some of the stuff that he knew from the inside track on this, apparently Doug Levero favored the Boeing plan, which was to have an integrated lander with SLS. It would require two SLSs, but it would be a lot less complexity to compile in space. You know, there wouldn't be multiple components as when it comes to the Blue Origin or Dynetics lander. It doesn't have as many refueling flights as SpaceX's Starship would entail.

But it would be obviously relying more heavily on SLS, but it would be a simpler overall architecture if you were to take out all of your biases that I know that you're coming to this argument with. He apparently favored that route quite a bit. So it seems like he might have helped Boeing or tried to help Boeing put a more competitive bid together. I don't know if that means sending them information or just giving them some inside info and insight or giving them advice in improper ways. I'm not exactly sure what that would entail, but if he was trying to thumb the scales in favor of Boeing, apparently it didn't work because Boeing was thrown out very early on as we talked about it just a show or two back on Main Engine Cutoff. They were tossed out

very early on in the round of contracting that was going out for those landers. So what it seems to be is that the Government Accountability Office was starting to look into some sort of acquisition stuff. I can't find the exact date right now, but it was maybe at the end of March that they announced that they were going to be reviewing the procurement of these NASA services. And nobody really knew what to make of that. But the thinking is, maybe,

maybe they started uncovering something that he did hear related to Boeing, if Berger's reporting is correct. And that mistake is going to lead to the downfall of his reign at NASA. But it's not as bad as I think it could have been. So I want to talk about kind of what the effects of this are now that, you know, maybe this head of human spaceflight left because he was improperly dealing with a contractor for what is the most exciting and most risk-taking contracting that NASA has done in maybe their history. It does have a lot of implications for what they're working on in the future. So I want to break that down and see kind of where we stand with Artemis overall, especially with regards to some of the other politicking going on with Artemis right now. But before we do that, I want to say

a huge thank you to everyone out there who's supporting Main Engine Cutoff, especially during these times. I know it's pretty crazy out there, but we've been having a rise in support for this, which is pretty amazing as you see a lot of other media entities struggling through this time. You know, you see people getting unfortunately laid off from a lot of media places and a lot of stuff being canceled or just kind of suspended during the pandemic. But with 408 of you supporting Main Engine Cutoff every single month, you can't stop this. You can't cancel this for a pandemic. And I'm hugely thankful for that. It keeps us flowing here. Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to travel down to DM2 as a team but you know it does keep us going so we've got some fun stuff planned for that and it's all thanks to your support over at mainenginecutoff.com

slash support this episode was produced by 37 executive producers Brandon, Matthew, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Nadeem, Peter, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Mintz, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, The Everyday Agenote, Frank, Ryan, Nadeem, Peter, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Mintz, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, The Everyday Agenot, Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Adam, and six anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for your support. As always, you make this thing possible. And like I said, it's really meaningful to me, especially at this time in the world. So thank you all so much. And if you want to help join that crew, head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support. All right, so where does this leave us? Where does this shake up leave us? When it first happened, I heard a lot of people

tweeting at me or emailing me like, when's the show going to come out? What are you going to say about this? And the truth is, with these kind of news stories, I like to let the dust settle a little bit because there was a lot of ways that this could have gone. You know, if I was correct in my initial worry that he was favoring the people that actually did win the contracts, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics, I think those contracts would have been canceled out pretty quickly. If he was not favoring them, then maybe they have a chance at sticking around. So in my eye, I'm thinking about the way the schedule falls here. If you're going to bury news, which is canceling these contracts,

which did seem likely up front that these were going to be canceled and maybe re-competed overall, especially if he favored the ones that actually won, then if you're going to bury that, you always like to bury news on a Friday. You like to bury news on a Friday when there's other things going on. So what better Friday to bury news

than the Friday before a long weekend here in the US, the first summer weekend, the first summer holiday weekend, where states are starting to reopen during a pandemic, while you have a flight readiness review for your first crewed flight in a decade that is coming up by next Wednesday, which is barely a couple of news cycles away, because you basically just got Tuesday and Wednesday for the real news cycle. That is the ultimate bury news slot that I could ever think of, especially for NASA. So I was kind of holding off a little bit because I thought on Friday we were going to hear really bad news and say these lander contracts are canceled.

We didn't hear that. Now it's possible they could have waited a week and said, well, let's bury the news when there's crew on orbit docking with the space station and everyone's tired of hearing about NASA that week. That could be. I doubt it. I think we're in the space station, and everyone's tired of hearing about NASA that week. That could be. I doubt it. I think we're in the clear here, especially with Berger's reporting. I trust the sources he's got. He's really tied in to this part of NASA. So I think we might be in the clear here. And overall, this isn't going to affect things too much.

However, there is definitely a congressional component to this the same old congressional component of specifically the house of representatives who have been kind of grumpy about the way these lander contracts are going are using this as yet another thing to kind of rake nasa over the coals for they're saying well look at all these shake-ups in leadership this was obviously surrounding you know we need more details on, we need more details on this. We need more data on this. So this is one of those things that could come up and, you know, maybe in a different time where there was more in-person congressional hearings. This is something that Jim Bridenstine would be pulled in front of Congress for to talk about this, to talk about what's going on here.

And it would be yet another time for them to say they disagree with the Landers. They think it should be recompeted to try to get some movement going on in that front. So it is possible that that is something that happens over the next couple of months. But again, to layer in the complexity with this stuff, when I start talking about this, it's just crazy times that we're in. It's just unbelievable because we're in an election year. So those kind of hearings aren't really going to be happening as we get closer and closer to November. People's interests, especially politicians, start focusing elsewhere.

They're worried about their election or their positioning in these committees or their friend's election that helps them maintain these positions. So I don't think this kind of stuff is going to come up in Congress the next couple of months, especially with the pandemic, especially with the election year, especially with it being a presidential election year. There is so much there that makes it equally tough for NASA to get funding, but it makes it equally tough for them to have these really bad appearances in front of Congress where they have to face up to some of these facts and talk about some of the dirt, really, that's behind the scenes.

So I do think it's yet another thing on top of the pile for politicking to happen, but it doesn't seem like they're going to have to just cancel these lander contracts outright, which would obviously put a huge dent in the 2024 plan and make it almost impossible to hit that point if it's not impossible already. NASA's big goal is to really nail down this funding. They've got massive funding that they need to have, you know, on the way by the end of next year. But this is stuff that we talked about in the podcast about the actual lander systems, the way those fall on the political calendar. They're going to be reviewing these things between seven and nine months from now, which is, you know, directly lockstep with the presidential election. NASA will know what kind of administration they're dealing with. They'll

know who's in charge of it, hopefully. I mean, hopefully they'll know if somebody's in charge from the new president. We'll probably hear that name floated about by the fall in the same way that we heard a lot of names floated about when Bridenstine was coming about. If it's the same president, we know who's running NASA. Those are the two kind of scenarios. But I do think there's some level of continuity there in terms of knowing who the leadership is. We have some names floating about for the Democratic side already, names that we've known about for a while. So it does seem like when that lander decision needs to be made, I think the people making that decision will have a general idea who's leading NASA, what the administration is like around NASA, what the budgetary issue is going to be.

So it's yet another thing that plays into that, but I don't think this is like the death nail in the Artemis coffin. One last little thing to mention on the Artemis front. A couple of weeks ago, NASA unveiled the Artemis Accords. This is a kind of framework that they're going to use to sign bilateral agreements. That's an agreement between the U.S. and another country to take part in the Artemis program. So at the same time as all this upheaval seems to be happening, they're kind of positioning themselves as the soft power player in space, especially to get some things that they really want

from an international policy level. So Artemis is the thing that they're branding as their missions to the lunar surface. That's important in that it does not contain the Lunar Gateway. The Lunar Gateway itself is going to be, it's going to fall under the same agreement that they currently are flying the ISS. That's the IGA.

I think it's the Intergovernmental Agreement for the ISS. That is the thing that is signed between NASA, Roscosmos, JAXA, ESA, Canadian Space Agency, everyone else that's a partner on the ISS in any way, adheres to that Intergovernmental Agreement. That same agreement will be used for the Lunar Gateway, specifically because Russia, Roscosmos, wants to be a part of the Lunar Gateway, specifically because Russia, Roscosmos, wants to be a part of the Lunar Gateway. NASA's taken a different tact with the Artemis landings themselves, and they're going to use the Artemis Accords as the kind of catch-all term for those agreements between themselves and the nations that would like to fly down to the surface alongside NASA astronauts. So in reality, what this is, is a really good example of what people talk about when they

say soft power in space. When you are a power in space and you have this soft power, not where you're marching armies across borders, but where you're doing something, you're having people come on board, but you're making them sign agreements to do it. And those agreements are generally, because you're the leader, shaped in the direction that you want it. This is like quintessential soft power in space. So what NASA is saying here is that we are going to do these missions to the surface. If you would like to come along, here are the guidelines that are going to draw out the agreement that you will sign with us to take part in it. And it is mostly an extension

of the Outer Space Treaty, the thing that governs most international agreements in space and the thing that most countries in space have signed on to. There was another one called the Moon Treaty that no major space power signed on to, and that never really came into any fruition in terms of space policy. So the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 is still king when it comes to space policy. The Artemis Accords are built on that, but they extend it in two key ways. Number one is the establishment of keep out zones around landing sites on the surface. I guess I should mention that includes historical sites as well, so the Apollo landing sites. The other is

essentially the ability to take resources out of the moon and use them to turn them into rocket fuel or other life support materials or even just HABs and things like that. But the ability to take resources in space, specifically on the moon, and use them in some other way. That is a major sticking point in a lot of different space powers today, specifically China and Russia are the two that these things are pointed at. So it's a really interesting kind of play here from NASA. We'll see what happens from here because this just announcing the Artemis Accords doesn't do anything for you. You need another nation to sign an agreement with the U.S. shaped by the Artemis Accords before it really becomes impactful. But what this does is it puts everyone on the spot,

all those nations that are partnered closely with the US in space or want to be, it puts them on the spot to say, are you okay with keep out zones around landers on the lunar surface? Are you okay with using resources in space, specifically on the moon? If so, welcome aboard, hop on our lander, we're going down to the moon. By the way, we just sent out three contracts for some of the most exciting companies in space to build us a lander that's going to be going in 2024. So if you don't want to miss the train, sign on the dotted line. Let's go dig up some moon dirt. That's essentially the play they're making there. Russia seems to be a lot more hit or miss on the space resources front. The US, Luxembourg, some other countries out there are really gung-ho

about space resources, being able to use resources in in space and keep out zones is another one that's been a hot topic over the years NASA and the current administration obviously right now really wants to be a leader in this space and not let China dictate this kind of stuff so it's it's going to be interesting to see if Russia does in fact come on board for the Artemis program, if China even starts talking to us in any way about this. We'll see which nations are first to jump on this. I would assume ESA, Canada, JAXA are going to be pretty quick to sign some sort of agreements like this. I could see some other players like Australia, who are just up and coming, sign agreements like this as well. But the list of those countries are going to be very important because not only does it, you know, it gives us a better relationship, us being the U.S. here, it gives us a better relationship with those countries.

It puts a little more force behind Artemis. So when you're doing that politicking I just talked about, you have a little bit more force behind you. You can say to Congress, look at all these countries that are coming with us. We don't want to cancel this program. that are coming with us. We don't want to cancel this program. But it also starts to make some de facto policy in space. And it starts to really give it some true strength when it's held up to the international community, if you have a long list of countries already adhering to this stuff. So while the Loverro resignation does seem to have things kind of in crazy flux here, this other side, the politicking side, it is total mayhem right now because of the pandemic, the election year, everything else going on. But they're doing the right moves to sure up some of the international stuff. Obviously, nobody signed this yet, but to put the international pieces in place that make it a really unkillable program from Congress's side at a time when there may be an administration change, especially looking at the polling recently.

when there may be an administration change, especially looking at the polling recently, that's a really huge move there for Artemis if you want to have any hope of it lasting into the next administration. So that is all I got for you this week. Thank you all so much for listening and for all your support over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support.

Big week coming up with DM2, so keep your eyes peeled on my Twitter account at WeHaveMiko. I'll be talking about some plans there as we get closer to launch. But until then, thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.