Main Engine Cut Off - T+160: Lueders Leads HEO, Northrop Grumman Awarded HALO Contract

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

Northrop Grumman was awarded $187 million for the Gateway Habitat design, which caps off NASA’s 2020 budget work for Artemis components. Additionally, Kathy Lueders was named head of human spaceflight at NASA, which is huge and fantastic news. We take a look at the Artemis program’s acquisitions so far and the road ahead under Lueders’ leadership.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 38 executive producers—Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Joonas, Robb, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Adam, and seven anonymous—and 377 other supporters.Topicsdonate.offnominal.spaceLet’s Make Space Better. | Off-NominalOrigins: Jim Bridenstine | Off-NominalWeMartians PodcastNASA to sole source Gateway habitation module to Northrop Grumman - SpaceNews.comNASA Awards Northrop Grumman Artemis Contract for Gateway Crew Cabin | NASANASA selects Maxar to build first Gateway element - SpaceNews.comFirst Two Gateway Elements to Launch Together - Main Engine Cut OffKathy Lueders Selected to Lead NASA’s Human Spaceflight Office | NASAEpisode T+158: Doug Loverro Resigns, and a Bit About the Artemis Accords - Main Engine Cut OffEpisode T+159: SpaceX Demo-2 Carries Crew to ISS - Main Engine Cut OffNASA Selects Blue Origin, Dynetics, SpaceX for Artemis Human LandersNASA Awards Artemis Contract for Gateway Logistics Services | 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'm Anthony Colangelo. We've got a little bit of NASA Human Spaceflight news to get to today. A little bit about the Directorate itself and a little bit about Gateway and some of the Artemis plans. But I want to start with something else just to update you on some things going on in our world. I am going to update you here on something that Jake Robbins and I are working on. Jake is the host of We Martians, which is the podcast all about Mars. He's been on here a couple times, so you might know him already. He is also my co-host on Off Nominal, the other show that we do together. That one is a little more casual, monthly show that I really recommend listening to.

But we've been talking a lot about everything going on in the world these days, and we had a 20-minute show to talk through some thoughts on what's been going on lately and about what we're going to do to help. Because one of the things that I kept coming back to in my head was a lot of these issues in the world, and I'm talking about the inequality here in the U.S. that has been on display through the past couple of weeks of protests and everything that's going on, is that a lot of these issues are local issues, things that need to be solved at the local and state levels, not necessarily federal levels. And that's really tough to engage with when we have a community like this that is spread all across the world, all across the country.

Jake and I are in different countries ourselves. So we were talking about the concept that, you know, local in this day and age doesn't just mean geographical anymore it does mean your community of people that you work with the industry that you pay attention to and the people around you the people we have on this show and there's a lot that we can do to help inequality there as well so we have put together a little campaign to make donations to two great organizations that are helping to increase the diversity of the fields that we follow here in spaceflight exploration, policy, everything like that. So head over to donate.offnominal.space for all the details.

I've also got a link in the show notes to that episode where Jake and I talk about this. Jake and I talk about this. But the long and the short of it is that we are directing donations to Black Girls Code, which is an organization that teaches coding to girls of color ages 7 to 17, and has been an organization I've followed for a while that does really good work. And the other organization is called the Banneker Institute. This is an institute at Harvard, which is a summer research program that prepares undergraduate students of color for graduate programs in astronomy. So a couple of different phases of education that are doing really great work. So we're also doing a matching program there. We've got, in addition to Jake and I, we had two anonymous listeners and our good friend Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut,

join in on that. So there's a ton of room left on the matching program. We're almost at $5,000 that have been contributed to these organizations so far. So it's been off to an incredible start. So again, donate.offnominal.space for all the details. And if you are going to donate to either organization, the links are over at that site. And when you do, email your receipt or some sort of information on your donation to donate at offnominal.space and we'll make sure to log it and do everything else related to the contributions there. Speaking of Off Nominal, if you do not listen to that show yet, this is a really good week to get in and listen to it because Jake and I just published this past Monday a one hour and 15 minute conversation with NASA Administrator Jim

Bridenstine. We talked a lot about SpaceX DM-2 and its positioning in the US today. We talked a lot about his history, about how he got into space. This is what we wanted to talk to him about. What was his early life like? What got him into space? His time as a Navy pilot. A really extensive and fun conversation that I think is worth listening to if you like either of us or Jim Bridenstine himself. So head over there offnominal.space for that episode. And thanks for listening to that little spiel. I think it's really cool what we're doing with this community here and I encourage you to take a look. Now for the space news of the day, we do have two stories that are, well, one is a story that was a couple days old, and one is a really big story, but we're going to start with some Gateway updates here.

Back in July, we had heard that Northrop Grumman would be building a Cygnus-derived habitat, which was called the Habitation and Logistics Outpost, or HALO, for the Lunar Gateway. or Halo for the Lunar Gateway. The Lunar Gateway is this kind of small space station that NASA has been theorizing would go into orbit around the moon and be a staging point for lunar landings. That plan has changed many times over the years, but back in July, Northrop Grumman was sole sourced for that. So we got a notification that they would be building that habitat, but that was all of the detail that we were given back then. There was no contract awarded at the time, no additional details fleshed out in that habitat design. But just this past week or two, we had an announcement of a contract that is headed north of Grumman's Way. They were awarded $187 million for the Gateway Habitat design. This carries them through 2020 up to preliminary design review.

So no money is awarded here for development, for build-out, for launch, or anything like that. This is for the design of that element. Now this Habitat element is the second of the Gateway elements that has been contracted at this point. The first was the Power and Propulsion element, which NASA typically refers to as PPE, but definitely needs a new acronym in this day and age of COVID. Now, the PPE, when it was awarded, the contract for that back in May last year, it was awarded the MAXAR.

And at the time, a total value was specified and a structure for that contract was specified. It was $375 million, which covered a 12-month base period and then a series of options beyond that for build-out, for launch, and for in-space testing. The PPE itself was a weird kind of contract for this sort of thing for NASA. It's something they haven't done before. They would only take ownership of the module once it was launched, sent to lunar orbit, and checked out in lunar orbit, at which point it would be turned over to NASA.

But Maxar would own it all the way up through that point, which was a different way of doing it and opened a lot of doors for them. At the time, we thought maybe they would be acquiring two of these just to see if one worked better than the other, but then they have two elements if both worked. There was a lot of different options that were opened up at that point with that decision. But, you know, a year ago, it was specified a total value. Now we get to this contract for the habitat where it's awarded for just the design of it and the build-out and development is pushed off further down the line. Now, since that PPE ward, plans have shifted, again, as they always do with the Gateway, it seems.

And instead of having these be two distinct elements, they are now going to be integrated on the ground and launched together on a commercial vehicle. So instead of launching that power and propulsion element, and then launching the habitat separately, docking them by some means of getting to the gateway itself. These are going to be a single element that are launched on a single rocket together. That changes things a little bit. I'm very curious to see how that changes the plans for NASA, where they were not going to own the module until it was checked out on orbit. Maybe that still stands, and maybe Northrop Grumman and Maxar are going to work tighter, be integrated

tighter. We'll see how that shakes out, but that's a thing that NASA is going to need to figure out here, and maybe that partially explains why they only gave Northrop Grumman money through design review. Maybe they're still trying to figure out some of the back half of that. Maybe there's going to be modifications to Maxar's contract. We'll see if we hear anything on that front. But I also think there's probably a couple other reasons that this contract was structured the way that it was. We're in this moment where NASA is pushing for a 2024 landing on the lunar surface pretty intensely. So that means they are putting every penny possible towards the human landing system contracts. We heard a month ago

or two months ago that Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper as a team, SpaceX, and then Dynetics, those three groups were awarded contracts for designs of human landing systems that would cover a 10-month period that was announced at the end of April. So that would carry them through to February of 2021. That cost a lot of money. You know, that was almost, it was a little above a billion dollars that they put into design contracts there for human landing systems. So between that and this announcement that both of these Gateway elements would be combined, Gateway was also taken off the critical path for the first landing of the Artemis program. We have these three things in concert.

Landing contracts, redefining the Gateway module structure, and taking Gateway off the critical path. All of that seems to be done to free up money for the landers themselves. Taking Gateway off the critical path, obviously, that delays the money that you're going to need to spend on the Gateway, so you have more to invest in landers up front. And then this combination of elements for the Gateway, that, number one, removes the need for a single launch vehicle contract or it takes it

from two launch vehicle contracts down to one it removes significant complexity by only building one vehicle that needs guidance and navigation systems and everything that goes along with that as these are going to be one single vehicle that fly themselves to the gateway orbit. And then the other thing that it does is it removes the need for rendezvous and docking systems from the vehicle, since it's only going to ever be a docking target at this point and not an active participant in docking. Whereas previously, the power and propulsion element would be sent to lunar orbit, and then the habitation module would get there somehow, whether that's with the help of Orion or flying itself to the Gateway, and then would need to perform docking. So there's multiple docking adapters that are going to be needed, but now with a single element,

those aren't going to have to dock with anything. They can be a docking target, so they're still going to need one or two docking ports, but they don't need rendezvous and docking systems in terms of guidance navigation proximity operations due to that change so all of that reduces the cost and the and it increases the complexity maybe a little bit because these two things have to be integrated but it reduces complexity significantly in other areas that probably nets out with a less complex vehicle overall reducing cost and freeing up money to be pushed towards the landing systems for 2024. So it certainly seems like even back in July, they knew Northrop

Grumman would be building this habitat. They knew it would be based on Cygnus, which Northrop Grumman has a lot of history behind. And it definitely seems like they were trying to get all these ducks in the row so that they know how much money they have, and whatever money they had left over for 2020 was sent Northrop Grumman's way to design, and then if they can get ahead on some build-out tasks, or maybe they design in a way that they're already ahead on build-out tasks, that covers their work through 2020,

which means we now have lander contracts through February. We have a PPE element being worked on already by Maxar, and now we have the design for the habitat being worked on through the end of 2020. So whatever money that NASA had in 2020 for the Gateway, for Artemis, that money is spent. They've done all the budget work they can, and now they have to begin the battle for, and they began this a little while back, I'm sure, but they're going to be battling for that 2021 budget, which is when they're going to need to see these significant budget increases to be able to do any of these plans in the way that they are currently talking about them. That's going to be a tough battle, quite honestly. We're going to be fighting that

battle through a pandemic-caused economic crash, a massive justice movement, as we talked about up front, a presidential election that is shaping up to be quite a show, if you will. Obviously, everyone always says this presidential election is the most important of your lifetime. So the stakes are always ramped up by everybody. But this is a particularly contentious year for presidential politics. Around the DM2 launch, as we talked about on the last show, there was some bipartisan politicking happening. There were some compliments being thrown back and forth by administrators across different presidential administrations, across different party lines. So it doesn't necessarily indicate that NASA's plans are going to be thrown into upheaval because, like we talked about, the Biden campaign, who is the other presidential candidate running against Donald Trump. Trump, the Biden campaign had this event in which the two people talking about space there,

Bill Nelson, former senator, big in the space industry in terms of policy, and Charlie Bolden, the last administrator of NASA, they both said they like the current path that NASA is on. They like the plans that are in motion, even though it differs from what was done over the previous administration. That does show a good sign that maybe the presidential part isn't as impactful. But the budget certainly is. It's a really tough budget time for NASA particularly. And with all these other influences, I don't know how that's going to shake out and neither does NASA. And we're probably not going to find out for a very long time because it's going to be a while until we get a budget for that 2021 time period. But NASA has certainly set the stage with lander contracts, with gateway contracts,

and everything else they could line up in 2020. They've set the stage for a big 2021 budget, a very telling 2021 budget. So before we dive into the leadership of NASA shakeup that's been happening lately, I need to say a very huge thank you to everyone who supports Main Engine Cutoff over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. There are 415 of you supporting this show every single month, and, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Nadeem, Peter, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, The Everyday Astronaut, Frank, Julian, and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Adam, and seven anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for your support. It really makes this possible. And at a time like this, I keep saying this, but the support has been amazing. We're seeing a nice uptick in Patreon, people getting in on headlines in particular.

That is a show I do every single weekend, running through all the stories of the week. $3 a month or more gets you in, gets you a special RSS feed. It's a, if I would say so myself, a pretty fantastic service to keep you up to date on all space news. So check it out if you want to help support the show, mainenginecutoff.com slash support. All right, so this is a nice way to tie all these storylines together. A couple of weeks back, we talked about Doug Lavero, who was the head of human spaceflight at NASA, and he resigned slash was forced out after some sort of infraction that he made on the contracting around those Artemis landers. Sounds like he was trying to work with Boeing to make them have a

more competitive bid, did something wrong, had to get out. It was a pretty bizarre time for Doug at NASA. He was here for just a few months. There was almost a longer gap before he was at the head of human spaceflight. There was almost a longer gap of not having a head of human spaceflight as long as he was the head of human spaceflight. So it was a very bizarre time period because it was July that Bill Gerstenmaier, the previous head of human spaceflight, left. It took until, I think it was like November or December when Doug Loververo came in, and then he was out by late May. So a very bizarre less than a year for NASA there. But beyond that, after that bizarre departure, after the epic triumph of SpaceX Demo-2, the successor for Doug Lavero was named this week, and it's Kathy Leaders. She was the longtime

manager of the commercial crew program since 2014. She's been leading that. She has been a calm and steady voice from the NASA side on that program all along, increasingly tired as the delays mounted. And you could tell she was just working really hard to make this thing happen. But then we finally saw Demo-2 launch with astronauts head up to the ISS. And the joy that you could see in Kathy Leaders was infectious in some of these press conferences. So she has been the steward of that program for the last six years. She has been through the ups and downs. She has seen what worked there. She's seen what didn't work, what still isn't working in the case of Boeing. She's learned a lot in that program. She's learned a lot about how to lead programs like that. And she is now

going to be elevated out of the commercial crew program and to be in charge of all human space flight at NASA. That contains the ISS program, the commercial crew program, that contains all of Artemis. It is a huge job, and she is definitely the right person to lead this part of the agency at this time, especially given the future and where things are going. And I think it states loud and clear which direction NASA is going in the future. She came out of a program that was acquired and developed in a completely new way for NASA. Commercial cargo and crew both were done in this manner of fixed price contracts with a couple of competing contractors. And it's really a shining part of NASA's human

spaceflight programs. And like I said, she's been there all along. So now when she applies that to Artemis, that's going to have big impacts because when you look at Artemis, almost every single piece of the architecture is being developed and acquired in a way that was inspired by commercial cargo and crew. are the very long-standing, very extremely large SLS and Orion programs, the launch vehicle and the crew capsule that are being developed by NASA, owned by NASA. Those are the only things in Artemis that are not being developed and acquired in a way that we learned worked really well from commercial cargo and crew. That includes both of the Gateway modules that I talked about. Those are fixed price contracts. The Gateway Logistics Services contract, that's SpaceX one, that is almost equivalent to commercial cargo to the Lunar Gateway. The human landing system contracts that we just saw are going to be developed in the same way. Fixed price contracts cross a couple of different competing contractors. And it certainly seems, though this is a bigger hurdle because of the existence of

Orion, it certainly seems like it's just a matter of time until we see the crew complement to Gateway Logistics Services in extending commercial crew out to the Lunar Gateway. So SLS and Orion have been around for a long time, But beyond that, every single piece of the architecture is done in a way that Kathy Leaders knows the ins and outs of, knows the pitfalls, knows what works, and is comfortable working within. And that is a huge, huge statement by NASA for where they're heading in the future. They could have went down to Marshall to get somebody out of that kind of side of NASA, that style of thinking at NASA, and named them head of human spaceflight and said, we're putting this person here because they know what is going on with SLS Orion and we need to get it that section of NASA, whether those changes are going to be implemented by Congress and the rest of the organization, TBD, but there's certainly been

no love lost there between certainly the contractors of SLS Orion and the NASA leadership of late. So they could have done that. They could have gotten somebody from that kind of side of NASA, but instead they have this incredible triumph of commercial crew right now riding high, and it's a perfect time for Cathy Leaders to switch over. They couldn't have done this back, right? Like, you could say, why wasn't she picked, you know, six months ago?

But they're obviously finishing up commercial crew work to get to Demo 2. That was not the right time to take her out of that team and put her in this position. But now, after that docking and DM2 is going so well, now's the right time for her to switch over and it comes at a perfect opportunity for her to have a huge influence. And the last part that I want to mention that's really important here is that the NASA administrator, the head of NASA, what Jim Bridenstine is, that is a position that is

nominated by the president. And in the recent era, wasn't always this way, but in the recent era, they change out with every new administration that comes in. So the administrator is much more of a fickle position. But the heads of these directorates, what Cathy Leaders is now, those have much longer time spans or can have much longer time spans. Let's not use Doug Lavero as an example, but they can have much longer time spans in terms of their effect on the agency. Previous to Doug Lavero, we mentioned Bill Gerstenmaier was the head of human spaceflight. He was there since 2005. He was there for 14 years. That's three different presidential administrations, none of which agreed with each other on almost anything, especially not NASA policy, especially not the direction of NASA and the plans that NASA

has. And yet Gerstenmaier was there all along for some sense of continuity. And he obviously had, we don't know, tons, but he certainly had opinions about the way things should go. And Kathy Leaders is as well. And we have a good indication for what kinds of things she's comfortable with and what kinds of things she thinks works well. We'll certainly hear more from her on that in the coming months. But she could be there for a long time. She could certainly be there. And based on her history with commercial crew, I wouldn't bet against her being there when a NASA astronaut steps foot on the lunar surface the next time.

And that's pretty exciting when you see all these ducks in a row here that we've been talking about with now Kathy leaders in charge of that. That's a really good sign for the future of NASA policy, the future of these architectures, and certainly a rising tide lifts all boats here. So as the industry steps up and SpaceX is doing so much, Blue Origin is going to come online in the next couple of years with New Glenn. There's so many different things that are going in the right direction here for these kind of programs. And now Kathy Leaders gets to have this kind of seat at the table at NASA, at the highest level of NASA. That is a huge sign.

And I, along with almost everyone I've seen online talking about this in the last week, are just thrilled to see her lead this department at this time. And I'm very excited to see where this goes. So like I said, we'll hear more from her. She's got a press conference coming up later this week. And we'll certainly cover that if there's something that comes out of there that's of note. But until then, thank you all so much again for your support over at mainenginecutoff.com. You keep this thing going.

Totally listener-funded. So head over there if you want to help out. And as always, find me on Twitter at WeHaveMiko. And if you've got any questions or thoughts, send them to me, anthony at mainenginecutoff.com. Once again, thanks. Head over to donate.offnominal.space as well, like I said up front. And I'll talk to you soon.