Main Engine Cut Off - T+161: Mark Wiese, Manager of NASA’s Gateway Deep Space Logistics

Episode Date: June 22, 2020

Mark Wiese, Manager of NASA’s Gateway Deep Space Logistics, joins me to talk about the logistics architecture for Gateway and, specifically, the selection of SpaceX and Dragon XL for missions in the future. He even lets me get really nerdy and responds to some of my complaints and questions from past episodes!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 384 other supporters.TopicsMark Wiese (@MW_go4launch) / TwitterMark D. Wiese, Manager, Deep Space Logistics, Gateway Program | Kennedy Biographies | NASAAbout Gateway Deep Space Logistics | NASANASA Awards Artemis Contract for Gateway Logistics Services | NASASource Selection Statement for the Gateway Logistics Services ContractEpisode T+152: SpaceX’s Dragon XL Wins Gateway Logistics Services Contract - Main Engine Cut OffNASA Seeks Information for Gateway Cargo Delivery ServicesGateway Logistics Services - Main Engine Cut OffEpisode T+124: Gateway Logistics Services, FY2020 NDAA, and Small GEO Satellites - Main Engine Cut OffGateway Logistics Services - Draft RFP - beta.SAM.govThe 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 Managing Cutoff. I'm Anthony Colangelo, as always, and we've got a fun show today. I'm really excited about this one. It's been in the works for a little while now, but we finally hit the moment in time when timing is right to have this conversation. So today we'll be talking with Mark Weiss, who is the manager for the Gateway Logistics Program based at Kennedy Space Center. This is the program that will be supplying cargo and logistics to the Lunar Gateway, which is a key part of NASA's Artemis program to build a small outpost around the moon. From there, we could stage lunar landings. International partners could add modules and things that would be useful in lunar orbit. So this is a really awesome program to talk about because most recently, there was an announcement that SpaceX has won the Gateway Logistics Services contract. They're going to be supplying a minimum

of two missions to the Gateway over its lifespan. They're going to be building a new vehicle for this called Dragon XL. We talked about this a little while back on the show. I've got some links in the show notes to old episodes. I believe it was episode, let me make sure that I'm not lying to you, it was episode 152 that we talked about it extensively, and SpaceX bid and how it fits into everything. So I'm going to be talking with Mark today about the Logistics Services Program. I've got some questions to ask, some bones to pick,

and Mark is awesome and open, so I'm really excited for this conversation. I hope you are as well. There's a lot to learn in here. And importantly, I think it's important to note up front, all of the programs that are in work as part of the Artemis program, we've talked about human landings, we've talked about gateway logistics in the past, the actual gateway itself, even so far as the robotic landers, the commercial lunar payload services program, all of these are programs that work really well on their own, they work really well together, and it's interesting to see all of these different things in work at the same time as all the politicking is going on that we've been covering on the show for a while.

So learning about these programs individually is a really interesting way to kind of fulfill the mental picture in your head and figure out what you actually think about these programs. Because there's a lot of talk out there about the gateway. But when you hear about these programs specifically, I think it changes your perspective a little bit about what's possible and what there is to be used in the near future here in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. So without further ado, let's give Mark a call. Mark, welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. I'm happy to have you here after we've been thinking about doing this for a while. So it's good to finally have you on the show. Thank you, Anthony.

I'm excited to be on MECO. Pretty cool to be on one of the first podcasts I ever listened to. That's awesome. Yeah, I was just saying that we've tweeted and emailed enough that I think you know the kind of detail we like to get into. So this should be fun to dive in. And I was in prep for this looking back through links and podcasts that I've done all the way back for two years or so, maybe even more than two years at this point, about this kind of stuff that we're talking about here today, which is gateway logistics. I think a lot of people have been following gateway program and Artemis generally, obviously we have on the show here, but I would love to hear a little background

on logistics itself and its context around Gateway, because Gateway has been in different forms for several years now. But logistics has a pretty long timeline that I don't think people realize. You know, I think people picked up on the news when SpaceX was announced. But if you could give us a little background on how the program started, its interaction with Gateway, and interestingly, how it ended up at Kennedy Space Center where you are working day to day. Yeah, absolutely. So I was telling you earlier, I'm a New Yorker born and raised, so I tend to keep running on. So cut me off if I'm talking too much and you want to get a specific along the way. So the good news is with that, you can

keep up with how fast I talk. I don't notice it at all. So it was like August of 2018 when I first got involved. I had a phone call with Jason Cruzan and they were going through early formulation of Gateway. And we were talking about what this logistic role could be. And Gateway was pressing towards what they called a formulation synchronization review. And it was a place where they were going to kind of lay out on the table all the initial planning and work that had gone in to formulating what Gateway would be. And it was at that point that they were laying out the habitation assignment to Marshall Space Flight Center at that time and the logistics assignment to Kennedy at that time. So I kind of went in blind, started that thing in fall of 2018, went to that synchronization review. And that's where I learned about what logistics was all about. And Jason had a vision at that time that logistics

would be this big piece that wasn't just the bring cargo up to Gateway. It was really all things transportation to Gateway. And at that time, he said, hey, we're bringing Kennedy in because we really want you to leverage all the things you guys have been doing at Kennedy on the launch services program with the NASA launch services contracts. And then also pull in the cargo resupply and the ISS experience on CRS and kind of package that all in one so that we can have this big, you know, end to end contract that can really serve the lifetime of what we're trying to do with Gateway. That was kind of an early, early involvement in fall of 2018. And at that time, Jason said, hey, by the way, we really want to get this thing set up. Can you have a contract awarded within a year?

Which was like ridiculously fast. But I had some experience under my belt from Launch Services Program. I actually did the venture class Launch Services Contracts. And we did that really, really fast. So we said, all right, we think we got the right talent here, we can pull this off, and we just hit the ground running. So you mentioned the commercial cargo tie in. And that's, that's one of the things that I'm curious to pick on a little bit. There's many different components of the legacy of commercial cargo at this point, and even commercial crew. that we're seeing start flying. There's obviously the contracting

function end, right, the fixed price kind of architecture of that. But there's also the interaction with NASA and the providers. So it seems like that was a big part in, you know, taking lessons learned there, taking some guidance and direction from what's been working well there and applying it to logistics. Are there specific things that you look to based on what you've seen with SpaceX and Northrop Grumman over the past however many years now it's been? You know, it's been tons of missions. They're up to SpaceX is at 20. Northrop Grumman is in the teens, I think. So what were those things that you pulled out of those programs to apply forward to the gateway? So it's absolutely a huge part. And we pulled in some of our teammates from Johnson Space Center who have been working CRS intimately for the past couple of years and pulled them into our source evaluation board where we actually go through and review proposals and set up the requirements for what the RPO looked like. set up the requirements for what the artificial look like. And there was a lot there on, on the interaction with the human system, right? Because at Kennedy, we, you know, I, you know, I'm pretty passionate about this. The commercial space contracting way of doing business really started in the late nineties with the, with more services program. That was where we started to buy

a service and it evolved to then pull in the human spaceflight angle when CRS got involved. And that's a whole other layer of complication, right, to play in the interaction with human systems. So we knew from the start we weren't going to be developing a human-rated system per se. Gateway's got a little different spin on human rating, where we're actually human rating when Orion is docked and when the crew is there. Because we're a crew-tended spacecraft. We're not 24-7 crew like ISS is.

So there was a lot of how do we understand what CRS was able to do to leverage things on space station without having to go so, so deep on requirements that we all of a sudden aren't enabling a commercial service way of contracting. Because really, you've got to refocus your requirements in a commercial service vein to say, this is what I want you to do and not tell them how. And that has been one of the hardest things because, you know, coming from shuttle and coming from station, you know, the switch to try to make sure we're mentoring commercial providers with all our lessons learned that we've gone through at NASA and not specifically tell them how. That's what opens the door for innovation. So we pulled on packing and interfaces to cargo and how it plugs in,

but we really spent a lot of time in our requirement space going back and forth with the JSC team because this wasn't space station. And it was how do we go find that perfect set of what we need providers to do without getting into the nitty gritty of how they need to go do it. Because we knew that would evolve over time. All right. I have like a thousand different ways to go from here because I've got like, I've got two bones to pick with you, to be not really i just have things that i've like picked up on that i'm very curious about and then also to talk about how this sits in you know you mentioned the timeline here you were working on this early in 2018 and i plans have changed a lot since then they're still

changing because of you know trying to get to the moon by 2024 requires a lot of flexibility. Um, so let's start with, with some of the bones to pick because it is related to commercial cargo. Um, and these numbers may have changed, but I pulled it out of like the original RFPs and things like that. Oh, you're going back to your first podcast when you talked about this. I remember probably. Yes. So my team, I played that for my team after we had put the draft RFP out there. This is going to be good. Okay, great. This is awesome. So one of the things that I noticed early on was that the initial detailed notice of the RFP said that the initial requirement was for three missions with a single mission expected to deliver five metric tons of pressurized cargo and 2.6 metric tons of unpressurized cargo.

That puts it at a significant bump over the commercial cargo vehicles that we have today. Dragon says they can take six tons up to the ISS in any mix of pressurized, unpressurized. They typically become volume limited way before mass limited. Cygnus can do three and a half metric tons. So what is it that drove the requirements much higher? Because that essentially means a new vehicle for any provider. I think Cygnus probably had some flexibility to expand the size a little bit. We're seeing that with the habitation module that they're building based on Cygnus. But why was there such a significant jump? And were there studies done to see what you could do with existing vehicles

before going in and developing a whole new variant of a vehicle for logistics? This is great. So early on, early formulation, Gateway is all about being that precursor for deep space transportation to Mars. So a lot of the early on analysis of trying to figure out and scope Gateway always had this forward looking perspective on how do we get to Mars. So in typical aerospace engineering design, you know, everybody bigger is always better. So everybody kept going down that path of wanting to go bigger, wanting to go bigger, looking at the vehicles they had for CRS and thinking, well, if I'm only sending one and we're going to have an annual cadence of one mission a year, how do I make sure it's got enough

for a 30, 60, 90 day crew mission? I got to have enough cargo supplies up there to feed and outfit and do science. So some of the science and engineering community kept going bigger and bigger and bigger on. And that initial RFI was a little bit more of data gathering because we had both the NASA side saying, keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And then our perspective of hey but we got this firm direction that we're going and buying this as a commercial service so we don't want to drive development so let's ask some questions in this rfi and try to understand where the state of the industry is going and if they have any reason now now those two numbers also were kind of a hey how do you want to mix them? Because we knew we also had this big

requirement of getting your other buddy, Jake's friend, get that Canadian arm up there. So we had this really chunky, you know, external payload that would be on a one-time thing, but we had to like pull that into the mix somehow. So it was really trying to thread the needle of how to understand what this requirement is from the NASA side, how to understand what commercial can provide, and again, try not to be prescriptive. So, that first RFI was really trying to figure out what's out there and make sure we understood where we could push without driving a lot of development costs. Then you've coupled that with, and this was from, I think I read this in the RFP somewhere, and it was in your industry day PowerPoint. This is how into these details I was getting. You had the total mass at gateway arrival at 14 metric tons.

So you've got this sweet spot that you're looking for where you've got to take a lot of cargo, but you can only be so big. I assume that one is about actual gateway interactions. And when you're docked at the gateway, you've got certain requirements for station keeping and all that kind of stuff. But what is the specific requirements around that maximum size of 14 metric tons? So that was a two-piece requirement. So you're absolutely right on the first part. It was about knowing the requirements that were in the PPE RFP and understanding the control moment ability of controlling this entire stack and trying to lock in that we weren't going to have this huge, heavy thing hanging off of one side and that we'd skew the whole ability of PPE to control the stack. So that was the first piece that went in. And then the other piece was one that we started focusing in on was, hey, we're buying a

commercial service. 14 metric tons is about as safe as you can go with the current launch vehicle market and actually get something out there. So we focused it in from that standpoint. I will tell you going forward, that requirement will be gone. So that was really... Is that because you saw how giant some of these landers are that are now on contract? I think it's come to the point now where we realize, again, I think more people have opened their minds and realized we as the government don't need to necessarily constrain the trade space. So from a controlling the gateway stack standpoint, we can work that on a one-time basis. Logistic isn't going to go up there and be docked. At the time we put out that first RFE, we thought we had a three-year on-orbit life requirement. We just didn't back that down to one.

So when you start thinking about how long would something big hanging off the end be docked, you start to think about how much fuel you'd use on PPE. So we've got a lot more, I think, analysis now that's being done on different design analysis cycles to understand how we can control the stack with the amount of fuel that they'll have on PPE. So we don't have to require it from a control standpoint. And then hopefully in a commercial services vein, now that we've awarded one, we shouldn't have to drive too hard on constraining to make sure we don't get something that's not real, if that makes sense. Yeah. And I mean, I guess to your point about the launch vehicle, if a contractor is going to pitch something, they're probably already thinking about launch. They're not pitching this in a vacuum, to use a terrible pun in this case, but they know they have to get it out there. So I think the thing that I originally brought up was like that totally eliminated Starship from competition for logistics. Now, I don't know specifically.

This is getting down a different path, but I was surprised that SpaceX bid Dragon XL. Do you I don't know if this is something you can talk about, but were you surprised to see what came in from SpaceX? Or did it make a lot of sense given the kind of constraints that were set along this program line? So us, it made a lot of sense. We didn't know what SpaceX was going to bid. You know, a lot of times in these processes, you know, before you get a RFP out there, there's a lot of back and forth with industry. That's what that RFI was about, to try to understand an industry's trying to help influence requirements, because they're all trying to set the sweet spot so it goes to them. And, you know, we weren't sure what everybody was going to bid.

And I think what we were looking for, the way we really tried to spell out these requirements is we're buying a commercial service. We weren't paying for development. We don't want to go do a lot of development. So we were really hoping the solutions would come that were derived and leveraging all the investment NASA has done already in different systems out there. So seeing them propose DragonXL was not a shock. We expected something that was going to leverage what they had done with Dragon,

but we weren't sure. We weren't sure if they were even going to bid because we knew all the Starship push and where they were going long term. But when we got it, I'm sure you've read the source selection statement and seen it. It was an outstanding solution. Yeah, the interesting thing is, I was shocked because SpaceX seems to be heading a certain direction with Starship. We've seen that on the human landing side of the Artemis program as well. And this is a significant, I don't know if it's a significantly different vehicle, but it does have a lot of differences in the way it launches.

I noticed that it mates to the upper stage where the docking port is, so it kind of launches upside down in our mental model of how Dragon launches today. One of the things mentioned in that source selection document is that the service module is actually at that docking port side. So you've got the whole actual habitable volume or cargo volume behind it. That seemed interesting. Is there any kind of comments that you can make on the actual structure of that vehicle and the way that it docks to Gateway? Because the concern was having that service section right up against Gateway and having crew pass through it. Was that something that was unique and kind of the first time you encountered that? Or did this seem like something that was within the ballpark of what you were guessing would happen?

So it was definitely unique. I think, you know, a lot of us had in our head the traditional, you know, some kind of spacecraft bus, some spacecraft tug, something that was probably commercially developed that was, you know, on the back end. Like a Cygnus, essentially. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. something that was probably commercially developed that was you know on the back end and that's what the power exactly exactly so this was a little different but but what you know without you know i can't go too far into proprietary details but spacex basically is taking all their systems that they've used for cargo and crew dragon and they're repackaging them a little differently and that you know they're notorious for coming up with innovation and creative ways of doing things so they did this and it looked different so so the you know you saw we wrote that thing up in

the source selection statement from that standpoint of hey there were just some unknowns it wasn't necessarily this is a huge risk it was just a little different so we're gonna have to dig into some of that as we go through the development process yeah and you can tell the um they have a very uh unique docking port look to it, right? We've seen this now on the crew missions up to ISS where they've got those four Draco thrusters kind of around the rim of the docking port. It's really interesting just to see that vehicle. I'm excited to see it fly. Now, they were selected, and you said that there is a two mission guarantee for this

contract. I know the other governmental agencies, this might be something that you have to say no comment to. I don't know. Other like department of defense agencies and things like that, when they specify a guarantee or a minimum, they have to allocate funds at that time for those missions. Is that similar for NASA or are there differences in the contracting structure? So a little bit of differences in the contracting structure. So again, we are, I think, one of the biggest strengths we have, and I mentioned it a couple times, is leveraging the launch services program's expertise in commercial services contracts.

So that heritage of the NASA launch services contract has been around for 20 years, what launches all the science and exploration spacecraft for the agency. So we took a lot of cues from how they set up their contracts, both from termination liability standpoints, from how we turn on missions, how we allocate funds. So by awarding a contract, absolutely, we are committing that we are buying guaranteed of two missions from SpaceX. But sometimes these IDIQs, and I remember procurement directors telling me over the years when I started to get involved in this type of work was, you know, an IDIQ is an empty bag award sometimes if you don't guarantee anything. And how are you incentivizing a company to bid if they don't see what total amount of

dollars you can guarantee? So we've set up the GLS contract to enable ongoing competition. We have the ability to on-ramp at any point during the time. And we've got this really wide open space with what we call CLIN2, where we can go in a specialized mission direction. So the guarantee is to make sure that these new providers, when they come and put their money where their mouth is and try to get on this contract for our, we'll call it the Deep Space Logistics Project, they can actually see that they've got a little bit of a guarantee, but then it's an ongoing competition going forward for them to gain more work and gain more missions going forward. Now, that's a model that we're seeing in a lot of different NASA programs right now,

like Commercial Lunar Payload Services has this model where they on-ramp different competitors, different providers, and then they award task orders. That interaction seems much more straight up to add on new providers than this does, because presumably, if you were going to on-ramp another provider in the future, it would be a bigger ask, because in many of these cases, they're developing a new vehicle. So what would that process be like? Would it be you responding to how much cargo is needed at Gateway once the full plan and architecture really comes together the next couple of years and then taking the step to on-ramp?

Or I just don't really have a good mental model for when you would make that call and what would be the impetus for that? So I think, so we had set up GLS so that we could award multiple right from the start. And, you know, when we laid out all the proposals and saw where we're at at that time, it made sense just to award the one. And we would open it up again. And again, it's set, we can open it whenever we want. I think the key to opening up again is when there's a little bit of a change in the environment. So if we see another launch vehicle come on board, we see another development coming out of something else NASA's doing, whether that's HLS or CRS or somewhere else that shows a little bit more maturity and competition in the market that we're going after for cargo, that's when

we'll open it up. Because this is, I think, the power of what NASA has started to realize in the last decade or so is that we can't set up these long-term cost plus contracts because the risk is all on the government and it incentivizes cost growth. So this way, the way we're incentivizing costs to make sense and being great stewards of the American taxpayer dollar is driving it through a competitive environment. So Eclipse is pretty straightforward in their sense. And even the NASA Launch Services Program is a little bit straightforward where they open up the on-ramp and you get on and you have the ability to bid and compete on a task order. We're doing it a little bit differently. We'll look for that change in the environment.

We'll look for a little bit more maturity in some of the other systems out there. And if we think they're ready, we'll open up and that'll allow us to bring someone else on, guarantee them two missions, which is good for them because we're guaranteeing them an award. You get on-ramped onto Eclipse or you get on-ramped onto NLS, there's no guarantee right off the bat that you're going to win something. So it's a way of us foreshadowing, you know, confidence in the system that gets on board. And then we guarantee them too. And then going forward, we've got a catalog of different prices and maybe different, you know, capabilities.

And we can pick which one we want for the CLIN 1 cargo missions. And then we've got a setup for this CLIN 2 specialized ability where we can go down and compete for different unique capabilities. I want to get into some of the architectures of these particular programs. But the last thing on the kind of vehicle architecture,

I'm curious if you think that these vehicles could also be applicable to ISS program, for example. Is there anything that would preclude them from using DragonXL to haul large amounts of cargo up to the ISS, you know, taking over some of the... We've seen large cargo vehicles head up there before, ATV from Europe, HTV from Japan. Do you think that's something that would work out and might be in the cards in the near future if the ISS program thinks they need that?

Yeah, there's nothing that would preclude them. So the way we set up the GLS contract is all about Cislunar and going out to the moon. So it wouldn't be via our GLS contract, but the way the CRS contract is set up, I'm sure there's a way for SpaceX to look at offering different solutions. And their design of Dragon XL, I would fully expect would have ability for them to want to service low Earth orbit going forward as well with developing that system.

Yeah, it seems, I mean, it's a crazy amount of cargo that you can take up there. So that would be really cool to see one day. And it's great. I mean, we're in this mode of, you've talked about it a lot with Axiom and things like that. We're really turning the corner

of commercializing low-earth orbit. And that's really the vision and mission of what my project's trying to do is set up so we can be the pathfinder to commercialize deep space and go find that way of creating a logistics node at the moon and getting other industries on board to realize there's an R&D leg here that we can develop. And if we can go find a commodity out there with this water ice and find a way to get commercial industry and capitalism to thrive and make money out there, we can really be that commercial services piece going deeper, which will push us on the march. It's an awesome time that we're in.

Yeah, it definitely is. I'm pumped. So let's talk about the missions themselves. You're going to be supplying logistics and cargo to these human missions out at the Gateway. I would love to hear a general mission plan, both like, you know, does this launch before or after the crew? Does it launch either or? How does it interact with the actual,

you said there's like a 12-month kind of lifespan, but I think I saw six to 12 months is the range there. So how does that interact with what the potential human missions are that we'll see in the next 10 years? Yeah, so on the QIN-1 side of GLS, that bringing cargo up, bringing a cargo module, a habitable module that the crew can go inside of, is planned to be a...

Every time we send crew, we send this big, you know, trunk. You think a shuttle. A shuttle with a crew module and a cargo module all in one vehicle, and we've kind of split that up, right? So when Orion's going, we're going to send a cargo module up there and the plan is to pre-position it we probably launch before the crew get up there

make sure it's pre-positioned and docked and then you'd send the crew up and we'd have supplies that they need to live at gateway things they may need to transfer into hls so that they can get the cargo they need to go down to the surface so that's kind of our con ops is this annual cadence of a mission to go out via Artemis and explore the moon. We set up the design requirement for 12 months. So that was us trying to, again, skinny down requirements as much as we could. And we said the base is that you'd be up there for a six-month mission. And then we put in these what we call mission unique capabilities where we can turn on and

extend the stay at gateway if for some reason we think we need them to be there for longer than six months if there's a delay and orion launching or there's some reason to extend um so that's where we set that up we've also this mission unique capability is a way we can turn on little options like if you're buying a car and you want some you know specialized package so we put a mission unique capability when we design the rfp of what we call fast transit. So that was us trying to foreshadow. We didn't want to prescribe or preclude different ways of getting out to the moon. So obviously PPE just invested a lot of money in solar electric

propulsion. The ComSat world commercial side is investing a lot in solar electric propulsion. So we didn't want to preclude that as a capability, but we also knew that kind of NASA human spaceflight experience said, we're going to want to wait as long as we can before we launch cargo. If we can have it within, you know, a couple of weeks before launching Orion, that's probably ideal because there's going to be some last minute thing

we want to throw on there and we want that ability. So instead of baselining that as a requirement and precluding a solar electric propulsion type transport, we said, you know what, give us, tell us what it'll cost to go do a fast transit and we can decide at some point in time whether we want to pay for that option. And we think that's what we'll use more often than not is this wait till the end. But again, the way we set this up is to derive maximum flexibility.

I just keep getting distracted by the fact that NASA really needs to come up with something different other than PPE at this point. Like, that acronym has been taken. Yeah, I heard you talking about that earlier. They really, you gotta work on that one. Now, maybe it'll change now that they're going to be integrated on the ground. We can come up with a new term for, like, the base of the gateway. Right. That's an interesting thing that's changed recently is that the first two elements were

the power and propulsion element and then the habitation element. Those are now going to be integrated on launch, launched together. Does that change anything for logistics? Because those vehicles are certainly going to change a little bit, right? They are now going to be architected different. Does that change anything about either the requirements of the vehicle or the interaction with Gateway itself? It doesn't change anything requirements-wise for logistics. It just puts a little bit more need and emphasis on the fact that we've got to – it's great that I've got a large cargo capability because now that we're co-manifesting those payloads, it's putting a little bit more stress on the design cycle process to make sure they cut mass and figure out what is in and what's out and how to fit all that in.

Early, early Gateway formulation, it was power propulsion element. And then you had a utilization module, which was like that node on space station. And then the U.S. HABs and the international HABs that we started to build things out. And this was kind of a, hey, let's figure out how to optimize. things out. And this was kind of a, hey, let's figure out how to optimize. And you knew we had a lot of pressure out there to make sure it didn't, you know, we didn't want people thinking Gateway was this huge runaway program. It's not. It's very lean, you know, spacecraft out there, space station out there to aggregate all the systems. So this was, you know, one of Levero's big decisions was to aggregate these two on the ground. I think it makes a lot of sense. It does

buy down a lot of risk, but it took away the service module from the Cygnus heritage of Halo so that they can bolt those two things together. And I think just requirements-wise on logistics, it's okay. There may be more systems that I got to haul up, even some things that might be permanent on Halo that we might have to bring up on our side just to make sure they've got all the flexibility they need to have the weight within the bounds of the current existing commercial launch vehicle marketplace. Does it change anything that there's now a solid potential that the first logistics launch would be the first thing that launches and then docks in cislunar space? Like launches from Earth, flies out of the moon,

docks with something as its primary mission? I don't think that's been done before, right? So we see the autonomous docking at Space Station and low Earth orbit. So that has been a requirement on logistics from the start, that we had to have that autonomous rendezvous prox out from docking. And CRS has done a lot of work to buy down that risk. So it doesn't scare us at all. That's something we played in from the start. And again, why we were leveraging so much on buying a commercial service, because we felt like the development has been done out there.

So way out there in deep space, obviously, the environment's a little different and we're getting a little bit further away. But it's not something we see as a huge risk. You're making people happy back in the day that wanted aar Orbit Rendezvous as the original Apollo missions. Somebody out there is cheering for that. I like that. I would love to hear a little bit about what the, once it's docked to Gateway, you've got humans out there. What is the interaction with this module? There's going to be cargo storage inside. Are there going to be experiments and other scientific things happening in there now that you're adding on this big habitable volume to the Gateway?

Yeah, that's been a big piece all along, is to make sure that, you know, unlike Space Station, you know, Space Station looks like a lot of our garages here on Earth. You know, every time you bring up a cargo module, it's quick, let's unload this U-Haul and let's put everything where we can. And then eventually that cargo module goes away and you repack it with trash. We plan to be that same thing, but it's got to kind of be that like super fancy walk-in closet also.

So we're not going to pull everything out of logistics and leave it in Gateway and there's not going to be room for it. It's just a smaller, you know, it's a studio apartment, not a six-bedroom house like the PlayStation difference. So we are planning to go up there and try to make sure this is an extension module that's got cargo that you need, that it's got room for experiments to happen. And obviously, we could be doing experiments in route and on the way back to dispose of ourselves. So we don't

expect a lot to transfer out of this module. It's really going to be a, you know, this refreshed piece that can keep coming up over and over again. The disposal element is interesting. So after the mission, the vehicle has to dispose of itself. Where is the basic idea that that would be disposed to? And what kind of flexibility do you have to, is there a potential to reuse it in a different way for the architecture, whether it be a relay satellite or something else like that? There's all kinds of potential. And we put in the contract, again, leveraging a lot of heritage from LSP to make sure we set this contract up. So if a commercial provider wants to find a way to make money on this outside of its mission for Gateway, that's fully out there and open.

We did not dictate how they go dispose of it. We just said, hey, you've got to tell us what we're doing and we can approve that plan. So I think we all thought from the start it's probably some heliocentric orbit. But, you know, there were some early talks of if they want to dispose of it, you know, on the surface of the moon, is that possible? And, you know, there's different analysis going on with the dust and what it gets ejected as. Maybe. So I said, well, let's just write the requirements so they have to come back to us and tell us what they propose.

And if they want to go do another commercial mission after the fact, they just bring that back to us as well. And we look at it, make sure it's not going to negatively impact anything the government's doing and give them, you know, the ability to go do that. We want them to find ways to keep making money and incentivize that commercial economy out there in lunar orbit. I love the Gateway program for its flexibility so far. Every time that there's been things coming up in the architecture, there were so many different ways to use things. Originally, the power and propulsion element, they were going to acquire two of them and use one as the main PPE and then figure out what to do with the other one. Uh, that's changed since, but I feel like that stuff always comes

up, which is here's what we need to do beyond that. Like, let's talk about it. And that, that model is just awesome to see like flourishing really within NASA. Yeah. Um, I don't have too many things left on my list here. You're just crushing through my topics. Um, is there anything else about gateway I should have asked that we didn't get to at this point? Let's see. No, I mean, you've done really well. I think Gateway is this essential piece for us figuring out how to go to Mars. You know, I saw it a lot in the upfront, you know, you hear a lot of the negativity out there sometimes of like, well, let's just go lunar direct, let's go lunar direct. And I used to make the analogy a lot, you know, we're here, Kennedy Space Center,

we're in Central Florida. If someone's going to come here pre-pandemic and pre-COVID to come explore, you know, all the attractions and all the amusement parks that are here in Central Florida, you don't get off at the airport and go VFR direct right to, you know, the roller coaster you're looking to get on. You've got to go set up a base camp, you know, and that's what Gateway really is. It's this base camp. So you can go explore all that Central Florida has to offer. And that's what Gateway is. And we go figure that out. And, you know, we start to get better and better at this. We start to push our economy out and figure out resources we can leverage. Now we're really setting, we're taking that great step to go to Mars, which I wasn't sure was going to be possible in my career.

And I think now it is. Last thing that I want to end on, and maybe this is something that you don't want to get too involved in, but there's obviously a lot of political risk right now with Artemis. There's a lot of politicking to be done. We had Bridenstine on the last episode of my other podcast, Off Nominal, and he was talking a lot about this. And to me, the fact that there are different projects underway that get us to the moon in different ways and dissimilar ways

is a real strength because you've got commercial lunar payload services for small robotic landers. You've got Gateway to establish this outpost. You've got the human landing systems. Do you see these as things that exist together really well, but can exist on their own? And does that frame your thinking about the program that you're setting up and how it's politically survivable? As we've seen a lot of NASA programs over the years come and go because of politics. Do you feel like this is the right path to be able to maintain this for the timeline that you've set out for Gateway? the timeline that you've set out for Gateway? That's a great question. And I absolutely do. I just had a conversation with the Clips folks the other day, making the analogy that Clips and our GLS contract are very much complementary. If you're willing to take all kinds of risks, that's what Clips is set up to do. And it's a way to help develop smaller companies to get some development buy down and go out there. We can take a lot of shots on goal. And then GLS is where you don't have, you know,

the same risk tolerance and we're sending up a billion dollar, you know, science, you know, if we're bringing up a habitation module and tugging that thing out there, we're bringing up a Canadian arm, these one of a kind assets, we can't take as much risk. So, so they're very much complimentary. And I think HLS is the same thing, right? HLS is out there developing that,

that really long lead item that we've got to go get right of landing on the surface of the moon. So I think they all lay out really complimentary. And I think Bridenstine's done an amazing job of really getting what we've had to fix over so many years us and we love to inspire and, you know, really get that younger generation to see what capabilities they could go do. And Brinestein's put such an effort on communicating. And now we're in a spot like this where people like you have podcasts and we have all these super fans all over the place. SpaceX has done so much to really drive a whole new fandom. So I think we have the staying power. I think we are all complementary and we can remain flexible as it makes sense and what our country can invest in in different times. And we'll get through this and we'll work on it. But I think we're set up for a good long haul. And I'm very excited for that at this point in my career.

Perfect way to end it, Mark. Thank you so much for coming on. I'm excited post-pandemic to come down to Kennedy and see one of these head off to the moon. It'll be a really exciting time to be there. Absolutely, Anthony. I appreciate you having us. I appreciate all you do to help spread the message of what NASA's doing with Artemis. Well, thank you so much. I've got tons of links in the show notes to things that we've talked about here. Mark is very open on Twitter, as we mentioned. So if you want to ask him questions, I'm sure you wouldn't mind that. But do your reading because this is a lot of stuff to read through on Gateway Logistics. And it's awesome to have you here to ask you these questions that have been bothering me for a while now. So it's a real pleasure to talk with

you. You too. Thank you. Thanks again to Mark for coming on the show. As I said, he is an awesome guy to talk to, really open and honest. And I love that, that we can have frank conversations where I'm asking why they wrote requirements a certain way and he answers honestly and informs us really as to what the thinking is, because it's easy to sit here in my chair and talk about these things,

but it's really cool to hear from the team working on it, what the requirements were that drove that. And that's the kind of stuff I love doing here. But of course, I could not do any of this without your help. This episode of Main Engine Cutoff was produced by 38 executive producers, Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Chris, 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, 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. We are at 422 supporters every single month over at mainenginecutoff.com

slash support. If you want to help make more things like this possible, if you want to get yourself MECO headlines, which I do every single weekend. I run through all the stories of the week. Head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support and sign up there. And thank you so much for your support as always. It's always a pleasure doing these kinds of things. And we've got a couple of more interviews coming up in the near future that are going to be pretty fun. But until then, hit me up on Twitter if you've got any questions or comments at wehavemiko or email me anthony at mainagingcutoff.com. And until next time, thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.