Main Engine Cut Off - T+164: An Announcement, and a Check-in on International Space Policy and NSSL Phase 2

Episode Date: July 17, 2020

To start, there’s exciting news! My son is due at the end of August, and so I’ll be taking some time off after he arrives. Before that, I wanted to check in on two storylines.Professional shit-stirrer Dmitry Rogozin made it pretty clear that Russia is not interested in the Artemis Program, while various countries around the world partner with NASA on it. And we’re only a few weeks out from the NSSL Phase 2 awards and there is some related budgetary considerations being debated, so it’s a good time to circle back on that.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 38 executive producers—Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Lauren, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Nadim, 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 392 other supporters.TopicsRogozin Not Interested in Cooperating with U.S. on Lunar Program, Prefers China – SpacePolicyOnline.comSpace Exploration Transcends All Terrestrial Borders – Administrator Jim BridenstineNASA Administrator Signs Declaration of Intent with Japan on Artemis | NASABuilding the next Canadarm - Canada.caAustralian Government Commits to Join NASA in Lunar Exploration | NASANASA Artemis AccordsEpisode T+158: Doug Loverro Resigns, and a Bit About the Artemis Accords - Main Engine Cut OffAir Force awards launch vehicle development contracts to Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, ULA - SpaceNewsULA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman submit bids for national security launch procurement contract - SpaceNewsSmith encouraged by Senate NDAA proposal to increase funding for space launch technology - SpaceNewsIndependent study of launch market says U.S. Air Force should support three domestic providers - SpaceNewsThe 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 am Anthony Colangelo as always. There's been a ton of stuff in the news lately and we've got a couple of things coming up on the feed in the next week or two. I've got a bunch of interviews scheduled about some of those more topical elements. So I'm excited for those to come out. But I did want to check in on a couple of stories that are rarely, there's rarely a single story that makes me want to talk about it on the show, but they are good stories to check in every once in a while. One is the bigger international space policy movements that we've been watching over the

past couple of months or years. And the other is the upcoming award of the National Security Space Launch Phase 2 launch contracts here in the U.S. Those are the launch contracts that the U.S. Air Force and now U.S. Space Force give out to two different companies to carry the bulk of the big national security payloads in the U.S. It's a storyline that we've been tracking for years. to two different companies to carry the bulk of the big national security payloads in the U.S. It's a storyline that we've been tracking for years. That is between ULA, SpaceX, Blue Origin,

and Northrop Grumman. So I want to check in with that because we're just a couple of weeks out from those awards. So it feels like a good time to circle up where our thinking is at and what we should be watching for from now through the selection through the end of the year because it does relate to the budget in the U in the US that's making its way through Congress throughout all of the mayhem that is happening. But I really want to check in on those two issues because they're things that are going to be watched throughout the year. And that is related to an announcement I want to tell you about. At the end of August, my wife and I are expecting our son. It is our first child. We're very excited about that. I'm going to be taking some time off afterwards. Obviously, I don't think doing a podcast is the most particularly easy thing to do with your first

child's arrival. So I'm going to be taking about a month off and then figuring out where I'm at, where things are at, what my schedule looks like, and how it could fit back in to get the podcast going again. So we'll figure that part out on the tail end of things, but sometime between the middle and the end of August, I will be dropping off for a little bit. Headlines will be shutting down, so the Patreon itself, I'm actually going to pause that for a month so people aren't getting charged for things that don't exist, and then we'll kick that off again once we are back with the show. But I wanted to give you a little heads up because I know there's a lot of people out there

with a crazy podcast backlog in the era of the pandemic. So consider this a gift to catch up a little bit before I am back. But you're going to be seeing a drop off from me for a little bit there coming up. So very exciting times. But there are these stories that I'm talking about here that are still going to be progressing as I'm away. Hopefully the award for the National Security Space Launch Program is made before the arrival of my son because it's the story that I've been tracking for two and a half, three years here on the show. So it'd be ironic and not unexpected that that would be the story that breaks the day after my son is born. But I don't think that's going to be the case. So let's start. Let's start on the international side, though, because this has been more topical recently. Specifically, I'm talking about the ongoing movement between which countries and international

groups are partnering with who. So right now on the ISS, we've got the US, Russia are the two big tentpoles of the ISS program. On the NASA side of the space station, NASA has partnered with ESA, the European Space Agency, JAXA, which is Japan's space agency. Canada is in there as well with the CSA. And there's a handful of partners that make up that side of the space station program. a handful of partners that make up that side of the space station program. All of that partnership is governed by something called the Intergovernmental Agreement, and that is what governs the International Space Station. That same agreement is going to be extended to the Gateway, which is the small space station that will go in orbit around the moon to be a base for future operations in cislunar space. We talked about that a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about the Artemis Accords, which is a thing that NASA unveiled as this set of principles that they would like anyone that's signing on to the program to go down to the lunar surface with them to agree with and sign on

bilateral agreements, so agreements between the U.S. and another international government. They would sign on to these agreements and say that, yes, we like all these pieces of the policy. I won't go in depth on those policy pieces because I did that just a couple of shows ago. Head back a couple of episodes in the feed, you'll see one about Doug Lovero and the Artemis Accords. I talk about it a bit there. So all of this stuff is really in motion because we are still really in the planning and development phase of whatever's coming next in space exploration when it comes to the governmental side of things. The ISS is going to keep doing its thing for another 10 years or so under that current agreement. The Lunar Gateway is going to keep doing its thing for another 10 years or so under that current agreement.

The Lunar Gateway is going to be built out starting in a handful of years at the moon. That will be built out under that same international government agreement. Because Russia has shown interest in the Gateway program. Right now, they are slated to build an airlock, among potentially other things, for the Gateway. And so because of that, and because its operations are similar to that of the ISS, they're keeping it, there being the governments that are working together in the ISS, are keeping the Gateway under that same agreement. However, the larger Artemis program, that is the program to send astronauts down to the lunar surface, that is going to be governed by a different set of agreements,

mostly because we are in the era of a new Cold War between the U.S. and China, and China is doing a lot of things in terms of the way that they're operating their space program that people in the U.S. don't necessarily like and don't necessarily agree with. The lack of transparency, the military overtones of some of the stuff has caused disruptions in the past. There's obviously this whole ban that the U.S. has, that Congress implemented, that we can't work with China on a lot of space programs or space projects. There's the intellectual

property theft that is accused all the time and proven a lot of the time. So there's all of these different things that are in movement that make it this big split in the world of space where the US has a way that it likes to work. China has a way that it likes to work. Everyone in the middle is kind of like choosing sides. This is the storyline that we're telling, right? Whether or not this is true, whether or not people feel like they have to choose sides is a different story. In the case of ESA, they've worked with NASA extensively. They work with China on a lot of different projects. Astronauts have went over to train with the Chinese astronauts before from ESA. So they're a little bit more friendly with both sides.

Chinese astronauts before from ESA. So they're a little bit more friendly with both sides. And in the case of Russia, it's been a case over the last couple of decades that the US has kept Russia close in terms of the work that they've been doing in space. And there's a little bit of a shady backstory with some of that because it was kind of a case in the early days of keep your friends close and your enemies closer, in that we didn't want Russia in the post-Soviet era selling off some rocket engines and things like that to other nations in their region that we didn't want getting their hands on those rocket engines. So that path led us to work with them very closely, not only on Mir, but on ISS, and all the way through to today. However, in the last couple of years, it's been pretty evident that the relationship between the U.S. and Russia has been deteriorating, especially in the world politics, but also now in space. Increasingly, we're seeing a divergence between the two that were formerly not necessarily friendly, but at least amicable.

And in recent years, led most by Dmitry Rogozin, who is now the head of Roscosmos over in Russia, there has been increasing amounts of tension. There's been statements that have really rubbed both sides the wrong way, really rubbed both sides the wrong way, specifically around some of the incidents that we saw with the drill hole that happened in a Soyuz spacecraft and that led to a leak on the ISS that was really just, you know,

shoddy manufacturing. Well, there was at one point, there was some stories floated in Russian media that they couldn't rule out that a NASA astronaut drilled that wall in space, which is just an outrageous thing to say. There was also the in-flight abort that happened right around that same time period. That was because of bad manufacturing of a Soyuz booster. And this is a common thing that, you know, the Russian space industry is having a really tough time with QA, manufacturing. New development is certainly impacted quite heavily. They've had a lot of problems getting a new booster up and running fully.

They've had a lot of issue with corruption building out new spaceports. They've had a lot of issues with manufacturing this new ISS module that now they say is about a year away from launch, but that's been kind of that way for seven years now. And all of that is happening at the same time as commercial crew is coming online. and Europe and Japan paying for seats solely from Russia. There is now this whole other way to get to the ISS, which is commercial crew right now, Dragon 2, soon to be Starliner. After that is fully implemented, instead of paying each other for seats, the US and Russia will trade seats so that a cosmonaut can fly on commercial crew vehicles. NASA and ESA astronauts and Canadian astronauts, for what it's worth, and Japanese astronauts can fly on Soyuz vehicles still. That way, if there's ever an issue with one or the other, each side still has access to

both halves of the ISS. So that's the agreement that's in place. It's a no-funds-exchanged agreement for the future. So that takes away a lot of funding from the Russian space industry, really, because we're paying $80 to $90 million per seat. So in the era where we were buying two or three seats a year, that's a solid 10% of the budget that Roscosmos gets for all of its space activities. And that's just going away. that Roscosmos gets for all of its space activities. And that's just going away. The other side of it all is that for a couple of years there,

Proton was a big mover in the commercial launch industry. Proton, among others, were big movers in the commercial launch industry. That has almost entirely gone away from Russia at this point. SpaceX has done a huge number on taking a lot of those sales and flying them on Falcon 9s, Falcon Heavies. Ariane 5 and Ariane 6 are still a big player in the commercial space, but Russia's role has really been diminished. And then furthermore, not necessarily for US companies, but for a lot of other companies, they're finding other cheaper ways to get there through India's launch vehicles, China and their launch vehicles. So there's a big movement away from buying Russian seats and slots for satellites up to space, which does a huge number on their budget, which was already hurting.

So this has been about 10 minutes of context, but I think it goes to show how much there is going on in space these days, and how many, kind of, what the shifting sands are like in international space policy. So on that note, this past week, professional shit-stir Dimitri Rogozin was out again talking about the fact that they are not interested in cooperating with the US on the Artemis program down to the lunar surface. They are more interested in working with China and their long-term ambitions to go to the lunar surface. Rogozin was saying that it's a political project, not a space project. they're partaking on it in a different way than they are the spirit

of exploration that happens on the iss and what they see in the chinese space program so far he said that um there are the americans and everyone else has to pay their own way and contribute to get to the lunar surface which is is like, yeah, that seems to be a smart move because, well, that's how it works. You got to pay to develop things, you got to pay to contribute to the program, and then you become a part of it, just like on the ISS today. So that comment itself seemed a little odd to me. In response to that, Jim Bridenstine posted a very pleasant message on his own blog that outlined all the international support there is for Artemis already, including European support for it, both in the way of building modules for the future gateway,

but they're also supplying the service modules for the Orion vehicles that are going to be used to fly out a large portion of these missions. Then just this past week, there was an agreement signed between Jim Brinstein and some Japanese officials. Not a lot of detail around what that announcement was or what that agreement was, but it does certainly seem like that was the first step in getting the official sign-on that they want to participate in Artemis. Canada recently awarded the contract to develop the robotic arm that will be used on the Gateway, which is their main contribution to the Artemis program. I'm sure there will be other robotic-type stuff that they contribute to the surface ambitions as well. Japan's been working on some ideas for rovers for the lunar surface.

The Australian government recently threw in, I think it was like $150 million, to support the Artemis program and to start participating in that as well. So, Bridenstine posted this very classy message about how, look at all these terrestrial borders that the Artemis program transcends. In another world, I think, if he was as professional of a shit-talker as Dmitry Rogozin, it might have been worded a little harsher. But it's a really interesting time because there is this major division among the two main partners on the ISS, and there's a lot of stuff that was written in the Artemis Accords that is directly against the way that China has been working in space so far, specifically around

transparency and interacting with the different ways that the space community kind of communicates and keeps track of where everyone's launching stuff and what's in space. And, you know, the ways that everyone has interacted, China has been pretty averse to so far. And it would make things a lot easier if they would jump on board with some of that and share data across different facilities that we currently have set up to handle that kind of stuff.

As China does more and more in space, there are increasing signs that they are getting a little bit more visible. There are a couple of more live streams, but it's still very secretive. There's not a lot of insight we have into what they're planning overall. And that's something that is, you know, it's not necessarily that you can't have secret programs, but if the vast majority of what you're working on is a secret program or just straight up impenetrable, that is harder to deal with than it would be otherwise if you could plan around that kind of stuff. So anyway, I don't want to read too much into Rogozin's comments because, like I said, he

is a professional shitster. He wants to always stir up this kind of stuff. Some of it, you know, where is that source from? I can't say specifically. But the Russian space industry is having really hard times right now. They are not well funded compared to the other partners in the world. I mean, look, look at the budgets. NASA just spent for 10 month studies on lunar landers, human lunar landers, NASA spent almost an entire year of the Russian space budget on 10-month study contracts to three different companies or organizations or groups of organizations. So the budgetary difference is pretty massive. You know, Russia's spending every decade what NASA spends in a year. And it's not a contest

to see who can spend more. It's just trying to impress upon the scale difference there. So is Russia more mad about losing the funding from commercial crew and from satellite launches? Are they more mad about the fact that the Russian space industry is having such hard times, has experienced such brain drain over the past couple of years? And some of this manufacturing and is, you know, some of this manufacturing stuff is clearly coming to the surface now. I don't know exactly what the motivation is there, but clearly it's just not going to work out. So, you know, maybe they could

always reverse course if Rogozin is really just kind of going off on his own way on these interviews, but certainly seems like Russia is not going to be interested in the Artemis program as it currently exists. Now, they're going to go off with China. That's fine. I think how the US and China interact on this kind of stuff in the future will be very interesting, especially in a post-pandemic world. There's a lot of stuff in the Artemis Accords, to go there for a minute, that China probably wants to kind of sign on to as well. I know, I think they like the idea of keep out zones around their landers. They probably like the idea of being able to extract resources from the lunar surface. Some of the stuff around transparency, that would be

the sticking point. But a lot of the bigger, you know, the bigger, more controversial subjects, China probably wants to get down with that as well. The other thing I'm curious about is how India plays into all this. You know, like I said, in a post-pandemic world, not to get too political here, but we've already seen some companies wanting to diversify their production lines and their supply chain away from solely focused in China to other places in the region. And India has been one of the spots talked about a lot there. There are a lot of US companies that are flying satellites today on India's rockets because they do a really good job launching that stuff at really good prices. So if that continues to be a relationship that has developed and India starts to have, you know,

they obviously they've been working on crew module concepts, and I think they have some sort of demonstrator flying pretty soon. But they have ambitions that are obviously looking forward into human spaceflight. So if that's something that keeps developing, and the US, Europe, Canada, Japan, you know, the whole partnership there, Australia, I forgot to mention there. This is growing by the day. If that's something that India wants to get in as well, I think everyone would be pretty open to that. There's an issue where they did that anti-satellite test recently,

and everyone was mad about that. But I think in general, they would be open to partnering along with this group. So that would be an interesting movement there. India and China do not have good relations. So it seems more likely to me that India would want to get in on the big partnership. So all this is to say there's a serious divergence here between people that are interested in signing on to the Artemis Accords, people that are interested in going to the lunar surface as part of the Artemis program, and people that are interested in whatever China is going to the lunar surface as part of the Artemis program, and people that are interested in whatever China is going to find themselves doing pretty soon. Now, on that front, China is about to partake

on this program of building out a space station in low Earth orbit. In my opinion, they're falling into the same trap that we did in getting stuck on a space station for longer than they should, and that probably pushes their lunar ambitions out to the 2030s or beyond. I don't think they're going to make their way through that program as quick as anyone likes to say that they will. I think they're going to get stuck there longer than they should. But I am really curious what common ground in what each side wants out of the lunar surface can be found between China's long-term ambitions and the ambitions stated in the Artemis Accords that I'm sure we'll see all these other partners on this program sign on to pretty soon, especially regarding resource extraction,

keep out zones or safe zones, and how that plays out internationally is what I'm going to be watching as this develops. The other part of this all is that the Artemis program is something that is directed by a federal government that is going through a presidential election right now, and things could look very different in December than they do right now. However, the fact that there is a list so long that I'm forgetting to list countries on this partnership list, that says a lot about where the Artemis program is internationally. And that is a really good way to build support for the program throughout administrations. If you have all of these different governments that are looking to this program and committing money to this program, and there's this really huge partnership,

at a certain point, that gains so much momentum that it's really hard to stop, huge partnership, at a certain point, that gains so much momentum that it's really hard to stop, or it would be really disruptive to stop. And that's something that I think the Jim Bridenstines of the world are relying heavily upon to have this have a little bit of staying power beyond the election. So you know, a lot of this stuff can just look like boring policy and boring movements. But I do think it's really important to see if this program is going to work. You know, the more governments that are in on this, the more staying power it has beyond any given election, which has historically been a problem with NASA programs of this sort in the long term. And then the other side of it is how does the regulatory stuff come out? And I think that is going to be very dependent upon who partners in on this, what they're

interested in doing on the lunar surface, and even so far as, you know, countries like China that are obviously not going to be signing onto the Artemis Accords might still be interested in some of that stuff as well, so it might not be as controversial as somebody thinks. So anyway, that was a really long, rambly me thinking through international space politics, But I do think things are positioned pretty interestingly to have, you know, a couple of years here that things feel really messy, but are moving in a direction that is identifiable throughout time. So something to keep your eye on now and for the next five years, because that is a much longer storyline than any

given podcast episode. So before we dive into the National Security Space Launch Program stuff, our favorite rocket politics, I need to say a huge thank you to everyone supporting this show over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. There are 430 of you over there every single month. That is such a giant number. I'm so thankful for your support. And this episode was produced by 38 executive producers. Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Lauren, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Nadeem, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Adam, and Senevin,

anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for your support. You made this episode possible. And if you want to help support the show, join that list. Head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support. If you give $3 a month or more, you get access to the headline show I was talking about. And that's a show where every weekend I run through the stories of the week, give some thoughts on it. And I want to read one little comment from Tyler here, who recently said this about headlines. And I said, that is so good that I'm going to read that in the next plug if you're okay with it. And he said, sure. So he said, I'm through the most recent two and a half episodes and headlines is so good. I thought

it was going to be more of just going through the headlines and real short TLDRs, but it's like a full-blown podcast. And I feel like that's something I haven't said here before, but is worth pointing out. This is a full-blown podcast that I do every weekend on headlines. It's somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes, sometimes even longer than that. And I don't just read the headlines. I actually talk about them, discuss some thoughts behind that as well. And it's mostly stuff that, you know, I don't feel deserves an entire episode of the main feed, but is stuff worth mentioning and worth being on your radar. So it's a great way to stay up on space news. So head over there and check that out if you want to help support and get an extra podcast in your life.

All right, so the National Security Space Launch Program. This is going to be a little bit shorter of a segment and ruminating on this because we're a lot closer to the decision on this than we are in settling international space policy. But this is the program that is going to be the bulk of the national security launches for the US over the next five years. Right now, ULA and SpaceX are carrying out these missions under phase one and 1A. And that is what's being launched right now with GPS satellites and some of the different NRO satellites and some satellites that are going up later this year on Falcon Heavy. All of that is handled under the same program, but under Phase 1 and 1A. This that we're talking

about here is for Phase 2. So this is another portion of launches. It was something in the 20s, the 30s. I don't know if they specifically decided on a number, but there are going to be two winners selected. They will split the launches 60 to 40%, and each of those launches would be bidded out to those two companies. They would win these launches over time. And then going forward, there would be more phases to this program, which is something to think about long term. But for phase two, ULA bid Vulcan Centaur, SpaceX bid Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, Blue Origin bid Nuke Len, and Northrop Grumman bid the Omega launch vehicle. Two different variants of that, a short and a long one, but for all intents and purposes, just think of it as one vehicle because it's pretty modular. So back when these bids were submitted, uh, it seemed pretty clear to me that ULA and SpaceX were going to win phase two again.

ULA is developing a new launch vehicle that is based on Blue Origin's BE-4 engine. Um, Blue Origin is obviously developing their own vehicle based on that engine as well. Northrop Grumman is building a new vehicle, but is based on the same solids that were in use for the Space Shuttle and now for SLS. And even some of their other vehicles have some commonality

with the stuff that is being used for Omega. And the biggest piece of new development there is an upper stage that is using the RL-10 engine that's also new development there is an upper stage that is using the RL10 engine that's also used on the Centaur upper stage for ULA. So that shows you where all the lines cross here for these different bidders. Well, it sounds like we are within two weeks or so of hearing this decision. The decision is going to be met with like a huge round of protests, because they always are. So just expect that. You're going to see those headlines rolling through. Don't get too worried

about it. I'm still expecting, even after all these years, I'm still expecting it to be SpaceX winning 60% and ULA winning 40% of the missions. That was my guess up front. I think that was my guess up front. I might've had their relationship flipped, but it was always ULA and SpaceX. my guess up front. I might have had their relationship flipped, but it was always ULA and SpaceX. I didn't think that the other two had 0% chance, but they both seemed like pretty long odds to win this. Just because SpaceX and ULA, SpaceX is doing so well and they have such a long road ahead of them with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. ULA has a long-term history. They have, obviously, you know, they've been a little bit more scrubby and slippy lately with Atlas V launches,

but they have a huge history of mission assurance and mission reliability that really counts heavily in this kind of program. Even if they do have a new vehicle, they have made a good case that they're flying a lot of these different components before Vulcan even hits the launch pad. And there's a lot of commonality

with the stuff that goes into Centaur. It's a bigger version of Centaur, but there's a lot that it's based on that's coming from the Atlas 5 days, that they can lean on that heritage a lot. The other two are interesting cases. Northrop Grumman with Omega, when that was up front, it was significantly behind the other new launch vehicles that were being bid. As things have went forward and Vulcan and New Glenn have slipped, in the case of New Glenn it has slipped a lot, Omega has pretty much stuck to its initial launch date and all of a sudden is one of the earlier vehicles that could be launched as part of this program. one of the earlier vehicles that could be launched as part of this program. Now, the biggest thing against Omega is that it is an all-solid vehicle up until that very upper stage, the third stage. So all the way up to that third stage, it's a really rough ride. And early on, there were some big concerns around how rough of a ride it would be for payloads, especially payloads of this class

are typically more sensitive. So that was a big concern back in the early days. I don't know how well they've done to mitigate that, but that's something that is very concerning about Omega, specifically when it comes to national security payloads. That's something that is a major concern. New Glenn, on the other hand, you know, I had historically a lot of hope in New Glenn because they have such giant consistent funding. They have hired a ton of really good people and they seem to be going about this in a way that is focused on the long term and focused on sustainability. It's going to be a reusable booster. It's based on a really good engine. But they've had a lot of problems

getting to the launch pad. They have had a lot of problems getting to the launch pad. They have had a lot of delays with BE-4 and getting that qualified. They've been building out a lot of facility at Florida, but we haven't seen a lot of actual hardware, if any yet. We've seen some fairings. We've seen some tank sections.

We've seen some engines, but we haven't seen a lot more than that. And they're obviously a secretive company, but we haven't seen a lot more than that. And they're obviously a secretive company, but it's hard to hide hardware that big. And not only that, but the fairings that we've seen, we've seen some videos inside the factory of these big fairings. It seemed like that was a pretty early version of that fairing. There wasn't a lot of excess hardware hanging around. So it doesn't seem like they've got an entire vehicle sitting somewhere that is under wraps and we're waiting to see this whole thing rolled out. It does seem like

they are behind. And that is also proven by the leaks that have been coming out or the rumors that have been coming out that the launch date for New Glenn is slipping well into 2022 at this point, which is significantly behind what even I was, you know, my pessimistic half of me was thinking that they would be a lot further along than that, which is really unfortunate. So I do think New Glenn provides a lot of interesting capability for the National Security Space Launch Program generally. It provides a lot of interesting capability for NRO payloads, which are like spy satellites and things like that,

because it's got a gigantic fairing and a huge amount of payload it can launch. So I do think there are members of the community that are building these payloads that are salivating over that fairing and being able to fit whatever they can into a seven meter fairing. But they are really, really not sticking well on any sense of schedule. So that to me is alarming. I think we might see New Glenn win some contracts as one-off contracts like SpaceX did previously to launch X-37Bs. Like SpaceX did, they had an NRO payload that was a one-off, not part of the National Security Space Launch Program. We could and probably will see that with Nuclen, but I don't think they're going to be winning phase two here. So the phase two win stuff, that's pretty straightforward. What is

interesting is that we're seeing a lot of movement in the congressional side to, even though only two winners are going to be selected with the phase two, to have some funding available to continue funding a third competitor to look forward to phase three, which would be about five years away at this point. Right now, Congress is making its way through the budget for 2021, and there's something between $150, $250 million that would be going to a third competitor to keep them relevant in the national security space through phase two and on all the way leading up to a phase three award. The worry here, if you're going to be taking them at their word, is that there are a lot of significant development challenges that are related to handling national security payloads.

And if we don't give some incentive to these launch companies, they will build things entirely commercial and not really be fit for what is needed out of national security launches. Now, one of the biggest people pushing for this kind of funding is Adam Smith, who is the House Armed Services Committee chairman from Washington state, which is where Blue Origin is based. So if you're going to do the old parochial kind of thing that everyone looks at Congress and say, well, what district is that person from? He's got a pretty big vested interest in Blue Origin and has consistently been pushing for, you know, awarding three competitors up front.

And now when it's clear that only two competitors are going to be awarded to push for this extra kind of funding. Now, SpaceX does have a pretty big component there up in Washington state, but not necessarily for the launch side of things. At the beginning of the year, there was an independent study of the launch market that was released from the RAND Corporation. And they agreed that the Air Force should award just two providers for phase two. But they also agreed that there should be a way to keep a third competitor around for the long term future of national security space. So a lot of movement in the direction

that there's only going to be two winners, but we're going to see some significant funding in budgets going from 2021 to 2024 or so to keep some people on the development track building out vehicles that would be relevant for national security in the long run. I don't necessarily think that Omega, if it's left out of phase two, will have any interest in continuing to be built. Doesn't seem like a big market there that would want to take advantage of the Omega vehicle. If they got some funding like this, that would keep them relevant for a couple of years. Yeah, maybe they would keep that going because there's enough commonality between their other production lines that they already have

rolling. And New Glenn is going to be built. They have a huge vested interest in that vehicle existing, so there's no worry that if they lose out, they won't build that vehicle. But to the concerns that are expressed by people in Congress, are they going to build in a way that would be relevant for national security space? I think yes. I don't think that that's a worry. I think this is just a way to get some additional money and funding their direction, which quite honestly, do they need? Probably not. But Congress will be Congress to some extent. And that's kind of where we're left with that. So that's my little preview show. Who knows? This all could be totally irrelevant within a week of release if the announcement comes early. It could be relevant if

the announcement gets pushed back a lot. But it does certainly sound like we're going to be hearing soon. And then we're going to be doing a whole cycle of hearing about protests and launch awards and launch contracts and who said what and what person thinks it was a bad decision and who thinks it was politically motivated. It's going to be a whole new cycle in its own. So I'm sure we'll get there pretty soon. But for now, that is all the thoughts that I've got on it. Once again, thanks for your support as always over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. And like I said up front, I'm gonna be taking some time off towards the end of August. So I'll keep you updated on that front. But until next time, thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.