Main Engine Cut Off - T+167: Phillip Hargrove, NASA Launch Services Program

Starting point is 00:00:00 🎵 Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo, back for a third time in a row with a special guest. There's not a lot of analyzable news right now, that is my specialty, but there are a ton of interesting people that I want to talk to, and they all happened to hit at the same time. So today we've got Philip Hargrove with us. He is a launch vehicle trajectory and analyst at NASA, specifically the Launch Services Program. And I've been interested to talk to somebody from LSP for a long time because it feels like

Starting point is 00:00:41 one of those things that's a little bit mystical to everyone on the outside. They sit at this point between the NASA mission teams like Mars 2020 Perseverance, Psyche, Lucy, all the science missions that you know, and the launch providers that are flying those missions like United Launch Alliance, like SpaceX. And their work is really the point at which all that ties together. So I've been dying to have somebody on the show to talk about this. And I reached out to Philip and he was game. So we're going to be talking a lot about those missions that they fly. We're going to talk a lot about the nature of work at LSP. And then my hobby horse will get into the polar orbit flights out of Cape Canaveral that are coming up for SpaceX. They're going to be flying Salcom 1B. Right now it's slipped to August, but sometime in the next couple of months, they'll be

Starting point is 00:01:29 flying to a polar orbit out of Cape Canaveral, which is really cool and something that hasn't happened in about 60 years. Before we get into the interview, though, I want to just plug a couple of things. Tomorrow, this is coming out on Wednesday, July 29th. On Thursday, July 30th, coming out on Wednesday, July 29th. On Thursday, July 30th, Mars 2020 Perseverance is launching, and I will be producing a live stream for my friend Jake Robbins over at the We Martians podcast. It's going to be happening on the Off Nominal YouTube page. So as confusing as that all is, that's where all of our video stuff's going, youtube.com slash off nominal. We're going to be hanging out from about T minus 40. The launch is very early. The launch is at 7.50 a.m. Eastern Time. So if you're up early, head over to YouTube and watch the stream.

Starting point is 00:02:10 Jake's got a couple of guests lined up. I'll be behind the scenes pushing the buttons so that he can focus on the launch. It's going to be a good time. So come check us out. And on that topic, Off Nominal, I want to plug that show because we've been having a great couple of interviews lately on Off Nominal, a great couple of guests on for conversations, and there aren't many that are more fun than who we just had on this past weekend. Richard Garriott, he is a longtime video game developer, designer, a very storied developer, and eventually flew to space, up to the ISS for about a week back in 2008.

Starting point is 00:02:42 His father, Owen Garriott, was an astronaut on Skylab and Space Shuttle. So we got into all sorts of stories with him about trips to the bottom of the ocean and up to space. We talk about the commonalities there, the differences, and he one time watched a Soyuz from 200 meters away, which was kind of crazy. So we've got into a ton of interesting stories. So head over to offnominal.space to check that one out. But for now, let's get into this conversation with Philip and give him a call. Philip, thank you so much for joining me here for an episode of main engine cutoff. Welcome to the show. Thanks. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited about this one for a myriad of reasons. But also I've been dying to talk to somebody about

Starting point is 00:03:24 like launch trajectories in general, and specifically some of the cool ones that we're going to talk about today. So I am pumped for this, which is, this is the exact kind of nerdy topic that I think people love listening to on this show. So I feel like you're a perfect fit for it. Good, good. And yeah, it's a good day for it. I'm sure you saw on the interwebs that I was out there for the Atlas rollout to the pad. So I'm at my peak, you know, geek nerd excitement right now. So it's a great time to talk about this kind of stuff. Yeah, there was the one video that you tweeted out of you in the background of an interview walking around out near the pad. And it felt exactly like I would find myself randomly stumbling into an interview of the NASA administrator, the head of ULA, and the top scientist at NASA.

Starting point is 00:04:17 Right, right. It was a fantastic moment there that is now captured on film for all of time. So I'll put that link in the show notes. It's worth a watch. Okay, great. If for nothing else other than Tor Tory Bruno's epic mustache. Right, right. It threw me off. I hadn't seen it live. So yeah, very cool to see. So let's start off with some of your background and how you ended up at... Actually, you know what? Before we get there, can you demystify NASA Launch Services a bit? I think people probably see the name around.

Starting point is 00:04:45 So before we end up talking about how you ended up there, I would love to demystify what the Launch Services program is at NASA, if you can give us a rundown on that. Sure. So, you know, feel free to interrupt and stop me if I blather on too long. But I think there's a lot of ways to describe it. I've heard a lot of different sort of metaphors. One of them is saying, you know, hey, we're NASA's insurance policy when it comes to launch. So that's one way to look at it.

Starting point is 00:05:10 Another way to look at it is just, you know, we are NASA's people who know about commercial rockets. So we just provide a lot of insight and, you know, understanding to NASA teams who get involved with these commercial launch vehicles. So there's a really interesting history of, you know, and I guess I'm not an LSP history expert, but, you know, there's a whole history of the way that NASA spacecraft got linked up with commercial vehicles in the past. But about, I guess now 21 years ago, the Launch Services Program got started here at Kennedy Space Center, where they really consolidated all the different efforts that were happening around the country. So we had people who were focusing on analysis, people who were doing more of the contracts side of things, people who were doing hardware, mechanical, electrical, avionics types of things. And we really handle all of that now. So for,

Starting point is 00:05:59 so, you know, say NASA has a spacecraft there, you know, they know that somewhere down the pipeline, we're ready to launch this Mars rover. They say, okay, we're ready to start, you know, picking a rocket. They come to us and we help them develop a requirements documents to send out to the launch vehicle providers, the potential providers. And those bidders make proposals. We evaluate those proposals and figure out which rocket is the best fit for a given mission. And then we facilitate that procurement process. And then

Starting point is 00:06:32 throughout normally about three years before launch, or for about those three years, we just are part of the integration team to put those pieces together. So I guess my group specifically is a part of the analysis division where we, you know, just throw all of the math at all the problems to make sure that things go the way that they're supposed to go. There's the groups that analyze, you know, structural loads and vibrations and thermal and all those kind of things, like EMI, electromagnetism interference and things like that. My branch does, or we're the flight dynamics branch. So we do software, flight controls, and flight design.

Starting point is 00:07:18 So I'm in the flight design group and we analyze the trajectories. So sometimes we are just you know, just providing performance quotes to say, hey, based on our insight, this vehicle has a certain amount of performance to a certain orbit, or we're actually doing an analysis to help the spacecraft anticipate when they're going to enter sunlight or something like that. So we stand up our own independent models. And all of that is really just to support to support the NASA spacecraft. It's an awesome, like, you know, it's a point where everything comes together between the science missions, the launch providers that are out there and all of the other requirements that the mission entails. It's a really interesting spot as somebody who's a nerd about launch

Starting point is 00:08:04 vehicles. It's like my ideal location because As somebody who's a nerd about launch vehicles, it's like my ideal location because you get just enough of the science missions to be fun and interesting, but a lot of nerdiness about the launch vehicles themselves. So it's cool. And I like the way that you were talking about some of the historical stuff. I want to dive into some of that, not only just historical stuff, but like the actual interaction with those different ends of the process. So let's talk a bit about how you ended up at Launch Services Program. What was your path to this group at Kennedy Space Center? Sure. So I've been kind of an astro geek since I was a little kid.

Starting point is 00:08:36 I always wanted to be an astronaut and everything like that. I was always interested in the science. I remember my parents got me this huge binder of um i think it was it was more than one it was these huge binder books with information about the planets and they just had all these cool pictures and stuff so i was always interested in that kind of stuff so going into college i you know studied aerospace engineering because it had the word space in it so i figured that was right for me that's literally that's that's what happened i didn't really um nothing else went into that decision it was like yeah of course this is the right major in it. So I figured that was right for me. That's literally, that's what happened. I didn't really,

Starting point is 00:09:09 nothing else went into that decision. It was like, yeah, of course this is the right major. So I got my bachelor's and then I had a really cool internship during my, it was after my third year of undergrad where I worked at JPL for a summer. And I got to do some early, like I was in a mechanical engineering group and did some super early studies for the Europa actually lander concept. Um, obviously that's not the one that they're rolling with right now. They're working on the Europa Clipper. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Right now they're not working on it right now. Um, so, so I got to work on some of that and I also got to meet a bunch of the trajectory people because I had just taken my first orbit mechanics class. And I was like, oh, I love this stuff. This stuff seems really cool. So that was when I really started to put

Starting point is 00:09:55 myself on this path to pursue this type of work. So I went to grad school to get a master's degree at University of Michigan. And they have an aerospace engineering program and a space systems engineering program that's a little bit more project-based. So I got to work on some CubeSats. Also in sort of the early phases, I was on the analytical end. So it was things like, you know,

Starting point is 00:10:20 modeling the power that they would get from a solar cell if it was angled at a certain way on the CubeSat. So I did some stuff like that, graduated, and I got a job in Northrop Grumman up in Maryland. And I was working on some orbital analysis for DMSP, which is a defense, the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. uh, defense, the defense meteorological satellite program. So that's a, uh, a sun synchronous, you know, approximately polar orbiting satellite constellation where I was doing some sensor analysis for that. But I really had my eye on working for NASA. So I was just, you know, kind of looking out for whatever opportunities came up. And when the right job came up on USA jobs, I applied and, and, you know, this was the one that, the one that bit. Um, so I came down

Starting point is 00:11:05 here about three and a half years ago. And, uh, it seems like you have a nice outside desk, which I find totally crazy in the summer in Florida, but, uh, it seems like you're taking, you're making the best of a life out on the space coast, huh? Well, not anymore. I know I've, just last week I moved it inside because it's too hot. But it was really nice a few months ago when I first moved it out there. I'm shocked you made it this far into July like that as somebody who spent some time in Orlando. It's painful heat at this time of the year. So props to you for surviving that long outside. I was pretty stubborn. And obviously, there's a lot of things going on. You know, I want to spend – I'm spending a lot more time in my apartment than I ever thought I would.

Starting point is 00:11:47 So I just wanted to switch things up a little bit. Yeah, I've got a nice foldable desk here by my window now. So let's start maybe from the payload end and the way that you integrate with the mission teams themselves. and the way that you integrate with the mission teams themselves. You mentioned that you get started with that team pretty early on in the process, you know, years ahead of launch, to work with them on a lot of different phases of their flight. So what does the team integration look like?

Starting point is 00:12:20 Is it a handful of people from Launch Services Program that integrates with the mission team, or is it a pretty wide cross-section of LSP throughout the lifecycle? Yeah, that's a good question. So that really depends on when in the mission. So if we're doing the sort of advanced mission support, you know, everything before we've procured the rocket, it may be sort of kind of handpicked or just sort of cherry picked. Like somebody will just come and ask a question and say, hey, I'm, you know,

Starting point is 00:12:48 I guess a mission manager or an integration engineer or somebody will say, hey, I'm working with people at JPL on this mission. They need to know about the performance with this inclination and this altitude. You know, what can you tell me about this? So it'll be kind of a one-off discussion where it's really just a matter of being the discipline expert for your discipline and being somebody who a person can come and ask you that question. But once we procure the vehicle and we actually start working with the launch vehicle, it is a, you know, an established team where each, at least each analytical discipline is going to have

Starting point is 00:13:25 probably one person, maybe two people, depending on the workload, um, who will be the primaries for those missions. And we have, um, you know, what we call it. And that, that, um, I guess puts together the mission integration team. So it's a group here at KSC, there's a group at the launch vehicle, uh, company, and then there's the people on the spacecraft side who work directly with the launch integration. So we have regular telecons where we talk about things. We have specific working groups over particular disciplines. So yeah, does that answer the question? It does. Yeah, I think one of my main questions, and this might tie back to some of the historical way that LSP came about, is why is this role something that NASA has grouped as one program that integrates with the rest of the missions rather than having somebody like yourself on the Lucy team or on the Mars 2020 team? I'm sure those people exist as well. But what is it that makes grouping it all together in a certified program beneficial to NASA as a whole? Right. You know, I wish I knew more about what exactly made those decisions happen,

Starting point is 00:14:40 you know, back in the 90s. There's probably others who could answer that question a little bit better. But in terms of just the benefit that it provides to NASA, you know, it's helpful to have people who are tracking these things day by day. We're working with the launch vehicle companies, not only while we're doing these missions, but really in everything that they're doing, we just maintain that insight. So, for example, we do post-flight data analysis for every flight that they do, because if there's some pattern that creeps up, you know, something is normally performing less, you know, spend, you know, taxpayer dollars to buy this rocket, you know, for this, for this vehicle. So we, um, are really just buying down that risk where we're reducing the risk that comes with, um, procuring these launch vehicle services. So, uh, yeah, just maintaining it exists outside of any given mission, right? So if some mission either is delayed or has its funding cut or the plans change that doesn't change the fact that you still need to be following the industry and the launch

Starting point is 00:15:48 vehicles themselves um so i guess it protects against you know ebbs and flows of funding or any given you know mars is really hot right now but maybe venus will be again someday uh but you can work with any of that right and um yeah, um, yeah, I think, you know, it really depends on just kind of when, like what the schedules look like for when you're doing more mission work versus more work that's just sort of insight related. So obviously, you know, with, uh, with the SpaceX and their Starlink launches, you know, we're, we're following those all the time. So we have a group of people in my flight design group who just, you know, we rotate who does the post flight for each Starlink launch. That's a lot of work. Holy crap.

Starting point is 00:16:31 And I mean, you know, we automate tools and, you know, we make it easier to be able to process the data. But it's also, you know, just right now is a very interesting time and why I guess the current day is one of the reasons why it is important to have a program like LSP, because the launch vehicle industry is changing a lot. You know, SpaceX and Blue Origin and, you know, ULA or, you know, Vulcan is on the way as well. So things are changing and NASA needs to be aware of what's going on. So that's really what we're here for. what we're here for. So on the launch provider side, I take it like you're saying, there's a lot of work that goes into mission agnostic looks into the launch service providers. I think LSP is the one that certifies vehicles for the various classes of missions as well. Can you talk a little

Starting point is 00:17:19 bit about that kind of general insight into the vehicles and what things, you know, you're paying attention to when any given launch service provider comes online or is talking about a new vehicle? You know, we've, like you're mentioning, we've got a lot on the precipice here. So what sort of things and how early in the flow do you start looking towards Vulcan or New Glenn and things like that? Right. Yeah, I mean, we, I guess this is where my my limited knowledge will uh will come in just because i'm i'm sort of in the analysis world so i mainly focus on the analytical side of things and there's a lot of pieces that that i don't necessarily touch but um you know we have people who are involved very early on like when when launch, when there are companies that are brand new

Starting point is 00:18:05 and they are at the PDR phase, the preliminary design phase of their vehicle, and we're providing, we may have some relationship with that company where we can provide support to help them do what they're trying to do because we want to make sure that the commercial industry is thriving, right? We want that competition to be there.

Starting point is 00:18:30 We want these companies to do well. So there's a variety of options that obviously drives the costs down for NASA. So we're really there very early on in terms of the vehicle developments. And we do a lot of different things depending on what the processes are for that launch service provider. So if it's someone like ULA, who at least the people who I work with, they've been working with a lot of the same people at ULA for all of the 20 years.

Starting point is 00:19:00 And we may be tracking just the changes that they're making between Atlas and Vulcan. We may be doing IV&V work, independent verification and validation work to make sure that their analysis tools are like up to par, I guess. You know, like we're providing that independent look, um, which is something that all of these companies look for, like, you know, be it us or aerospace core or somebody else, um, they're going to want that independent look to support the work that they're doing. Um, so yeah, we're, we're pretty involved, um, you know, early on, all the way up until the point where we certified the vehicle and then, you know, select it for a given mission. So then once you make it through, you know,

Starting point is 00:19:49 you've matched a payload to a particular vehicle or provider. Are you sort of a third party in that discussion between what the payload needs and what the provider needs? Or are you, you know, who's calling the shots there and what kind of role does lsp play as you're in a phase where you're leading up to the launch you know the last couple of months or years before launch once you're really getting things ready to roll out to the launch pad yeah it's um i think as you ask the questions that it it makes sense why this is something that would need to be demystified because it it's almost mission by mission. Like there's different relationships with different people.

Starting point is 00:20:29 You know, sometimes there's aspects of the spacecraft design that are fixed and that, you know, they may drive a decision that the launch vehicle has to make or or something like that. So LSP may come in and be a part of pushing the launch service provider to do something different than their normal process because we need it for this mission. So, I mean, obviously, NASA, we're not their only customer. They have a lot of other customers who, you know, quite frankly, I guess, you know, I say this as respectfully as possible, you know, they may not be as needy as us because they may have, you know, that's why we call LSP NASA's insurance policy, because, you know, we're not we're not insuring our however many million billion dollars the rover is. We're not insuring that. So, you know, we need that thing to get off the ground safely and get into orbit safely.

Starting point is 00:21:20 So we may have more needs than their other customers. So we may have to push them. But it really is a collaborative effort. Like it's, I think a third party may be, you know, a good way to describe it because, you know, sometimes we are just sort of filtering the information that the spacecraft is trying to send to the launch vehicle. Definitely in the analysis world, because they may ask questions about, oh, how long is this burn going to be or how long? They may have questions about the trajectory that may not be in line with what the launch vehicle contractor is doing at the time.

Starting point is 00:21:58 So that's where we can set up our models and we can say, hey, based on our insight, this is what things are going to look like. So yeah, again, it depends on kind of what discipline you're talking about. But we really are just, you know, one of this team of three entities that are all working towards the same goal of, you know, getting spacecrafts safely into space. Let's talk about some of the stuff that you're working on, you know, today. You've got, like you were saying, you're out watching an Atlas five roll out to the pad. Uh, I take it. You worked on Mars 2020 quite a bit. Uh, it's the hot mission right now. So what have you been up to on that mission? And, you know, we're two days away from launch. If, if the schedule holds at this point, uh, what can we

Starting point is 00:22:36 look forward to on Thursday? Yeah, it's, um, it's a really exciting mission. I mean, Hey, we're, we're going to Mars. It's really awesome that, you know, you mentioned earlier that you are that you're sort of a geek with the spacecraft and the launch vehicle. Growing up and going through my education, I was really only on the spacecraft side. I didn't know anything about the launch vehicles at all until I got this job. So there was kind of a learning curve towards just, you know, understanding how, you know, what these launch trajectories look like and everything. But I joined this mission almost two years ago. I guess it was in the fall of 2018 when I became the backup analyst for this mission. And it's really just involved, you know, like I said, being that being a member of the team to make sure that things are working. I mean, JPL has models where they need to develop their targets to figure out exactly, you know, the speed and direction that the spacecraft needs to be going at a particular time in order to get to Mars based on their, you know,

Starting point is 00:23:39 their deep space maneuvers and everything like that. So they have their models of the launch that they put together. and everything like that. So they have their models of the launch that they put together. And we sort of facilitate the process to make sure that that's in line with what the launch service, with what ULA is doing with their trajectory design.

Starting point is 00:23:53 So, you know, we set up models and we will process data that we receive and, you know, do a lot of checks. A lot of things that we're doing are just checks between LSP, ULA, and JPL to make sure that everybody's getting the same numbers, you know, making sure that everything's meeting all the requirements. And it's interesting for this mission because we're working with a lot of data

Starting point is 00:24:16 because, you know, the launch period opened on July 17th, and we had trajectories for about two hour windows, maximum two hour windows. Some of them were a little bit less from the 17th up through a few days from now. And in the last 10 or so days of the launch had, you know, increasingly smaller launch periods. But that meant that we just had, you know, hundreds of trajectories to analyze at five-minute increments. So sometimes it's just been putting together scripts to run the data and check all of the requirements and simulate the trajectory. I got to put together a pretty cool animation of the trajectory for our launch vehicle readiness review, which was a couple of months ago to convince management that everything was on track.

Starting point is 00:25:04 So yeah, lots of really cool stuff. Lots of math, really. Yeah, the launch window stuff, that's been really interesting to watch because there were a couple slips, but there was a lot of news reports of, oh, actually we can launch up to, I forget the specific dates,

Starting point is 00:25:20 but it was like August 10th and then the 15th. And then I saw one article that at least said we might be able to stretch to the 17th. And a lot of that sounded like once the final numbers came in on the payload mass and the actual mass of Centaur, I read that they weigh every individual one because that changes a little bit. So is that, you know, people within your team, maybe not you personally, but within the launch services program that are rerunning all of the data based on what's coming back. And that's why you're able to manage the launch window so close. You know, the fact that we didn't know precisely when the launch window would close months ago, but we did in the last couple of weeks, is that, you know,

Starting point is 00:25:58 up to people like you? I mean, definitely not, not me individually, but I guess I'm just one of the flies on the wall who may peep in and say one thing. But yeah, that's exactly the kind of stuff that we were doing. So that's one of the interesting sort of nuances about this kind of work is that different technical disciplines look at different information. So throughout most of the launch integration time or throughout that lifecycle, we just work with the sort of the not to exceed numbers or the NTE numbers. So we say, okay, the Centaur max weight is this, spacecraft max weight is this, and we run our models based on that because at the end of the day, we just need to know that the vehicle can handle the worst case performance scenario but then yeah once they actually put together the vehicle and they weigh everything um yeah i think i think you're right i don't remember exactly that the sensor came in a little light or actually i know that i know the spacecraft came in a little light

Starting point is 00:27:00 um as in mars 2020 the the crew stage and everything which from what i know, is maybe the most shocking piece of data in this whole conversation, that a spacecraft came in light. I saw multiple emails that said that. They said, wait, what? We need to figure out what they did right and duplicate that on every mission from here on out. Right, exactly. But it's interesting because that actually has, you know, you don't necessarily want to come in light because if you come in too light, you may invalidate certain pieces of data so the groups who do um you know

Starting point is 00:27:29 structural analysis and vibrations uh or i guess dynamic loads i think that's the way to describe that um if you have a lighter spacecraft you're gonna have higher loads so you know even though it's totally fine from my side from the trajectory side, other people had to look at it as well. So that's sort of the interesting piece where, you know, the performance group says, oh, yeah, great. You know, we have this window. But then another group may swoop in and say, oh, yeah, but on this day, your accelerations are too high. So this is not a viable launch. But, yeah, I mean, exactly like you said, we were tracking those

Starting point is 00:28:05 things, we had that information, and we basically tweaked the results that we had. You know, we developed the launch windows on each individual day that, you know, stacked up to equal our launch period. You know, those were based on a certain amount of propellant margin, which were based on certain weights, so once we get those final weights, we can tweak it and, you know, see what the final results are. So I want to look forward a little bit to some things that are coming up. NASA is obviously quite busy these days with plenty of different programs. Does LSP have anything to do with the ISS programs or the SLS program? Is there any crossover there? Or are

Starting point is 00:28:46 you more focused on the NASA science missions that are dealing with external launch providers? The latter. We're mainly focused on those things. I think there's a relationship, obviously, because ISS and SLS are both involving launches, you know, just launch vehicles in general. I think there's relationships between us and people at Marshall who are working on SLS. And even, you know, with commercial crew or other pieces of ISS or other parts of the International Space Station program, we're involved. But our focus, our bread and butter is really the, um, those science missions. So which ones are you, uh, looking forward to? We've got tons heading out to asteroids and all sorts of interesting places of the next decade or so.

Starting point is 00:29:36 What are, what are you working on in the near future? Uh, once we get beyond Mars 2020 here. So my next mission, it actually, it's funny when I got started, I, so there was me and one other guy who got hired into my same branch and we were both given a mission once we got started to be our sort of our first project. And he was working on the Parker solar probe mission, which launched a couple of years ago. Awesome mission, Delta four heavy, you know, really cool. One of those sort of flagship missions. Um, and then I was starting with JPSS-2, which is a NOAA Earth orbiting satellite, which is going to launch in a couple of years. And I guess I'll be, I can be big enough to admit that I was a little upset because an Earth orbiting weather satellite just didn't sound as exciting as, you know,

Starting point is 00:30:22 Parker Solar Probe going to the mission to touch the sun. So I was a little upset. But then it turned out that the JPSS-2 mission is getting really interesting because we're paired with this. We're now paired with this mission called LOFTED, which stands for the Low Earth Orbiting Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator. And it's basically this big six meter diameter inflatable heat shield that's going to be packed into a canister under the spacecraft. So we're going to launch JPSS-2 separated into its orbit and then do a couple of,

Starting point is 00:30:57 do one sort of reorienting burn and then do a deorbit burn, inflate that flight test. And then they're going to do a bunch of reentry science on their way in. So that's going to be a really interesting mission, and it's been really fun to sort of model those different trajectories and figure out what the trade space looks like and how we can really make those pieces fit. So, yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to that.

Starting point is 00:31:22 I also love the Lucy and the Psyche missions because, I mean, those are the those are the asteroid missions. Those are the, you know, deep space, really interesting trajectories. And there's there's secondaries on the Psyche mission as well. One of them that's going to go to Mars and then one that's going to go to, I think, another asteroid. I think another asteroid. So it's like, yeah, one mission, one vehicle is going to send a couple of spacecraft to Mars and then a couple of asteroids and then one to another slated for a launch. That's not just a typical secondary payload that hitches a ride. There are a lot of unique requirements to that. How did that get matched up with JPSS-2? Was it more of a performance or orbital regime kind of matching, or is there something specific about the mission that makes it a nice pair? Really, that's a really good way that you put it, that it was an orbital regime thing. So that's really what happened a couple of years ago. It was really my first project where I was

Starting point is 00:32:34 kind of the primary analyst, where we had a conversation with headquarters, where we were talking about the possibility of matching these missions together. And, you know, we had to put together our models. We had to work with the team at Langley, who's putting together Lofted. We had to talk with them about what their orbit requirements are. And we had to make that fit the JPSS-2 mission because JPSS-2 was going to about an 825-kilometer circular orbit. JPSS-2 was going to about an 825 kilometer circular orbit and the lofted spacecraft has a specific

Starting point is 00:33:15 entry flight path angle and velocity requirement for when it comes in and due to the geometry there are some things that are just not possible so we had to do some really interesting work. I put together a million models to make some of that stuff work. So I think I was fortunate because we don't often do that sort of early concept study type of work because this is a really unique mission. It's not like a regular rideshare or secondary payload. It's just going to kind of go on whatever orbit the primary is going on. So yeah, this was definitely a pretty unique one and i'm excited to see it launch too and then the others that you're talking about that are you know farther out missions um are are those things that come along as as a byproduct of the mission design

Starting point is 00:33:57 from the science team or is it something that you know once you've selected launch providers you can say okay we have a certain amount of payload left over. Let's find some people that also want to fly to the same location. How does that work out? So that's actually an active sort of question and the thing that NASA is working on. So I was actually able to attend this this rideshare workshop back in February. It was right before, you know, everything with COVID really started to shut things down. It was three days of workshops.

Starting point is 00:34:30 So it was great. But it actually was pretty interesting to hear a lot from the science mission director, just the scientists on what they're trying to do. So people were asking exactly that question. How do we take advantage of the excess performance that we often have on these spacecrafts? That's another sort of interesting kind of historical thing that comes in with LSP that I heard from some of my coworkers who have been around for longer than I have. They were mentioning that the Delta 2 was really kind of a sweet spot in terms of performance. It worked really well for a lot of the size of our missions and the orbit requirements that we had, that NASA had. That's why it was called the workhorse for NASA.

Starting point is 00:35:14 So it was kind of a medium-class vehicle, which fit really well for us as a customer. But now we're flying on Atlas Vs, Falcon 9s. Pegasus is its own sort of smaller class, but it's normally these larger class vehicles. So we often end up having a lot of excess performance and we want to make sure that we're maximizing that and doing that in a way that is meeting the needs of the science community. So basically, NASA Science Mission Directorate, S&D, they're going to do that.

Starting point is 00:35:47 They're going to figure out what mission is going to work best with which primary. So it seems like they are looking at the orbit requirements that we have even before a vehicle is selected. They ask us what the sort of performance range may be, knowing that, you know, there could potentially be three bidding vehicles. So there could be a big swath of a potential performance sets. And then they will direct us to, you know, include a ride share for a given mission. Now, that's one good way to use excess performance. Another good way to use excess performance is to do totally counterintuitive things like fly polar out of Cape Canaveral, which I am very excited about to watch the return of. It's slipped until August at this point,

Starting point is 00:36:34 but SpaceX has one coming up, Salcom 1B, that's going to head a very strange trajectory out of the Cape and do a dogleg and fly know fly over cuba again and and not drop a stage on cuba like happened 60 years ago or something like that um i don't know that you know being a commercial launch you probably haven't had much interaction with that but i'm sure like you said you're gonna have some work to do after that one launches um is that something that the team's gonna be watching do you have any thoughts on this kind of crazy trajectory that SpaceX is going to attempt again? I mean, the way that you described it is exactly, you know, how I think about it.

Starting point is 00:37:11 I'm just, I'm picturing the, it's just so different. I mean, I've seen, I've been fortunate to see about 40 launches out here since I've been here a few years ago, and they all pretty much do the same thing. They'll just go east. But this one is going to go east, and then it's going to hang a right pretty sharp, which is going to be really interesting to see. I'm not sure how far downrange it'll be, but I'm definitely excited to watch it.

Starting point is 00:37:35 And, yeah, it is really interesting just from a performance perspective that we have that type of capability. And it's actually kind of on brand based on the way that SpaceX is working with us, you know, even for a couple of missions that we have coming up. So we have a mission that's going to an equatorial orbit from the Cape. So they're going to launch east

Starting point is 00:37:59 and then they're going to hang a sharp left once they hit the equator. That is, oh no, I can't remember the name of the mission right now. Is that IXPE? XB, yes xp yes it's xp is that is that how the cool people say it that i get down with that that's how we say it i don't know oh you're probably right so i'm gonna go with it all right so there's that and then um and then pace is a mission that we have coming up i'm not sure what year it launches it was just awarded to to spacex think a few months ago, maybe six or seven months ago. And that is also going to go to a proximity, I think it's a sun synchronous,

Starting point is 00:38:34 you know, so a polar orbit from the Eastern range as well. So yeah, I actually won't be doing the post flight for that, for the Salcom 1D mission mission because our analyst who's leading PACE, he's going to be, you know, diving in with SpaceX to understand how this is going to work. So, OK, so you're going to have to send me his name. Right. Yeah, definitely can do. as I talked about in the past when this was announced, is that it opens up polar trajectories for launch vehicles that currently don't have a launch site at Vandenberg or anywhere else like that. So, you know, pending how things go on the Department of Defense side, New Glenn might not have a launch site out there,

Starting point is 00:39:16 but it still means that, you know, when you have future missions coming up that are going sun-synchronous, that could be an option if they're interested in the same trajectory. So I'm following it more from that aspect that, you know, it opens up, you know, tools for you to play with in the future as missions come about that require it. So I'm quite excited for that. I'm kind of bummed I can't come down and see it. But I guess, you know, I'll make up my launch, my launch time next year, once everything clears out. Yeah, yeah. launch my launch time next year once everything clears out yeah yeah well awesome philip thank you so much uh is there anything else that you want to plug any anywhere people should find you on the internet if they want to follow along with uh your work down at the cape sure um so people can follow me on twitter at flight master phil it's flight master phil without an e because that

Starting point is 00:40:03 name is too long has too many characters so i couldn't get it all in there um so yeah i'm often sharing things i love taking time lapses of launches whenever i can drive out to the to the causeway to see them so that's some of the content that i'll put out there um and if they listen in time to this uh this will be coming out wednesday morning we're recording this tuesday. If they're listening in time, you will be appearing on my friend Jake Robbins' live stream for Mars 2020's launch Thursday morning, real early Eastern time. You're going to come on and talk a little bit about the trajectory. I believe you're during the coast phase of the mission.

Starting point is 00:40:36 Yes. So, yeah, it won't be too early for me. If we get off at the beginning of the launch window, I'll be talking at about 8.20 a.m. We're hoping to lift off at 7.50 Eastern. Awesome, Philip. Thank you so much again for joining me and hope to talk to you soon. Great. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:40:55 Thanks again to Philip for coming on the show. It was a pleasure talking with him and I learned a ton as has been the pattern with our recent guests. So it's a great time to have people like him on, smart people I can convince to hang out with me for a little while. But I could not do it without all of your help out there. There are 435 of you supporting this show every single month over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. If you like what I've got going on here, you want to see more of it, head over there and join the crew. That crew includes 39 executive producers who produced this episode of Main Engine Cutoff.

Starting point is 00:41:25 Thanks to Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Lauren, Melissa, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Nadim, 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. You make this thing possible. And we've had a lot of good feedback lately on the headlines show over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. A lot of people discovering that and realizing that it is a full-blown podcast, as our friend Tyler said a couple of shows back. So head over there if you want all of the headlines in your feed every week with a lot of thoughts from me and stories that don't quite make it here. So for all of that, there's a lot of monologue in the back end of the show and in

Starting point is 00:42:09 the front end as well. Don't forget to check out offnominal.space for the conversation with Richard Garriott. And tomorrow, if you're listening to this in time on Wednesday, don't forget to check out youtube.com slash offnominal for the Mars 2020 launch stream with Jake. But until next time, thanks for listening. Thanks for your support. And I will talk to you soon.

Main Engine Cut Off - T+167: Phillip Hargrove, NASA Launch Services Program

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