Main Engine Cut Off - T+169: Commercial Small Launcher Updates

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

There have been a ton of recent updates from commercial small launch companies, like increased payload mass and volume from Rocket Lab, contracts and funding from ABL, solved vibration issues from Virgin Orbit, and a few others. With a handful of vehicles on the verge of their first launch, it’s a good time to take a higher-level look at these competitors.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 39 executive producers—Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Lauren, Melissa, 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 399 other supporters.TopicsRocket Lab Increases Electron Payload Capacity, Enabling Interplanetary Missions and Reusability | Rocket LabABL Space Systems begins RS1 stage testing and reaches $90mm in fundingSmall launch startup ABL secures over $90 million in new funding and Air Force contracts - SpaceNewsWrapping Up Our First Launch Demo, and Looking Ahead to Launch Demo 2 | Virgin OrbitFirefly suffers anomaly during launch vehicle test - SpaceNewsFirefly Aerospace on Twitter: “Yesterday evening we attempted to hotfire test the Alpha first stage for the first time. Unfortunately, after the four Reaver engines ignited, an engine bay fire developed (flame jet to the left in video). The system immediately shut itself down and the fire was quickly…”Relativity wins Iridium contract, selects West Coast launch site - 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 back with you for another round of launch vehicle talk. Because we've had a plethora of updates from the commercial small launcher side of the industry over the last week or two surrounding small set, just conference that happens typically out in Logan, Utah this year, virtually. So I wanted to go through, talk about some of these updates, but then also take a look at where the competition is between all of these different companies, because there's a bunch that are coming online within the next year or two. They're all sort of on the precipice. A lot have funding that's sufficient to take them through to first launch, given the current plans. So it feels like a good

time to take a look at a story that we'll track over the next year, because it certainly seems at this point like the story of 2021 on the small launch side is going to be who gets flying, what kind of payloads are they signing up, what kind of regularity are they flying with, how do the offerings compete with each other. So I want to take a little bit of a high level view after diving into some of these updates. But let's start there. Let's start with the updates. We'll go one by one through some of these things that we've heard. So we'll start with Rocket Lab, who had a couple of updates to their Electron vehicle that are pretty exciting. So the top level is that they've increased the performance of the vehicle, and they've also added an expanded fairing option,

which is quite cool. So the performance side of things, originally Electron started around 150 kilograms to 500 kilometer sun synchronous orbit, 225 kilograms to a lower altitude, lower inclination, low earth orbit. They've now bumped that up quite a bit. So they can do 200 kilograms to that sun-synchronous orbit and 300 kilograms to that low Earth orbit. Now they've credited this to some battery improvements that they use in the Rutherford engines and some other upgrades that they've made in the vehicle. It's a pretty beefy performance upgrade for, you know, considering the size of their vehicle. And it also helps out a couple of their things that they're working on. They are

working on this whole reusability effort to capture that first stage via parachutes and a helicopter. They've been working on a couple of different points of that over the last year. They've been doing testing of parachutes, of drop tests, and all that kind of stuff. So they're making good progress there. But the increased performance obviously helps with that because with the reuse, you're going to have to add some hardware to the first stage, which takes away a little bit of performance. So any performance increases you can make help that out, give you a little more margin for that reusability effort. But it also helps greatly with their ambitions to go beyond earth orbit they've got uh the capstone mission for nasa signed up already to use electron that's going to lunar orbit uh peter beck himself

the the man in charge of rocket lab he's got an obsession with venus so he's hoping to pull off a venus mission he said uh in you know 2023 or something like that i heard uh recently so they've got these ambitions to go beyond Earth orbit and extra performance helps greatly in that department. They've also got these plans for what they're calling Photon, which is essentially an upgraded kickstage that you can use as a satellite bus, attach your payloads to it, and let them take over some of the other pieces of, you know, having a satellite. That, with the performance upgrades, can now handle 180 kilograms of payload, so they've increased that offering as well. We've yet to really hear anyone taking advantage of that. It seems like a little bit further out

on their timeline. That's something that we should watch in the future to see how that pans out. That'll be curious, given all of the other manufacturers out there doing small satellite stuff at this time that seem to be catching on in a big way throughout the industry. Now, the fairing upgrade pairs nicely with this. The fairing upgrade gives them a lot of additional volume. It sounds like it's going to be more of a custom thing they've got in their payload users guide, essentially like contact us if you want to use this expanded fairing. And their fairing was pretty tiny previously, or is pretty tiny, their standard fairing. It's one of those cases, kind of like Falcon 9 on the SpaceX's side of things, where the mass that they can put up to orbit is sufficient, but it runs out of volume pretty quickly with

the fairing size. And especially when we've seen the Department of Defense taking advantage of Electron recently, we've seen a lot of NRO payloads going up, Air Force payloads going up. You could kind of get the sense that there's going to be some bigger volumetric payloads that want to be getting a ride on Electron that could do it with the mass but can't do it with the volume. And I wouldn't be surprised to see that this expanded fairing option was sourced from some of the feedback they were getting from those department of defense missions especially i've been very curious to see all the nro stuff going up um that seems to be some new

trend within the department of defense to uh work out some you know do some tech demos or things like that on smaller platforms before it gets rolled up into a bigger mission. And I wouldn't be shocked to see them take advantage of that expanding Führing in the near future. It sounds like that might be a year or more out at this point, but it sort of seems like somebody was sniffing around about some bigger volume inside what Electron can put up into orbit. So all in all, the Rocky Lab updates are really solid, not shocking, right? This kind of feels like that point in the life cycle where we would see these

sort of updates out of Electron. They've had this launch failure, unfortunately, on Flight 13 that we just saw recently, but they're pretty far into their flight manifest at this point. And that's when you start to see these kind of upgrades through the life cycle. So really good stuff there from Electron. And we'll talk more about how that these kind of upgrades through the lifecycle. So really good stuff there from Electron. And we'll talk more about how that compares to the rest of the industry. One of the other updates we got was from ABL Space. I don't know if it's Able Space or ABL Space. I'm going to just keep saying ABL because I see it capitalized in a lot of places,

and I will get corrected in the near future, I'm sure. ABL is working on a vehicle called RS-1. It's a little bit larger than Electron. It is up in the one-ton range, so that competes with Relativity, Firefly, that sort of thing. Their unique capability is that they have a containerized launch system where they can port this launch system around, you know, they launch infrastructure around two different launch sites, and they don't have to install anything permanent at these locations. So right now they're talking up Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Air Force Base. I would not be shocked to see them also be able to do this at Wallops or Kodiak or anywhere else, really, that they can get these containers in.

But their updates were pretty big as well. They won two different Department of Defense contracts that total $44.5 million over the next three years, one for the Air Force Research Lab, one for AF Works. AF Works, that is an arm of the Air Force as well. In addition to that, they've received $49 million of funding, including some by Lockheed Martin Ventures, who also invested in Rocket Lab back in the day. So all in all, they have enough funding now to take them through their first launch, which they currently have slated for early next year. So early 2021, we could be seeing a launch of RS1. That is a big milestone to be able to say that you have enough funding to get them through to first launch. That's always a milestone that people talk up. So not surprising to see them roll out the press bandwagon for that.

They also say that they've made some performance improvements. So they can do 1,350 kilograms to 200 kilometer low earth orbit, 1,000 kilograms to sun synchronous orbit. And it goes down from there, but they were even advertising or are even advertising on their site.

400 kilograms to geosynchronous transfer orbit, 250 kilograms to the moon, 125 to Mars. So they can do a lot with that vehicle size, and it seems to be an interesting spread of capability there through all those different kinds of orbits. Now where they're at in their testing, they've tested the upper stage, it sounds like. They've been doing a lot of testing of the engine for the upper stage at Edwards Air Force Base. They've done cryogenic propellant loading and proofing and just about every test except a long-duration engine burn, which they say is up to be happening within the next few months or so, which would get them to their first launch early next year. Within this update, they also said that the two places they're looking at for sites right now

are Launch Complex 46 at Cape Canaveral and Space Launch Complex 8 at Vandenberg. So again, they can put this containerized system anywhere that there is a launch site. I would be interested to see where that expands to in the future, or if they're quite happy with those two offerings. I mean, that's really all they need for the kind of missions that they're looking at. But they could obviously take this around as needed if a customer really wanted them to be based somewhere else. ABL has kind of flown under the radar to this point. A lot of people are talking up Relativity and Firefly, Virgin Orbit, the others that we're talking about in this show, but ABL hasn't gotten a lot of attention yet. But to see them land two Department of Defense

contracts worth a pretty beefy amount of money, that says there's a lot of confidence there, or at least a lot of interest there. In the same way that we've seen it with some other launch providers, getting those first couple DOD contracts when you're trying to target a certain audience, that says a lot for where you're trying to target a certain audience, that says a lot for where you're at in the lifecycle and what kind of capabilities you're offering that are of interest to agencies like that. So if they can pull this off early next year, that'll be a huge, huge milestone for them, obviously. But to have done it by flying under the radar this whole time, being kind of quiet until you get to this point, is markedly different than some others out there, and something that I feel like, you know,

leads them to be overlooked, but when you look at their capabilities, definitely should not be. Virgin Orbit also had an update this week to talk about what's been going on since they had their failure back on Memorial Day of Launch Demo 1. They had an update that was a lot of the same info that we heard before, that was a LOX feed line failed and shut down the engine after a couple seconds, and that is why that first flight failed. There's some, a little bit more technical detail that they posted on that, but not a ton. The two biggest updates they posted is that for Launch Demo 2 coming up, they say sometime the end of this year, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that happening next year. They're actually going to be flying the NASA Venture Class Launch Services mission

that they already had on their manifest. They were originally going to bump them a mission, and then NASA, I guess, said we would be okay flying on the second flight, which is a gutsy decision to say the least. okay flying on the second flight, which is a gutsy decision to say the least. I do not find it incredibly likely that Launch Demo 2 will make it all the way to orbit just because of how everything goes with this new sort of effort. That's an interesting decision for me and something that I'll be watching as they get through the rest of this campaign. One of the updates that I was interested to read about in this blog post was something that

they talked about in terms of vibrations that satellites experience on their ride up to altitude on the 747, then release in the ride to orbit. This vibration environment is something that I have heard has been a major issue with Virgin Orbit and has been one of the leading issues that they've had. They are quite delayed from their original targets. I remember a lot of articles in 2018 talking about how that summer was going to be their first launch. They obviously didn't get to that until summer of 2020. So they're quite a bit behind schedule. And I understand that a lot of it was from trying to solve issues like this, where the payload environment was

quite intense and was definitely not to spec. The other issue that they're having is that their payload capacity right now is actually a lot lower than what is currently stated in their payload user's guide and will be that way through the first couple of launches. It sounds like they're working out issues with engines and whatever else goes into that, but their payload is not up to spec yet. Last I heard, that could change, could have changed by now. I would love to be corrected by anyone out there.

But this vibration environment, they say that they, sounds like they've got it solved. They had a paragraph in the blog post that said that they, through their first test, they had it all rigged up for data and everything like that. And they saw, uh, loads in terms of vibrations that were much more within

bounds. And they've now been able to verify that it will be sufficient for their customers. So if that's true and they've gotten that under, under control, that's a huge update for Virgin Orbit. Low key, the biggest update in that blog post is that maybe we've got this vibration problem solved. So if that's true, then we might see them make quicker progress towards these next couple of launches. Hardware dependent, obviously, but that thing that has been nagging them for so long is maybe behind them, which would be great news for their future cadence. The other two launch providers that I'll throw in here, we don't have tons of updates from them, but I'll throw them in here because they're going to be a thing that I talk about in the next segment where we're comparing all of these different launch vehicles. Firefly

Space, they have been kind of quiet. They've been doing, you know, they post random pictures to Twitter. I think they've recently posted a picture of their mobile service platform or something like that that has been taken out to Vandenberg Air Force Base where they're going to be doing their first launch from. But they had this fire back in January where they had the qualification stage on the test stand. They were going to do a full duration burn with it and a fire broke out, you know, seconds into the firing. They went totally quiet on that. They said, oh, we'll provide updates after the investigation, and have said almost nothing. That stage was destroyed.

They had to get a whole new one. Originally, they were saying, oh, we might be able to reuse it, but that thing was pretty well destroyed, engines and tankage alike, from what I understand. And they haven't really told us anything since then. They say that they're still on schedule for a launch October, November this year. Wouldn't be surprised to see that slip to early next year, given not only the troubles that it is to get to that first launch attempt, but also the year that 2020 is. Nobody would be shocked to

see anything slide into 2021, I'm sure. So aside from, you know, radio silence from them, not a lot of updates, the indications they're giving, the random pictures they're posting on Twitter are saying that they still are slated for the end of this year. And then the other one I mentioned a couple of minutes ago, Relativity. We've had Tim Ellis of Relativity on the show before. They are, um, again, no new updates from them, but just kind of a, to get you up to date on where we're at with them.

They've got this new headquarters. They've got a new factory they're working on out in L.A. They've got plenty of funding. They did a big round last fall. They also are funded through their first launch at a minimum. Right now, they are scheduled for mid to late 2021 there. I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot of, you know, test campaigns throughout the next year as they make their way to launch or about a year out from this point. But those are the five that I want to look

at. So before we dive into the big comparison, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who makes Main Engine Cutoff possible. Thank you to everyone supporting over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. There are 438 of you supporting every single month. I'm so thankful for your support. And that includes 39 executive producers who made this episode possible. Thank you 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, TheEverDashNut, Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Adam, Grant, David, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, TheEverettAstronaut, Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Adam, and seven anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for your support. It is a huge, huge boost to the show. Keeps this thing going. This is totally

listener funded. So if you like what you're listening to, if you want more of it, head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support and join up over there. And thank you all so much again. Okay, so where does all this leave us with all these different launch providers? They're all rough. They're all either flying or roughly a year from being flying per their current schedules. Well, to start, we got to go through the issues with getting a new launch provider online. Issue number one, getting to your first launch attempt. Pretty straightforward. Issue number two, getting to your first successful launch. Slightly less straightforward. Could happen on your first attempt. Almost never does.

Issue number three, getting payloads to launch. This is something that is a little outside the bounds of what I'm talking about in this show, but there's a huge concern out there about having payloads to launch. And not only just for any given provider, but across all these providers, especially when you've got companies like SpaceX that are offering rideshare for very cheap, and a lot of payloads are going to take that up. You've got rideshare providers like Spaceflight or NanoRacks, other people out there trying to sell different ways to orbit. So if you are looking for this dedicated launch provider market, that's a concern that is always there.

If you talk to people, grab a drink with somebody from one of these companies, that's probably a concern you're going to talk about at some point during the session when that was a thing where we can hang out with people that we don't live with. So those three issues are, I'm going to set those aside and I'm going to look at the fourth issue where if you get through those three, the fourth issue you got to look at is the competition, the market that you're playing in. How do you compare to others? Where are your unique capabilities? How do these things compare? So I've made a little chart that we're going to run through to look at how these are laid out. I've got these in order of payload from lowest to highest. So in that order, Rocket Lab Electron, Virgin Orbit's Launcher 1, Firefly's Alpha, Relativity's Terran 1, and ABL's RS1. Those are in payload order. In terms of low Earth orbit, you've got a range

from 300 kilograms up to 1350. That's from Electron to RS-1. The most interesting segment that I find throughout this entire thing, I'll spoil the ending, is that Launcher 1 is really weirdly positioned amongst all of this competition. So you've got Electron on the low end, 300 kilograms to Leo, 200 kilograms to Sun Synchronous for around $7 million. And then you've got a grouping at the higher end, Firefly's Alpha, Relativity's Terran 1, and ABL's RS-1 that do a little bit over a ton to low Earth orbit, and about a ton to Sun Synchronous, Firefly a little bit over a ton to low Earth orbit and about a ton to sun-synchronous Firefly, a little bit less, about 600 kilograms. And those are $12 million for Relativity, $12 million for

ABL, and $15 million for Firefly Alpha. So a little bit pricier on Firefly's side for a little bit less capability than the other two who are very similar. Virgin Orbit is kind of stuck in the middle here. They've got 500 kilograms to LEO, 300 to Sun Synchronous Orbit, and right now they're sitting between 12 and 15 million dollars. So they have just about the payload range of Electron for the price of these other three, Alpha, Terran 1, RS1. So I know I'm throwing a lot of numbers out, but that is really the long and the short of it. Launcher 1 from Virgin Orbit is strangely positioned, and if all of these were flying today, I feel like it would get edged out of the market. like they were originally planning in the summer of 2018, this story might be different because they would be flying, they would be taking those payloads, they would be signing up launches. Much like Electron, they would have that benefit of being actively flying right now,

which the more that are actively flying right now makes it harder for any new entrants to get in, especially when the capabilities are as close as these are in terms of price and payload. the capabilities are as close as these are in terms of price and payload. On the upper end of these five, Firefly, Relativity, ABL, they all have launch sites at Cape Canaveral, Vandenberg Air Force Base. They all do about the same payload for all about the same price. So it's sort of a shootout there to see who can get flying, who can get flying regularly, and who can start attracting those contracts for that range. Now, if you ask Peter Beck over at Rocket Lab, he doesn't see a lot of benefit in that payload range. He says that there's nothing in that range to be launched. You're mostly looking at rideshare.

I am a little bit, I don't necessarily agree, because it feels a little bit chicken to the egg. Delta II had quite a career at just a little bit higher than that payload range. There are certainly things that are flying on Electron in the 200 kilogram class that could go on any given rideshare for sure, much to his point. You could do a collection of smaller satellites, much to his point, rideshare. But I think if you've got options like this, it makes it more attractive to push into that range. Because right now, when you're thinking about a one ton to orbit range, you're looking at vehicles out of Northrop Grumman, like Pegasus or Minotaurs that are in,

you know, the 50, 60, $70 million range. And that's just not attractive to fly a vehicle for that much money at that payload range. But if you're looking at $12 million, $15 million, it might be more attractive to build a little bit bigger of a satellite, have a little bit bigger of a fairing, and be able to have some more mass margin. So I do feel like this might, especially considering if you've got three different providers like this coming online, this could be an area of the market that we see flourish. I think in Peter Beck's case, you could probably have made that same statement about Electron back in the day, and they seem to be doing just fine finding all sorts of

different payloads, especially a lot of ride shares. So it feels a little bit like, you know, I could easily see him just kind of using that line right now while they're actively planning on something bigger. They say that they're not, and I believe them on that, but wouldn't be shocked to see them totally change their mind in the near future. But if he is right, then it's even worse for Virgin Orbit and Launcher One. Because for the same price that you're paying for Launcher One, you can get twice the capability on any of those other three rockets. And if you've got something that's just a few hundred kilograms, you likely are going to fit on Electron, and you don't need the extra hundred kilograms that you're

going to get on Virgin Orbit. Now, the hugest, unique capability that LauncherOne has is that ability to launch anywhere, any inclination, any phasing from any launch site. And that's something that I feel like we're going to see Virgin Orbit really double down on is that if they sign agreements with different countries around the world, all of a sudden that country has a totally homegrown launch service that can take off from their airport, go to space, not have any issues. There are issues getting Virgin Orbit and LauncherOne to operate in that country, but if Virgin Orbit can solve that, then any country they have a partnership with has a 100% domestic launch service in some sense.

And that's attractive for a lot of countries out there. I'm sure that's something that we're going to see. We've already seen them start to sign some agreements and start to sniff around some agreements in Europe. I wouldn't be shocked to see that be something that they double out on because it is really their one unique advantage. And it's something that I think there are people out there that would pay a premium for that rather than getting their payload all the way to the US to launch at the same price with one of those other three providers.

So if they can sell that as their advantage, or if they're right in that the Department of Defense here in the US really likes the ability to launch anywhere, anytime, any orbit, any inclination, that whole thing that they talk up with air launch, then we could see them have a sufficient market. But I don't know if that market is that big to, you know, totally have a launch provider survive on it alone. But like I said up front, this is, you know, the first issue is not competition. That is the fourth issue. First issue is getting the launch. The second is launching many times successfully. The third is getting enough payloads. And then you got to worry about competition. But if we take those three for granted, I'm not super hopeful on the future of LauncherOne in this current layout of market,

especially, you know, we've seen prices drift up over time. Virgin Orbit was originally saying $12 million. Now they're up towards $15-ish. Rocket Lab even originally was, you know, saying just under $6 million. We've seen them drift upward to $7 million. I'm sure we'll see that with the other companies as well. As of yet, we haven't seen that, but it's certainly getting crowded at that part of the market. So we'll keep an eye on it. We'll hope that we'll see a launch or two in the next year. It could be a really exciting year if they all go off without a hitch, Um, but I sort of doubt that, but there will always be twists and turns along the way that are quite fun.

So anyway, that is the kind of rundown on where commercial small launchers sit today. Hope it's helpful to get your mind around it. And if you've got any questions or thoughts, email me anthonyatminagincutoff.com or on Twitter at wehavemiko. As always, thank you so much for listening, and I will talk to you soon.