Main Engine Cut Off - T+17: NextSTEP Habitat Prototypes, and the Zombie Centaur

Episode Date: August 17, 2016

NASA selected six companies, as part of the NextSTEP program, to develop ground prototypes of deep space habitats, and the Centaur could live on as a wet workshop. Orbital ATK pushed OA-5 to late September. SpaceX landed yet another stage on the ASDS, and have up to 9 more launches planned for 2016. NextSTEP Pushes Forward to Ground Prototypes - Main Engine Cut Off NextSTEP Partners Develop Ground Prototypes to Expand our Knowledge of Deep Space Habitats OA-5 Slips to Late September - Main Engine Cut Off OA-5 Mission Page Gwynne Shotwell at SmallSat: First Raptor Shipped to McGregor - Main Engine Cut Off A Look at SpaceX’s Remaining 2016 Manifest - Main Engine Cut Off SpaceX successfully launches JCSat-16 satellite, faces crowded end-year manifest - SpaceNews.com Email feedback to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo and before I start I want to say thank you to all of those supporting this show and the blog over on Patreon. Head over to patreon.com slash Miko if you would like to join the group of people who are absolutely lovely for supporting this show. If you give as little as $1 a month, you'll be included in that group of supporters who I send out some extra bonus content to, the first of which is coming up this week. The show next week will be an interview that I'm incredibly excited for, and all of the people on Patreon

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I really, really appreciate it. We've been in a little bit of a lull in terms of news, as I've talked about several times in the show. It's just typically that way in the summer. It slows down a little bit. There's not as much going on. There are some launches, which we'll talk about later in the show, but we seem to be coming out of that lull. And this week, that's thanks to NASA, who awarded a contract to six companies as part of the Next Step program. The six companies involved in this program will have 24 months to develop ground prototypes and demonstrators of future deep space habitats, some of which they've proposed before and are getting a little bit of funding to work on in the future, some of which are brand new proposals that are really things that we've seen for the first time here. And each of these companies would get that full 24 months to build

these things and to show them off, to talk about their advantages. And then we could imagine beyond that, NASA might down select to a few, you know, maybe two or three to kind of investigate in the future as part of their exploration plans in the later 2020s and in the early 2030s. Now, the contract awards in full, so all six total, somewhere around $65 million over the next two years, over 2016 and 2017. Each company is expected to contribute at least 30% of the budget to their own program, so they're not getting complete funding from NASA on this. They are having to put a little bit of their own skin in the game, which is a little bit different than some of

these contracts have been in the past. But that's definitely a good sign. So it's not a giant contract for these companies, but it does give them a little bit of runway to work on some of these concepts. And I figure we'll just dig through these concepts, talk about what they are, what they contain, what we've seen before, what we haven't, and maybe, you know, talk about how some of these things might shake out, how some of these things might be used elsewhere in space, and which ones have a real shot of doing something interesting outside of this program. But before we dive into the concepts themselves, I'm going to just list off these six companies. And if I were to walk up to you two weeks ago and say that NASA is going to award these contracts for deep space habitats that would be used in

their journey to Mars exploration, name six people that come to mind. That is exactly who won all of these contracts. We could play contractor bingo here and kind of see the same names that we always see with these programs. So here we go. Get your bingo boards ready as I read off this list. We've got Bigelow Aerospace, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Orbital ATK, Sierra Nevada, and NanoRacks. Now, NanoRacks is a bit of a unique one. They aren't typically included in these types of programs. They don't even seem to have a lot of the experience that you would think is necessary for this program, but they are going to work with SSL and United Launch Alliance. So they're the kind of old

steady names that you would expect to see in this program. Don't worry, those two have a foot in this game as well. And I should mention that Aerojet Rocketdyne are part of the Sierra Nevada Corporation proposal, so they are in the game as well. So that's a list of nine companies that you would just off the top of your head expect to be part of this program. And it's a little bit of the old Insiders Club that always seem to win these sort of contracts. And I say that because I know there are feelings within companies left off this list, notably SpaceX, that sort of feel that these contracts are an insider's club and they have no way of breaking in. Now, it's not necessarily a bad thing in this case because a lot of these proposals are based on things that are flying currently or things that have flown in the past or ideas that have worked out in the past or things that are somewhat into development and just need a little extra push

over the edge. So in a lot of cases, I think these choices make sense, as we'll talk about as we get into each concept. First up, let's talk about Bigelow Aerospace, who, as part of this program, are going to develop and test a prototype of the X-BASE, which is their BA330 platform that would be kind of adapted for use as part of the International Space Station. Now, this is something they've talked about a couple months ago when they announced they were going to send some BA330s into orbit in the 2020s. They talked about using one of those as an expansion to the existing ISS infrastructure. So this is based on the BA330 that they're working on, but adapted a little bit. So this is a full-up test of that idea. This is a ground prototype, as we talked about. So they would build one of these out on the ground and kind of see how things work out. Now this is an interesting one to me because

it's something that was already proposed as an idea, as something that they would develop separately as part of a different program. So this is kind of a nice way to bring those two things together where NASA has this need for these deep space habitats as part of their exploration plans. And they're going to award these programs, these program awards, to different companies like this to develop ideas. So why not use an idea that a company has already floated as something that could be useful to another part of NASA? It seems to be kind of nice, you know, two birds with one stone sort of thing where they're capitalizing on an idea that's already out there. And we'll see that in a couple of these proposals throughout this

program. But the Bigelow one in particular, I like this a lot because they're flying beam right now on the ISS. They have BA330s in development that should fly in the next decade or so. There's a lot of problems within Bigelow Aerospace. That's something that's not so much of a secret within the industry that it's a little bit weird place to work. But in general, I think this is a good idea. Next up, Boeing. Boeing's little blurb here in the NASA press release is something that I could sum up with the words, something, something, International Space Station.

That's pretty much what this whole blurb says. Boeing is the prime contractor on the International Space Station. That's pretty much what this whole blurb says. Boeing is the prime contractor on the International Space Station. So they are the ones operating the US side of the ISS all the way through 2024 or whatever date we decide to deorbit the ISS. It seems like they'll be the prime contractor all the way throughout. So this seems to be an idea to develop this ground prototype based on something. They're already flying on the ISS.

They're already operating on the ISS. It would probably be based off one of the modules that they're particularly fond of up there. So overall, this isn't that exciting of a proposal. It would be more interesting if they provided any details whatsoever about what this would look like, maybe what module it would be based on, or how big it would be, some sort of detailed description there, like some of the other companies have provided. But right now, it doesn't seem all that exciting. It kind of seems like the heritage choice in this program. Though, that said, that's typically the route NASA likes to go, so you never can count Boeing out. Lockheed Martin is similar in that they are going to

refurbish a multippurpose logistics module that was used as part of the space shuttle program. That was something that they used to fly on the space shuttle that would bring supplies and equipment up and down to and from the International Space Station back when that was flying. So it seems like their entire proposal and their ground prototype would be based on one of those MPLMs. That's something that is kind of expected in this program. That's something that we've seen kind of in the diagrams before or the illustrations before as using an ISS-derived module or a space shuttle kind of heritage-derived module as a habitat in the future. It's something that has flown before, so there's certainly that advantage,

is that it's been flight-tested, it's been used in space, it's matured a little bit past some of these other ideas. So in a similar vein to Boeing, it's the heritage choice. Again, something that NASA typically likes to do, take something that's already been flown and kind of improve on it, or expand on it, or use it exactly as it has been. So this is something that I could see being chosen out of this process, especially because Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor on Orion, so there's a certain bit of kind of consolidation there that might be helpful in the environment that NASA's operating in, in terms of their exploration needs. Orbital ATK's proposal for this ground prototype

is based on their Cygnus spacecraft. You remember a couple months ago, they released an idea about using the Cygnus-derived habitats as a cislunar space station of sorts to support some later SLS Orion flights, and this is that idea again. So this is building a ground prototype of those Cygnus-derived habitats. I assume they're only going to be building one of those rather than a collection of them like they showed in some of those Cygnus-derived habitats. I assume they're only going to be building one of those rather than a collection of them like they showed in some of those illustrations previously, but who knows? They do have a lot of Cygnus hardware laying around, so they might have some old structural test articles that they could use and, you know, string a few of these together

to show just what they could put together as part of this program. Now, I am particularly drawn towards this because it does kind of have that benefit again of where it's bringing two programs together. The Cygnus was developed for the commercial cargo missions that they're flying now. That's something that's been in use. It's been flying. So it has a little bit of that heritage kind of angle to it, where it's something that's been flown a handful of times at this point and something that's already had a couple revisions of it from the original version that was short, and they've extended it out beyond that and put more supplies into it with each successive flight.

So I am drawn toward this idea because I do think the Cygnus is a good model to use in the future. It certainly has more going for it than the MPLM idea because Cygnus is already something capable of flying on its own. It's already got its own solar generation, different things like that, that it's kind of a self-sufficient spacecraft already. So if you are able to use an ISS-sized module as one of these habitats, I'm more drawn to the Cygnus direction than I would be towards the kind of what I call the dumb module direction that would be using an ISS module that that kind of needs to back off of another spacecraft to be used as its own free-floating space station. Next up is the

Sierra Nevada one which is a little bit weird when you read the blurb about it. It doesn't seem that clear about what this is. There was an illustration that went along with it that kind of showed it as this multi-module space station of sorts. So let me just read a section of this blurb to you to see if you're as confused by it as I am. Sierra Nevada will study and refine a flexible architecture and concept of operations for a deep space habitat that leverages three to four commercial launches to construct a modular long-duration habitat. Their prototype will be based on the DreamChaser cargo module as a foundation for the Next Step 2 proposal and will allow Sierra Nevada to assess their ability to meet the criteria for each operation phase and identify risks. After a

launch from the DreamChaser spacecraft, the next step 2 module will be combined with a large inflatable fabric environment module life support system and propulsion system now this is the thing that aerojet rocket dine has a part in as well and aerojet rocket dine's press release about this kind of indicate that they are developing a solar electric propulsion module that would be part of this sort of mini space station. So this isn't necessarily a single one-off habitat like some of these other proposals. This is more of a fully self-contained space station. If you look at the illustration, and that is as part of the NASA link that I will put in the show notes at mainenginecutoff.com. If you look at that illustration, you can see that it's kind of, you know, what you would expect from a space station put together through a series of modules.

It's a little bit unclear how those modules get to space if they're part of the, if they're launched from the trunk of the Dream Chaser or if they are the trunk of the Dream Chaser. To me, it reads like this is going to be a modified version of the Dream Chaser cargo module, which is sort of this little cone-shaped thing that flies on the back of the Dream Chaser. This is something that we'll see with the contract that Sierra Nevada won a couple of months ago. So it looks like this would be based on that cargo module itself and would kind of be released into space. I'm not sure why this is kind of tied to the Dream Chaser, whether or not, you know, because the Dream Chaser is not in the illustration of this habitat. So this whole thing seems kind of vague to me. And it sort of seems like they're trying to hit a couple of different buzzwords. They're like, we've got solar electric propulsion, and part of our commercial cargo contract is used here. So sort of seems a little bit like promising too much,

and not really being focused enough for what this program seems to be looking for. Next up is NanoRacks, who right now, they focus on CubeSat and small satellite deployment technologies. They're something that they have of theirs on the space station, which is the thing they launch CubeSats out of and has been seeing heavy use over the past few years. But this is the first time we've seen them in any capacity beyond that, especially in something this big of scale. But like I said, they're working with SSL and United Launch Alliance. And their part of this proposal is an idea around wet workshops.

Now, wet workshops are an idea that's kind of come about time and time again. Originally, Skylab was going to be a wet workshop. And the idea here is that you are converting a rocket stage, a spent rocket stage, totally emptied of fuel. You're converting that from a fuel tank into a space station or module or whatever it may be. You're converting that into its useful form once it's in orbit. So it's part of the launch vehicle that gets it to orbit, and then it's sort of worked out in space to be converted into a habitat. Now Skylabs was going to be a converted stage of the Saturn V, and that was going to be converted from the S4B stage

into what Skylab was. Eventually, when we had a leftover Saturn V to use as part of the Skylab program, we flew it as a dry workshop because we had the launch capability to get that whole thing into orbit, so it never was actually flown. But nonetheless, wet workshops ideas kind of come about every now and then. Recently, there was an idea for Skylab 2, which was using the proposed upper stage for the SLS and using that as a wet workshop, kind of in the idea for Skylab 2, which was using the proposed upper stage for the SLS and using that as a wet workshop, kind of in the way that Skylab was as well. So this sort of mentions that idea, but what it seems to be focused on mainly is using the Centaur upper stage as the basis for the wet workshop.

In the press release, they describe it as conducting a comprehensive feasibility study regarding the conversion of an existing launch vehicle's upper stage or propellant segment into a pressurized habitable volume in space. The feasibility study will provide insight into this innovative and low-cost approach that can be used for any rocket system, including SLS. So they are saying that they're interested in this as a way to be used with any launch vehicle, not just the Centaur or whatever flies on the SLS. That seems like a good idea, but it also sort of falls on the side of things where it seems like they might not have the focus needed for this kind of program, which is a smaller, very focused seeming program where they're saying, what does your one habitat look like? Rather than what does an entire system look like? Which is what Sierra Nevada

and the NanoRacks team seem to be going after. They're saying, here's an entire system that we could use. So I'm not sure how that tactic will work out in the long term, especially on a smaller program like this, something that's more focused and shorter duration even, than an entire exploration program would be in general. Now, the interesting thing to me here, and I think this is the reason they might have been leaving that door open, that saying, hey, we're going to work on this based on the Centaur, but this would be usable with any rocket stage in the future. The interesting thing there is Centaur, how long is that thing going to fly? The interesting thing there is Centaur, how long is that thing going to fly?

I mean, it's been flying since 1962, and it's an incredibly useful and pretty amazing upper stage. It's sent something, you know, all over the solar system at this point. It's been used to send payloads pretty much everywhere. So it's a very capable upper stage, something that's got a ton of heritage, a ton of usefulness. And, you know, not saying that Centaur is long dead at this point. It's still being used by ULA today and into the 2020s, certainly. They are planning on phasing that out rather than using that on their Vulcan rocket, even though they are at the beginning. They're going to use the ACES upper stage, which we talked about a bunch. This is kind of their next generation idea, something that would be a little bit more useful than Centaur has become today. But certainly Centaur still does

have a lot of years left in it. But something like this, you know, if this were to get picked beyond the Next Step 2 program, we could see Centaur flying well into the 2030s, maybe even the 2040s. At that point, it would be about 20 years away from having 100 years of heritage on it, you know, that first flew in 1962. So if you're incorporating this as part of the NASA exploration program that's going to get us to Mars sometime in the 2030s, 2040s, that's coming up pretty quickly on 100 years of flight heritage, which is an absolute testament to the people that worked on Centaur originally and have worked to upgrade it over the years and keep it so relevant and so useful in the space program today. It's a pretty amazing piece of hardware, something that really,

you know, from outside people that are not as interested in space as you or I are, it's something that doesn't get a lot of love. It's something that doesn't get a lot of attention, but certainly has been just such a staple and workhorse of this industry for so many decades already. It would be a little ironic to, you know, as the company that is still flying it phases it out, that it finds another use as one of these like long duration habitats

or something like that, that would make it live on another 20 years or so. That would be a little bit ironic. But, you know, again, that's such an amazing piece of hardware that I could see that working out. I'm just concerned for NanoRacks and the team there that this isn't such a focused project that they're embarking on. This is something that they want to be more general use. So I'm not sure they're going to win whatever is beyond next step two you know whether there's follow-on contracts that are going to go from ground prototype to a flight system or whatever

it may be beyond that i'm not sure that such a general applications program could find direct use beyond that though you know nasa might tap them in the future based on the work that they have done in the next two years so those are all the proposals that are part of the Next Step 2 program that NASA announced here. We'll be following along with them over the next two years as this work goes on. Hopefully we get to see some pictures and things as those ground prototypes come together. But you know just wanted to give a couple more thoughts about this program, both some good and some bad about this program overall. The good news is that this is a sign that NASA is progressing beyond the current phase of their exploration program

that they're currently stuck in, which is focusing purely on SLS, purely on Orion, and not giving themselves much of a roadmap beyond the initial two, maybe three flights. This is a sign that they're going to move beyond that phase and start to build out a little bit of the hardware needed for their roadmap. Whatever comes out of this Next Step 2 program, whatever comes after the Next Step 2 program, you know, whatever one of these ground prototypes are chosen to move into the next phase, those are things that we will probably see fly in the late 2020s as part of the SLS Orion roadmap. Specifically, the Orbital ATK proposal I've talked about before as being very attractive

for those missions. They would build a cislunar habitat that could kind of be the base of operations for Orion to fly out of in EM-3 or 4 or 5 or whatever those missions take out to be. That's something that's particularly attractive for the NASA roadmap because it does keep the same old contractors with some projects to work on, keeps them in business, and also supports the rationale for these missions into cislunar space that they currently have planned for SLS and Orion. So all in all, this is a good sign that there are some developments about moving beyond this kind of phase that we're stuck in with the SLS and Orion programs where we have nowhere to go. We have nothing on the roadmap.

But there are some issues with this whole program in general. Number one, it seems to be specifically focused on the cislunar space missions. It doesn't really seem to get into anything that would be involved for a Mars mission. It seems to be sort of focused on low Earth orbit and cislunar space. So, you know, especially in the Bigelow case, you can see that that's a low Earth orbit kind of thing because it's something that they bring up the International Space Station in their little blurb there. You know, they bring up attaching one of these modules to the International Space Station. So it seems kind of focused on the low Earth orbit

thing. Certainly could be used in cislunar space, but they make no mention of that going beyond low Earth orbit. A few other times throughout this little press release, they do mention cislunar space, and nowhere in this do they mention Mars or even deep space, aside from saying deep space in terms of cislunar space. So there doesn't seem to be a lot of focus on, you know, the Mars habitats or the transit habitats that would be used to get us from here to Mars or anything like that. It seems to be pretty focused on their cislunar proving ground space that they've been talking about for so long now. So, you know, good things that they're developing these things that they need for their roadmap. Bad news is they don't seem to be

building the payloads needed to land on Mars. They just kind of seem to be building up this roadmap for the kind of long duration thing where they're going to build, you know, a decade around cislunar space and then slowly move out towards Mars, maybe, you know, an orbital mission or a mission to Phobos or whatever it is. Another thing I don't particularly like about this program, and this kind of goes back to what I talked about last week with artificial gravity, none of these things are even meant to push the boundaries of what we could do with habitats in space. These are all sort of cookie-cutter ideas that fit into their idea of this long-duration spaceflight in microgravity. None of these involve any ideas

about artificial gravity, and this would be the time to look at some of those ideas. You know, maybe let's put a Cygnus module on the end of the upper stage that got it there and spin it up to see if we can do artificial gravity or anything like that. None of these even mention it or are focused on it because they are all kind of pigeonholed into the roadmap that NASA has already laid out, which involve microgravity for long durations. So it is a little bit of that kind of same old, same old, or things that we've expected to see for this long. We probably could have predicted these projects, aside from the Sierra Nevada kind of all over the place one, and the NanoRacks wet workshop. The other four we've already talked about or, you know, could predict pretty readily even before this. So it is a little bit of a

disappointment that none of these are really pushing the boundaries at all in terms of what we could do for habitation in space. But, you know, at least there is some movement for things that we're going to need beyond EM1 and 2. At least there is a little activity in that kind of vein of thought. Before I wrap up today, I want to just update you on a couple of odds and ends about things that we've talked about in the past or might talk about in the future. Things that you just need to stay aware of that you may have missed over the past week. First up, Orbital ATK has pushed the launch of OA5, which is the launch that was supposed to happen next week, the return to flight of Antares launching a Cygnus up to the ISS.

They pushed that from August 22nd to the second half of September. So sometime in late September, hopefully we'll see it go off. They're citing launch site testing, integration issues, and some ISS schedule delays, but it certainly kind of has that vague feel that we're not getting the whole story there. We're not getting the whole story about what that actual delay has caused by. So we'll keep an eye on what they say over the next few weeks. They should have a launch date for us, hopefully soon. This is a launch that I will be at when it goes off down in Virginia. So we'll be talking about this plenty on the show as we move forward. On the SpaceX side of things, they had a beautiful launch and landing of JCSAT-16 and its first stage back on the ASDS.

That set them up pretty good for their launch manifest throughout the rest of the year. There's a rundown on Space News that I linked to on the blog this week, and I have a link in the show notes for you. That kind of outlines the rest of their launch manifest for 2016. Right now, they're targeting nine launches, six out of the Cape and three out of Vandenberg. That does seem a little bit tight because there's not a lot of wiggle room left in the schedule at that rate. That would certainly put them up at the once every other week cadence that they've been kind of shooting for this year. So we'll see how many they do get off. I would be surprised if they got all nine off. This would be absolutely an incredible year for SpaceX if they can even hit double digits. So anything above that is certainly icing on the

cake. Other SpaceX news, Gwen Shotwell was at Smallsat and was doing a talk there with some Q&A and somebody asked about the Raptor engine, which is the methane engine that would be part of their Mars architecture, and they have a contract as part of an Air Force contract to develop an upper stage version of the Raptor for use in the Falcon family of rockets. Someone asked her about how that development was going, and she mentioned that the first Raptor engine has been shipped to McGregor for testing. This is a full engine. You know, we're not sure exactly what size of an engine it is. There's been some reports that it's a scaled engine, which could mean the size that they need for the upper stage

of the Falcon family, which would then be scaled up for use on their Mars architecture, which would be used on the first stage of that giant rocket and on the upper stage or the lander portion of that giant rocket, which they call the Mars Colonial Transporter. This is the engine that would drive all of that. So I would expect to see a photo of it or a video of it firing as part of their announcement in late September of their Mars architecture. I could see that being a very big part of their announcement there, where they're showing off, you know, this isn't all smoke and mirrors. This isn't all just fantasy. We have an engine that's working today that is part of this, that is the base of

this entire architecture. So I'll be very interested to see how that comes along when we see a test firing of that engine, how big that particular engine is and what their plans are in the future. But again, just absolutely exciting there that there's this piece of hardware in McGregor, Texas for testing that is a fully built Raptor engine. Now, late September, I brought that up three times in the last couple minutes here. That's going to be an absolutely crazy time. We've got the OA5 launch that I'll be at, probably doing a lot of podcasting around, a lot of writing around, maybe even some live streaming from the launch site when I'm down there for the launch. Then we've got the Mars architecture announcement, and there are some other conferences that we'll talk about in the future that are going to be happening at the end

of September. So there's going to be a ton going on that couple of weeks there. So we'll play around with what we want to do here. If you guys are interested in some of this live streaming that we could do where we're doing like periscoping or something like that, maybe even just an extra show here or there, a special show around the launch, special show around the Mars architecture announcement. We'll figure that all out as we get closer to those dates, but it's just going to be a really exciting time period. And it's just about a month off. So I'm really excited for that late September timeframe. So that'll be it for me this week. Thank you very much for listening. If you have any thoughts on any of this that I'm talking about, uh, email them to me, Anthony at mainenginecutoff.com. Follow the Twitter account at WeHaveMiko. I've been posting

a lot of links there. Uh, you can also send some of your thoughts on Twitter if they're shorter form. And if you're enjoying the show or the blog or anything else that I'm doing here, patreon.com slash Miko is where you can go. Head over there, check out the different perks for the different levels that there are there to support. As little as $1 a month really helps and gets you some of that extra content that I mentioned up front on this show. So head over to patreon.com slash Miko, and please help support Main Engine Cutoff. Thank you very much for listening, and I will talk to you next week.