Main Engine Cut Off - T+170: Catching Up on the News

Episode Date: October 5, 2020

I’m back after a few wonderful weeks offline with my newly-arrived son, Will! I figured I’d jump back in with a rundown of the important and notable bits of news that happened while I was gone.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 38 executive producers—Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Lauren, Melissa, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, 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 402 other supporters.TopicsMy son has arrived! Signing off for a few weeks. - Main Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off on Twitter: “It’s Space Shirt Friday over in the @offnom Discord and I’m guessing @JimBridenstine will appreciate Will’s first participation in it.”Discovery of noxious gas on Venus could be a sign of life - The VergeWhat the future of Venus exploration could look like following major discovery - The VergeVenus is One Stop in Our Search for Life - Administrator Jim BridenstineRocket Lab Launches First In-house Designed & Built Photon Satellite | Rocket LabNASA signs agreement with Italy to cooperate on Artemis - SpaceNewsNASA Publishes Artemis Plan to Land First Woman, Next Man on Moon | NASABridenstine Optimistic About Full HLS Funding - SpacePolicyOnline.comSenate Hearing Offers No Hints on Prospect for Artemis Funding - SpacePolicyOnline.comAnother Senate Hearing, But Still No Clue on Likely Fate of Artemis Funding - SpacePolicyOnline.comSpace Resources are the Key to Safe and Sustainable Lunar Exploration - Administrator Jim BridenstinePurchase of Lunar Regolith and/or Rock Materials from Contractor - beta.SAM.govNASA Moon Rocket Stage Passes Simulated Countdown Test | NASAJim Bridenstine on Twitter: “More progress on @NASA_SLS Green Run Hot Fire! @NASA_Stennis teams completed the sixth test of the Green Run test series – the simulated countdown – on Sunday, validating the stage for the sequence of events leading up to an Artemis launch.”OneWeb secures additional financing as bankruptcy restructuring continues - SpaceNewsBankruptcy court approves OneWeb sale - SpaceNewsSpaceX wins launch contract for NASA space science mission - SpaceNewsAfter second hop, SpaceX preps for next phase of Starship testing - Spaceflight NowStarship SN8 prepares for test series - First sighting of Super Heavy - NASASpaceFlight.comSuper Heavy waiting in the wings amid Starship testing - NASASpaceFlight.comSpaceX on Twitter: “Completed a full duration test fire of the Raptor Vacuum engine at SpaceX’s rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas”SpaceX launches the first south-bound rocket from Florida in decades - The VergeEpisode T+167: Phillip Hargrove, NASA Launch Services Program - Main Engine Cut OffSpaceX to Fly to Polar Orbit from Florida - Main Engine Cut OffSoftware fix could position Astra for another launch attempt by end of year - Spaceflight NowVideo of Astra Flight 3 from Jennifer CultonRichard Branson’s Virgin Orbit is Seeking Investors - Parabolic ArcExoTerra to develop upper stage for Virgin Orbit LauncherOne - 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 again. After a couple weeks off, you might have seen my message over on the blog, or if you're a member of the Patreon, you heard a short little update last week that my son was born towards the end of August, so I took some time off, as I mentioned on the show. And to get back into it, I thought I would run through some of the stories that I missed while I was out, some of the things that I thought were particularly notable or something

that I might be tracking in the coming months. So this is a little bit like a headlines to get back into things, but really just want to talk about some things that are of interest to us. So we will start over with the biggest news that happened shortly after I was offline, which is all that Venus stuff that happened. Phosphine was discovered in Venus, in Venus's atmosphere. There is a whole chemical side of this that I'm not good enough at to really talk about. So I want to talk a little bit about what it might mean for some of the plans going forward. But the long and the short of it, the context you need, you should read up on this otherwise,

if you're interested, but phosphine was discovered in the atmosphere at Venus. And that's notable because here on earth, we can create it in laboratory settings and things like that. But, uh, almost all of it on earth is created by some sort of biological process. It is very energy intensive to create otherwise, so it's found on Jupiter and Saturn and bigger planets like that that have a lot more energy to spare. But on something the size of Venus, we don't really have a chemical process that we know of that would create it in the quantities we're seeing on Venus. process that we know of that would create it in the quantities we're seeing on Venus. Now, Venus is a crazy planet. It's incredibly hot, and it's got this crazy atmosphere. It's close to the sun. There's a lot of things going on that we obviously don't have a lot of experience with outside of a handful of missions that went there back in the day. So my bet would be some sort of

exotic chemistry. The thing that everyone likes saying is it's never aliens. I think it will be that way until it's always aliens, but that's something that we will discover in the future uh now it's you know like i said it's probably exotic chemistry but it's worth investigating and that's where i think the interesting stuff picks up we have uh discovery missions from nasa that are currently being evaluated will be selected next year. They will select up to two of the four finalists. To bring up to speed, the finalists that were announced, I think sometime, maybe a year or two back, were the Io Volcano Observer Trident, which would do a flyby of Neptune and its moon Triton. Veritas, which is the Venus Emissivity Radioscience INSAR Topography and Spectroscopy, which is a Venus orbiter that

would do high-resolution mapping with the synthetic aperture radar that was mentioned in the name of the surface. And then the final one is called DAVINCI+, which stands for the Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases Chemistry and Imaging Plus. This one is an atmospheric probe, so it would actually fly to Venus, descend through the atmosphere, I think it would take about an hour to get from entry to the surface, and it would be doing chemistry on the way down. So this one is particularly interesting. Back when these finalists were selected, it was notable because two of the four were Venus missions, and Venus has a near-term history of being kind of, you know, if you're a fan of Venus, you would say snubbed of all these decisions from NASA, and we haven't sent missions there in a very long time. So to have two of four missions

selected to Venus was really exciting for that community who has been really working with just old data at this point, and then remote observations. And now this really amps it up another level. So heading into that selection, it's hard to not see this news swaying that a little bit. You know, Jim Bridenstidenstine NASA administrator put out a post that says we're going to be unbiased in our selection yeah sure but it's hard to say that an atmospheric probe of Venus does not get a boost from this news and I'm sure the team over there is working on their instrument suite to see what they can do with what they've already got planned

on the spacecraft to look at these phosphine discoveries a little bit closer when they're on their way down through the atmosphere. So that's something to keep in mind as we head towards that selection point sometime in 2021. I don't know how much the pandemic is going to screw up the timing of that selection or if it's continuing, you know, on its current plan. But maybe sometime next year we'll get news on that front. But that's also really good news for somebody like Rocket Lab, who I want to switch to next. Peter Beck at Rocket Lab has talked up his Venus ambitions for a long time. They, this past month or so, they announced that they have officially launched the first

photon satellite. So on their return to flight mission that happened at the end of August, they actually flew, instead of the regular kickstage, they flew one that was upgraded to that Photon satellite bus, which is essentially the kickstage plus attitude control, power generation, thermal management, other things needed to turn it into an actual satellite. The idea being that they could sell that satellite bus to other people, host payloads on it, and then really the customer only has to worry about their payloads and not all the stuff that Rocket Lab can do for them with Photon. So much in the Rocket Lab way, they like to do things first and announce them later.

They eventually turned on, after deploying their satellites on that mission, they converted the kickstage into that Photon satellite and started working out some early operations and really just demonstrating that they have Photon up and working. Through the announcement of that, they're talking up the fact that a bigger version of Photon will be used to go to the moon. They've got the Capstone mission for NASA in early 2021. They also have talked up Venus missions privately.

That's what Peter Beck was on about pretty recently. And I wouldn't at all be shocked to see an up-and-coming space agency, you know, New Zealand comes to mind, jump in with some funding as well to send something out towards Venus with Electron and Photon in this case. So that plan could also get a boost. Somebody could be particularly curious to be, you know, the first person who can confirm life somewhere else other than Earth is going to be going down in history. If you can do that for $25 million, seems like a pretty good rate these days. I think that $25 million was kind of the order of what a mission to Venus would cost.

I saw some numbers being thrown about, but I might be in baby brain and totally making that up. But that could be a pretty good motivator for somebody now. You know, a private individual could step forward and fund that mission, help Peter Beck fund that mission and carry out some sort of, you know, maybe it is a small atmospheric probe. Who knows what that is, but it does boost those kind of prospects in the future. So Rocket Lab, you know, return to flight, they launch Photon

and they get good Venus news. Pretty much a triple play for them at the end of August there and beginning of September. So good stuff for Rocket Lab in the last month since I've been gone. beginning of September. So good stuff for Rocket Lab in the last month since I've been gone. Shifting focus over to Artemis and NASA's plans, there was, it continues to be a slew of international partners signing on to Artemis in some way without a lot of detail. Previously, we've seen Japan, we've just heard Italy, Canada also has their plans in motion for the gateway and things like that. So the international support for Artemis continues to build. And politically, that's important because something that has a lot of international support is particularly hard to kill here in the US, just given the way that things work in Washington. But this past, I think it was only a week or two ago, NASA published this

plan, as they call it, to land the first woman and the next man on the moon. It is essentially a list of, you know, numbers of budgets that they would need over the next five years. It amounts to $28 billion for Artemis alone in the next five years. It's pretty hopeful. I don't know if anyone sees NASA getting that money right now, considering the state of politics, considering the state of the world that we are in, considering the state of how much money the government is spending this year on everything else, is their appetite for another $28 billion over the next five years doubtful. Particularly troubling for NASA is that they need $3.2 billion for the human landing system this year. Right now, through Congress, we're in this continuing resolution already, which means we're sticking with the 2020 budget through 2021 so far. And that doesn't really seem to be changing

anytime soon, given everything that's going on with the presidential election, the congressional elections that are going to happen soon. And it's just kind of a mess right now, to be honest. So it's unlikely they're going to get that much money. Congress right now has about $600 million in the paperwork that has yet to be signed off on. So you might as well take this list of numbers and send it to the North Pole to Santa or something like that. It's not going to happen. I admire the effort. Full court press from Jim Bridenstine through congressional hearings, through appearances and things like that, talking up how hopeful he is that they're going to get the money. It doesn't seem to be in the cards. We'll see exactly what

shakes out once we do get real budget, who wins the elections, both, you know, in Congress and in the presidency. Things might look different. But like I said, the international support seems to be there for Artemis. The domestic support is questionable. And we'll see which route those two things take over the next, you know, six to 12 months. Now, there was some good news on the lunar front from NASA. Well, good, depending on your view of this next story, I guess. There was this announcement that NASA put out there that they are going to purchase lunar regolith and or rock materials from a contractor.

That was the title of this RFP. And there was a lot of talk about this, but essentially what's happening here is that NASA is putting out this small contract available to establish a precedent. So the scope of this contract is that someone is to go collect 50 grams up to 500 grams of regolith, provide imagery of that collection to NASA, imagery of the collected material, plus location information where on the lunar surface that material is, and then NASA would pay $15,000 to $25,000 for the samples. Not a lot of money, there's only about $50,000 available for this project, but they're trying to establish the precedent that they can buy materials and make use

of materials on the lunar surface under the propriety of the Outer Space Treaty. So they're not claiming territory. Outer Space Treaty says no nation can do that. But NASA and those in the administration believe we can use the resources there without establishing territorial claims for the United States. So it's not a ton of money. It's mostly precedent-setting, and it's not a ton of money. It's mostly precedent setting, and it's not even sample return. NASA says they're paying for those materials that could be used in the future by NASA. They are under the sole property of NASA at that point. They can be used in the future. NASA might

go collect them and return them at a later date. But really, this is all about establishing precedent. Now, opinions on this are all over the place, whether this is a good or bad thing. I think we can argue about it to the end of time, about the right way or the wrong way to do these kind of things. But I don't think anything is going to particularly happen or move in any direction until somebody goes up there and does something to trigger, you know, another round of decisions on this to trigger the wider international community to come together and decide what our policy is as a world. wider international community to come together and decide what our policy is as a world. So you can judge for yourself right or wrong, but I don't think things will really get into motion until something like this actually pans out. Whether or not this does pan out or not, that's a good question. Very likely a CLPS provider, the Commercial Lunar Payload Services providers, would do something like this to get a little extra money, maybe approve out their sample

collection mechanisms, and also help establish that precedent because the companies that are signed up for CLPS would be interested in making use of resources, and they need the political framework to do that in the future. So they are vested interests in making sure this kind of thing happens. So that's an interesting development in terms of the resource utilization front in space. And the other good Artemis news is, surprisingly, the green run for the SLS is making good progress. They are now through six of eight tests for that core stage of the SLS. The seventh and eighth test, number seven is load and drain the propellant cryogenically, and the eighth test is fire all four of its engines for eight minutes so they are pretty well through the entire green green run

checklist at this point uh depending on how this fall goes here in the u.s and what kind of you know work environment we've got down there we could see this firing up pretty soon um which has been a long time coming it's been years coming. But I think that's pretty cool for anyone who's remotely interested in SLS, either as a fan or just as a bystander watching to see what happens with it. Getting close to that Green Run hot fire is really, really big news for NASA and everyone that's working on that. And I think if you're a Rocket fan, it's going to be cool to see that thing fire up for eight minutes on a test stand. I will be interested to see that happen. Who knows when it will be? Seems like it's going to be in the next couple months. All right, before we get into

the last couple stories that I wanted to talk about, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone out there who supports Main Engine Cutoff. Particularly want to say thank you on this show because it is your support that I can keep this thing running as a single person operation. And when I have things happen, like have my first child, I can take some weeks off. And I got a ton of messages from all of you saying, take the time. It's a special time. We'll be here when you get back. So thank you all so much for the support and obviously for the monetary support as well over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. There are 440 of you supporting the show, including 38 executive producers who produced this episode of Main

Engine Cutoff. Thanks to Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Lauren, Melissa, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Ryan, Nadeem, 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 making this episode possible. If you want to join the crew, head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support. If you're in the $3 level there per month, you get an episode of Headlines every week. We're starting back up this week. It's a great rundown of everything that happened in space, so head over there and check it out if you are interested, and thanks again. All right, we did have some OneWeb news, surprisingly,

in the last couple of days, really. The United States Bankruptcy Court that was overseeing the OneWeb bankruptcy, the sale to the British government and Barti Global, they have approved the sale of OneWeb to those new owners. And additionally, they got some additional financing from the bankruptcy court. Basically, funding got released from debtor in possession financing. Then additionally, they signed a new launch contract with Arianespace, who they had a previous launch contract with. The effect of that new launch contract is that they've dropped three launches off of the plan. So they will conduct 16 Soyuz launches, each with 34 to 36 satellites, and that will complete the Constellation by the end of 2022, at least the

first rollout of the Constellation. So I'm quite surprised that all this happened so quickly. I was really unsure what would happen here with OneWeb, whether they would get back to launching so quick, or it would be more of a rethink from the new owners' perspectives. But it seems like, you know, regardless, they want to get these satellites up. They've already got a bunch of stuff in the production line, apparently. They did open that one back up as well to use some of the funding to get that production line back rolling. So it seems like they're going to ramp up again. And I think I originally saw they were going to launch in December, but then not until next year, I saw another update. So we'll see when they start launching. But I'm pretty surprised that,

you know, mere months after the purchase announcement, they're going to be launching on Soyuzes once again. SpaceX has been up to a lot as well. They've won another launch contract from a NASA space science mission. They continue to sweep these NASA science missions. Over the last year and a half, they've won NASA's double asteroid redirect test. That's a $70 million contract. They won the contract for IXPE for $50 million or something like that. That was the one that everyone assumed would launch on Pegasus, but they snuck in there at $50 million on a Falcon 9. Then just back in February, they won the launch for Pace, which is an $80 million contract, and now they've won a contract for the IMAP probe from Cape Canaveral on a Falcon 9 in 2024.

Interestingly about this launch, the contract price is $109.4 million. That breaks a thing that I've heard from a couple of different sources, both in and outside SpaceX, that there was a rule that they were not to sell a Falcon 9 mission for more than $100 million just as a policy. Just because they could, you know, they always could bid Atlas V minus a dollar for these missions, but they were always in that $50 to $80 million range. And the $100 million was kind of a cutoff that was dictated by leadership that they didn't want to cross that line. Now, granted, this launch is more complex because IMAP's going to L1. They're sending some spacecraft to the moon. There's rideshares. There's a lot more than just a single satellite.

So maybe I'll let it slide a little bit. But it's interesting, nonetheless, that they are pushing that contract price up as they continue to sweep these science missions from NASA's perspective. In Starship news from SpaceX down in Boca Chica, they've been busy since I've been gone. They had Starship SN6 do another hop to 150 meters, just like the SN5 test that happened while I was still around. They've done some more tank testing, including with new alloys. There was a Raptor vacuum that got shipped out to McGregor, their test site in Texas, and has started its test firings down there. Super heavy sections are being built and spotted down in Boca Chica as well. And most excitingly, Starship SN8 is on the launch mount. It has aero surfaces. It's going to get three Raptors. It'll also have header tanks, which will be tested in these high altitude test flights. The target for those high altitude flights has been moved

a little bit, was originally 20 kilometers, then 18. Now it's down to 15 kilometers, which is high enough to do the things that SpaceX needs on those tests. So the fact that it's on the launch mount, unsure exactly how long it will take from here to actually making its flight. And it's got to obviously go through tanking and static fires and all that kind of stuff. But to see something on the test stand with AeroSurfaces is pretty exciting. These tests are going to be the most exciting ones to watch in a long time.

So I'm excited for that. And it does sound like we'll get another update from Elon Musk sometime in the coming weeks on Starship, and maybe we'll have more to talk about coming soon. Other than that SN6 hop and the Rocket Lab return to flight, there were a few launches that happened that were particularly notable. One is the launch I've been

talking about for a long time. It's that polar launch from Cape Canaveral. SpaceX successfully launched the SALCOM mission on a polar trajectory from Cape Canaveral, landed back at the launch site. So that polar corridor is open for business for the first time since, you know, 50, 60 years ago or something like that. Beautiful mission. If you have not watched the launch in a while, pull up the Salcom 1B video because it was a very pretty launch

given the timing and the trajectory just was absolutely beautiful. So that's exciting for SpaceX. You can go back and listen why I think that's important. We've talked about it on a few episodes. Most recently, I have to pull up the numbers. I'll have it in the show notes.

I've totally forgotten what episode that was at this point. But that's important for SpaceX. Blue Origin might make use of that in the future. And other launch providers that only have an East Coast launch site but want to go to polar or sun-synchronous orbits from Cape Canaveral, they now have a Pathfinder mission there from SpaceX in the modern era. Astra was attempting to get to orbit again. This was the Rocket 3.1 vehicle. It launched, and after I think it was just under a minute,

the guidance system appeared to introduce some sort of roll to the flight, and then that caused the vehicle to drift outside of the trajectory. And then it issued a shutdown because it was straying from its trajectory and eventually crashed downrange. It wasn't a, you know, unzip the tank kind of situation. It would just terminate the thrust, let it fall harmlessly because they were still within safety range at that point. So Astra still having a hard time getting to orbit. safety range at that point. So Astra still having a hard time getting to orbit. I'm unsure what to make of that, but quite surprised that at this point in 2020, Rocket Lab is the only small launch provider flying regularly. I don't know I would have believed you a couple years ago if you told

me that. I thought, you know, obviously there's always delays, but I figured by now somebody would be up and running to compete with Rocket Lab at the smaller end of the launch market. And on that note, the last thing I wanted to mention today is not a particular story, but something I've kind of been keeping an eye on over the last couple of months. It seems to me that the Virgin space companies are coming up on some hard times on the cash front. Obviously, the pandemic is hitting Virgin's core businesses really hard, so maybe they have a little less money to throw around these days. But Virgin Orbit posted an investor seeking post on their website. So it looks like they're looking for some outside cash. Virgin Galactic has that whole weird setup where they are now a public

company. I sort of always thought that was a way to get additional money injected into the business without Richard Branson dumping some money into it. So sort of seems like they are maybe pulling back on the investment from the parent company a little bit and hoping that others can step in to get them over the finish line. There's not a lot there yet. There's not a lot of confirmation of that, but it's just sort of a vibe I've been seeing in the recent reporting around Virgin Orbit and a little bit of Virgin Galactic as well. Right before I hit record, I did see an announcement that ExoTerra won a NASA Small Business Innovative Research contract to develop a solar electric upper stage to ride on Launcher 1 from Virgin Orbit, which would actually extend them beyond low Earth orbit, could do about 150

kilograms to the moon, 180 to geostationary orbit. So that would be a cool thing to come about if, I don't really know the relationship there between ExoTerra and Virgin Orbit, but that could be a cool thing that would enable some more interesting missions for that Virgin Orbit class performance, assuming they can get up and running, assuming they can make it through the gauntlet of funding, and assuming they finally do make it to orbit successfully in the coming launches. So we'll see where that all pans out, but a little bit concerned about Virgin, to be honest. And for now, that is the epic rundown of the news that I missed while I was gone. Thanks again to everyone for dealing with me

there as I took some time off. And I will return to some form of regularity as the news flows. I have no idea what's going on with the news these days, so we'll see how that turns out. But once again, thanks. Head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support if you want to help support the show. And until next time, I'll talk to you soon.