Main Engine Cut Off - T+190: Brock Howe, Nanoracks Bishop Airlock Program Manager

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

Brock Howe, the Program Manager for Nanoracks’ Bishop Airlock, joins me to talk about the final build out and launch of Bishop, its installation on ISS, some details of its operations, and its plans for the future on ISS and beyond.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 40 executive producers—Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Lauren, Melissa, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Joonas, Robb, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Matt, The Astrogators at SEE, Chris, Aegis Trade Law, and seven anonymous—and 592 other supporters.TopicsNanoracks - Your Portal to SpaceBishop Airlock - First Commercal Space Station AirlockNanoracks (@Nanoracks) / TwitterBrock Howe (@B_Rock_Howe) / TwitterBishop Airlock Takes Flight, Headed to ISS on SpaceX-21 LaunchNanoracks on Twitter: “#BishopAirlock: Now mated to @Space_Station”The 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 JustusArtwork photo by NASA

we've got another special guest with us today on main engine cutoff with me anthony colangelo today we'll be talking with brock howe who is the program manager over at nanoracks for the bishop airlock this is an airlock that they have funded themselves. They have now put on station. They're going to be using it for satellite deployments, payload deployments, external payloads, potentially EVA support in the future. There's a lot of different use cases for this thing.

I've been following the storyline for several years now, and it made its way up to space over the last couple months. It's been on station, attached to station for three or four months now. So we're going to talk a lot about where things are at, what it was like getting ready for launch, some of the use cases it might be seeing in the near future, some things they have planned, and then where this kind of program is going overall

now that we're in a new era of the ISS program and we're heading into maybe not uncertain territory, but there's changes in the ISS's future in the next five years with the expansion plans that Actium have underway, with potential changes in the international partnerships involved. Lots of different stuff could be coming up for this in the future. So I wanted to talk a bit about what we could be seeing with this kind of capability now on station and that agencies and organizations will be relying on into the future. So Brock Howe is going to be talking to us all about that. Before we get there, before we give him a call, I want to say thank you to all

of you out there supporting the show every single month, making things like this possible. There are 632 of you supporting the show every single month. I'm so thankful for all of your support. This episode was produced by 40 executive producers. Thanks to Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Lauren, Melissa, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, the Everett Astronaut, Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Matt, the Astrogators at SEE, Chris, Aegis Trade Law, and seven anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for making this show possible. If you want to help join that crew, head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support. There you'll find some info on getting access to MECO headlines.

If you want to hear an extra podcast every single week in your feed where I run through every story of the week, mainenginecutoff.com slash support is where to go for that. And without further ado, let's give Brock a call. Brock Howe, welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. It's been a couple of years, I think, since I've had someone from NanoRacks on the show. So I'm excited to have you here. Okay, thank you. Appreciate it. Glad to be here and looking forward to talking a little bit about Airlock. Yeah, so the last time I think I had Mike Lewis on years ago when things were in planning stages, and it's been, I'm sure, a whirlwind of time since the airlock made its way up to station. I'd love to hear about, now that it's attached to station, everything's kind of shaken out there,

I'd love to hear a little bit about what it was like to finish the build out of Bishop and then what it was like to actually go through with launch, getting it integrated on launch. What was that entire storyline like from the NanoRacks perspective? Okay. Yeah, it was a, it was a big whirlwind exactly. Like you just said. Uh, so we started into the final, I call the final push for, uh, uh, getting all the avionics on board the vehicle, getting that through the checkout and delivered down to SpaceX. We started that roughly around the February timeframe of last year. And of course, we all know what happened around February, March last year, COVID hit. So right away, right when we start into that final push, we're hit with trying to deal with COVID. And we bring the team home, of course, and we're trying to work from home for a little bit.

But then we just have to get together. We have to build this spacecraft, have to put her together. We have to test it. So we're marching along, trying to meet, you know, doing all the right things, all the right protocols for COVID while we're trying to build the spacecraft of this magnitude was no simple task to say the least. So I was really proud of the team to really come together, band together, willingness to come work together, keep our social distancing, keep all the masks, try to sort through all that and take care of their home life. Meanwhile, build this spacecraft. So but we got really busy. It was it was a tight crunch

there for several months. We were working, uh, seven days a week, um, uh, trying to get her together, but it was very fulfilling at the end, of course, to finally get her on orbit. So we get, uh, uh, the airlock completed, get her through all of our testing, um, here in our facility in Houston. And then we, um, uh, ship it down to Florida. And again, they got the same similar protocols and everything going on there in Florida as we do here. So we go into the NASA space station processing facility, spend about a month there processing, getting final checks, final integration, final cleaning. And then we roll over to the SpaceX facilities. And that was a pretty neat experience for all of us

to be able to be there with the Dragon vehicle. We were flying on SpaceX 21, which is the first cargo flight of the new version, the Dragon 2. And so we were very proud to be in the trunk as the prime payload for that mission and getting it integrated with SpaceX. We had a great relationship with them and with NASA as our partner, supporting the commercialization of low earth orbit, of course. And yeah, then we get to the launch and launch was pretty exciting for us as well. You know, nothing like seeing five years worth of work,

riding it, going uphill on a Falcon nine from the beach there in Cocoa Beach was a moment to remember for sure. And so we really loved seeing that whole aspect of getting her to orbit. I'm curious to hear a little bit about the work that you did with the ISS program, because between the airlock and the new solar arrays that are going to be heading up to the ISS pretty soon, it's some of the first real big changes to the outside of ISS in several years at this point. You know, there obviously haven't been big structural changes since the shuttle days,

but there's been some upgrades of docking adapters and things like that. Bigelow had Beam flying on station for a while now, but we're in this era now where there's some things getting added to ISS. So do you have a sense of the team on the ISS side that's managing your interactions with the ISS generally? Is that something that is kind of new to everyone there? Or is it some veterans from the old station days when everything

was getting assembled? I'm curious how that process went. If it's like, are you blazing new trails there? Are you learning a lot from the veterans of days gone by? What was that like? Yeah, so it's really pretty neat. They got a kind of a mixture. I've been in this business for about 30 years now and dating back to the shuttle days. And so, yeah, there's a lot of veterans that are still there, but there's a lot of new folks too. So it's still kind of a mixture of people. But what's really changed is the NASA's culture to embrace the commercialization.

I mean, we're different, we're odd, we're self-funding our projects. So we're kind of blazing this new trail of, okay, what are they? They're not really a payload. They're not really a government module or in between. And what's really neat about it was the NASA cultural change to embrace that commercialization approach and to bring us alongside. And so we work more like partners than we did contractor, government, you know, customers, if you will. So there's give and takes. We do a little bit on our side. They do a little bit on their side. So there's trades back and forth to make that happen. And that was really neat to be part of that and kind of being at the tip of the spear, if you will, of leading some of this new commercialization efforts. You know, the space station has been around for quite a while, 20 some odd years now.

And it's neat to be able to be part of somewhere. Like you said, it's changing. It's evolving now. It's a U.S. national laboratory that's evolving to new capabilities and new customers and hopefully some new science that will go on board there. More opportunities for the scientists to do some really neat low-earth orbit science. some really neat, uh, orthorbit science. In terms of the installation, uh, on, on station itself, uh, were there any things, any things that came up during that process that were surprising?

Was there any bugs to work through as that was getting installed? Or, um, did you have a pretty solid handle on what that would be like from, you know, ground testing or whatever else you've done leading up to that event? What was the flow there from, you know, ground to installation? Yeah. So, um, uh, actually, you know, that's pretty interesting because you never know what you, what, what might come up is that's one of the hardest things about the space flight. Sometimes things come up that you just did not expect to happen, but, uh, luckily for us, uh, it went really smooth. We were really happy with it. You know, one of the, we laugh at one of the, the neatest pictures we had been looking forward to for at least about four years really smooth. We were really happy with it. You know, one of the, we laugh at one of the

neatest pictures we had been looking forward to for at least about four years. There's a great view when the Dragon vehicle separates from the second stage on orbit, and you got the Earth's limb in the background, and you see the Dragon vehicle separate, and for us, that view from the second stage looks right into the dragon trunk, right where the airlock was. That happens about 12 minutes after launch. That view, we had been, a few of us had been along the airlock for the four or five years from its inception, had been looking forward to that view. That's your first view on orbit. Is it really there? Is it still in one piece is it still uh nothing wrong

with her on orbit um and uh that was a picture perfect for us we got a great picture of a snapshot it's it's one of my favorite pictures uh now so that was exactly the way we envisioned it and to see it come out that way was really something uh something really neat to behold. And I credit that to not only the NanoRacks team here, that our designers and engineers that made this thing happen to bring the airlock to life, but also the NASA team that was there to integrate. And, you know, the SpaceX folks that got us into the trunk and get us in that location to the robotics folks on the NASA side that did a great job of planning out all the robotics and the install the airlock and

just all those interfaces there's just so many different things that can trip you up on your way to the space station and all of them just work fabulously it was really great just kind of very well planned out very well orchestrated and hardware really proved that proved her worth. The installation is interesting to consider for one perspective. So it was installed with the, with the arm on station and a lot of the different deployments that might be in the future for the airlock are going to be using pretty much the same mechanism, right?

Detached from the station with the arm, positioned into its deployment attitude, and then you proceed with deployments and all that kind of stuff. So were there things that were happening during that install process to kind of check things out and make sure everything was operating as expected so that you've got some data to lean on when you do go ahead for future deployments?

Was there some sort of testing process or was it pretty much like, we've got a checklist of items to get this thing installed. Let's just do it as quick as possible. Yeah, no, no. We definitely did some checkout. The heavy work, like you said, was from the robotics. We're a heavy user of the space station robotic system,

the SSRMS. And so all those maneuvers to get us to birthing point on node three were all checked out. We also did a lot of verifications along the way. As far as positioning of the robotic arm, we had targets on the airlock that helped guide us in. And then those targets won't be used anymore on these future sorties as we take the airlock out to users. So we were able to verify that those positions of the arm were accurate. And so to help us, so when we go back to the birthing again to get us back home, if you will,

they're going to be accurate and be able to be reliable to get us there. There were some other things that we were going to do. We still have a few things the next time we go on the arm to prove Wi-Fi capabilities in all spots in the air outside the space station. But for the most part, that first install really proved out a lot of the system. We also had to power up on the arm and communicate while we're on the space station arm. That was all proven as part of that, those aspects as well. So we got to think quite get everything really well wanted, but we got to, you know, I'd say a good 95% of

what we're trying to achieve on that installation. And right before launch, maybe a couple of weeks, I forget the exact timing, there was the announcement that NASA and ESA had pre-purchased some airlock cycles from you all. I'm curious to know from both perspectives, why that contract arrangement about pre-purchasing? And do they have specific plans for those cycles? Or was it more of, you know, booking your availability before other people come running your way? Yeah, so it was a relationship. We've been talking with NASA, of course, they're a huge partner for us. So we, as a commercial entity, we have a variety of different customers and those can be commercial

to government agencies, to universities, a variety of different types. So NASA as a customer then wanted to get some early cycles booked to use the airlock and we made an agreement. They weren't sure at the time exactly what they might use those airlock and we made an agreement. They weren't sure at the time exactly what they might use those airlock cycles for and we continue to work with them to utilize those. In fact, one of the very first uses of the airlock might be to deploy trash via NASA cycles. So familiar with the station, they have a lot of equipment and a lot of supplies on board. If you're familiar with the station, they have a lot of equipment and a lot of supplies on board. Trash can get to be a problem sometimes with regards to stowage on board. So usually that trash comes back down on one of the U.S. cargo vehicles when it returns.

But they don't come very often. And so your trash has to kind of build up until you're ready to dispose of it. So we're going to try to use the airlock. We're building up the trash deployer system. It's going to get delivered here in just a few weeks and get it on orbit this fall. And we hope to use the airlock this fall for the first time to deploy trash off the space station. So not a super glamorous job, if you will, but a necessary job if you want to keep an ISS, you know, a national laboratory like that in good working order. Yeah, absolutely.

It's very utilitarian, but it's, you know, it's a job. It's got to be done up there. Yeah, so we're looking forward to it. And like I said, we got the hardware ready to, it'll be delivered to NASA targeting NG-16 flight later this fall. So is that system, the hardware to actually take, you know, I guess some sort of the cargo bags or whatever that they're going to dispose of it from and then throw it into space for all intents and purposes? What is that actual hardware?

Yeah, so the hardware is essentially just a large trash bag. Imagine your kitchen trash bag, but a much larger version of that. It can hold several hundreds of pounds of trash. And then for us as an airlock, we do a lot of satellite deployments off the space station. So we've deployed some 300 CubeSats and then a handful of other small satellites off the space station to date. What this trash bag is, is essentially just a large deployable satellite to us. So we'll deploy the bag off and we'll go into jettison away from the space station. The way we do that is we have a spring loaded mechanism device that will be in the airlock. And when they pull the airlock off, we always

deploy our satellites down and aft from the space station at 45 degrees to minimize the chance for recontact. And they'll deploy this trash bag off and it will orbit for about maybe a year or so. And eventually drag will take over and then bring it down into the atmosphere where it will burn up on reentry. So for us, it's just a big, giant trash bag satellite. So it's not much different than what we're doing with our current customers. It's just maybe not, like I said, maybe not as glamorous as some of the CubeSats and military satellites we've done. But the philosophy and the engineering is pretty much the same. The old trash set. You gotta get some brain. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, one of the most interesting use cases that we might see in the future for the airlock is

EVA support, you know, the, the ability to have things come in or out to support different EVA operations. That's been talked a lot about in a lot of the stuff that NENEREC's put out about the airlock, stuff that NASA has talked about. Are there specific con ops that you're developing for that and any particular use cases that we might see in the next couple of years? Definitely within the next couple of years. We don't have anything in active work right now to develop those kind of systems. So a couple of different things we're working on.

One is what I call EVA support. So almost like envision the airlock is like a large tool cabinet for the EVA astronauts. So instead of bringing their tools with them, hanging their tools off their belts and having to maneuver around the space station with all that, bringing that hardware with them, we use the airlock to position the tools and maybe the parts that they're swapping out on the EVA itself out near their worksite. And then that gives them the freedom of movement and a little bit more flexibility and maneuvering around than maybe what they had before. So that's one aspect of the airlock we've been talking with NASA about and doing some ideas here.

And then another aspect of the airlock is actually to minimize the number of EVAs by bringing in some of the bigger hardware that is maybe outside the space station that needs some either upgrades or repairs to try to bring that hardware into the space station, into the IVA environment, the shirt sleeve environment, then the crew can do those repairs in shirt sleeves rather than in EVA suits. And you can envision that being able to do that gives you a lot more flexibility as far as handling small items because you have much more dexterity with your fingers and, of course, with the EVA gloves and allows for maybe some upgrades that they've never been able to do before or fix things that they haven't been able to fix before.

And so we're looking forward to trying to work with NASA on that kind of capability to bring those equipment in, get them upgraded, and then send them back out again, whether it's experiments or orbital replacement units, pumps and valves and batteries, those kind of things. It's capabilities that we're trying to open our eyes a little bit and say, hey, what can this airlock do for us? Because we're a much bigger airlock than the Kibo airlock. So that opens up some opportunities there for the NASA ISS team to think about. So that would be kind of like going, instead of spending a lot of time outside for extended EVAs,

or like you said, things that aren't even possible because of the limitations of being in an EVA suit, there would be a spacewalk to go get the hardware loaded into Bishop, and then the astronauts would come back inside, the airlock would be reattached, do the work, and then maybe another EVA to redeploy it? Or are you envisioning using the... There are now going to be a couple different robotic arms on station.

Are you envisioning the possibility that there could be fully robotic to get things in from the outside? Yes, so we're looking to do it fully robotic if get things in from the outside. Yes. So we're, we're looking to do it fully robotic. If we possibly can, that would just, uh, uh, that would be the ideal world. And that's what we're building around our hardware right now is actually do all those operations robotically and bring those, uh, uh, devices back inside the space station. We can't get everything, but we can get a lot more than what they've been able to get before. Uh,

but yeah, so the idea is to try to eliminate those EVAs, eliminate those risks that are involved in the time and effort and everything that goes on with the EVAs, and maybe be able to do some things that, like I said, that weren't possible before with the airlock now on board. One thing I've been wondering about, the robotic arm itself and the fact that that is, you know, how Bishop gets around the station, uh, the, the arm can walk across

the surface of ISS by attaching to different attachment points, uh, and, and maneuver where it is, which obviously helps for accessing all sorts of different things on station. But, um, when you're grappling the airlock on one of the ends of the arms, you can't obviously walk when one of your hands is tied up. So is there only one spot that the arm can be to grab Bishop? Do you have some flexibility around where the arm can be positioned to grab the airlock? And I'm just wondering what kind of access the airlock will have to the outside of the station, considering the constraints of being attached, you know, to the arm at all times. Okay. That's a great question. So, um, for the airlock itself, there's a couple of different places that the, uh, SSRMS can be based where they can grapple the airlock off of a node three and maneuver it. Uh, one of the really neat

features that we worked on early with the airlock is to, uh to be parked on the mobile base system what they call the payload or you adapter or poa it's a parking spot essentially what it is is the latching end effector of the arm is hard mounted on this cart and so what that does we can since we have two grapple fixtures on the airlock and this was early in the design working with nasa we put two grapple fixtures on her so we can park the airlock on this mobile base system poa device and what that does that's the same card that runs up and down the truss work with the arm is mounted in another place there so then that frees up the arm so then once we're parked there then the arm can release from the airlock and that's what we actually use how we do how we do that robotic transfer of equipment from the inside

of the airlock to the outside of the space station and then when we're on the cart we then have full travel the full width of the space station um so we can move the air you can move the base of the arm goes with us and this cart can run up and down the full width, go all the way out from one solar array wing to the other, and move all over the place. And from that cart position, you can reach a whole lot of the different modules that are on board the space station as well. So from that one spot and the ability for the airlock to go for a ride on this cart gives us a lot of a lot of flexibility to, uh, access to a lot of different spots on the space station. So that kind of, that seems like a good way to achieve some of the stuff you were talking about for EVAs,

you know, making that the, the home to stash all the parts or the tools or whatever you need. That seems like it would be pretty useful for that kind of use case, considering the flexibility that that would bring. Yes, exactly. You're exactly right.

Especially when you consider, you know, how many EVAs, you know, there's an astronaut at the end of Canada arm arm doing some sort of work on on some evas so uh definitely that's that's cool i did not know to that i'm sure there's nerds out there listening that are all about that kind of thing like how did you not know about the cart but that's uh that's really cool to hear the the yeah no that way you can move the cart so say for instance like maybe they're going to do something i think there there's some upcoming work on the AMS module and you can move the cart close by there, have the airlock full of equipment there. And and then still be able to have the arm there where the arm can the astronauts can ride on the arm and go where they need to go to help out some looking towards the future um there is a lot of expansion planned to the iss

with axiom having access to a port they're going to be building out a lot of different modules um curious if you've talked to them at all about expanding their own station in the future sending another airlock to the iss or um you know i don't know about repositioning Bishop as it is today to a different spot on ISS if it made sense. Have you put thought towards that at all? Are you kind of waiting to see how exactly all of this plays out over the next, you know, half a decade or so? Yeah, no, we've definitely been looking forward, looking at that,

and we're leaning forward on that quite a bit. You know, the airlock was designed for, at a minimum right now, a 10-year lifetime, and with a little bit of sharpening of the pencils, we think we can probably get much longer than that. But so we anticipate the airlock to be maneuvered to future commercial space stations, whether that's through via Axiom or somebody else that might come along the way. Um, what we want to we want to do is we continue our business. We continue to build a market demand for an airlock. There's just a lot of things this airlock can do. Once we get those customers and people that are relying on that kind of capability,

we don't want to abandon them just because space station is going away or we're moving to a different commercial space station. So we want to capture that marketplace and then just continue those services. So we're, um, uh, we look forward to the airlock, uh, having a great life on space station and then whatever's beyond that. And then, um, you know, we're also working on even future things beyond low earth orbit and airlocks that are on future projects outside of just the low Earth orbit area. So we see potential for using airlocks in lots of different places for lots of different purposes. And we're hoping the space station is just the starting point for all that. Well, I think I'm at the end of my list of questions here. Was there a topic that I should have covered about the airlock,

where it is now, what its near future holds, that you were thinking of all day and then I just didn't get to it? You know, one of the things, a little bit of a shout out to, you know, we talked about NASA and their use for it. I didn't even talk really too much about ESA and their potential uses for the airlock to support their payload operations for putting external experiments out on the outside of the Columbus module and even maybe to the Bartolomeo platform that was just installed. So we're working with these, not only

government agencies, but like I said, Airbus and the Bartolameo platform is another new commercial platform. So we've already been working with them to work together to provide common interfaces. But the first commercial use of the airlock is coming up with a new robotic arm technology demonstration payload from a company called Gitai and out of Japan. They're going to fly up on SpaceX 23. We're delivering their hardware here in a few weeks as well. And so we look forward, this fall is going to be a busy time for the airlock.

We've got a commercial customer with Gitai doing some robotic arm operations and testing inside the airlock. And then we're hoping to do some of those trash deployments that we talked about. So we're looking forward to putting her to use this fall. So far, she's been on orbit for about three months since we've turned her on. All systems are nominal right now. So that's a great sign. She continues this work away and our flight control team continues to monitor her progress.

But right now, all systems nominal ready to uh put her to use i can't wait to watch you know i've i've been uh i feel like the entire length of this podcast i was uh following this project i remember i visited the office a couple years ago and and got to see the mock-up there uh before i think any metal was bent uh and just following the whole storyline from that all the way through you you know, being attached to the ISS. It's really cool to see come to fruition. And, you know, I've been looking at the video of the installation that you've got on Twitter. I think everyone should go check that out just to get a sense for how things are going to work.

There was a video, I think, that was on the NanoRacks website about showing some of the different missions that are going to be happening. And I think a lot of people didn't really realize exactly how this is going to work in the future. So I've got links to those in the show notes because people should definitely check that out. But good luck with all that. I cannot wait to see video of the actual thing happening in the near future. Okay, great. Yeah, it's going to be some fun stuff. We got NANRAX has got some new content coming out here pretty soon,

specifically about the airlock. And so be looking out for that. And over the next few weeks, we'll be getting some new stuff out. And if you're ever in the Houston area, don't hesitate to come on by. We always like to see and support our airlock fans. Thank you so much, Brock, for hanging out. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Yeah, you're welcome.

Thank you. Thanks again to Brock for coming on the show. It is always a pleasure talking to people from NanoRacks. They are some of the best people that I've talked to in this industry and always have a good time talking with them about the projects that they've got going on. They're always working on something interesting. So hopefully we'll hear from them more in the future as they've got new things underway. Once again, thank you all so much for your support over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. Your support makes this kind of stuff possible. So if you like what you're hearing, head over there and join the crew. And otherwise, that is all I've got for you here. If you've got any questions or thoughts, hit me up on email anthony at mainenginecutoff.com or on Twitter at wehavemiko. And until next time, talk to you soon.