Main Engine Cut Off - T+192: iROSA with Matt LaPointe and Andrew Rush

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

I’m joined by Matt LaPointe, Technical Director at Redwire’s Deployable Space Systems, and Andrew Rush, COO of Redwire, to talk about the newest upgrade to the International Space Station: the Roll-Out Solar Arrays that are currently being deployed over the course of several spacewalks.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 41 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, Fred, and seven anonymous—and 617 other supporters.TopicsRedwire | Heritage + InnovationDeployable Space SystemsROSA Flight Demonstration Hardware Successfully Deploys On ISS - Deployable Space SystemsNew Solar Arrays to Power NASA’s International Space Station Research | NASARedwire acquires Deployable Space Systems - SpaceNewsSpacewalkers unfurl first of six new space station solar arrays – Spaceflight NowRedwire Space on Twitter: “Check out the new view on @Space_Station! #ICYMI: The first of our iROSA solar arrays was successfully installed on space station at 11:24am ET this morning. At 63 feet long and 20 feet wide, they'll provide a significant power boost 🔋 to the orbiting laboratory! (📸: @NASA)”T+131: Andrew Rush, CEO of Made in Space - Main Engine Cut OffAndrew Rush (@RushSpace) / TwitterThe 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 United Launch Alliance

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo. Today we're going to talk about the newest upgrade to the ISS, the rollout solar arrays that are in the process of being deployed. There's going to be six different wings deployed on the ISS. The first one is deployed now. The second one is kind of halfway there, given some EVA scheduling that we will talk about in this show. The rollout solar array upgrades to the ISS were something that took some of us by surprise early in the year. It was kind of under the radar for a while. And then NASA posted a press release that said, we're flying six new

solar arrays to the space station this year. And they're really a press release that said, we're flying six new solar arrays to the space station this year. And they're really, really cool pieces of technology. They are, as the name implies, they roll out. So they're all rolled up. When they get launched, then they get put in place and they deploy under some really interesting mechanisms that require no motors or anything like that, no moving parts, just unfurling with its own support structure. So I wanted to talk to a couple different people from Redwire. Redwire is a company that holds a couple other companies that you may or may not have heard of, Made in Space and Deployable Space Systems, among others, those two just pertinent to the conversation

today. First, we're going to be talking to Matt LaPointe, who is the technical director for the Rollout Solar Array program, formerly at Deployable Space Systems, I guess still at Deployable Space Systems as part of Redwire. And then we're going to talk to Andrew Rush. You may remember his name because he was on the podcast almost two years ago when he was at the time the CEO of Made in Space. Maiden Space became part of Redwire and Andrew Rush moved to be COO of Redwire, the parent company. So he's coming back on the show to talk about some of the future looking aspects to the Rollout Solar Array program. There's a lot of missions that are going to be using this in the near future. And I want to talk a little bit about Redwire's general strategy because they are kind of the experts with deployable or in-space assembly systems in space today. So I wanted to talk about, you know,

everything from the technical background of the Rollout Solar Array program through the what does this mean for Redwire overall. And I think we got the two perfect guests to do that. So that's what we're doing here today. But before we get into talking to Matt, I want to say thank you to all of you out there who made this episode of Main Engine Cutoff possible. There are 658 supporters of Main Engine Cutoff every single month, and that includes 41 executive producers. Thank you to Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Laura, Melissa, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Matt, the Astrogators at SCE, Chris, Aegis Trade Law, Fred, and seven anonymous

executive producers. Thank you for making this show possible. If you want to help support the show, head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support and join the crew there. You can get an entire other podcast in your feed every week called Miko Headlines, where I talk about all of the stories going on in space. It's a great way to stay up with news and support the podcast. But now that we've thanked all of you, let's get into our conversation with Matt. Matt, thank you so much for joining me here on Main Engine Cutoff. It's a pleasure to have you in the, I'm sure, a very exciting week as everything is, I guess we're still mid-deployment of the solar rays that are up on station. So how's your week been going with all this happening?

Oh, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's a really exciting time here. Yeah, we have one of two down, so we're looking forward to Friday for wing number two deployment. Yeah, definitely a lot of buzz and excitement. Yeah, we can't wait for that second wing to be deployed and start producing power. It was an interesting time because ISS EVAs tend to go relatively without any issues, and then they're always like, oh, we're ahead of schedule we're doing like nine other tests uh the first eva they had some suit issues i think this i was

traveling during the second eva was there also some things that were getting worked during the second yeah unfortunately shane's suit had a couple issues on both both the evas um they also had a little bit of trouble with the thermal cover that goes over the hatch. So yeah, that definitely set us back a little bit on the first EVA. And unfortunately, they ended up having to cut early before they could get through the full installation.

So yeah, you know, things happen. It's never easy with human spaceflight it's there's always challenges and come up and you know tamar and shane they did an amazing job on these evas overcame all these challenges to make um make that deployment happen so um we couldn't be more happy and you know we're hoping this third eva everything goes according to plan and uh no more suit issues hopefully for sure yeah exactly um so i wanted to talk a little bit about the historical context um for the the work that's happening this year because i and i don't think i was unique in this i was surprised in january when nasa put up this press release that they were upgrading the solar arrays on station i don't think

many people knew about it because i sensed a lot of surprise from many people in the industry as well that I was talking to about that at the time. And I know you had a demo mission back in 2017 of the smaller scale rollout solar array that I assume led into the upgrades that are going on station this year. So could you give us some context on the program overall to this point and how it got to this level of, of like, now we're going to upgrade six of the eight wings on station. How did that all come about? Yeah. Um, yeah, definitely. So, so Rosa as a product line, we've, we've been developing, um, for a little over a decade now. We were deployable space systems. Now we're part of the Redwire team. ROSA kind of came about as a, you know,

funded by these SBIR small business programs to develop new technology with a lot of support from the Air Force Research Lab early on and NASA. Coming up with the new, you know, there's always this desire to have these new high performance solar array designs. So, you know, we spent a lot of time with these kind of smaller programs developing the technology and kind of taking that big step of getting it infused into the market over these past 10 years or so.

And we were fortunate enough to get funding from Air Force Research Lab, NASA SMC to do this experiment demonstration mission on ISS back in 2017. And that was the first chance we had to really showcase this technology on orbit for the general public. We've been doing a lot of work up to that point with various customers, both commercial and government, developing ROSA for different applications. And right around that time, we did that demonstration mission um you know working with boeing and nasa uh there was definitely this desire to or a need i'll say to increase the power on iss or they were realizing that the um current arrays up there right now were degrading a little bit faster than they had dissipated so um you know boeing and nas, they saw a need to add more additional power

capabilities to extend the life of the existing systems up there, but also enable any sort of future missions and, you know, prolong the life of space stations. So right around that time in 2017, we, you, we began developing this program with Boeing. And yeah, it was a little under the radar for a while, just with everything going on with ISS. And I think there was a kind of a desire to kind of keep it low key until we got kind of further along in the, in the design and development process. And then, yeah, you know, we, we produce these wing, the first two wings and, and deliver them. And here we are today, we have the first two up on orbit and currently working on wings three and 4 that are going to be delivered later this year.

And then 5 and 6 will shortly follow after that. I'm curious about the interaction there about the ISS program and your demonstration mission, right? You did this on ISS the first time. Did you have an idea at the time that this would be a good upgrade for the ISS or, you know, the long list of missions that ROSA is going to be used on? I think that was pretty lengthy at the time as well that you had your eyes on certain missions. And I don't know if the ISS was on there. But I guess what I'm getting at is, is what is the the fit for ISS of the actual technical aspects of ROSA? Did that feel like a good match from day one? Yeah, you know, for us, you know, ROSA, I think it would be,

it kind of was this perfect technology if you were going to add more power to ISS. It's a very, the way it deploys and how we can package it in the launch vehicles it just to us seemed like a perfect fit so um when nasa and boeing first started expressing interest um about using it you know it it was kind of around all that same time frame so definitely that flight experiment was a big kind of push and um they you, they definitely saw the benefits of using, uh, Verosa and, and what it could do for, for upgrading stations. So, um, yeah, it was all kind of a great, uh, combination of things that all happened around that timeframe.

And, and, uh, we were, you know, fortunate enough that NASA was looking for a solution and, you know, Rosa was really a perfect fit for what they needed. was looking for a solution and you know rosa was really a perfect fit for what they needed so um was the stowage part that you mentioned there that the ability for this to be packaged uh a lot smaller from my understanding than you know competing designs and things like that that seems like a pretty big motivation because of the constraints that nasa's dealing with with uh unpressurized cargo to iss you basically if you fit in a dragon trunk, you're good to go. Otherwise I don't even know what you would, you'd have to like make a new spaceship to get to ISS with, uh, something much more sizable. So, uh, and it certainly looked like you were maxing out the trunk area of dragon. Uh, was that a design constraint early

on that you knew that was the package that you had to fit into? Yeah, no, that was definitely one of the key design drivers was being able to fit in the Dragon. And yeah, you're absolutely right. Without the space shuttle allowed for a lot larger payloads and things to fly. And so with that no longer an option, space is definitely a, a constraint that we have to work around. So we maxed out as much volume as we could,

um, in the dragon trunk, you know, we were down to the last quarter of an inch or so of what we were allowed to. So we, we really packed in as much as we could um uh to to meet that power requirement that boeing and nasa were looking for and um yeah luckily with the rosa design we have um a lot of different options and what what we can do with the design um the irosa wings that we're flying on iss that's our folded rosa design. So we do have other applications. Like the flight experiment is one example where that array didn't fold. We didn't have that need to fit it in a smaller envelope. But yeah, we have a lot of different options for packaging

and the arrays we're going to be flying for the lunar gateway, our propulsion element, those are also going to be a folded ROSA designed to fit on their launch vehicle. So yeah, if customers are looking for big power, that's a good way to package a lot in a small area. Now the cells themselves that are on these, I think I saw some references to your site that it was a, was it Boeing that actually makes the cells themselves on the solar arrays? And you are more focused on the deployment system. Is that the kind of breakdown of the system? Yeah.

So us here at Redwire, we don't actually produce the solar cells themselves. So we basically procure the cells from a handful of suppliers. we basically procure the cells from a handful of suppliers. So for iRosa, we were using cells from a company, Spectralab, who is a subsidiary of Boeing. And they're one of two or three kind of key suppliers of solar cells for space. And they have a cell that packages really nice with what we want to include on ROSA. But the really nice thing about the ROSA technology is we can really incorporate any cell technology that's out there.

And it's kind of a flexible platform. We can do different cells and also different concentrator technologies. That's something that we're trying to kind of infuse back into the industry is the use of concentrators, which allow you to use less solar cells because you're using the cells more efficiently. That's something that we can incorporate onto ROSA. So, yeah, we're not in the business of making the solar cells themselves. We, um, we'll use whatever the customers want and, um, and we're, we're flexible in that, in that regard. Yeah. And it makes sense for the work that you do, right. And you're, you want to keep that end of, of the product offering open because then other

people can be making innovations in that area, but you still are focused on being the best deployment mechanism you can be for any given solar panel. So it's like a very clear mindset. One of the things that's interesting about the ISS usage is that it's getting deployed over top of the existing solar wings. And I believe this is to take advantage of some of the infrastructure that's already there with those solar wings with, you know, tracking and I'm not sure exactly what else, but I'd love to dig into that a little bit. You know, why did that decision get made that way? Why still have those solar wings attached? Some people might look at that and say, well, just get rid of these old things. You'll save some propellant when you need to do a reboost.

What is that breakdown there so um it's if you look at a picture of how we're overlaying um it's pretty clear that we're only we're only covering up about a third or so of the original arrays and we're actually not um they didn't just unplug the original ones and plug us and we're actually kind of spliced in so they boeing created kind of a y connector where one end plugs into the legacy arrays, one end plugs into ours, and they combine those power sources together. So about two thirds or so of the original arrays are still producing power. And they do still produce quite a bit of power, even though the efficiency is a lot lower than it was in the past. So there's know, there was, there's no need to really

get rid of those if they're, they are still producing power, just not to the level that NASA needed them to support, you know, another 10 or 20 years or so. But yeah, and then the existing structure too, we were able to utilize that for mounting our arrays and deploying. It would have been a pretty significant challenge to try to get rid of those original arrays and not have them up there anymore. So yeah, it was definitely a smart choice just to pick a design like ROSA

where we can just deploy right in front of those existing arrays, let them stay in place and, and keep producing power for as long as they can. Um, and you can tell like just looking at the astronauts next to those original arrays, how incredibly large they are. And, um, it would, it would be quite an undertaking to try and get rid of them. Not as easy as when they go out on evas and they throw stuff overboard uh yeah it wouldn't quite be the same it would be

quite a challenge so i noticed that the uh the new arrays are mounted about 10 degrees uh tilted up above the original wings is there are there like thermal reasons for that or is it more of of trying to get as close to flat as possible while still maintaining space to deploy? What's the design decision there that's driving that? Yeah, it's, it's to maintain clearance between the two arrays. Um, you know, as, as different vehicles come to ISS, you know, Dragon, um, the Cygnus vehicles, they can impart plume loads from their thrusters onto the arrays. So we had to be sure that there's no chance our arrays could kind of sway and hit the existing legacy arrays. So we worked with Boeing and they came up with this kind of panting angle that is a good compromise between not losing power from the solar cell angle while giving us a ton of clearance to the original arrays to make

sure that they wouldn't contact or anything like that. Can you talk about the booms themselves that deploy these arrays? That seems like the special sauce there is that these are stowed in a position that has a lot of tension on them, then when you release that it unfurls under its own power. What is it that's doing that, the actual unfurling itself? The booms, their technical name is a slit tube, thin wall composite boom. So if you think of like a, a drinking straw and you were to cut a slit down

the entire length of that straw and then, um, flatten out the end and kind of roll it up into a tube, it kind of naturally is going to want to spring back out that original tube shape. So that's kind of the fundamental concept of those booms. And it's something that they've been around for a long time, these slit tube posit booms and different form factors. And it's something that kind of led to the original idea of ROSA was, you you know air force kind of had a lot of these um a lot of development they had done with these these booms and they were looking for ways to turn them into real applications so you know along we came and said hey we can make a we can make a solar out of these things um and yeah we've we've done a lot of development through the years. On their own, if you don't control them in the right way, there's a lot of stored strain energy in those things.

So when you flatten and roll these booms, they really want to just spring out. So we've done a lot of development and figuring out a really simple kind of elegant way to control that and turn it into a way we can deploy the array. And the really nice thing about it is we're kind of getting a dual use out of them where they're basically kind of like the springs that deploy the array, but then they also turn into our structure. So we don't need any extra things like motors that a lot of other competing technologies, they require motors to deploy. We don't need that. We only need, we have some dampers that slow things down, but it's a passive device. It doesn't require any electronics or any complicated things like that. It doesn't require any electronics or any complicated things like that.

So, yeah, it's kind of a really elegant way to get a dual purpose out of our structure. And, yeah, and they're really simple. If you see one in person, they're like a tube with thin carbon fiber. Of course, there's a lot more that goes into it as far as properties and um what we do to make it work for for us but uh yeah they're they're uh definitely unique and um we have a lot of different applications too that we we use them for other things like antennas and not just solar rays too we've we've done a lot of different things with those so now that we've got um we kind of see how the actual installation of one of these goes we've got some experience kind of see how the actual installation of one of these goes, we've got some experience watching these two EVAs that just happened. What are, what is the

rest of the early operations for, for each array on station? Is there more to it than that? Or is it really getting that install, getting it deployed successfully, and then you kind of sit back and let it generate power? Yep, that's, that's pretty much it. So wing one, you know, and let it generate power. Yep, that's pretty much it. So wing one, you know, it's deployed. It's producing power. The telemetry is saying that we're actually producing more power than they had expected.

So, yeah, everything is looking great. You know, we even saw as we were deploying, you could see the power curve, the power starting to increase as it was deploying further and further out. So that was kind of a cool way to track along the deployment as it was going in real time. So yeah, so wing one is it's done. It's up there. It's ready. It's producing power as we speak. And so once wing two is up there, then that'll complete this, this first ship set. so once wing two is up there then that'll complete this this first ship set maybe to finish off our little technical discussion here is there a story you can

share of like a moment that got very harrowing in the development of these wings is there something that happened that you didn't expect and that there was some lessons learned from or or did this feel like given that you had just done the demonstration mission before this and you're working on all these other areas was this as easy as it appears from the outside uh to all of us looking in well you know it's um like i said we've we've been around for a little over 10 years or so um when i started originally at DSS, I was employee number five. And we were just this tiny, small group. A lot of us came from, you know, bigger companies. So we definitely had the experience. But, you know, we kind of came into this as a small engineering group, kind of figuring it out as we go.

as we go. And to go from that to building the largest solar arrays that, you know, are currently in production. There was a lot, you know, a lot of growing pains as a company trying to get to that point. And, you know, we're really lucky we have an amazing team here. And we have an amazing customer in Boeing that really helped us navigate all these intricacies of working with ISS. So, yeah, there was, you know, ISS and human spaceflight in general, it's a lot more challenging than just a satellite. You have all the safety concerns, a lot more eyes looking at what you're doing to make sure that everything's safe for the astronauts it's going to perform like you're expecting it to um so all along we just faced these um these engineering challenges that we had to overcome and then of course building something this big um without this existing infrastructure in place there was a you know a lot of a lot of development that went into just putting together

the fixturing we need to make this. And our team here just did an amazing job figuring it out and putting it all together. And yeah, I think we developed an amazing product. And yeah, we're excited for all these new future applications that are coming up and looking forward to using ROSA as many applications as we can. Yeah, it's probably sounds like the the EVA incidents might have been the most harrowing of all. I don't know, I just got you get nervous when you see things go a little bit south with EVAs. Because like I said, up front, it usually doesn't happen. Everything seems to be very,

very ironed out on these, uh, operations. And so I'm sure there was a couple of moments there where you're like, well, this isn't great that this is, uh, happening on these very important EVAs,

but you got back on the books for, uh, this week. So it seems like, uh, I think it was Tomada. So this was like one of the most complicated, uh, EVAs he's done just as far as all the maneuvering.

You're working with this solar array with these really delicate solar cells. So there's that extra challenge where they can't just, you know, throw this thing around. They got to be very careful with what they do and everything else pre-planned. careful with what they do and everything else pre-planned and um you know they do we do the best we can to give them the training and the tools and procedures but uh you know ultimately there's always with evas and things like this where it's not a really well-defined uh interface and what we're doing it it there's definitely some challenges you have to overcome so um you know it was definitely a sigh of relief getting wing one done. And, and now we we've seen how it goes and the workflow, and we're hoping these next five wings are, um, just go very smooth because they, they, we have the procedures

ironed out now we know what they need to do. And, um, yeah, we're like, we're really looking forward to Friday and seeing that second wing up there. Awesome, Matt. Well, that's all I've got on the list for the technical side of things. So thanks so much for coming on and talking through some of that. I'm sure people are interested to learn about this after keeping their eyes on the ISS all week. So thanks again for joining me here. Yeah, no problem. Andrew, welcome back to Main Engine Cutoff.

It's been almost two years, I think, since we talked to you last. So welcome back. Thanks, Anthony. Really talked to you last. So welcome back. Thanks, Anthony. Really, really glad to be here. Last time you were CEO of Maiden Space. So many things have changed in the two years since that. Redwire has, I was just looking at the timeline right before you hopped on, so I could remember how things played out. I didn't realize we're like almost the exact year anniversary of what Redwire existing at all. And everything has happened. So all the different acquisitions, and then announcing that you'll be listed publicly pretty soon. I'd love to hear from you to start

just some general Redwire takes on like where things are at, how all these different companies work together and what you've been working on as COO day to day? Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Thanks for thanks for that question, Anthony. You know, so at Redwire, we're really focusing on accelerating humanities expansion into space. And the way that we are doing that is by bringing together some really talented folks from some, some, some from our legacy acquisitions from the legacy businesses, and integrating into just one really amazing company in Redwire space to be a trusted mission partner to all the folks across the sector, whether they're focusing on civil space missions

or commercial space missions or national security applications. And we're here to really help those folks be successful via our strategic focus areas. And those strategic focus areas are unsurprisingly areas that reflect many of the focuses that our legacy businesses really were specialists in. Those include LEO commercialization, on-orbit servicing assembly and manufacturing of satellites, digital engineering, large deployed structures and solar power generation,

as well as space domain awareness and resiliency. So we have a really wide variety of products and services and capabilities that, you know, that we can bring to bear, you know, to really make this, you know, the second golden age of space that I believe that we're in, really, really be sustained and realize its potential. The acquisition pattern was very rapid and all these different announcements hitting one after another. And it seemed like there was a very specific goal up front of which companies made sense to fit together. Was that as plotted out as it seemed based on the calendar? are really just amazing companies throughout our sector that Redwire as a platform enables to kind of go to the next level. That as a smaller independent company in a sector that's kind of

shaped like a barbell, there's a lot of small companies and there's a few like gargantuan companies. It can often be challenging to scale. I mean, it's challenging to scale in any sector, but in space in particular where, you know, where flight heritage is king and, you know, having the insights into the marketplace or, you know, is paramount, that scaling can sometimes be difficult. But we provide, I think we've shown, and we've gotten this feedback from the folks that have joined the cause here at Redwire, that we provide this really great platform to help folks really realize the potential of their capabilities, realize the potential of

their technology. And that's been a great attractor. And certainly we've been thoughtful about the companies that we brought together. We've definitely looked at a lot more companies than we have joined the cause. And we really, you know, we appreciate anybody that kind of talks to us on that. But in being selective, that has enabled us to build a really strong company from a technical perspective, but also from a cultural perspective. You know, we really look for folks that kind of have a commonality of vision, that their companies have a demonstrated track record that is additive to our organization.

You seem to have become, by way of gathering a lot of talent, the experts in deployable, in-space assembly. That area seems to be pretty dominated by Redwire. The last time we talked, it was right after Arcanaut 1 was announced and Made in Space had won that contract. And we're talking now right after the first of the ROSA arrays have been, I guess that's like ATM machine, ROSA arrays, have been deployed on the ISS. And I feel like that bookends things pretty well. From your perspective, as I know that that was an interest of yours from a longstanding time, the state of deployable structures and in-space assembly, what is that like today? And has your vision for that changed now that you are running a company like Redwire that has all these different capabilities at its disposal?

At the end of the day, the market need has not changed. The market need is putting more capability on orbit per dollar, per unit mass, per unit volume. mass per unit volume. And the ROSA technology is just a supremely capable technology that shows how we can do that, shows how we can put more watts per kilogram on orbit than traditional approaches. And we can do that in a more reliable, more robust way than state-of-the-art arrays. And really what we have brought together at Redwire really presents the entire continuum of capability to our customer. You know, so whether it's a, you know, whether it's a few hundred watt array on a small asset to, you know, to a few kilowatts for an S-class

or via an Arcanaut-enabled system, maybe 10 kilowatts on an S-class asset, all the way up to the solar arrays that we're developing for the power propulsion element for NASA's Lunar Gateway that are going to be the largest in terms of power generation solar arrays ever deployed in space. Just in of power generation solar arrays ever deployed in space um you know just in

that that power generation segment we're really kind of you know covering the entire waterfront um but and then we have some really great next generation technologies that we're working on um for you know for deployed rf structures um for both power uh you know collection and transmission RF structures for both power collection and transmission. And, but really by bringing together the companies we have, we have augmented our knowledge of what the art of the possible is in deployed structures for space assets. And by bringing together really talented folks from LoadPath and and row core and deployable

space systems who you know in some cases the folks at deployable space systems who just put up that iros array they also worked on the original able arrays that are on the space station so they have this incredible depth of knowledge and then bringing bringing them together with folks that are these world leaders and in-space manufacturing assembly of satellites and saying, okay, what can we do together? That just makes a much tighter package that makes our customers that much more confident that they can adopt these next generation technologies or they can adopt the you know, or they can adopt, you know, the state of the art technologies that we have, they can, they know that we're, you know, really, really talented

in this area that the team we have is really, really capable in this area. It was at this moment that a storm struck, where Andrew was hanging out talking with us, and completely knocked out his power. So we had to finish the interview on an old school phone call. So pardon my interlude. That's what's happening here as we get ourselves reorganized. Hey, we made it. Yeah, it's all good. I'm gonna add a nice like thunderclap sound effect to the recording just to really drive home what happened there. Right, right. And then the power went out. I really only had one other question to wrap it up, if you have like a minute or two.

Yeah, absolutely. into is that the Voyager space holding strategy is kind of like find the common areas that we can take off of the sub-company's plates and make those things easier to deal with so that they can just focus on what they're working on. I'm curious if Redwire sees that strategy as viable, or if there's tighter integration that you'd like to bring between these companies, or is it all the way up until everyone is going to be Redwire and these brands are going to disappear over time? Yeah, yeah, no, that's a great question. So one of the core tenets in how, you know, in the ways that I think Redwire is a great, you know, partner

and a great home for, you know, for folks' businesses and really, really, you know, banks that they've been building up is in offering a great platform, you know, commonality of, you know, shared services, whether it be finance or HR or facilities or operations, but also bringing to bear just some really great talent that we, as separate individual companies, would not have been able to attract on our own. You've seen us bring on Al Tadros, our chief growth officer, who is just really just a titan just really just a titan at Maxar for many, many years. More recently, Mike Gold, who was an AA at NASA, and then Dean Bellamy, who has a just really amazing career in national security space arena. And these folks really help our teams, you know, be that much more successful.

teams, you know, be that much more successful. And certainly there's power, you know, in being one red wire. You know, the teams used to be saying, you know, the old adage of, you know, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And that's really a philosophy that underpins how we approach integration and working together because we have just some really amazing technology across the organization, really talented folks across the organization. And by bringing them together and having more integrated offerings, having that cross-selling, introducing one company

to another, one legacy company to another legacy company's customers and driving business together forward, that really lets us be as successful as we can. So unlike some folks that have more of a holding company model, we celebrate the companies that we bring together and their legacies and their capabilities and their cultures. But we really want to go far and go together to get there. Is there a process where the companies that Redwire acquires can take a moment to say, all right, well, now that we're part of this larger group, we have these projects that are actively underway that we could reach out to some,

you know, sibling companies and bring them into the fold. Is that a process that either exists or something that you'd like to see? Sorry, then you cut off like just in the middle of your question. Oh, sorry. Yeah, we're dealing with the weather here. Really, I'm wondering about the companies that join Redwire that have all these active projects underway. Is there a process in place or something that you'd like to see become part of the Redwire process where they can reach out to the sibling companies and find areas to say, hey, we've got this work going and we need help within this area that you're an expert in. So join the team and do resource sharing in some certain ways. Is that something that exists today?

Is that something that exists today? Within Redwire, the team absolutely acts as one team. And so part of that means that we have folks at one site that reach out on a regular basis to other sites and say, hey, we have these resources available, or we need these resources. And that lets us be much more responsive and nimble compared to the companies being separate, whether they're in kind of a hold co-structure or just as independent entities that we can leverage each other in a very rapid way. Very cool. Well, Andrew, I know we're dealing with some weather and some timing constraints, so thank you so much for joining me and for covering all that. I'm sure people are enjoying this kind of overview from the rows of technical details all the way through what's going on at

Redwire. So thank you so much once again for joining me here. Certainly. It's been my pleasure, Anthony. And I look forward to seeing you in the future at, you know, Space Symposium or future IAC. It's getting close. It's definitely getting close to that time. So I'm very excited for that as well. Thanks again to Matt and Andrew for coming on the show. It was awesome to talk to them both and get all this context about the upgrades that are happening on the ISS and everything else that Redwire is looking to do in the present and near future. So always a pleasure to have them on. Always cool to have guests return to the show in different roles than they were when they were on last. So definitely big thanks to them and Redwire generally for sending them my way.

Once again, thank you all for your support at managingcutoff.com slash support. You help make this show possible. This is entirely listener-funded, so if you like what I'm doing here, head over there and help support the show and get an extra podcast in your feed every single week, as I mentioned up front. It's a great way to stay up on Space News,

support the show, and I think if you like this, you'll really enjoy that, so check that out. But until next time, thank you all so much for listening. 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, I'll talk to you soon. Bye.