Main Engine Cut Off - T+196: Checking In on Small Launch with Firefly Alpha, Astra LV0006

Episode Date: September 8, 2021

Last week, Firefly made their first flight attempt of Alpha, and Astra launched their latest vehicle, LV0006. Though both ended in failure, it’s a good time to check in on them and other small launchers that will debut soon like, ABL’s RS1 and Relativity’s Terran 1, and how they may all compete with each other.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 42 executive producers—Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Lauren, Melissa, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, 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, Hemant, Dawn Aerospace, and seven anonymous—and 662 other supporters.TopicsFirefly Alpha failure blamed on premature engine shutdown - SpaceNewsJack Beyer (@thejackbeyer) / TwitterFirefly Alpha FLTA001 - YouTubeFirefly partners with Aerojet Rocketdyne, mulls AR1 engine for Beta launch vehicle - SpaceNewsT+177: NASA VCLS 2, Relativity, Astra, and Firefly - Main Engine Cut OffAstra Rocket 3.3 launch fails - SpaceNewsAstra Conducts Test Launch | AstraLockheed Martin makes block buy of launches from ABL Space Systems - SpaceNewsLockheed Martin pitching mid-size satellite bus to DoD for remote sensing  - SpaceNewsABL, Astra, Relativity selected to compete for U.S. Space Force responsive launch contracts - SpaceNewsVirgin Orbit to expand launch business, move into satellite services - SpaceNewsRelativity raises $650 million round, announces Terran R rocket - SpaceNewsRelativity to open a huge factory that measures up to its grand ambitions | Ars TechnicaThe 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 ESA

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo and I wanted to check in on our small launchers today because last week we saw a launch of Firefly Alpha, the first attempted launch of that vehicle. We saw another launch from Astrafly Alpha, the first attempted launch of that vehicle. We saw another launch from Astra. Both unfortunately ended in failures, but it seems like a good time to give some thoughts on those two and also the other launchers that we're seeing getting closer to the launch pad or having their first few launches successfully. Some interesting new areas of competition opening up between all these different companies. So it just feels like a good natural

time to check back in in this section of the market that we tend to talk about a lot on this show. But not always do we get stories like these ones. So let's start with the Firefly Alpha News. Like I said, this was the first attempted launch of this vehicle. And it was impressive alone that they were able to go in their first launch window possible for this test. Once they had their launch window set, they counted down to that time. And unfortunately, the very first attempt, they did not go. They aborted that and they recycled. And within the hour, they were able to get this off the launch pad. So that alone was very impressive and speaks a lot to their preparation coming into this launch. They said they did something like 20 static fires with this particular vehicle. Of course, at the beginning of 2020, they were working with a different stage and were static firing that one, and a fire broke out on the engine test stand and unfortunately destroyed

that vehicle. And that's what led to, among other things, the delay that put them into September 2021 for their first launch. But clearly, they did a lot of prep leading up to this, the delay that put them into September 2021 for their first launch. But clearly they did a lot of prep leading up to this and hitting that first launch window as a new launch company, first vehicle for the entire company, that's fairly impressive and should be noticed because you don't see that a lot with a lot of companies, you know. So that alone is notable. However, once the vehicle did lift off, everything seemed to be going well up until about 15 seconds in, they had an engine shutdown, engine two shutdown. They said it was not an explosive shutdown or anything. The valves closed off and it shut down on its own. So

they're investigating that because what that led to was underperformance of the vehicle. They were climbing slower than they expected to. They were not supersonic until something like two minutes after the flight launched. And at that point, they did not have enough control authority to prevent tumbling once they were supersonic. With just three of their engines still firing, and each engine only gimbals in one axis, so between the four of them, they have complete control of the vehicle. But with only three running, they were unable to maintain control once they were supersonic. Clearly, they were not going to make it to orbit or even close to that with the underperformance that was happening. But anyway, once they hit supersonic regime, they started tumbling. Really cool videos of this are out there. I've got one linked in the show notes from

Firefly themselves. Eventually, the range safety officer commanded the destruction of the vehicle in epic fashion, and it ended about two minutes and 20-some seconds into flight. All in all, this was an impressive first go from Firefly. It's unfortunate that they didn't make it to the phase of flight that includes main engine cutoff, not only because it's named the show, I promise. But you like to see the first launch get to main engine cutoff, stage separation, upper stage ignition, because that's a portion of the flight where there tend to be some dragons that lay. And, you know, I think not having made it through that portion of the flight leaves a lot of open questions for the second flight. But to get through this first phase of the flight so

smooth gives them a lot of confidence, a lot of data certainly to work with in the future. They do have to figure out why this engine shut down. But, you know, considering the vast possibilities that exist out there for ways for your first flight to end, an engine shutdown. But considering the vast possibilities that exist out there for ways for your first flight to end, an engine shutdown all in all is not too big of an issue to investigate. You should have a lot of data on that, especially because the vehicle kept carrying on for so long. And before the flight, they mentioned that they would be able to, if all went well, have their second launch, their first commercial launch by December, which means that they have some hardware pretty far along in the flow. And if that's the case, if they're able to figure out what went wrong with

the engine and nail that down and rule out the causes of that, and they have some hardware so close, they could actually get another launch attempt off within the next six months or so. and they have some hardware so close, they could actually get another launch attempt off within the next six months or so. I would hope it would not go too much longer than that. And considering that they did make it so far into the flight, the structures clearly held up pretty well to be tumbling supersonic and not falling apart until you got the range safety officer triggering the flight termination system. That all speaks volumes about the vehicle. And I think that should give them some confidence going into second flight. So I would hope that we see the second flight within the next six months or so. And I would hope that one makes it to at least upper

stage ignition, if not more. And, you know, that sets them up really well for potentially having a commercial launch in 2022, if all goes well there. And there's a lot of hope I have in Firefly Alpha specifically, but also this section of the market. I've been a big fan of the way that these, you know, one ton to orbit launchers are playing out. I think they have interesting price points, interesting capabilities for a lot of missions, not only commercial missions, but NASA science missions. This is a sweet spot for a lot of those that we've seen over the years. There's also a lot more interest in smaller satellites from the Department of Defense here in the U.S. And with something like the Space Development Agencies, there are various projects that are going on right now that are looking at constellations of small satellites for Department of Defense uses,

that's something that could see a lot of service with vehicles in this size class. So, you know, if Firefly Alpha can get operating pretty quickly here, I think they can start winning some contracts and make some pretty big impacts. There are some open questions I have about Firefly overall. This gets us into the one part that I found interesting about the webcast. There was a lot more Max Polyakov and Newsphere Ventures on this webcast than I would have expected. If you remember a couple of months ago, I talked on the show about how Max Polyakov, the investor that brought Firefly back from bankruptcy, was, I wouldn't necessarily use the word ousted, but he was kind of put behind the scenes and taken off the website, and they tried to get outside investment to dilute his

ownership and his shares because there are some concerns that people within the U.S. Department of Defense and other agencies in the U.S. have about Max Polyakov and the stability of the backing there because of some stuff that Snopes uncovered in their investigation a couple years ago into where Max Polyakov got his money. Ukrainian, obviously, there's some concerns there from the defense side of things. And there was a couple of people that were just not comfortable with his involvement in the company. So Firefly was trying to tack away from them. But the webcast featured him prominently. They talked a lot about how Max Polyakov made the company happen, which is all well and good and factual.

There was a New Sphere Ventures logo on the vehicle itself. Not all of this is as impactful as what might be going on behind the scenes. you know, not all of this is as impactful as what might be going on behind the scenes. It just was notable to me that he was more present than you might expect for that other storyline to be happening, for him to be nowhere on the website right now, but featured prominently in the webcast. Maybe that's something that he just kind of pushed for because of his history of the company. And certainly, you know, based on how things went, they wouldn't be here without Max Polyakov jumping in when they were going through bankruptcy just four or five years ago. But that's an interesting thing to track if he starts trying to make his way back into kind of the headlines here of Firefly. out there with a lot of unanswered questions. This story was a couple years old at this point,

but they signed a deal with Aerojet Rocketdyne that I think was more focused around some engine expertise and problems they were having with Reaver at the time, based on a couple of things that I've heard. But at the time, they also talked up the fact that they could potentially be using Aerojet Rocketdyne's AR-1 for a bigger launch vehicle, like maybe their beta vehicle or something down the line. And certainly they have this orbital transfer vehicle that's kind of like an in-space transportation vehicle that they talked about using Aerojet propulsion for. So I really want to know what that is going to result in, if that is going to result in anything in particular, because that there is a company that has a long history of very expensive products that tend to jack the prices up of products that are downstream

of them. And it does, you know, at the time, I was not very thrilled with that partnership. It still makes me a little nervous, but haven't seen it rear its head too much yet. And I really just want to know what's going on there behind the scenes before I'm willing to say this is a company that will last for the long haul. But all in all, very impressive day from Firefly. I think everyone there should be super proud of what happened, and I hope that they can get back on the launch pad in, like I said, the next six months or so. I think that would be a really big win for Firefly to be able to give it another shot. Now in a very similar but different boat, Astra had another launch this past week, Rocket 3.3, as they call it, or launch vehicle 0006. That speaks to how many vehicles they hope to produce in their lifetime, that they have three

leading zeros on their single digit serial numbers. This one went wrong in a more funny and interesting looking way, I would say. Actually, both were pretty interesting looking. So right after liftoff, about one second after liftoff here, one of the five main engines shut down, which caused the vehicle to drift completely sideways for, I don't know, 20, 30 seconds. And then the vehicle started going up, you know, everything was still running. So it vehicle started going up. You know, everything was still running, so it finally started going up. And about two minutes and 30 seconds after the flight, the range safety officer commanded shutdown of all engines because they were outside of their trajectory. So the flight ended in failure. Now, this one is a huge bummer because the previous flight, this was the previous flight was, I think, in December of 2020,

I want to say it was. They got almost to orbit. They were just a little bit short of orbital velocity. They had a fuel mixture ratio wrong in their upper stage, and they ended a little short of orbital velocity because of that. But other than that launch, every other launch of firefly i think just about every other launch ended with either an engine shutdown or the range safety officer shutting the engines down because of underperformance or trajectory issues the vast majority of astra launch attempts at this point have ended with something in the similar range of engine failure or engine shutdown commanded by the range safety officer. So much so, you know, at a certain point that the launch in December 2020 starts to kind of look like the fluke, that they made it all the way through these regimes of flight in a way that you wouldn't expect based on all the other patterns here. And so while this launch and

the Firefly launch seem like similar failures, engine shutdown, you know, 1 to 15 seconds within the end of the flight, the context matters a lot and the direction of progress matters a lot. And that's something I'm starting to get concerned about with Astra, that there's now six different launch attempts, including a vehicle that had a fire and destroyed it on the pad, that have all ended with some sort of different failure mode. You know, a lot of different failure nodes, but most of the failure modes are the engines. And that to me is concerning when you have such a high number of flights that are ending with

some sort of engine issue that you haven't quite worked that out yet. That to me is just making me a little nervous. And I've heard some concerning things about Astra generally that I can't really talk about much but just give me some concerns and I'm honestly not quite sure what to make of Astra at this moment in time but I really want to see them start pulling this together because they have an interesting

shtick I would say overall they have an interesting take on things and there seems to be interest from, you know, the Department of Defense, U.S. Space Force is quite interested in what they're offering, and their responsive launch capabilities, where they can take this launch vehicle and the launch system anywhere where there's, you know, basically a flat piece of concrete and some propellant that can be sourced and launched from there. That's certainly an interesting tack that I would be curious to see how it plays out.

But when you see this many failures in a row, I think there's some people that might have put their payloads on your demonstration flights that are going to start to say, maybe I'll just wait to see like two or three successful launches from Astra before I give them the payload, even if it's for free. And I feel like that's kind of where they're at at the moment in time. So we'll see how their pace continues here. I just, I'm honestly a little bit perplexed about what to make out of Astra, but I still am

interested in them. I'm just like kind of a little bit concerned and a little bit not sure what to make of it all at this moment in time. So anyway, that's my Astro take. It's not much. I'm just kind of confused, to be honest. Anyway, I want to talk about some other companies that are going to see their first launch in the next couple months, some companies that have had a couple of launches at this point. But before I do that, I want to say thank you to all of you out there who make Main Engine Cutoff possible. There are 704 supporters of Main Engine Cutoff every single month, and I could not do it without you. Joel, Jan, 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, Fred, Heyminth, Dawn Aerospace, and seven anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for supporting

the show. And I want to mention, it's been a while since I've done a show on the main feed here, but all these supporters that are at $3 a month or more, they've been hearing me every single week talking about all the news stories, stuff that just doesn't really have a spot here on the main show, because I like to keep the main feed a very high signal to noise ratio. I talk here when I have an opinion or some analysis to share. But if I don't, if I'm just not that opinionated about something or just don't think things need more analysis than I've already put out into the world, you're not going to hear from me on that particular topic. But over on Miko Headlines, I do a show every single week. I run through all the stories that happened this week to talk about what's happening up on the ISS, all the launches that occurred. And I give some thoughts on all

those stories where it makes sense to. But it's a great way to stay up on Space News. It's a great way to stay in touch with me and what I'm thinking about the industry. It's a great way to stay up on Space News. It's a great way to stay in touch with me and what I'm thinking about the industry. It's a great way to support the show and make sure I keep doing this every single month. So thank you all so much for all that support, for listening, and for keeping up with me over at Miko Headlines. And if you want to help join the crew, if you want to get Miko Headlines, head over to mainenginecutoff.com support to join up there. All right, so with the Firefly Alpha launch and the Astra launch out of the way, I believe that leaves us with ABL Space as the next up small launcher to hit the launch pad. They haven't talked too much about what they're up to, but from a recent Space News article

and some other chatter I've heard,. Sounds like they're the ones in the batter's box here to get off the launch pad. And then beyond them would be Relativity with Terran 1. That was supposed to be late this year. They recently said they're not going to make it until 2022. So these are the next two that we're going to be tracking in terms of launch debuts. ABL, I'm really curious about. I've always kind of been curious about them because they have a similar idea of that containerized launch, like I'm really curious about, I've always kind of been curious about them because, uh, they have a similar idea of that containerized launch. Like I was just talking about with Astra, they, but they do about one ton to orbit,

whereas Astra is on the much smaller end of the scale. So I think ABL is even like maybe one ton or 1300 kilograms, uh, to orbit. So they're, they're up in that one ton range. Uh, and interestingly, it was in April of 2021 when Lockheed Martin made a block buy of launches from ABL Space Systems. They bought up to 58 launches over the next decade. That was front loaded with 26 through 2025 and then options for 32 from 2026 to 2029. So it's an interesting way for Lockheed to have injected a lot of funding into ABL. If we use the list price of ABL RS1 launches, that would put it just about $700 million of

funding. I doubt it was like that. It's probably a lot less. But just to give you an idea of the scale of funding there, Lockheed had previously invested in ABL in July of 2019, but then they did this block buy just earlier this year. And that's an interesting way to go about things. Makes you think why they would do that or how they might want to use that. And a couple of days after that story went up about Lockheed Martin making this block buy, I started to see some news go around. about Lockheed Martin making this block buy, I started to see some news go around. Again, this is back in April of Lockheed pitching new midsize satellite buses to Department of Defense and other users like that that are looking for smaller satellites that can be as capable as things that they might have had bigger satellites for previously. So they were marketing their LM400

bus, which is the size of a mini fridge or something. They were marketing that as an idea to be used heavily by the Department of Defense. And it makes me think, in tandem with a small launcher, where they did this big block buy, that Lockheed could be trying to market this kind of all-in-one service, where you get a small satellite, you get a launch, they pair it together, they make a good price for that package available. And that's a way to attract customers for not only their satellites, but also their launch vehicles that they've done a block buy for as well. Now, I don't know how exactly Lockheed is going to go about selling those launches. And I also don't know exactly how many launch vehicles

that leaves out there for ABL to sell otherwise. So this is the part that's a mystery to me about ABL. But as a company, I'm really interested in them. They've been very quiet, but I've been trying to keep tabs on them. I'm excited to see them hit the market, and it looks like we should be seeing a launch from them fairly soon. Now, on the other end, Relativity, we've talked a lot about on this show, not only Terran 1, but they've also recently announced Terran R, which is a bigger reusable vehicle, kind of like a mini starship. They've taken a ton of funding. They've gotten about a billion dollars of funding in the last year. So they have not yet turned off the money faucet. But they're building out this big new factory, this new launch

vehicle Terran R, all before they've gotten to actually launching terran one or even really starting to put terran one into operations um so you know not to say companies can't do more than one thing at once because that's something that i tend to get mad at that people say like oh well this company hasn't done this thing they've talked about yet so they shouldn't be working on that other thing i think companies that especially ones that have a lot of funding like this should be working on multiple different things, some short term, some long term. They should be able to do that because they can hire a lot of people that work on all these different projects. But with a lot of stories coming out from Relativity in the

last year that almost none about Terran won, that piques my interest a little bit, that they are focusing so heavily on the 3D printing they've been doing, this new factory. I even saw some comments recently about how the new factory is capable of printing non-rocket parts, which leads into my thesis that I've had forever, that is Relativity a launch services company that happens to 3D print their rockets, or are they a 3D printing company that happens to do launch services uh i've asked tim ellis who's the head of relativity that directly and he says we are a launch services company that happens to do 3d printing right now some recent

quotes and in articles that i've read specifically one by eric berger makes me think my original thesis might be correct um so whatever the case is, they are still looking at getting Terran 1 off, you know, within the next year. And they have a lot more launch contracts signed and announced than a lot of the other small launch companies out there. But what will be interesting to look at is a US Space Force program called the Orbital Services Program 4, OSP4, which is a program that onboards a bunch of launch providers that can do small launches for US Space Force. And then each task order for a launch is put out to bid into these selected vendors. So right now there are 11 vendors, four just got added recently, or three,

I guess three just got added recently, ABL, Astra, and Relativity, the companies I'm talking about here. They got added into this program to go alongside SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, Northrop Grumman, Rocket Lab, Firefly, Virgin Orbit, Avum, which has this drone plane that launches things to space, and Expo Launch Systems. So between those 11 vendors, they get to bid on task orders for launch contracts from the US Space Force. And this is interesting to key on because when it comes to commercial launch services, the agreements that get signed for commercial launches are either you never actually hear the terms of the agreement, which is the most likely case. is the most likely case. And there's also things going on behind closed doors, negotiations going on that you'll never be privy to. So it's hard to compare one-to-one commercial launch services agreements. It is easy to look at trends on who is signing up to fly with who, how frequently they're flying on different competitors, but it's hard to do a direct comparison. With something like this US Space Force program, there's much stricter constraints around the bids. And the US Space Force is kind of beholden to select the best offer and the best offer with the best performance and whatever other constraints they put into the actual bid process, but everyone's following the same rules. There's less room for negotiations in the way that there are with commercial launches. So this is a really good

head-to-head comparison. We'll see exactly how some of this stuff shakes out, especially now that just about every small launch company that is of interest in the commercial market is into this. I think as we start to see some task orders come out, I think the next one should be later this summer or in the fall, I guess, at this point, because we're at the end of the summer, we will start to see who's going to win out of these bidders and what kinds of launches they're winning. Hopefully, we hear some specific terms of these deals and we'll be able to compare head to head. Because right now, everyone's being a little dodgy about their launch price, about their capability. There's companies like Virgin Orbit who are now actively flying. There are a couple of flights in, but they are still having performance issues,

getting the kind of mass capability that they've touted to being actually part of their product. And they're also still very expensive. And even though both of those things are true, they're still out here saying that they have the best cost per kilogram in the small launch market. And I would love to see the math because there's a lot of numbers in there that I would love to fill in and understand their math.

But it's something that isn't super confidence inspiring to hear them having performance issues to see them touting their cost per kilogram when none of that really lines up so anyway all in all i'm just excited to watch some direct head-to-head comparison as we move out of everyone talking about what they can do into everyone showing what they can do and that's really what the next year is for small launch. Now that we've got a good crop flying and a good crop yet to come, this is really the make or break time for a lot of these different companies.

So I'm sure we'll, we'll talk more about that in the future, but for now, that is all I've got for you. Thank you all so much again for listening. Thanks for your support over at managing cutoff.com slash support. Sign up there to get Miko headlines in your podcast player every single week. Stay up with me, stay up with Space News and help support the show. And until next time, thank you so much.

I will talk to you soon.