Main Engine Cut Off - T+216: Orbital Reef, with Brent Sherwood (SVP of Advanced Development Programs at Blue Origin)

Episode Date: April 27, 2022

Brent Sherwood, Senior Vice President of Advanced Development Programs for Blue Origin, joins me to talk about Orbital Reef. We talk about the long history leading up to this architecture, the nature of their partnership with Sierra Space and other team members, the parts of the program that are specific to their contract with NASA on the Commercial LEO Destinations project, and dive into how their business strategy might play out in the near future.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 40 executive producers—Simon, Lauren, 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, Andrew, and seven anonymous—and 788 other supporters.TopicsBlue OriginOrbital ReefAnnouncing Orbital Reef - Your Address in Orbit - YouTubeMixed-Use Business Park Developments in Space: A Real-Estate ParadigmT+200: Orbital Reef, Starlab, and the ISS Conundrum - Main Engine Cut OffT+203: Starlab with Marshall Smith, SVP of Space Systems at Nanoracks - Main Engine Cut OffBlue Origin and Sierra Space Leading Team to Build “Orbital Reef” Business Park in Space – SpacePolicyOnline.comSierra Space to work with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries on commercial space station technologies - SpaceNewsNASA Selects Companies to Develop Commercial Destinations in Space | NASAOrbital Reef passes design review - SpaceNewsThe ShowLike the show? Support the show!Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOListen to MECO HeadlinesJoin the Off-Nominal DiscordSubscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhereSubscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off NewsletterBuy shirts and Rocket Socks from the Main Engine Cut Off ShopMusic by Max JustusArtwork photo by NASA/Ben Smegelsky

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo and I'm very excited about today's show. We will be sitting down and talking to Brent Sherwood, the Senior Vice President of Advanced Development Programs for Blue Origin. We're going to talk all about Orbital Reef, which is their space station project that they have underway. They are partnered with Sierra Space on the program, and they have a bunch of other team members involved. Boeing, Redwire, Genesis Engineering Solutions, Arizona State University, among others contributing to this. They previously won $130 million from NASA as part of the commercial LEO Destinations program to develop these free-flying space station concepts.

So they are in the mix alongside NanoRacks. We previously talked to Marshall Smith of NanoRacks about their space station called Starlab, and Northup Grumman is the other competitor in that program. This is for the free-flying commercial space station programs. That is in addition to Axiom Space, who is working on modules that will initially be attached to ISS, eventually breaking away to be a free-flying station of its own. So I am slowly working my way through all of those competitors. We've had, I think, three different shows with Axiom on the podcast through their lifespan. We've had that one I mentioned with Marshall Smith about Starlab, and today we'll be talking with Brent

Sherwood once again. So we're going to dive into all sorts of stuff, the architecture and how they ended up at this architecture. It's been a long time in the making, as you'll hear us talk about. We're also talking about the way that the partnership is structured among Sierra Space, Blue Origin, and all the other team members. And then we're going to talk about the parts of the program that are specific to their contract with NASA and how that might differ from a purely commercial space station, you know, not centered around an anchor customer this early on in the program. And then the most interesting parts, I think, that we get to at the end is how their business strategy might play out in the near future, where they're working on building modules for customers that might not have the space experience, but also talking about how they remain open to those that do have extensive space experience. So very cool conversation. I'm excited for you to hear it. So without further ado, let are here with Brent Sherwood, the Senior Vice President of the Advanced Development Programs at Blue Origin. We want to talk all about Orboreef today, but I think it might be cool to talk about the Advanced Development Programs part of your title,

exactly what that is, what that entails, and maybe if you can't tell us the projects you're working on day to day, some of the projects in your past that have been under that, because I think it's a little bit mysterious of a title, even though it's definitely a cool one. Sure. No, I can say a few things about our portfolio. So the way Blue Origin is organized, we have four businesses. And essentially, if it's not a rocket engine or a rocket, then it's in advanced development programs. So the way to think about it is in-space systems for our various product lines. And so we have flight programs in next-gen space transportation, space mobility, space destinations, which is what we'll be talking about today and lunar permanence and in addition uh advanced technology projects and um honeybee robotics uh reports into

advanced development programs as well yeah that's a recent change that i totally forgot about because it was so recent and i haven't committed that to long-term memory yet. So I want to talk about the history of Orbital Reef and the architecture itself, because I've got opened up here on my desktop. I've got a paper that I believe is from 1994 called Mixed-Use Business Park Developments in Space. And the fourth of five authors here is a man named Brent Sherwood. So I feel like you might have a little more longer history context of this than people might realize. Yeah, so this has been in the works for a very long time. Um, as you just noted, um, fairly early in my career, I was a manufacturing engineer on the international space station actually before it was the ISS, uh, back when we called it space station freedom.

And I was at Boeing at the time. So we were building the pressurized systems, the modules. And, uh, in that time, I, I led the team that figured out how to build the ship in the bottle, so to speak. So, cause you make a big pressure vessel and then you have to stuff it full of wiring and tubing and ducts and, and replaceable units and secondary structure and all that kind of stuff. And that that's a hard challenge because it all goes in through the hatch opening and has to be installed to make a complete module system. So I'd been thinking about space stations, uh, in general for many decades and then, uh, in manufacturing terms in a very intense way for a

few years, um, in the early nineties that, um, led me to be thinking about, uh, other uses for space stations than just research, uh, which caused me to publish a paper in, I think it was 1990 or 91, um, on, uh, commercial resort hotels in earth orbit, uh, which was the first modern paper about space hotels since, uh, Hilton's paper in the seventies. And, uh, in presenting that work, I got to meet some people who actually know things about developing commercial real estate. Chuck Lauer was the principal one among them. This was in the early 90s. Then that led to a small team of us developing the idea of a mixed-use space business park. That's the paper you saw, one of them.

We had a series of about three papers on the topic. And the idea is just very simply that, um, the way we do mixed use business parks on earth has merit as a model for developing real estate in space. And, and that is, uh, that there's a separation of the business case of a user or a tenant, which could be a store or a factory or a researcher or some laboratory. That's the way it works on Earth today. A separation of their business cases from the business case of running the overall real estate enterprise. the business case of running the overall real estate enterprise. And that model works very well on earth for a variety of reasons that have to do with regulatory issues and the spreading of risk across multiple companies that are in diverse industries. And so it occurred to us that that same business model might help us develop commercial real estate in space. That's where it all originated.

And so the current iteration that we're looking at in Orbital Reef's term, I'm trying to get a sense for the positioning of it and NASA's commercial LEO destinations program that you're obviously a part of. The partnership that we're looking at, you know, the list is pretty long with Blue Origin, Sierra Space, Boeing, Redwire, Genesis, Arizona State. I'm sure there's more that are not on that list yet that you're working with. But how did that partnership come about in relation to that program? Was it completely distinct from that?

And then the NASA program came along at the right time? Or is this a partnership that's crafted around what NASA is looking at in the near future? Yeah, that's a great question. The answer is that we put this particular team together knowing last year that NASA was going to be embarking on what they call the CLD, or now CDFF, the Commercial Destination Free Flyer Program. So we knew that was coming. And our, I'd call it sort of long-term but general thoughts about developing LEO kind of came to a head because of the timing of the NASA opportunity. kind of came to a head because of the timing of the NASA opportunity. So as usual, the government is a catalyst, uh, for business and represents kind of an anchor, uh, customer for a commercial

station and that's the agency plan. So the timing was good, um, to put the team together, uh, to really build out this vision of commercial real estate and to normalize and increase the amount of human activity in Leo, but also to propose that team and that architecture into the NASA opportunity. So it kind of all happened at the same time. And we were looking at a variety of what I'd call physical architecture concepts. I had an advanced concepts team that had about eight of those approaches, very, very different from each other. And the one that rose to the top is the one that we now call orbital reef, um, which, um, is consistent with this mixed use business park vision because it implements an approach. It's sort of a,

it's a business architecture as built in physical architecture, but it, it very thoughtfully divides the hardest parts from the, um, easier parts. And it puts all the harder parts concentrated in infrastructure to make the easier parts, which are the applications modules for different users and different customer types, to keep them as simple as possible. And part of our approach is that by doing that, we're good landlords, I'd say, in the sense that, you know, we're going to take care of all the infrastructure and the vehicle hosting and the power and thermal and, you know, telecom. Trash will go out on the right day, that whole thing. Yeah. Physical security, cybersecurity, you know, all those things. And then the customers are free

to focus just on their business. Again, in keeping with the terrestrial model. So we think that that will lower the bar to the maximum degree for a diverse set of customers to get into the game. And that's really what the objective is. It's, as I said, to expand and normalize the types of human activity in low-Earth orbit. Now, in terms of the initial configuration, I understand you just made it through initial design review with NASA for, I believe this is the initial component, which would be one of the core modules that Blue Origin's building, the life module from CR Space, and then the logistics module from Boeing. At least last I heard from y'all, that was the initial configuration as envisioned.

Is that still true? So, yeah, let me let me. I won't say update, but let me let me correct you a little. Sorry. Either one's good. So that's good. Yeah, the so the baseline configuration, the one that people will see fly in the late 2020s has, um, a core module, um, and an energy and external energy system that's power in and thermal out and all the associated vehicle things,

propulsion, attitude control, all that, um, associated with the core module. And then the attack, the first two attached modules are the life module from Sierra, which is, you can think of it as the dormitory functions. Um, and then a research module, uh, which would be, uh, done by Boeing. And that's the microgravity laboratory, um, part that NASA and its, its peer institutions require for, uh, conducting microgravity research. So that, that kind of gives you the essence of it. There's the infrastructure core, and then there's a dormitory module and a laboratory module. That's the essence.

So, yeah, each of the teammates has a distinct role. Boeing and Sierra and Blue Origin are the three primary transportation system providers. And then the rest of the set are for associated destination system elements and services. Now, with the initial baseline configuration, is that how you think that you would plan that out if you weren't involved in the NASA program? Or is there something specific about that configuration to NASA's requirements? Think of the market in three big segments. And I'm going to give them to you in reverse order so that we can answer your question specifically. The third one is flying people, which starts with adventure travel and then progresses to tourism and eventually orbital living. The middle one, the second one is built up out of multiple industries, commercial industries and enterprises, most of which have not really had an opportunity to operate in space so far. So that includes things like entertainment industries, like sports, gaming, and so forth, advertising, marketing, but also

scaling up the production of industrial products that can only be made in space for use in the terrestrial economy. And so that one requires applied research, industrial research, and so forth. And it's associated with, but different from the first market segment, the very first one, which is basic research. So the good news about that market, basic research, is that we understand how to do it. That's what's been being done on space station for decades. It's a very stable market. It's predictable. NASA and its peer agencies, the ISS National Laboratory, which has half the capacity on

the ISS, and the international agencies as well, all do basic research. The bad news about that market is that it's very stable. Um, the bad news about that market is that it's very stable. It's, it's not a market that's going to grow by a factor of five or 10, or, you know, it's the other two segments that are the, that have the upside potential that has folks excited. Um, and a lot of those customers don't even exist yet as customers. And so we're working with a diverse set of folks to develop what can be done and then to meet their needs. But that first market, the basic research market is well understood. And that's the one that NASA needs to make sure doesn't experience what they call a Leo gap, right? Between the end of the useful life of station and the beginning of

a commercial substitution for it. We definitely don't want to have a gap in United States presence in low earth orbit the way we did when we retired the shuttle before the commercial transportation systems were online. So that gap is what we're trying to avoid. That drives NASA's timing and NASA's timing in turn drives our timing. So to answer your question, do I need a research lab on my space station? Well, primarily it's for NASA and its peers who are the customers of that. For applied research, that's most likely a different type of optimized facility. That's more, you could think of it as industrial space rather than fundamental, you know, laboratory benchtop kind of stuff, the way we do with microgravity research today. So, so that the

existence of that research lab in our baseline configuration is directly traced to supporting NASA's needs, uh, without a Leo gap. Yeah. And that, I assume that's kind of similar on the, on the habitation side that it's scaled for the amount of crew time that that initial customer base, you know, is envisioned to be of, of however many astronauts for however much length of time it's, it's sort of scaled around that. No, um, that's, that one's a little different. And the reason is that, um, NASA's, uh, written, um, uh, requirements for microgravity research are fairly modest, um, two crew continuously doing only research, not operations, um, and, uh, an average of 200 experiments per year. So that's somewhat modest compared to today's use of the ISS and the way the ISS was designed. So for a laboratory, you size it for that capacity plus what you expect the rest of the market to be um and then on the

for the for the other functions like um the dormitory functions and so forth um that's where you start to get these other markets right so if nasa wants to crew continuously and then we need some operations crew for the station, we're designing for capacity significantly above that because we expect adventure travelers and tourists and other business travelers to be there right with them in this mixed-use kind of setting. Now, in terms of the interconnection between these three core modules and the way that each company is working on them internally, what is the coordination like between the partners right now when you're making a decision about something internal to your module or Sierra Space is making trades internally to their solution? Are all of those reviewed by the whole set of partners? Does somebody have final say over that things?

And what happens if those change within each module? Yeah. So this is like any other large scale aerospace development program. It's the requirements are. We develop lower tier requirements from the top level requirements. And so they're tiered. So if there are changes that a partner or a teammate wants to or needs to make for an individual system, as long as the impacts of that change are contained within that system, then that's easy. are contained within that system, then that's easy.

But if the impacts modify the interface between that system and the rest of the vehicle, then that becomes a vehicle consideration and the team weighs that together in a change board, just like any other space development program. Now, it's kind of interesting of the way that this is set up in terms of whose modules position where, if you decided tomorrow, this project's not for us anymore and bounced, that seems to bring the whole situation down, right? I don't know if the other two are going to be ready to step up and build that core module on the same timeline with the same functionality. The other two, you know, are maybe in a different situation where they are these use cases that are attached to the core module. So they're not handling some of the things that is, you know, the responsibility of the

core module. So is there anything about the partnership structure that kind of references which pieces are exchangeable, which pieces are interchangeable references which pieces are exchangeable which pieces are interchangeable which pieces are potential um schedule risks how does all how does all that get managed in in terms of whose responsibility that is to look at that risk yeah well so the um the the partners uh uh in orbital reef are blue origin and and Sierra Space. And the other teammates are teammates. So the vehicle level, program level decision-making is by Blue and Sierra. And we, like any good aerospace program, you know, we listen to all of our teammates

and all the, particularly, you know, they all, they each bring unique experience. And so nobody knows more about operating and maintaining a space station than Boeing. So if, you know, when, I won't say if, when the, our Boeing experts give us advice in the design phase where we pay very close attention to that, that's, that's one of the reasons that they're on the team. You don't go, ah, what do you know? How long have you been flying a thing up there? Exactly.

Um, with respect to, um, schedule, I would say the entire schedule is very aggressive. Um, you know, it took a long time to develop space station, uh, a few reasons for that one you know government program second uh multiple governments um together third it was the first time it had really been done um very different from sky lab or mirror or solute you know it's a very different kind of space station now that all that's been done and since this is a commercial, we have the opportunity to go faster. And that's certainly our goal. But the schedule is still very aggressive. With respect to kind of the risk of somebody changing their mind, I guess I would just say we are in this for the long haul. You know, both Sierra Space and Blue Origin have very long-term visions that involve sustained and expanded human space flight and operations. So I just say that's not a consideration. We're committed to this. to have two companies partnered who are more independent in their ability to maneuver than traditional government contractors. So we have a kind of flexibility that a lot of other companies

don't. And so that makes us good partners because we can make decisions fast and move. don't. And so that's, that makes us good partners because we can make decisions fast and move. One thing I'm really interested in, um, that I saw mentioned some of the original rollout of orbital reef was the idea that, um, and I think this was specific to blue origin that, that you would work with non-traditional space companies to build out modules for them and add them on to, you know, the business park in the future. Um, I didn't see a lot of info on that. So I'm interested to dive into that. What would it be like at number one, is that even the case? Is that the current plan that you would work with companies that don't have a space experience to build out modules for them? Um, if that is true, what would that experience be like if Ritz Carlton came to you

and said, we want to build, you know, really high end hotel, what would their interaction with blue bee um yeah it's a great question uh the and uh the the types of enterprises that might ask that question um would certainly include hospitality as you mentioned but also industrial consortia um that have not done a lot of large scale experimentation in space, um, and also, uh, other nations. So, um, if you imagine a country that has a, uh, nascent space program, um, we would like orbital reef to provide, um, countries like that and earlier, earlier, lower friction opportunity to have a footprint in space than they would otherwise possibly be able to have. And so that gets to your question of the kind of assistance. If someone comes in to be a, I'll call it a tenant of Orbital Reef, a participant in Orbital Reef, and has all of the requisite capability to build a module and certify it to our standards, you know, and attach it to our station, then that's fantastic, right? The business model there is we'll lease a port for some length of time.

is we'll lease a port for some length of time. But if somebody wants to be there and doesn't have all the requisite capacity, within our team, we have all of that. So we can, it's like you can dial in how much help you need in order to get your address on orbit. If you know a lot, great. If you don't know anything, that's okay too.

And again, so you can, this theme is consistent with what I mentioned earlier about kind of opening the aperture for the most diverse possible set of LEO customers. That's really how we intend to change the economics of flying and using low earth orbit. So that would be a boutique engagement where, you know, they might say we want to help designing everything from the pressure vessel to the interfaces inside, or, you know, just as much as they need integration help to figure out exactly how this system works, what they can rely on. It's boutique and anything in that range is up for grabs.

Yeah, you can dial it in. it's boutique and anything in that range is up for grabs. Yeah, it's, you can dial it in. So, so our, our approach, our business approach is what we call open vertical integration, which means it's vertically integrated in the sense that across our team, we have the capabilities to develop and test and operate any aspect of this end-to-end service. So we have it all within the context of the team, but if somebody comes in and has their own, that's okay too. So just because it's vertically integrated doesn't mean it's a closed garden. It's open. And so we would just have those discussions, figure out where the right water line is really for the kind of help needed. Um, and then that would be the basis

of the contractual arrangement. We have just a couple minutes left, but you mentioned end to end services. And I want to dive into that because, um, end to end services also includes the word transportation on, on the website and some of the market material. Does that mean that, uh, orbital reef will be planning cargo and crew flights on particular schedules? And those will be based around what kind of customer load you have, some of the internal needs, like you mentioned, the crew being a main part of that. How does that end-to-end transportation idea actually manifest in like the flight program that you have around Orbital Reef? So again, that's part of the open vertical integration, uh, nature of the structure of the

team. Um, so new Glenn, um, is a very heavy lift, um, low earth orbit, um, vehicle, uh, optimized for low earth orbit. And, um, with, uh, Boeing starliner and Sierra Spaces Dream Chaser, now we have all the fundamental elements of transportation up and down and within the context of the team. So we can optimize the service for our customers' needs. The NASA program, CLD or CDFF, The NASA program, CLD or CDFF, mandates the provision of end-to-end services. So it's important to understand NASA is not trying to buy a space station. What they want is LEO hosting services, and that includes logistics resupply, crew transportation, all the ops and maintenance, all of that activity in a turnkey sort of a way, which again is how it happens on earth. And so we're very excited to be able to integrate those services, our products and services in a way that maximizes cost effectiveness for the

customers. But that's all done within the context of the Orbital Reef offering, you could say. Right. So if, you know, Axiom wanted to fly another private astronaut mission, but they're going to Orbital Reef this time, that architecture would be open to visitors that are outside of the end-to-end arrangement as well? Designed to be open. You know, there's if we're going to get to a place where. Hundreds or thousands or millions eventually of people are living and working in space, we've got to go through a phase which kind of mushrooms the activity in Earth orbit, a lot more of it, a lot more diverse types of activities. And that's what NASA means when

they use the phrase a robust ecosystem. So we're trying to build that ecosystem or at least build the infrastructure that allows that ecosystem to grow. And I would say the more the merrier. That's the way this business has to grow. Perfect place to end it. You stuck the landing with the tagline in there and all. You're a true professional. Brent, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you. Anthony, you're quite welcome.

Thanks. Thanks again so much to Brent for coming on the show, talking with us at length about Orbital Reef. It's a very cool project. And the commercial LEO destinations side of things is one I'm particularly excited about. So anytime we get a chance to talk to people actually working on these programs, especially someone that's been working on these concepts for almost as long as I've been alive, if not longer, the way that Brent has is a very cool aspect as well. Now,

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