Main Engine Cut Off - T+231: The Future of Private Astronaut Missions to the ISS

Episode Date: September 30, 2022

In the wake of Axiom-1, NASA has revised the requirements for future Private Astronaut Missions. It seems to put pressure on the market to focus on a certain customer base, like research and national astronauts, and it definitely changes the math for future flights.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 43 executive producers—Simon, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Joonas, Robb, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Frank, Julian, Lars from Agile Space, Matt, The Astrogators at SEE, Chris, Aegis Trade Law, Fred, Hemant, Dawn Aerospace, Andrew, Harrison, Benjamin, SmallSpark Space Systems, Schultzy, Tyler, and seven anonymous—and 848 other supporters.TopicsNASA revises requirements for ISS private astronaut missions - SpaceNewsNASA division proposing program to send scientists to ISS - SpaceNewsNASA, Axiom Sign Second Private Astronaut Mission to Space Station Order | NASANASA requests proposals for two ISS private astronaut missions - SpaceNewsAxiom Space to fly Saudi astronauts - 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 NewsletterMusic by Max JustusArtwork photo by NASA/Joel Kowsky

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo. I've had stuff kicking around in my head about private astronaut missions to the ISS for, I guess, a couple of months now. There's been a bunch of different stories coming out about not only the first mission that went up, Axiom 1, but subsequent missions, changes NASA's making to the private astronaut mission program overall, some other science directorate stuff that NASA's working on about sending scientists to the ISS, and then even on the private side, who Axiom have been signing agreements with. There's just a lot swirling around these kind of new missions that are heading the ISS and wanted to talk about some of the fallout there and put some pieces together to make sense of it. So to start, Axiom 1 was that mission that had a former NASA astronaut, Mike LA, three tourists going up to

the ISS. And to not even sugarcoat it at all, it did not sound like it went well up on the ISS. They jammed their schedule full of activities. After they got back, they talked about how they didn't give themselves enough time to adapt to space. They quickly got behind on their schedule that they had, jammed way too much stuff in and tried to be too productive on station. They were doing all these different research experiments and stuff. It sounded like at times the NASA astronauts that were on board the station were taking some time out of their schedule to help the Axiom 1 crew get through what they were working on. And overall, you know, NASA, like every company or agency out there, they try to put the best face possible on news as they communicate it. So you kind of have

to break through the PR speak a little bit. And the way that NASA officials talked about the schedule on board ISS during Axiom 1 was that it just was chaotic. And in the wake of that, they talked about the fact that they really want these flights that have former NASA astronauts to be the way that it goes. And then they made that official. They changed the policy for future private astronaut missions to require a former NASA astronaut to be on the flight. Now, Axiom had already planned that for the first two Axiom missions. Axiom 1 was Mike Lopez-Alegria. Axiom 2 is Peggy Whitson. Those are the commanders of the mission. They would then fly with three customers. They did not always intend that for the Axiom side of things. They talked about how they're

excited in the future about having these missions that don't include an Axiom seat as well, being able to sell four seats instead of three seats. But after this and the requirement change from NASA, that is no longer going to be the case. There's also a bunch of new requirements about submitting research plans about a year in advance of your mission so that the ISS National Laboratory can review them and certify them, etc. There's different timing requirements so that they need to build in adaptation time into the schedule. They can't just get right to work. So there's basically all these new requirements specifically designed around what went wrong on Axiom 1. So that way, you know, reading the requirements is a good way to, you know, backport your thinking into what parts didn't go well on Axiom 1. Now, originally, when this announcement came out

about requiring a former NASA astronaut to be on these flights, I sort of got my mind into almost like the regulatory capture sort of idea where incumbents in any particular space tend to favor locking in requirements that only they can meet because of their size and scale, right? Axiom has a bunch of former NASA astronauts on staff. It would be great if they made that another barrier to entry for any competitors for private astronaut missions. After talking to people within the industry, both at these companies, but on the NASA side as well, I don't really think that's the case anymore because there's a lot of former NASA astronauts and specifically the ones of the most recent era that have been retiring. They didn't have all that

many flight assignments in their career because shuttle had shut down, commercial crew wasn't flying yet, so there was really only the Soyuz to get them to station, one seat every couple of months. So there's a lot of former Nash astronauts that really want more flight assignments, and it doesn't sound like if you're somebody who was legitimately competing for private astronaut missions that you would have a hard time hiring one of them or making some arrangement with one of them to command your flight. So that's definitely not what it is at this point. And the only thing that

I'm left with is that NASA would really like to keep the ISS a cleaner environment in terms of workflow and also promote these private astronaut missions to be more than tourism. They would like these to be used for not just tourism reasons. And there are a bunch of different reasons outside of tourism that I think they look at as more legit and something that is less disruptive to the ISS. Um, so I want to break down what those things are. Number one, it could be, you know, Tom Cruise going up to shoot a movie, as confirmed to us by Jim Bridenstine on Off Nominal, what, two years

ago, that he was flying on an Axiom flight. It could be that, right? A professional use case of the ISS. That's a very commercial use case that certain parts of NASA and the US government would like to see. Tom Cruise has not been talked about lately. So I don't know if that project fell through, or is it just not ready to be announced yet, right? Axiom 2, NASA just officially signed the paperwork to fly that one. So that'll be flying in sometime next year, second quarter of 2023. We only know about two astronauts on board that right now. Peggy Whitson and then John Schaffner is the pilot. He's the customer. We don't know who the two other customers are. So presumably that could be Tom Cruise and whoever's going up

with Tom Cruise to shoot the movie. So that's one use case for sure. The others are things that I've talked about in the past, specifically the idea of national astronauts from countries that don't have seats on commercial crew or Soyuz flights right now. So that could be partner agencies like the Canadian Space Agency that doesn't get flights very frequently. You know, they get a seat every couple of years. Up until commercial crews flying Europe was in a similar spot. So it could be that, you know, maybe they want to get some flight experience for one of their astronauts in their core. They would buy a seat on a private astronaut mission and they would fly up and do some training on the ISS, get acquainted with the system so that when

their time comes around for an expedition flight, they're in a better spot for it. time comes around for an expedition flight, they're in a better spot for it. It could be countries that aren't in the ISS program, but would like to have an astronaut corps, right? We saw this with United Arab Emirates sending an astronaut up on a Soyuz flight in that case. They have an agreement with Axiom to fly one in the future. Saudi Arabia has signed an agreement with Axiom. They've been courting Turkey and Italy, and I'm going to run out of all the names that I remember. New Zealand, I think. Some of those cases, not exactly just about astronauts. Hungary was in there as well about flying an astronaut to the ISS. Some countries were interested in research that wasn't necessarily flying to the ISS, but these countries that

aren't part of the ISS program or, again, don't really have seat assignments, but still want national astronauts, that's a really good environment to find customers if you're Axiom. And I think there's a lot of interest in that sort of model. And clearly, Axiom is pursuing that pretty heavily. The other would be this new program that NASA has, the NASA Science Division is looking into. They're doing some research to see what it would be like to fly scientists to the ISS on these private missions to conduct their own research, or even to train the NASA astronauts that are on board the station on how to do the research so when they leave, they can keep going and then everything would go well. So this study came out a couple of months ago in a National Academies Committee. The NASA's, what is it, the Biological and Physical Sciences Research Division was looking into, I think they're seeking some funding for this to start figuring out what this would entail.

tail. But it's a really interesting idea, right? Because there may be some really specialized science that somebody wants to do within the research industry that they haven't gotten into the typical NASA flow yet. They haven't gotten time to train astronauts that are going up on this particular research. Maybe there's something that is very hard to do or very specialized that they could do better. So send them up for 30 days and do that research, carry it out. If you need to train a NASA astronaut while you're on board, you can do that, you know, while you're there with the material and the instruments, you know, at your disposal. And that would be a really legitimate use case. And if it's something that is that important, that there's an actual, you know, the scientist going up to the ISS, it seems like something that you could charge a premium for, for your Axiom. So those are three kind of more professional use

cases than tourism that I think NASA would really like to push private astronaut missions more in that direction than tourism. The other thing is that, um, as part of these requirement changes, uh, the, the release that NASA put out about these changes also included, um, you know, on these private astronaut missions, they, uh, get space on the spacecraft on dragon in this case to bring scientific samples home, uh, on dragon, even at the end of those private astronaut missions. They could bring other hardware home. Like there's, I think they specifically called out

a nitrogen-oxygen recharge system tank, two cargo transfer bags, which are last minute returns. And then specifically they called out that the other thing that NASA requires of private astronaut mission providers is 10 hours of the private astronaut mission commander's time during the docked mission to complete NASA science or perform tasks for NASA. So again, NASA looking for these former NASA astronauts because they have

stuff on ISS that needs to happen around these missions and they don't want to take the crew time away for those tasks because, you know, and I totally understand there's some externalities that these missions impose upon the station, and they're looking for that former NASA astronaut to take over those tasks. So this is kind of a double-ended thing, right? NASA wants to offload some of that work to the providers, but they also want to push the customers of those providers to be a more professional, task-oriented kind of customer set. Now, all that has major implications for private

astronaut mission providers, because there's no way that Axiom was making money on Axiom 1. There is almost no way they're making money on Axiom 2, because they have a seat that was taken up by an Axiom representative that they're paying for, and they only have three paying customers. Now, it was, you know, these Dragon missions have been reported and rumored around the $200 million range, right? $50 million a seat or something like that. It's kind of what NASA's paying. NASA's up a little higher than that now for the most recent commercial crew stuff. Of course, there's other requirements there as well that probably aren't imposed on private astronauts as much. But if you are looking at your future and your Axiom, and you were planning on your math being, we'll sell four seats in the future, right? We'll take the loss on the first two missions because we're still figuring this out. We've got a lot of things

to sort out on our operations, on our planning, on what we should and should not do. So we'll take the loss in those first two. But Axiom 3 and beyond, we're going to sell four seats. That's how we're running our math. Well, now you've just been told that math is out the window. You have three seats to sell on all these flights. You know, up until when SpaceX brings back the seven-seater version, which doesn't seem likely uh you've got three seats to sell per private astronaut mission well tourism probably isn't the one that would pay the best uh per seat but these other use cases certainly would you know national astronauts uh very important highly specialized research that needs to go up to the ISS, professional use cases like Tom Cruise shooting a movie.

Those are things that you can do some ROI math, right? And in the case of National Astronauts, it's more of like, you know, your return isn't necessarily a monetary return as it is in a Tom Cruise movie, but you can at least figure out a cost-benefit analysis and figure out if it makes sense. But Axiom is going to be able to charge a lot more for those things than they would for tourism missions. Or, you know, they could charge it for tourism missions, but you run out of people pretty quick if you're selling these for $100 million a pop. There's not a ton of people that would be trying to buy that seat, especially in an era where there's a bunch of people flying on Blue Origin, New Shepard to space. There's a

bunch of people flying eventually on Spaceship Two to space. Like people are going to get their tourism fix elsewhere. And orbital tourism has always been a more niche thing. But anyway, the idea here is that if NASA is nudging these customer sets into a different section of the market and they're limiting how many seats these private astronaut mission providers can sell, that also is going to nudge that market into a higher end kind of thing. And Axiom has been going very hard in the national astronaut direction. I'm curious to see if there are other providers that would step up for these private astronaut missions and what they would do to approach this. But right now,, right now I don't really think

there's, um, too many other people out there that would be trying to buy these missions. Um, you know, I, I, I guess there, there could be hypothetically in the future, uh, a SpaceX mission, but I feel like they're just would rather Axiom do it. Um, we'll see if any other companies come along, but in that same realm, like they're going to have to find these use cases that are worth paying a significant premium over what a single seat would cost on any Dragon mission. So it's a very interesting shift in strategy here. And I'm curious to see how it plays out in the long run. So, you know, the first time we see a scientist go up to train other NASA astronauts on board, we'll see who's on the

hook for that seat fare. Is it a commercial company that wants to do that research? Is it another part of the US government that finds that research particularly appealing? Are they going to be able to pay enough for that seat to actually make the business case close? If Tom Cruise ever comes around to fly in, we'll see how big of a budget the movie's got. There's a lot in flow here to make these missions really make sense for Axiom. And, you know, with how much they have going on between their space station module that's heading up in the next couple of years, they've got the spacesuit contract for Artemis missions now. They've got free flyer space station modules to work on. If this becomes something that is more effort than

it's worth in terms of you know if this is a loss leader for them i don't know how long that's going to go um in the long run and if you can't find these kind of professional use cases to fill a dragon flight then i don't really know what kind of market there is there for for this sort of thing so see exactly who gets the next couple of seat assignments. And I think that might clarify, but I just kind of wanted to pull a bunch of these different pieces together and try to make sense of it a bit. So before we get out of here for the day, I want to say thank you to all of you who support Main Engine Cutoff over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. There are 891 of you supporting the show. We are so close to 900, which would be a really cool milestone. So if there are nine of you that want to join this crew, mainenginecutoff.com slash support, join up there. $3 a month or more

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