Main Engine Cut Off - T+254: Mars Sample Return, Vulcan, NSSL Phase 3 (with Eric Berger)

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

Eric Berger of Ars Technica joins me to talk about the budgetary threat facing Mars Sample Return, the latest issue with ULA’s Vulcan vehicle, and the ongoing tweaks to the National Security Space Launch Program’s Phase 3 architecture.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 35 executive producers—Will, Tyler, Ryan, Stealth Julian, Lars from Agile Space, Harrison, Craig from SpaceHappyHour.com, SmallSpark Space Systems, Pat, Theo and Violet, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut), Kris, Russell, Donald, Matt, Jan, Dawn Aerospace, Steve, Bob, Benjamin, Joel, Joonas, Lee, David, Warren, Frank, Simon, Fred, Chris, The Astrogators at SEE, Pat from KC, and four anonymous—and 833 other supporters.TopicsEric Berger (@SciGuySpace) / TwitterEric Berger | Ars TechnicaNASA’s Mars Sample Return has a new price tag—and it’s colossal | Ars TechnicaThe Senate just lobbed a tactical nuke at NASA’s Mars Sample Return program | Ars TechnicaVulcan’s upper stage failed due to higher stress and weaker welds | Ars TechnicaSpace Force to select three providers of national security launch services - SpaceNewsNational Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 DRAFT Request for Proposals (RFPs) #2Stephen Clark | Ars TechnicaThe ShowLike the show? Support the show!Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOFollow @[e-mail] on MastodonListen to MECO HeadlinesListen to Off-NominalJoin the Off-Nominal DiscordSubscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhereSubscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off NewsletterArtwork photo by ULAWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo and I've got our friend Eric Berger of Ars Technica back with me today to cover a couple of stories that I thought would be fun to kick around with him. There's a lot going on lately, a lot of smaller stories that I kind of wanted to put together in an episode because I don't know if I have 30 minutes of something to say about a lot of these stories. But nonetheless, Eric's here to help me sort through all of that. So without further ado, let's give Eric a call. Eric Berger, welcome back to Main Engine Cutoff. It's been a while. How you been? You know, I was beginning to think you lost my number anthony yeah you only have my youtube link not not the zencaster link

so but i was able to get you on the rest day here tour de france rest day oh my goodness no one wants to hear us talk about the tour de france but this is the best race i've ever seen not yet a couple weeks we'll figure that one out so that's more foreshadowing for a thing i haven't really talked about yet that'll be fun okay um i have had a short list of things that i should talk about on this show and if people have noticed in the feed i haven't done an episode for a couple weeks because i've sometimes when i'm by myself the pressure to like have enough thoughts to fill an episode uh results in me not putting an episode out about a thing. So I thought no better way to tackle a grab bag list with you. Uh, so you want to start with Mars sample return? You've been writing about this hot drama. Yeah, let's start with Mars sample return. So this is the highest

profile mission of the planetary science community. NASA has wanted to do this for three decades, something like that. Basically send a robotic spacecraft to Mars, retrieve some samples, some rocks, some soil, blast it off the surface of Mars and return it to Earth. The problem is it's really difficult to do that. We've never launched a rocket, anything from the surface of Mars. It's difficult enough to land there. And then you've got to get the samples onto the rover and you've got to get them into space. You've got to rendezvous with a return spacecraft and come back to Earth. It's lots of new technology.

A couple of years ago, NASA started settling on a plan, and then that got all scrambled with a partnership with the European Space Agency, and they wanted to get involved. And it's just they finally about a year ago kind of committed to this mission design and everything, and they had a cost estimate of $4.4 billion. The problem is that's not a realistic cost estimate at all. And they know that, and there's this independent review board that's been studying the issue and is going to have a final report on whether this is doable within any kind of a budget and timeframe. And I found out a couple of weeks ago that the cost actually was closer to $9 billion as opposed to $4.4 billion.

And that was way higher than the scientific community was planning for. And one other kind of tricky thing with this is everyone looks at James Webb's space telescope and they say, well, no one's complaining about the price tag of Webb now because it's in space. And that's true. Webb has been a phenomenal success. But Webb serves this very, very broad constituency of scientists. You have planetary scientists. You have astrophysicists. You have exoplanet scientists. You have people who study quasars. I mean, you can look at the entire astronomy spectrum and they are all benefiting from Webb. The problem with Mars sampler turn is it's a relatively narrow field of study.

You've got to kind of be in a planetary science issue. You've got to be interested in sort of surface geology and Mars rocks and maybe astrobiology. And it really doesn't go much further than that. And so the support for web is kind of a mile wide and a mile deep and the support for, you know, um, Mars sample return is kind of a few inches wide and a mile deep. So it's kind of a difference. There's two things I want to bring up. There was, um, a year ago, was that when they introduced the helicopters to the sample return architecture? That was only a year ago yeah that's another weird thing like like everyone loves the helicopters and ingenuity is probably the greatest space

success story the last two or three years it's amazing that thing is still going on the surface of mars um congress loves it too um but they added two of them to this mission design in case Perseverance breaks down over the next decade and is unable to drive their samples over to, because there's no longer a, quote, fetch rover on the lander. As I say, the architecture keeps changing. The current plan is for Perseverance to drive the samples over, chuck them onto the rocket, and the rocket takes off. And someone said, hey, let's put two helicopters on there. And in case Perseverance breaks down, they'll fly over, pick up the samples and bring them back.

And that just adds an immense amount of cost and complexity to an already expensive and complex mission. But yeah, you're right. Excuse me, the helicopters were added about a year ago. Yeah, it just it felt it felt at the time, right? I'm trying to just put some context because at the time it was like wow ingenuity is working great this thing has a lifespan way beyond what they even estimated for it and it felt like taking advantage of the momentum that that had to say this was a great thing to do it makes sense to use this for other things that

it is capable of which is lifting these sample tubes but then i'm like all right was that like why was that happening at that moment if was it purely the momentum or was there concerns that the the fetch rover itself would balloon in cost and time but that was so like it had i don't know am i trying to link these stories, but maybe they are completely unlinked. So remember, ESA has its own Mars lander coming up, right, that was going to fly on a Russian rocket. And then the ExoMars program got taken off the Russian rocket because of the invasion of Ukraine. I don't understand all the politics, but basically the fetch rover that ESA was going to build went away. And I think some of that budget has been moved into

ExoMars and this is the new plan is to have Perseverance drive over and the helicopters are purely a backup plan. A backup. Which makes the second helicopter a backup to the backup. A backup to the backup so you've got triple sting, triple fault redundancy or whatever. In that one spot

of the architecture and nowhere else do you have triple redundancy. Right. And there one spot of the architecture and nowhere else do you have triple redundancy. Right. And there's no reason to think perseverance is going to break down, right? The rovers we send to Mars, Curiosity is still going strong and it's been there for a decade. And so why would perseverance break down over the next six to 10 years? I mean, it's possible, but it's kind of a weird thing to do. There's another layer to all this and that, of course, is politics, and particularly center politics. This is the banner mission for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California for the next 10 years, and it's a real cash cow in the sense that it brings just an extraordinary amount of funding every year to that center.

You could sort of stick a glove in the air and capture $800 million or a billion dollars a year in terms of funding, which is an extraordinary amount. And so, you know, that's sort of like, I think they did the helicopter. And so they were sort of adding that on there just to sort of put it on top. But again, it's complex to understand it all entirely. And then you complicate this all with the budget situation that we find ourselves in. And I think it's easy to think that the budget situation is what caused the extra scrutiny here. But when you were,

when you got the initial scoop that this cost estimation was going on and it was like three times the size of what they thought previously, did you have a sense of, of that? That was a thing going on longer than the 2023-24 budget drama? Like, is this basically has nothing to do with the fact that NASA's budget is getting cut this year, if a budget deal is to come?

This predates that. It was pretty clear Thomas Zurbuchen, the former head of science at NASA, told me before he left last year, he knew this was a massive budget problem. He was trying to get his hands around it, and he felt pretty bad about dropping in the lab with Mickey Fox. They've known for a while that this budget is going to go up.

You know, one of the weird things, again, is that JPL is not sort of commercially acquiring the lander. They'd never built a lander this big. So you would go to someone like Lockheed Martinin or maybe spacex if you're feeling really frisky astrobotic or intuitive machines and say hey you know how much could you build this lander for us um but jpl is like no we're going to build the lander in-house and again that's sort of that cost plus approach non-commercial approach is just really driving cost way up too so the other um aspect to the james webb uh equivalency that you were talking about was everyone said yeah yeah this happened the threat happened to jwst back then and they ended up

getting the full budget um i don't have a memory long enough to remember at the time when the review was going on uh if congress was so forthright in saying, well, cancel it and send the money in these particular locations. They definitely specified where the money would go if and when this is canceled, which I found an interesting add-on. Yeah, I think the more notable thing to think about when you look back at James Webb 10, 12 years ago is that there were a couple of things that that telescope had going for it

that I don't think Mars Sample Return has. Number one, they had Barbara Mikulski in the Senate. She was looking out for the interests of Goddard Space Flight Center. And so she was very protective of the Webb Space Telescope and made sure that it got funding. The initiative to kill it was actually in the House. And I don't see the equivalent person from California right now stepping up to fill that role. Someone could emerge, you know, someone maybe like Adam Schiff in the House.

But I've yet to see it. And he's obviously got a lot on his plate with the scientific community stepping up to save Mars sampler turn. And a few weeks ago when I did this story about the Mars sampler budget, the response I got from scientists was not, you know, we must do everything to protect Mars and for a turn. There was a healthy chunk of scientists who reached out to me and said, good that this is getting out there and we need to have a really serious think about this and whether we want to devote all of the planetary budget to this and really impair other programs. So I think there's, there would be less resistance from the scientific community if this really was on the chopping block or seriously in risk of being cut.

It'll be interesting to see what happens, especially with that there's so much momentum in the right directions as far as the development of space and landers that are going to go to the moon soon, let alone starship. That's like,

it does feel like the momentum is leaning in the direction when we would be able to pull this off at some point in the next few decades without this gigantic effort. It doesn't feel like a singular thing. Like this is the only way this will ever happen in the near future of humanity. Like just limiting it to my lifetime. Yeah.

I mean, if you take, if you take Bill Nelson, his word that humans are going to Mars in the 2030s, right? Yeah, it's going to be good. If you take him at his word, and if this mission launches in 2030, samples come back in 2035, then are we really going to spend $10 billion to get Mars rocks five years earlier and far fewer? It's a legitimate question. And then, you know, I think you, I think Congress pretends that Starship doesn't exist and will continue to do

so. But you're right, that is, that is out there too, that, you know, maybe this architecture will open up and allow sort of a much more daring mission to take place either robotically or not. So, yeah, all very, all very important questions. And I think, again, you know, you raised the issue of threats to NASA's budget. And this, this, this request for significant increase is coming in. By the way, what happened was the House said, no, excuse me, the Senate said, we're not going to give you the 900 million you're asking for, we're going to give you 300 million. And you have to come back to us with a realistic budget for all the out years or else that money goes away entirely it was a huge shot across the bow yeah um now if that comes to pass i'm very curious to see what the what the

future is for the budget overall um it is to shift focus to the budget for a second the full support of of Orion SLS and then mostly full support of the other parts of Artemis very interesting to see how that's playing out versus Planetary that's looking like not doing so hot they're not doing terrible in the budget

but certainly like you're saying here with that line item alone it's one mobile launcher short effectively. So that's good. The other takeaway from the NASA budgets and the House and the Senate is that there is clear and unequivocal support for the Artemis program. You know, it has survived a number of critical tests, including the transition from the Trump to Biden White House when Biden embraced it, or his administration embraced it within 10 days of coming into office, which was significant. And then now we're in this era where there is going to be some budget austerity, and the budget

for Artemis keeps going up, and that NASA is getting all the funding it received. And so I think you're seeing the priorities of NASA and the priorities of Congress really in alignment here. And that program is on such a great trajectory. I'm setting aside the hardware questions, which I think are substantial, and the execution questions, which funding standpoint, you could not ask for a more stable, successful program. I mean, the conception of the Artemis Accords was brilliant. The addition of India recently was a significant coup for Nelson or Administrator Nelson. And it's just they they're doing great things. Now the contractors and NASA have to go out and execute.

Just to put a finer point on that, in our lifetimes, we have not seen a program like this at NASA that has had such universal support and pretty audacious goals. I mean, I have been critical often of NASA in the past for various things, but on the Artemis program, the way it was put together by Jim Bridenstine and then augmented by Administrator Nelson, it's just been brilliant and they're really doing a fine job with it. Yeah. And you think about that going forward, it's hard to see how this one loses all the momentum in the way that the other architectures in previous presidential transitions have gotten it's hard to see how this one loses all the momentum in the way that the other architectures in previous presidential transitions have

gotten thrown out pretty easily the momentum alone, the things that are in motion even if you shut off a particular contract, the momentum is there and there's different inroads to these things there is the CLPS program there is the CLPS program.

There is the HLS program. There are duplicative things that are happening that are like, yeah, there will be landing legs on the moon with an American flag nearby in some regard. You know, is it the 2020s? Boy, I hope so. Are there people on it? Probably not. But like, you know, there are moon landers happening.

It's very cool. Really big things would have to go wrong right like the cliff missions would have to miss or crash on the moon which is possible i mean i think at least one of the first two is going to do that um you know china would have to abandon its lunar program um which doesn't seem likely but certainly is possible given their financial situation which is not great i't think, but it's hard to tell. Artemis 2 would probably have to blow up or something very serious could go wrong with that. SpaceX would need to have some really serious setbacks

with the Starship program, which is possible. They're really setting a high bar from a technological standpoint because, let's face it, I love the idea and the design of the blue origin lunar lander and the, the tug. You've got to be over the moon with the tug over the moon. Did you like that? Got to be over the moon with the tug design for the Cislunar transporter. But that system is probably at least a decade away from,

from flying in a meaningful way. So there's a lot of big things would have to go wrong to scuttle artemis because i agree we are like on a path back to the moon it's great to see it yeah i think i mean my whole contention is is as it remains the iss budget and the uh uh i don't even know what what feeling to subscribe to on the commercial space station front within NASA. The non-committal nature that they're aiming in that direction. I think that's the biggest, budget-wise, that's the biggest thing that I think is to be answered. Because if you're looking at the budget priorities here in this cycle, Artemis is going to be doing its thing.

Planetary science demands a certain level because there are active missions going on and the missions that are in development have support. And then the budget wedge that no one can figure out exactly how much or how little it's going to take out of the rest is ISS. And that's not going down. The ISS wedge has not gone down in the budget.

And if you look back like 10 years at all these hypothetical budget wedges, it's like the ISS at some point was going to phase out and it's just a straight line across right now. Well, we could do a whole show on commercial space stations. If you look at the budget wedge for that this year, it's less than half of what NASA wants to spend on a mobile launcher.

So we may well be working toward a gap in low Earth orbit habitation, but we're not going to have a mobile launcher gap. That's clear. Where NASA's priorities are on the contractor side. I mean, the commercial space station program, you talk off the record to the participants, and they're all very concerned about the budget to get these up and flying. There's just not enough money. And so it really relies on Jeff Bezos showing significant interest in space stations to keep it, you know, to really put a lot of money into Orville Reef. And I'm not sure that's going to happen. It requires an axiom to keep fundraising at a prodigious level because financially their situation is not great. It requires nanoracks to find a provider. and now they're working with Airbus on a space

station and execute on a really big project. And it would require Northrop Grumman to stay in the program, which I'm not sure they're going to do. And then you've got the vast, I kind of like the vast space station, but they're kind of the new guys in that we haven't really seen any hardware from them. I think there's serious questions about all the providers and there's not enough money to make investors particularly confident in these programs and so it's a real challenge and and yeah i would like to see the human spaceflight program at nasa get serious about figuring out what we're going to do

not just with space station end of life but what comes after yeah um speaking of blue origin we got to talk about the be4 situation that happened uh because i have some questions uh i have two two prong question here um well let me just start with the one that i feel most strongly everybody out here loves tory bruno in the space community people love. He's a really nice guy. We've had him on off nominative for, he's super fun, really smart, but God,

if he's not downplaying every single bit of Vulcan from now to four years ago about the state that they're in and the issues that have cropped up every time one has cropped up, he has downplayed it to a level that is turned out to be, uh, way too downplayed in my opinion and i that makes me question uh what happened here which i guess we should set the table on that the qualification or the uh the acceptance test firing of this is the third flight engine i believe it is

they had an issue blew up the engine on on test stand for the acceptance test of the third production engine for BE-4, thus shuffling around Vulcan's hardware one more time. And Tori Brunner says, no big deal. This happens all the time with acceptance test firing. I wasn't cool enough to be on the call, so maybe you can add some more color to that. Well, he didn't really talk too much about the BE-4 test on the call, but I'll say a few things about this, Anthony.

First of all, I like Tori. As you say, bright guy, funny, Anthony. First of all, I like Tori. As you said, bright guy, funny, charming. He does not like me. I, you know, it's kind of complicated, but, you know, I have been the one to report a lot of these slips in the past of, well, Vulcan's not going to launch in 2020. It's not going to launch in 2021. It's not going to launch in 2022.

Not going to launch. Maybe I'll be reporting soon. It's not going to launch in 2021. It's not going to launch in 2022. Not going to launch, maybe I'll be reporting soon. It's not going to launch in 2023. You know, we'll see. Um, and, and when the, when the, when the Centaur anomaly happened in March, you know, uh, I said, this looks like this is going to be a setback on Twitter and Twitter said, maybe not. And, and that's complete BS, right? The, the, The Centaur issue is very serious. It blew up the test stand. It blew up the stage. And, you know, he just, he does, you're absolutely right. He does downplay these issues. And, you know, I had been hearing from sources for a long time that Centaur was not ready, the upper stage for Vulcan. And every time I went to ULA and asked, it's no, no, it's fine. It's fine. It's coming along. It's on schedule. And when in fact it was behind the BE-4s. So about this BE-4 explosion, my sense is that the truth is somewhere in between. On one hand, it's not good to have production engines blowing up on the test stand. This is a different development program than the Raptor engines.

Like SpaceX is blowing up Raptor engines and McGregor because they're changing them all the time and they're innovating and they have less risk tolerance or they have more risk tolerance because let's face it, there's no national security payloads flying on Starship anytime soon. There's no national security payloads flying on Starship anytime soon. However, the Air Force, the Space Force, has been intimately involved in the development of the BE-4 engine, as well as ULA. And the design, development, and test of those engines has been very, very rigorous to the point that it's sort of met, because it's got to meet the exacting demands of Space Force missions on just the third flight of this rocket. So it's serious that it blew up and you don't want to see it. But, you know, my best source on this stuff says that it's really not that big of a deal. And I trust him he says yeah he says that you know that it was a it was a well it was foreign object debris is what it was that got in the engine they screwed up um and it's not an engine design issue and it it is they understand

it it's fixed and they they can sort of from the production schedule they'll be able to sort of keep up so i don't think it's a big issue long term, but I do agree with your more general point that Tori absolutely downplays everything. And he is just as bad on schedules as Musk is, as Elon Musk is, as much as the industry is. Almost all the industry is way, way too over-optimistic about schedules.

I think it's actually, I'm going to go to bat for Elon one time, which is not usually the stance that I have in these particular instances of schedule, but I actually think it's worse because the entire time the reason that he's been downplaying his everything is because he could point to BE4 and he could point to Astrobotic and say, hey, look,

our vehicle will be there when their vehicles are there. But that's not saying that you're on a good schedule. That just means they're more late than you are, which is schedule chicken that the industry plays. And to some extent you can say that's a good that you're on a good schedule. That just means they're more late than you are, which is scheduled chicken that the industry plays. And to some extent, you can say that's a good communication strategy because then you always look good. But then when it unravels, you really look bad. Yeah, because you're sort of posturing yourself

as having the patience of Job, right? Sitting there, well, we'll wait for these guys. Well, Astrobotic's now been waiting, what, two, three, four months? The spacecraft's been in their factory, ready to ship, it's ready to go. And the BE-4s are on the rocket and they did their flight readiness firing test and it performed exceptionally well.

I was on the call and I asked Tori about that. I said, you've had a month to look at the data, how's it look? And he said, it looked fantastic. No concerns or changes whatsoever. So it's all on the Centaur at this point, which was, it's a ULA product. Yeah. The other concern that I have with the BE-4 storyline, though, is looking at, for Blue Origin's perspective,

what their plan is on production overall and what the ramp-up of production looks like. If this is the acceptance firing for the third flight engine engine and it's June 2023 when that was happening. How long is it going to be before they have a production line that's up and humming to fulfill all the Vulcan needs before they can start doing the seven flight engines for the first New Glenn? Do you have a sense

for the factory that they're going to open up? Not in Kent and where that's at? I was going to ask you, do you have a sense of where the Decatur factory is? You get the pics from Decatur. I don't get the pics from down there. You get the security footage. I feel like you probably have seen it inside the factory or something.

Posting that picture to Centaur Novel, it probably broke the camel's back in terms of my relationship with Toric. That's the last piece of security footage you'll ever get. Is that the key for BE4? Is that that factory has to be going before they have enough capacity? Yeah, that's a great question of this. There's lots of questions about BE4 and Nuclen. And I think one of them that you're mentioning is right on is how close is the Decatur factory to being up and running? The fact of the matter is it's been a few years since

they did the groundbreaking and I haven't seen any substantial updates since then inside or outside of the factory. You would think that it's ready to go because they've had plenty of time and they've got the engine in a production status. They should be ready to ramp it up. One question I have too, is I was told a while back that the engine configuration for, um, new Glenn is going to be different because there need to be reusable and, and sort of as a way to move more quickly, um, to get the engines ready for Vulcan, they sort of skipped that step. The engine's going to need to be modified to some extent for,

for new Glenn. And I don't know what that's going to entail i if i had the information i would share um i hope you're wrong because that sounds horrible i mean you know it's even money on me being wrong about these things right because you sort of as a journalist live between fact and and speculation um you know a couple other interesting things is you know new glenn i don't think is particularly close to being ready to fly. You know, they're talking about missions in 2024. It is already July and we have yet to see any really serious testing. Um, and you're right there.

If they're only on production engine number three in June, how quickly are they going to ramp up? It's a great question. Um, I assume they're going to accept. Hold on. Pause on that though. Do we actually know this was only the third production engine to go through acceptance test firing? Or is this just the third engine bound for ULA? I think we can be pretty sure that this was the third production

engine. If it wasn't the third, it was the fourth or fifth. So it's not, you know, they're gonna have to send seven engines through production testing for sure. And do you know i i think the idea of them launching in 2024 is is pretty far-fetched you know the other thing is that that bob smith is was talking to the financial times recently and he talked about acquiring a launch site in europe for new glenn to serve it's the customer's needs now Now, Anthony, what, you know, they can launch, they can do polar launches from the Cape, right? Just as almost just as well as they could do it from like Finland or Norway or wherever in, in, in Europe.

So like where would their launch site in Europe be? Maybe the part of Europe that's in South America. That doesn't give them any advantage over the case. He was 100% talking about New Glenn, though. I don't think I got through the paywall. Was it? Because I thought it was like, this is a New Shepard thing. I caught the headline and was like, this is New Shepard.

I mean, if they do a New Shepard launch site, it's going to be in the Middle East somewhere. It's going to be Abu Dhabi or UAE. That's my sense on that. I thought it was New Glenn. I mean, not the worst time in the world to say maybe we can launch our giant rocket out of your spaceport. Of all the times that

have ever existed to say that sentence, July 2023, after the last Ariane 5 has flown, Vegas Sea is offline, Soyuz is gone, Ariane 6 is nowhere to be seen. Not the worst time to say, sure it would be nice if other stuff was happening at your launch site. But it doesn't, like,

okay, if you take action on that, it doesn't change anything for anyone. Blue Origin, Europe, no one. Does Europe want to allow a competitor to launch from its spaceport? Maybe purely out of spite for SpaceX, but at this point, they look like they put that one, they buried that hatchet, and they're

fine with the launch service they're getting. You know, about SpaceX, I heard that the, they look like they put that one, they buried that hatchet, and they're fine with the launch service they're getting. You know, about SpaceX, I heard that the Europeans who came up and saw that launch were like, oh, my God, they're doing things in days and hours that we take weeks and months to do in terms of, you know, getting the Euclid launch ready to go. By the way, the Euclid launch, the launch of this $.5 billion dollar space telescope for europe on a falcon 9 is remarkable for a number of reasons i mean not to promote my falcon 9 book which is forthcoming but that's actually like at the very end of the book sort of getting to that launch is just i mean symbolically it's just remarkable but anyway um the new glenn thing i don't want to let that go i want to actually transition that into this national security space launch phase three thing yeah because and you said you haven't

read through all these pdfs and neither have i because do you know how many pdfs you get when you download this rfp it's an unreal amount of pdfs that you have to sort through and they all reference each other and you don't actually know what you're reading but eventually you find a couple of helpful paragraphs and i have some some thoughts on this overall so the the big headline recently is that they're shifting there's these two lanes right lane one of phase three is the kind of clips based thing where they put out a task order for launch if you're able to fly it you put it in a bid they might choose you lane two is the more traditional lane where they'll select a certain amount of offers. They'll block buy launches and they'll assign them over the course of 5 or 10 years.

And they also provide the launch service support payments in that lane 2 where they pay you. This was for years the source of... Subsidies. I was going to say, for years the source of everyone saying the word subsidy when it was directed at ULA, but now because it's directed at SpaceX-2, that has gone out the window of calling it that. So the biggest change in this recent draft is that there's now going to be three providers in that lane two rather than two as there are today with SpaceX and ULA. They would on-ramp a third. The only person that could remotely fit the definition of that third provider at the moment with everyone's plans being public is blue origin with new glenn and that is because lane two has to hit all nine reference orbits which the taxing most taxing of which is direct to geostationary

orbit relativities terran r rocket labs neutron they do not quite have the the uh payload performance that they need to do that sort of thing if they were to roll out a different launch vehicle if terran r heavy exists whatever then that might be plausible but given the current format this is really a new glenn territory and even that eric i think you and i have heard the same things the same concerns about new glenn's upper end performance uh i am questioning where they're at on hitting direct to geo with the targets needed in this paperwork. Yeah, this is 100% the product of Blue Origin lobbying Congress, because Congress has really

pushed the Space Force to change this and allow an additional provider into lane three. I'll be honest with you. I thought that the compromise that the Space Force came up with with lane one and lane two made a lot of sense. It was it sort of it tried to bring new operators into the market while having the assured access to space for its important missions. But it was pretty forward thinking. And to see Congress coming in metal like this just kind of really kind of stinks, because I agree with you, there's performance concerns about new glenn and then

i think too you know this we have yet to see that rocket fly um and you know maybe it gets there in 2025 but how many how many are they going to build and how many of them are they going to crash in the ocean before they start getting them into a reflyable state and the first one's probably not reflyable um right so it's going to take a while to really ramp up their operations i mean could look at look at a simple system like new shepherd right i mean they're not moving lightning fast with that that's they had two of them and they were launching six to eight times a year and they they're going to be launching Project Kuiper missions for Amazon. I just don't see it for the next contract. This is Blue Origin lobbying, and I think it's pretty unfortunate. All right. Let me try to convince you that this whole thing is less worrying than that.

Okay. uh, less, it's, it's less worrying than that. And I actually think the lane, the two lane structure makes me question the entire enterprise of, uh, why limit lane two to a certain amount of providers. So let me, let me sketch this out for you. Uh, lane one is not like any rocket would be able to fly any mission. This is still an still a top tier level of performance like the baseline is like you know eight to ten tons to low earth orbit was kind of like the bottom end of lane one mission so in terms of expanding the market for national security launches it didn't do a lot it might have brought in neutron and terran r but there's not a lot of other launch vehicles even being developed to have a heavy lift rocket that's going to fit that.

They might eventually, right? That's great. And then they'll get on ramped. But it's like they're going from two to three competitors to like five to six. But I'm going to let you finish, but I'm just going to jump in and saying having more medium lift capacity in this market sure would be nice right now because there's one US rocket in the one western rocket outside of the lbm3 in india that has launch capacity and it's the falcon 9 so more medium

lift would be a good thing sorry i'm i am 100 in support of that i think it's i just i'm like why not just make the baseline lower and eat the next launch system down which is the the small launch contracting and roll it all up into this one thing and have a lower baseline so that electrons competing head to head against Falcon 9. And if they can beat them on price for a particular launch, they can do it. So here's the other angle, then lane two, what if we if we're in that world where lane one is this open competition kind of thing to to develop more options, then what is lane two for what is the purpose? And the purpose is the assured access to space line that you've heard for all these years that we have these providers that provide

exquisite service to the national security market. We have requirements that are above the commercial space companies out there that are buying launch otherwise. So we want to ensure that there's competitors in that space. And then we're going to write the requirements so specifically that we choose which providers fit lane two, right? There's, it's extremely specific still, that this now includes ULA, SpaceX and Blue Origin in the current construct. And so that's them assigning, let's assume that there's similar amount of launches, right? 30 some launches in this contracting period. And instead of a 60-40 split between the two, they'll do 40-30-30. That's like 10 launches, 15 launches a piece that they're buying over a five or 10 year period, which doesn't really have a lot of

cost saving when you're buying in that bulk instead of 30. So the only way I can see this is like, this is a legally defensible way to select the providers that are able to provide all the services that the u.s space force needs with money per year to remain in existence uh so i'm like why not give that money to everyone that's can hit all nine reference orbits if there are three competitors and you want to keep them around like i can't really be mad about this strategy if this thing is written in a way to provide exactly this, which is a, again, a legally defensible mechanism to make sure those three companies keep doing whatever they're doing that caters to this market. Well, I think lane two is the vestigial remnant of the original contract, right, for ULA, which basically was set up to keep them financially viable. for ULA, which basically was set up to keep them financially viable. And so the 60-40 split in NSL phase two was to keep ULA viable. So if it's a 40-30-30 split in phase three, is ULA still viable?

Does that make them non-viable? And I think the last thing the DoD would want to do is sort of impair ULA at a time when it's really the only viable counterweight to SpaceX in that area. As you were going through your anti-lane one, lane two speech there. I had a thought about maybe there's a conspiracy theory that the real reason that Blue Origin is lobbying because Jeff is trying to reduce the market value of ULA so it's cheaper for Amazon to acquire it. The greatest theory of all time. I doubt that's the case

but it's kind of fun to think about. I don't know, that's a pretty great theory. I guess my point is that and I actually have heard that internal to the the national security space launch program with the the agencies that are getting launches on this program and the people that are writing the requirements there actually is wrangling to say no i want more of my launches in lane one because i think pricing is going to be better there than i will get in lane two so even internally there's some like what the hell am i stuck on lane two for i want one of the lane one pricing so i don't know

like i'm just looking at this and saying and by the way i think if my memory is correct from this pdf the launch service support uh payment annually is limited to 100 million dollars uh that's the upper end of what you can request as launch service support. Um, so I'm like 300 million a year. How much does operating a lane two program administratively cost? Why don't we just, just give them a hundred million a year. If you can hit all nine reference orbits, like if that's the policy, let's write the policy. Yeah.

I don't know. I don't know. I just think it comes back to the financial viability of ULA. A hundred million a year is going to do it? No, no. I'm talking about like if they're not getting four Vulcan heavy – Oh, just the baseline. Four DOD launches a year, that really cuts their profitability.

Yeah. So I just don't like the fact that the Space Force had a planet light and Congress came in and said, no, no, no, this isn't fair to this company that's given us all this lobbying money that has proven nothing in terms of orbital lift. But you've got to make it – you've got to bend over backward to put them in here as the third provider. It just does not – I mean you've got two companies in this country that do excellent heavy lift, right? And there's a third one coming along that may or may not get there. But so far, we've seen no evidence that they're going to get there. Yeah.

And to the extent that this policy is written to incentivize the existence of those providers at that performance point, I still don't think 100 million years is enough to incentivize the creation of new entrants. I mean, let's go back to 2014. I mean, SpaceX had a rocket, Falcon 9, that could hit some of these orbits. And they had to sort of sue their way on the on-ramp to do national security launches. And Congress here is saying, no, no, no. Blue Origin is going to have a rocket in five years that's going to be able to do national security launches. And Congress here is saying, no, no, no. Blue Origin is going to have a rocket in five years that's going to be able to do this.

And you need to put them on there right now because that's not fair. And it just – that was not the way SpaceX was treated, you know, 10 years ago. And I hope New Glenn succeeds. I mean that would bring a phenomenal capability into the national fleet. glenn succeeds i mean that would bring a phenomenal capability into the national fleet but you know assuming that it will be successful in time to have a meaningful impact on phase three launch contracts that's not a bet i'm sure i would make yeah i'll be curious to know who the first uh winner of a lane one contract is that is not spacex because that's going to be a nice moment for the market. Got to be.

My money would be on Neutron. Neutron, yeah. I mean, they've got a chance to fly in 2025, don't they? Yeah. I'm supposed to go down and visit the factory at some point. I mean, you're the one that's been visiting them. You've got their connections. You got the security footage from Decatur.

I'll get it from Wallops. The one last note i forgot about was that and this is a nice little kicker uh french goodbye in the spirit of tour de france uh the lane two phase three requirements are that the west coast launch capability of every launch vehicle is must be done by octoberst, 2026. So if you want to say this is written for New Glenn, have fun with that line. Yeah, New Glenn doesn't have West Coast Cape. They do not even have an agreement signed. They're not launching from Vandenberg.

Well, if they want that sweet, sweet Lane 2 money, they need it by October 1st, 2026. So let me just make sure I understand this. To be eligible to be in Lane 2, they've got to have a West Coast US, United States, West Coast launch site, 2026. So let me just make sure I understand this. To be eligible to be in lane two, they've got to have a West Coast US, United States West Coast launch site by 2026? October 1st, 2026. It must be reaching its initial launch capability.

Or else they do not meet the requirements of all nine reference orbits from both coasts. So that's a poison pill because... There it is. Yep. So there's that. Okay. that's quite a good tip but i thought for the the french outre we were going to talk about the ariane 6 rocket oh we don't want to beat that dead horse no no i'm feeling nice today so if i come back beyond best deal Day here.

Come on, take it easy. If I come back in a year, is Ariane 6 launched yet? No. Before or after Bastille Day 2024, I'll take the over. I'll take the over. We will know the 2024 winner of the tour before Ariane 6 launches. Is the tour early or late next year because of the Olympics? I forget.

Is it early? Oh, I forgot about the Olympics. That's a kicker. They're not finishing or late next year? Cause the Olympics, I forget. I think it's, is it early? Oh, I forgot about the Olympics. That's a kicker. They're not finishing in Paris next year. Time trial. Oh man.

That's right. Look at that. All right. Well, everyone learned a lot on this episode. Please plug your book. When is, when do you have any dates yet?

I feel like you don't yet, but, um, we're currently looking at end of September, 2024. What I will say this, I just turned in the first draft to the publisher a couple weeks ago it's a big effort it's it's about 50 percent longer than than liftoff because there's a lot going on but i'm very happy with how it came together there's a lot of story to tell um and it's just, it's a great story.

And as I say, it's going to be a while, it'll be another year before it comes out. And I think I've got a title, but I'm not 100% sure that's the final title, so I'm not going to share that yet either. No teasing it. All right. Are you still on Twitter?

Sure people will follow you there? I'm going to ride the ship down on Twitter. You can find me on Sky Guy's face and all the spacers. Oh, let me say this. Let me say this. Are you still on Twitter? Should people follow you there? I'm going to ride the ship down on Twitter. You can find me on Sky Guy Space and all the spacers. Oh, let me say this. Let me say this. So our space coverage on Ars Technica has been so great over the last seven years, or so well received is how I should say it, that we wanted to expand it. So we hired Stephen Clark from Spaceflight Now. He's been doing gangbusters.

He had a great story on the Viasat satellite failure that came out Friday. And so we have now like twice as much space coverage on Ars Technica. Like we have more space coverage than the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal. I mean, it's like we sort of are really, it's a great area.

So be sure to check out Ars Technica for our space coverage. Co-signed. It's like one of my main reads. So be sure to check out Ars Technica for our space cover. Co-signed. It's like one of my main reads. So that's been awesome. So, all right, Eric, thanks for hanging out. You're the best. And we only got through half the list, but I'll get through the rest some other time

because they were much less interesting topics. So I'm glad we went as long as we did on all that. And your theory, your theory remains the best, that Bezos is using political lobbying to drive down the cost of ULA for Amazon to buy. One more reason for ULA to just let me. All right, buddy. See you later. Thanks again to Eric for coming on the show and talking with me about all those stories.

There are a couple others that I want to get to that maybe I'll put in a show later this week or early next week, depending on what else comes out. put in a show later this week or early next week depending on what else comes out um but if you enjoy this kind of thing if you like these kind of shows the only way it happens is because of your support this a 100 listener supported show so head over to managecutoff.com support and join up there there are 868 of you supporting the show every single month including 35 executive producers thanks to will tyler ryan stealth julian lars from agile space harrison craig from space including 35 executive producers. Thanks to Will, Tyler, Ryan, Stealth Julian, Lars from Agile Space, Harrison, Craig from SpaceHappyHour.com, SmallSpark Space Systems, Pat, Theo and Violet, Tim Dodd, David Ashtonot, Chris, Russell, Donald, Matt, Jan, Don Aerospace,

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well. I always want to mention that because there's a lot of you out there listening. I know by the numbers, there's thousands of you listening that have not checked out Off Nominal yet, and I really think you should because it is quite fun. So do that. And otherwise, until next time, if you've got any questions or thoughts, hit me up on email. Anthony at MainEngineCutoff.com. On Twitter at WeHaveMiko. On Mastodon at Miko at Spacey.Space. Or I guess, you know, find me in real life if you live in the Philadelphia area.

But otherwise, thanks so much for listening and I will talk to you soon.