Main Engine Cut Off - T+260: Northrop Grumman Changes Plans, Starlab, Orbital Reef, and Leadership Changes

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

Northrop Grumman has changed plans—they’ve ended their own space station project, and will contribute to Starlab. At the same time, Blue Origin and Sierra Space are reconsidering their Orbital Reef plans, amidst changing leadership and raising money.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 35 executive producers—Jan, Frank, The Astrogators at SEE, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, Joonas, David, Lars from Agile Space, Matt, Harrison, Theo and Violet, Kris, Pat, Stealth Julian, Lee, Bob, Ryan, Russell, Steve, Dawn Aerospace, Donald, Joel, Will from Agile, Benjamin, Brandon, Craig from SpaceHappyHour.com, Chris, Tyler, Pat from KC, Warren, Fred, SmallSpark Space Systems, and four anonymous—and 833 other supporters.TopicsNorthrop Grumman to join Voyager Space commercial space station project - SpaceNewsBlue Origin, Sierra Space Orbital Reef space station in limboSierra Space raises $290 million - SpaceNewsJeff Bezos finally got rid of Bob Smith at Blue Origin | 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 Stoke SpaceWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

hello and welcome to manager cutoff i am anthony colangelo back after a completely unplanned hiatus uh of sorts some bad travel timing and then uh straight up just some podcasters block, I'll be honest. Not really sure what was going on, but I am back here. And there's a bunch of stories that kind of fit together in an interesting way and an interesting moment in time. It just kind of seems like there's a trend here of certain projects being re-evaluated across a couple different companies and thought it would be good to kick around a little bit. So the first one is that Northrop Grumman has decided to end their own commercial space station project that they were working on as part of NASA's commercial low-Earth orbit destinations program. program. This was the design round that they were taking place in, or they were taking part of, I should say, regarding what's going to come after the ISS in low Earth orbit for NASA. So NASA gave out, there's two prongs of it, right? There's Axiom Space, who's working on modules that will

go up and be actually attached to the ISS. But then there's a group of companies that were doing design and really initial definition around free-flying space stations. Smaller scale in some cases, some cases really large scale, but this is all intended to be a follow-on to the ISS. And Northrop Grumman, for a while, kind of, they didn't seem as into it as the other companies, straight up, right? I've talked to all the companies here on the show about their plans. It was Axiom Space. It was Blue Origin, Sierra Space. It was Northrop Grumman.

And then it was NanoRacks, Voyager. Now Airbus is involved with that project. And, you know, just didn't really seem to have a good vibe from Northrop Grumman on exactly what's going on. They were going to be doing a heavily Cygnus-based space station. Really, any time a NASA program has come up in recent years, Northrop Grumman has assembled a couple of Cygnuses and submitted a bid to see if they can take that platform and really make it work for whatever NASA is intending to do. And in this case, though, it really did seem

like they didn't have a good sense for the non-NASA business that would be taking place here to make this project viable. And that has been the thing all along that has stumped a lot of us from the outside and apparently a lot of those on the inside as well is, you know, NASA is going to be an anchor tenant of these commercial space stations. But what does that mean exactly? Does that mean the only tenant, the only big customer? Does it mean you might get a one-off mission every now and then? How does that close the business case? Those are the problems that, you know, are, this is the phase really when those problems are confronting you most heavily is, all right, we have a workable design, workable concept for the hardware side of this, for the actual architecture of this. We've decided on the shape and scale of this. We've got a couple of partners to do cargo and crew missions with. Now we need to figure out how to actually make all of that add up, how to make the revenue forecasting make sense. And, you know, this sort of back half of the definition is where this program stumbled north of grumman um decided that they would be better off partnering with that team the voyager

space nanoracks uh airbus team and providing cargo to that program overall so they would be using cygnus cargo spacecraft much like they do today with the ISS, and contributing that with the Voyager Starlab program, that is the name of their commercial space station. And that will be their contribution to that program and really focusing on a thing that Northrop Grumman does really well right now, is very reliable with and, you know, it's feels like a better fit for them overall, because they don't have to deal with being the main space station provider and trying to figure out like a business development pipeline to fill out all their time outside of what NASA time is. And quite frankly, right now, what NASA's commitment is to these programs is, you know,

I've been very critical of it over the previous years, um, that NASA's not very heavily invested in these programs. The timeline is very unclear right now. They're trying to get the station extended to 2030. Can the hardware make it that long? Another question altogether. Will they try to extend it further? Very likely. Um, you know, there's never been an ISS deadline that has not been extended that we are still in that world today. So for a lot of these companies until NASA has a very hard date on the end of the ISS's time that they can actually bank on and literally bank on and work their financial plans around, there's just not a lot to go on to confidently go in the direction of building out a space station

and trying to make it a viable business. So while the NASA decision about which space station they're flying on in the future hangs in the balance and makes it difficult for business development on the space station side of things, it makes it much clearer for a player like Northrop Grumman to double down on a service that is useful to the ISS, can continue flying to the ISS until the ISS flies into the Pacific Ocean, and is then extensible to be able to fly to other destinations like commercial space stations or really any other spacecraft that would need cargo resupply services, including, you know, out to the lunar area where they're

already involved in building the habitation module for the gateway out there. It makes a lot of sense for them. They know that this is a reliable platform that they've got. It's a reliable business between here and, you know, whenever we're done with this era of space stations and they could sell it to anyone. They don't it doesn't need to just be the US players. So, you know, if the ISS up there doing their thing, cool. It doesn't need to just be the US players. So, you know, if the ISS is up there doing their thing, cool.

If it's the commercial LEO development players doing their thing, cool. We'll sell vehicles and resupply services to them. You know, if Europe or Japan or another partner on the ISS that isn't Russia wants to have a, you know, homegrown space station, Northrop Grumman can be involved in selling resupply services to them. So it's a reliable enough business line for the next decade at a minimum. And it doesn't involve a huge outlay of cash like a commercial space station would with that you also need to place a big bet on being able to fully utilize the station to have reliable revenue. It's definitely a little bit of like the who's selling the pickaxes kind of situation. But, you know, I can't say I blame them with the

precarious position that the commercial station market is at the moment to really focus on what makes sense for them. And very much in the same way, I think Sierra Space is, it sounds like they're drifting in a similar direction. So there's a story out from Michael Sheets over at CNBC about the partnership between Blue Origin and Sierra Space on Orbital Reef, their commercial space station project, being in a bit of limbo at the moment. So I'll read a little bit from his article here. The Orbital Reef space station partnership between Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin

and Sierra Space is on rocky footing, CNBC has learned. These companies announced Orbital Reef as a co-led project in 2021, but updates about the project dried up last year. The pair of private space companies are now navigating a potential end to the Orbital Reef partnership, according to three people who spoke to CNBC about the situation. Those people, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss non-public matters, emphasized that discussions are ongoing and describe the situation as fluid, but other development projects with more significant current contracts, such as Blue Origin's Blue Moon lunar lander and Sierra Space's Dream Chaser space plane, have taken higher priority for both companies, those people said. Um, and you know, I, I don't know that I ever really saw this partnership go in the distance together. Um, because I find that the, you know, motivations or the, the background to orbital reef are different for the different players involved. And, uh, Sierra space has been talking up cargo and crew dream chaser forever. Cargo dream chaser is getting close to fly to the ISS.

cargo and crew dream chaser forever cargo dream chaser is getting close to fly to the iss they've always talked about a scaled up version to carry people um and uh then they also have the inflatable habitat the life habitat module that they've been developing and have continued to post videos of them testing on the ground um so if they are again much in the way that north north of grumman is looking at cygnus and saying you, I don't know that we can make a go of it on our own, but we certainly can sell this thing to whatever space station exists for the next 10 years. Sierra Space is in a similar bucket there. They've got Cargo Dream Chaser that would be, you know, by the either it's going to fly through the end of the ISS for sure. But beyond that, it would have been then proven out over the course of a couple of ISS missions. If they are using their cash to invest in Crew Dream Chaser, I mean, that alone is a gigantic

project that's going to take up a ton of money, a ton of resources, a ton of focus. And when they're looking around the commercial spaceflight market at the moment, I mean, it's hard to say it wouldn't be a good idea to get in there as a second player because Starliner from Boeing is not flying right now and looks like, you know, it's just going to fly out the end of their ISS contract and that'll be it for Starliner. It's not really going anywhere commercially. So SpaceX has the run on the place with Dragon for the foreseeable future. So if you're Sierra Space and you're like, you know, listen, we're looking at these two markets, commercial human spaceflight from ground to orbit, or the commercial space station segment, we at least know that there is

demand and at least, you know, potential for use on the commercial human spaceflight launch side of things. So with Boeing, where's they're at with SpaceX kind of in the place. And we're already, you know, down the development roadmap here for crew dream chaser to some extent you know we've got a lead right now on the other players blue origin we don't know what they're working on internally for uh human transport but that's certainly been a thing on the roadmap um you know why not make a run of it and again in the same way know that you've got a decade or so of other space stations bouncing around in feasibility and initial outfitting and needing flights up there. And maybe you can make a run at being a second

provider and even come in to put a little pressure on SpaceX if it turns out that their model works really well for transporting people up and down. That to me feels like a better decision for them than going in on a space station as a primary partner. And it seems to the same extent if they've got this life habitat that they want to sell to whoever becomes the next space station up there. I mean, even Actium Space, I could see buying a module from them if they're looking to add footprint to their station and not wanting to go and do a whole nother design and build cycle on an additional module. So they can certainly sell that to other providers. Maybe Starlab is looking to expand because right now they're going to launch a pretty limited first module that just covers their basic use and look to expand in the

future. So certainly Sierra Space could sell to them. So I feel like these companies are kind of just sorting into those that are interested in being the main provider and those that are being the suppliers of either logistics or crew transport or even full on habitats. But that's a distinctly different thing when you're looking at a business to say, there are going to be space stations that we can serve versus let's make a space station and figure out who to serve. So it's a practical decision. And I can't say I blame them for that if that is the direction that they're leaning. There hasn't been, since this report from Sheets, really anything else coming out about this.

The only other Sierra Space News was that they raised an additional almost $300 million in a Series B round. And they had previously done a Series A of $1.4 billion two years ago. So another $300 million here. Not huge, but certainly in this market of investment, notable that they were able to land that much cash and see what they end up using it on. I think that's probably not completely unrelated to have that funding story happen at the same time as some stories coming out about them reconsidering exactly what the future holds for them. On the Blue Origin side of things, the only story that's come out recently is that CEO Bob Smith is going to be done his tenure at Blue Origin at the end of this year. Dave Limp is coming in in December as the new CEO. He is from Amazon, had a handful of positions at Amazon in his time there, worked on Project Kuiper. So we'll see how

much that kicks up a hornet's nest of people looking at Crossover and anything going on there. But who knows how that'll shake out. Anyway, a lot of it was made of this story because, uh, Bob Smith was not, not well liked from the people I know at Blue Origin. Uh, not them directly, but like everyone I've ever talked to, I've never really heard the Bob Smith stans coming out of the woodwork. And even the people that I talked to that know people at Blue Origin that I'm just like indirectly aware of these people at Blue Origin, they've never heard of, of the Bob Smith stans. I'm sure maybe that's just a part of the company that I end up talking to. But I really, you know, it was it was an odd arrangement. And I heard

resoundingly positive feedback about this change. So we'll see exactly what Dave Limp comes in and wants to institute in terms of reprioritization or what kind of decisions are going to be made in the early days of a new tenure. And at the same time, it's not like, you know, this isn't going to drastically change the trajectory of the nearer term projects that Blue Origin is working on. New Shepard, New Glenn, some of the stuff that's closer to, you know, either flying now or closer to flying. I feel like New Glenn is so far down the list of things to complete before it starts launching that,

you know, this might change the trajectory a little bit, but you can't drastically change that program and how soon it's going to be flying by changing out, you know, top level leadership at the end of a calendar year,

hoping to fly the following. I think it will change, you know, maybe a mindset around some of these projects and the way to approach them. Uh, but you know, how much of those effects are going to be visible to the public? We will never know. And Blue Origin is not a company that has been very public facing, uh, with internal stuff. So, uh, you know, I guess we'll just pick up some vibes from time to time about how people are talking about it internally, or when they do make an external appearance, how they talk about the vibe of the company. It'll be a purely vibe check based thing. But it certainly is, you know, I did hear the word finally a couple of times,

not just in the headlines that were written at the various outlets. I did hear it from people at Blue. So I think this was a long time coming. Not sure how much of an effect it'll have overall. But again, is this completely, it just happens to be completely correlated time-wise where Michael Sheets is reporting that Orbital Reef is getting a rethink and we've got new leadership at Blue Origin. I don't know how related or unrelated those things are, but

it certainly would be interesting to have new leadership come in and take another look and say, you know, what is going on here? What do we want to be doing? And Blue Origin is one of the partners here on the commercial Leo Destination side of things that makes decisions differently than the others, because I think Blue Origin's outset was kind of like, you know, Jeff Bezos' original vision was to build infrastructure for space, knowing that he had the resources to do so and to put money towards Blue Origin. And, you know, there's always arguments about whether that creates a better or worse product, that there isn't this kind of scrappy need to have a business running pressure around Blue Origin. But it certainly does change the math on whether

Orbital Reef is worth it at all. You know, it's not shocking to me that they are going to be the third or fourth company to have that reported about of like, well, maybe we don't think there's necessarily a business here that we want to invest in. I think there is some portion of the DNA of Blue Origin that is let's invest in. I think there is some portion of the DNA of Blue Origin that is let's invest in infrastructure, even if it doesn't necessarily have an ROI right now. Now, does that create the healthiest product for the market overall? Arguable, arguable not. But it does definitely mean that, you know, the more that these other players drop out of the running for the Prime commercial space station contract, the better situation that is for somebody like Blue Origin who wants to have this project regardless and now just has to fight over it less because there's fewer people involved. So, you know, maybe that's a tip in the good direction for them that they can continue to be this kind of central aggregator of these different partners that are going to provide just pieces and services and not necessarily the business side and let them focus on that.

It feels like a good direction for them. So we'll see what the change of leadership brings. And just to round us out, you know, I kept mentioning Starlab, Voyager Space, NanoRacks, Airbus, that partnership. That's the other one left standing, if we're reading everything correctly here. And I am very intrigued by their strategy, because they've now added Airbus as a partner on their team, instead of Lockheed Martin. And, you know, at some point, the non-US partners are going to start asking questions about what they're going to do after the ISS. And, you know, as much as we like to say, you know, how parochial the US government is when it comes to figuring out

where projects should sit and what they should get funded, Europe's even more so in many cases. And they definitely like to have a European involvement in the project that they take on. And I think a partnership with Airbus opens up some doors for Voyager with Starlab that the others did not seek to open. Europe's certainly caught in an area of what do they want to spend money on right now. Launch is in a problematic spot for European launch players overall. They have institutional launch problems. They've got some upstarts on the small launch side of things. And there's been, you know, in the last two years, there's been talk of, do we want to spend money on European

human spaceflight, you know, meaning launching humans on our own vehicles up to orbit? Or does it seem like, you know, maybe this is the project that the one they get behind is having a commercial space station and then riding whoever they can up there, you know, buying those services where available so that they can focus their money on something more outwardly looking? I don't know. I think it would be pretty Herculean to be able to get enough funding out of the way that the european system is set up to fund space projects right now to be able to get enough funding to pull off a commercial space station would be uh that would be kind of amazing but you know if if they can merely support

an effort like voyager space has going with star lab and do do so through airbus and some players that are on the European side of things, that's starting to sound like something more in the realm of likely than not. And certainly Axiom Space, the other player in this whole commercial space station business, they're working with Taliesin Alenia to produce their pressure vessels. Northrop Grumman does that for Cygnus as well. So how much sway that provides, I don't know. But Airbus is certainly the big name there. So I continue to be intrigued by that. I think overall, like I said, the more that the field of the primes for these commercial

space stations gets called down, the better for the remaining because they have to, they are spreading the resources a little bit less thin. And, you know, that's coupled with the fact that NASA has not gotten as many resources for this project as they have written down in their requests. Um, and honestly, I think they've written down numbers that are too small anyway.

So if we're going to split less money, less ways that provides more funding for the couple of viable projects or, uh, the couple of partners that think they really are onto something that, that starts to sound more hopeful to me, but I'm still overall pretty disappointed in the way this side of things has gone considering the state of the ISS, considering the timelines involved here. Um, I just, I'm continued to have my other position of, you know, I think there should be more focus on this if it's really something we want to do, or there should be no focus on it if it's not something we want to do. And I think this kind

of half state that we're in is a waste of resources if it's going to stay that way for five to eight years. And at the same time, the ISS continues to get extended and extended and extended, and no one can really shape a business model around it just feels like a waste a squandering of you know not big money but money uh between now and 2030 so continue to be frustrated but am a little bit hopeful with some of the things that are moving here i think moving in a more positive direction overall or at least a more sensible direction so uh we shall see how that all shakes out this episode of manager cutoff was brought to you by you. This is a 100% listener-supported show. I'm so thankful for all of your support. There are 868 of you over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support, including 35 executive producers. Thanks to Jan, Frank, the Astrogators at SCE, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, Eunice, David, Lars from Agile Space,

Matt, Harrison, Theo and Violet, Chris, Pat, Stealth, Julian, Lee, Bob, Ryan, Russell, Steve, Dawn Aerospace, Donald, Joel, Will from Agile, Benjamin, Brandon, Craig, Chris, Tyler, Pat from KC, Warren, Fred, SmallSpark Space Systems, and four anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for your support. If you want to join that crew, head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support. Join up there. $3 a month or more gets you access to MECO Headlines, a separate podcast feed where I run through all the stories of the week to keep you updated on what is worth knowing about. I read all the space news that you don't have to. I keep you updated on all the launches, all the interesting storylines, and give you some of my thoughts a couple days in advance

of you might hear about them on this show. So it's a really great way to have more of me in your feed and to help support what I'm doing here. Thank you all so much for that support. And that is all I've got for you today. Thanks again for listening. If you've got any questions or thoughts, hit me up on email anthony at manage your cutoff.com on Twitter at we have Miko on Macedon at Miko at spacey dot space. And all the other 19 Twitters you can find me on if you search hard enough i cannot be uh i cannot promise i'm on all of them but just do a quick search you might find anyway until next time i'll talk to you soon Bye.