Main Engine Cut Off - T+264: ESA’s Interest in Space Stations, Virgin Galactic Bails on VSS Unity

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

ESA is looking to start a commercial cargo program while looking further ahead to commercial space stations by signing an agreement with Airbus and Voyager. Virgin Galactic is laying off 20% of its staff and ending VSS Unity flights in just a few months.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 35 executive producers—Russell, Joonas, Kris, SmallSpark Space Systems, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, Jan, Chris, David, Warren, Stealth Julian, Craig from SpaceHappyHour.com, Pat from KC, Frank, Donald, Pat, Fred, Dawn Aerospace, Ryan, Steve, Tyler, Brandon, Harrison, Theo and Violet, Will and Lars from Agile Space, Joel, The Astrogators at SEE, Lee, Benjamin, Bob, Matt, and four anonymous—and 821 other supporters.TopicsVoyager Space and Airbus create commercial space station joint venture - SpaceNewsESA to start commercial cargo program - SpaceNewsAirbus and Voyager sign agreement with ESA on Starlab commercial space station - SpaceNewsVirgin Galactic lays off staff as it focuses on next-generation suborbital vehicle - SpaceNewsVirgin Galactic to halt Unity suborbital flights by mid-2024 - SpaceNewsVirgin Galactic’s president explains how VSS Unity is now flying frequently | 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 NASAWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

Hello and welcome to Managing Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo. I've got two storylines I want to talk about today. Number one is the European Space Agency and their relationship with commercial space station projects coming up in the near future, how they're going to manage that, some announcements that they made over the last couple of days coming out of their big summit. And then number two is some storylines coming out of Virgin Galactic, where they had a round of layoffs. They've also changed some plans for their current VSS Unity space plane and what its roadmap looks like over the next couple of months, and what their roadmap overall looks like over the next couple of months and what their roadmap overall looks like over the next two or three years. Two big storylines to follow for the future

of commercial space at large. So to start with the European side of things, probably helpful if we go back and do a little context with what's going on with space stations at the moment. So right now we've got the ISS, obviously, NASA, European Space Agencies, Japanese Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency, the Russian Space Agency is all partners on this project, but it's coming up on its lifetime. And nobody knows what's next. So this is the thing I've been talking about for months, which is, you know, the NASA budget situation, if you go back, listen to the most recent show I did with Marsha Smith of Space Policy Online. You know, we talked about the budget situation that they're in where NASA has a ton of funding obligations to get out of the jam of the ISS right now.

The ISS is really expensive. They want to move to commercial space stations beyond that because they also have the Artemis program going on, but they also need to pay for the ISS deorbit tug. There are so many budgetary demands on the ISS program right now that it makes it really tough for funding for commercial space stations that would hypothetically follow on the ISS. So after the ISS is no longer up in orbit, but NASA wants some astronaut time in low Earth orbit, they would pay a company who's running one of these space stations to basically rent space, both human space and research space on board as needed. So that's probably like two astronauts at a time, somewhat ongoing. But that's just the NASA side. These other partners haven't really figured out what they're going to do after the ISS comes down. And that's been something that I felt was always,

it needed resolution, really, to figure out, you know, what are these other partners going to care about beyond the ISS? And so I was particularly interested a couple of months back, this was in August, where the announcement was official, that one of the competitors on the new commercial space station projects got Airbus involved with their bid. So for additional context, there's a handful of companies that are in a sort of design round competition for future commercial space stations. NASA will eventually down select pick certain companies to receive

additional funding to actually develop and launch a commercial space station. One of those competitors is a company called Voyager Space that's working with a couple of other partners to build a space station called Starlab. One of the partners they were working with was Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin dropped out and they brought in Airbus Defense and Space to join in on that project as well, which I found particularly interesting because it was the first of the commercial space station projects that had any tie at a top level to a European partner. Now I say at a top level because Axi partner. Now I say at a top level, because Axiom Space, who's building a couple of modules to add on to the ISS before going to create a free-flying version of a space station after that, they are getting their pressure

vessels built by Thales Alenia in Italy, so there's certainly a European tie there, but they're not competitors on the top-line, free-flying, commercial space station project right off the bat. So Voyager was the first one to really engage with a European partner at a top level like that, which I found interesting because I do think that, you know, all these companies right now are talking about they can't have just NASA as a customer. They do need to find other customers to make the business case close here because of the funding levels that they're expecting NASA to be able to support. And as I said, the other ISS partners are not yet sure what they're going to do post-ISS. Feels like a pretty good idea to engage one of the other major partners and say, you know, would you be interested in having some sort of commercial space stations, you know, access to them beyond the ISS so that you can fly your astronauts up there. That felt very prudent. So I was very enthused about this decision from Voyager. I've been talking it up for months. On the most recent episode that I mentioned with Marsha Smith, talked about the fact that, you know, I had this kind of crazy theory that the Europeans funding

a commercial space station project is a way for NASA to to solve their budgetary logjam and i thought this timeline of this prediction or you know assessment would be much longer than like half a week but lo and behold the european space agency has signed an agreement with airbus and voyager to to start working with them on you know what it would be like to make use of star lab as a space station what kind of access could they have to the space station? What would they use it for, both astronauts and research? So engaging with them in the way that I thought would be very prudent to do for both ESA and the competitors at large. Now that came after an announcement that the European Space Agency is going to begin a commercial cargo style program,

agency is going to begin a commercial cargo style program, similar to the one NASA ran so many years ago now, but that this is going to be a program that they take on where they want to have a vehicle that can deliver cargo to the space station and return it to Earth. Their deadline was by 2028, but the funding that they laid out doesn't really make sense to support that timeline. And this announcement actually came first and i was like okay this is clearly leaning in the commercial space station direction because if you you know miss the iss timeline at least you have these other commercial space stations that you could use this service for uh and then the isa airbus voyager announcement came very shortly after that so it does feel very linked um so to give you a sketch of why I'm

concerned about the funding for this commercial cargo program, they've got about $80 million US, 75 million euros, right now coming out of existing funding within the European Space Agency, where they can award study contracts to two or three companies to develop this kind of, it's probably like a capsule-based situation know it sounds very analogous to spacex dragon which was built to handle cargo to the iss but you know it's shaped like something that can fly humans to and from the iss and eventually evolved to do that that sounds like what they want to do um but 80 million dollars for study contracts okay it's a good start um you know but the obvious question is what's after that? Well, they have to go to a ministerial meeting in 2025 where they would have to get funding

allocated by ESA member states. So if you're looking at study contracts now and then 2025 is when you would get the first chance to lobby for this funding and, you know, then you have to figure out what kind of funding are we able to get out of that meeting and you you want to fly in 2028. That timeline just doesn't make a lot of sense. If they're able to go in and get funding in 2025, you know, maybe they can fly in 2030, 2032 or something like that with this vehicle, which I think it was, it's still a really interesting scenario because it paints a picture of what Europe wants out of these commercial space station projects. The fact that they are interested in, signing these agreements

with Voyager, looking at actual hardware level programs to support this kind of project. As a statement of intent, I think it's notable. We heard a lot of talk from last November to this one that Europe was starting to get interested in their own human spaceflight. I'm glad they didn't start there because it's a huge jump to go from where they are now to a full-on human spaceflight program. And I think the commercial cargo style roadmap makes a lot more sense for this to sort of build up to that capability. But again, it's good signaling of where ESA's brain is on space stations and low Earth orbit after the ISS. And I think it's a good indication that there is interest there.

This idea that Voyager and Airbus had to partner up to be able to have hooks into the European side of things, that's a valid thing. I think it does change. You know, if this is something that Europe is going to put funding behind when they get to 2025, and they're going to put some serious funding behind this commercial cargo program, we'll see where this partnership with Voyager develops. I think it does start to come into the calculus of NASA's budget and figure out, you know, maybe we only need to fund, you know, 60, 70% of what we thought we would need to fund for commercial space stations, because ESA is

actually interested in kicking in a certain amount of funding. If Japan gets interested as well, maybe that can drop to 50% of what NASA thinks they need to provide. You know, maybe these other partners are curious in having something like this, and it gets NASA out of a logjam of a budget that just doesn't seem to, you know, the math doesn't come out right, no matter how I can draw it up on my side of things. So I really want to hear from these other ISS partner countries to say, you know, we are kicking off programs like this. We're interested in funding or partnering on these kinds of things. We're even doing work to figure out how we would make use of commercial space stations. Overall, I feel like it's a really good scenario for low Earth orbit if, you know, you're looking at a wider view than just like the the fundamental technology

technology and specifics around any given um architecture it just zoom out a little bit and see like oh the partners there are still kind of interested in this and there might be funding there that we didn't have in the math equation previously that's a good sign overall now the competition that is going to happen here for the commercial cargo program that europe wants to start that's going to be interesting. You know, there are some European companies that have announced plans for cargo spacecraft. There's one called the Exploration Company that is working on a series of capsules. They had a goal of sending one to the ISS in 2027.

They got a Series A round of funding in February for like 40 million euros or something like that. of funding in February for like 40 million euros or something like that. There's RFA, the launch company out of Germany, had announced that was partnering with Atmos Space Cargo and OHB on a cargo vehicle back in, I think it was the early fall, a couple months ago, maybe late summer. So there are companies interested in this sort of work. It'll be curious to see if any one of those spring to the surface here. But overall, I'm just encouraged by the signaling here. I'm thrilled that I can take a victory lap on the Airbus Voyager ESA situation.

And I really do think it could be a solution to get out of the budgetary log jam that is happening here in the US when it comes to commercial space stations. Because, you know, you always try to avoid being too US-centric, but when it comes to a project like this, I don't know that anyone is going to foot the full bill

of a commercial space station other than NASA. And even then, NASA can't really do it. So, you know, if it comes to a scenario where NASA's got a little bit of money, can you finish off the funding that you need there by pulling together some of these other partner countries and organizations to take part in this program and at least make the development of those space stations, make those financials close before you worry about the ongoing business needs, which is a much bigger

problem and I think is evidenced by the fact that there are companies dropping out of this commercial space station situation right now and reconsidering their organization of this project. All in all, I remain interested in Starlab. I'm curious to see how this develops and, of course, I'll be watching it. So good update from Europe there. Now, before we get into the Virgin Galactic stuff, I want to say thank you to everyone who supports Main Engine Cutoff over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. There are 853 of you remaining after a serious amount of card declines. So if you're not seeing headlines in your feed, you probably got declined because there was a gigantic number of you. So we'll see how many come back. Maybe it's just that time of

the year. Who knows? Whatever I know is, all I know is I am very thankful for all of you that are supporting over there, including the 35 executive producers who produced this episode of Main Engine Cutoff. Thanks to Russell, Eunice, Chris, SmallSpark Space Systems, Tindad, The Every Astronaut, Jan, Chris, David, Warren, StealthJulian, Craig from SpaceHappyHour.com, Pat from KC, Frank, Donald, Pat, Fred, Dawn Aerospace, Ryan, Steve, Tyler, Brandon, Harrison, Theo and Violet, Will and Lars from Agile Space, Joel, TheAstrogators at SCE, Lee, Benjamin, Bob, Matt, and four anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for making this episode possible.

If you want to join their crew and get Miko headlines in your feed, there was an episode that came out right before this one did. So you could get that in your feed by going to maininchicotoff.com slash support and joining up there. I thank you all for your support. And let's get back to the topics here. All right, Virgin Galactic. I'm not sure I have a ton to say on this, the topics here. All right, Virgin Galactic. I'm not sure I have a ton to say on this, honestly, but it felt like a storyline that was worthy of a bit of thought, at least. I have a couple things to think through because I'm not honestly quite sure which direction this is going to go yet, but let me sketch out what's going on for you if you have not kept up. So Virgin Galactic has flown a series of commercial space stations, commercial suborbital missions

so far with VSS Unity, their current space plane. They've flown Galactic 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, which are their actual real commercial space line missions. And they've been flying with about three commercial astronauts, private astronauts on board and an employee in the fourth seat. That's due to change on their next flight, Galactic Six. They're going to fly four customers in their space plane. So you'd think that's great. Things are going well. They've flown these. People are happy. Well, not so. There's a big shakeup coming at Virgin Galactic. So they announced round

layoffs last week, about 20% of the workforce, 185 jobs, which is pretty steep for a company that has about a billion dollars of cash and equivalents on hand. 1.1 billion, I think, is the most recent stat that they ended the quarter with. So it's an interesting scenario because what they're talking is up to is they want to preserve funding for the next class of space planes that they're developing. They call them the Delta class. The goal there is to be able to fly more frequently and lower cost than the current Spaceship Two, VSS Unity. And they're trying to have this enter service in 2026. It's going to be built different. There was an interview with Eric Berger.

I want to say it was back in August. Let's see. Yeah, this was August 29th. I think it was when Eric was out for one of the commercial space flights that they did. And he had a big interview with Mike Moses talking about, um, the state of VSS unity, what's coming with the Delta class. And in that they talk about, you

know, lifespan of vehicles, um, how the vehicles are doing, why they're moving to the Delta class of vehicles. And they talk about the fact that, um, they are making these vehicles much more manufacturable. They are going to build them so that there is less maintenance, that they look at less between flights, that they can fly much more frequently and be able to generate the way they source it is 12 times more revenue per month compared to Unity. Because right now they're just losing money on these VSS Unity flights by a good clip. They're only flying three, now four people, pretty high costs of maintenance on these vehicles. So they're just losing money month after month. So they're making

the decision to fly only three more times, maybe three more times. Galactic 6 in January, Galactic 7 in the early second quarter. And then it sounds like there may be a Galactic 8 mission, but that VSS Unity would be done flying by middle of next year mid 2024 and then they have a two-year gap before these new delta class vehicles that i've been talking about would come online um they're making this decision now and i guess why they're making it now is the interesting part you know they they say that they are going to focus these last couple missions on higher revenue opportunities. They're going to get more revenue per seat on research missions than private astronauts. They're going to try to prioritize those, but they'd be willing, if you're willing to pay a premium up to a million dollars,

you can fly on one of these last couple missions. But then we're going down, we're focusing on Delta class vehicles, and we're going to make this two-year jump forward onto this new class, because we think it's the right decision for the long term. And, you know, you could say, I guess this is them being honest with what their financial situation is. They've got a billion dollars in cash and equivalents. They're burning a ton of cash, you know, $100 million, $130 million per quarter, something like that. So it's not a huge runway. And maybe by, you know, dropping VSS Unity off the off the, the, you know, the run sheet, they can make the runway last before they until they can get this Delta class vehicle online. But that interview with Eric Berger that I talked about, you know,

they were talking about the lifespan of VSS Unity. And they said, Oh, we did this long maintenance period from 2021 to 2023, because they wanted to beef up the system. So we didn't have to look at it between every flight. And we think that this, this airframes got 500 to 1000 flights on it, a 10 year lifespan. And then three months later, they're like, actually, we've only got three more flights on this thing before we're, you know, dropping it out. So, you know, which one of these things is it? Is it purely that they're looking at their financial runway and saying, you know, if we don't stop this now, we're not going to make it to the Delta class of vehicles. We're just going to continually lose

money until we're out of money and we've flown 15 times and then we're out of business. But if we drop now and we do a hard cut over the Delta class, we might make it, we might be able to make it with our funding all the way to those new Delta class of vehicles, assuming that, you know, they have a flawless manufacture and test campaign and are able to get flying on that schedule, which seems unlikely, you know, if we see a Delta class Virgin Galactic flight before 2027, I think we'd be, you know, thrilled to see it. So it's a huge gap that they've got to jump. It makes me a little bit suspicious that they had this big long maintenance period from 2021 to early 2023, where they said they're going to

beef up this thing so they can fly it more frequently, they can do less maintenance on it. Feels like that just didn't pan out at all. And they have lifespan concerns of this vehicle. And maybe they've got concerns about, you know, how far into the future could we fly this thing before we have an incident. And with the architecture of Virgin Galactic and VSS Unity, anything that goes wrong is almost certainly a loss of vehicle and loss of all the crew on board, because there's just not a lot of scenarios that you could devise that are, you know, able to be recovered from. It's a weird vehicle. It doesn't have an abort mode in,

in any earnest sense, the way that new shepherd does. It's the reason that I'm not big on this vehicle overall. So maybe it's the fact that they got back from this maintenance period and they said, actually, this is not going to work out. Like we thought it would, we got to cut our losses and move to Delta class. Maybe it's a little bit of both, right? They were hoping to be able to fly through this gap. Um, but now they realize that they got to just, you know, cut and run over to Delta before they can get back flying. But I just keep thinking about how aggravating this must be if you're somebody who's got a ticket on Virgin Galactic.

You see them making this progress through this test campaign. After all these years, they finally get flying with commercial flights. They seem to be hitting a monthly cadence with these flights. Everything seems to be going great. They're getting good headlines on it. People are loving it. They're flying all sorts of different people. It's working out really cool. And then this, you know, a three year gap before it even picks back up where it was. And even then there was a couple of ticket flyers going, but or ticket buyers flying, but not a lot. It's a really frustrating scenario, and I'm curious. As we're now on the cusp of Blue Origin getting back to flying,

does this give Blue Origin again? It's just this tick-tock with this weird suborbital market. Blue Origin goes down for a couple of months, and everyone goes, oh, well, Virgin Galactic's flying. Maybe they'll start sealing customers. And then Virgin Galactic decides to completely bail on their space plane, and we're all like, oh, well, maybe everyone will go over to Blue Origin and pay them money to go up to see Earth from space. It's all in all a very weird

market. It does seem like a big opportunity for Blue Origin, for sure. They've got a couple of years here where they've kind of got the run of the place. So if they can get flying again and get back to their pretty regular cadence that they were flying before their issue, that would be a good sign for them. That's probably a good opportunity for them to, to, uh, sign some new customers. Um, but all in all, I, I'm, I'm just, uh, a little bit mystified here, but the Virgin Galactic storyline, I really want to know a little bit more, details on the Unity side of things. Was it really just a financial decision, or was it the fact that this maintenance period did not work out at all? I'm not sure. There's no way this was the plan, that they go down for two years of

maintenance to beef up Unity, and then they fly it eight times, and then they're down again. There's no way that this was the plan. So something went wrong internally, whether that was the sole reason that they decided to do this or just a reason that it made it easier to make this decision. Something was going on there. And I really want to know if we'll ever hear anything about it. Um, I'm not sure we will given the track record of not hearing a lot about a lot of things until the book comes out. But it does seem like there's a little bit of a storyline there. So if any little birdies want to send me an anonymous email, always open for that kind of thing.

I promise I won't give you away, but I might, you know, wink, wink, nudge, nudge in some direction if there is anything interesting there to know. But I guess we shall see how that plays out. That is all I've got for you today. Thank you all so much for listening. Thanks for your support as always. Again, managecutoff.com slash support. That's where you go if you like what I'm doing. This is 100% listener supported.

You're never going to hear an ad on this program other than me telling you that you support me and I love that. And I think it's what keeps the show really great. So if you think so too i would love your support i would love you to have a listen at uh of miko headlines that's a show that i think is a really nice addition to your podcast listening so check that out but otherwise hit me up on email if you got any questions or tips i guess a virgin galactic anthony at managingcutoff.com

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Bye! Bye.