Main Engine Cut Off - T+28: The Future of NASA and the Moon

Episode Date: November 2, 2016

NASA released an RFI for small scientific payloads bound for the lunar surface, meant to “address strategic knowledge gaps” associated with human missions to the Moon. I talk about how this could indicate a shift of the SLS/Orion roadmap, and how NASA may be focusing on lunar surface missions in order to build more political capital for the program of record. Lunar Commercial Cargo Lite - Main Engine Cut Off NASA signals interest in extending commercial spaceflight to the Moon | Ars Technica Lunar CATALYST | NASA Eric Berger on Twitter T+27: Financial vs. Political Capital and Mission Sustainability - Main Engine Cut Off Moon Village: humans and robots together on the Moon / DG's news and views / About Us / ESA T+20: Mike Johnson, Chief Designer at NanoRacks on NanoRacks’ History, NextSTEP, and Wet Workshops - Main Engine Cut Off Email feedback to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Subscribe on iTunes, Overcast, or elsewhere Subcribe to Main Engine Cut Off Weekly Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo. Last week on the podcast here, I talked about political capital and how that could be used to sustain a program over a series of years. And this week, I kind of want to expound on that a little bit, but especially as it pertains to the future of NASA's exploration program. Right now, they have SLS and Orion in the works, working towards a Mars mission, as they say. Of course, that doesn't happen until the late 2030s on their roadmap. In the next 10 to 15 years, they will be in and around cislunar space.

And there's a lot coming out about the moon recently that kind of tipped their hand that we might see SLS and Orion used to support lunar landings, and whether it be short sorties or longer stays at the surface, it seems more and more likely that SLS and Orion will be used to support those missions in the next 10 to 20 years. So today in particular, NASA released an RFI for small instruments that could be placed on small landers sent to the moon to figure out some of the things that they don't know yet about supporting robotic missions and human missions on the surface of the moon. I'm going to read a few blurbs from the Ars Technica article written by Eric Berger about this RFI and talking a little

bit about what it is, what it's defined to do, what the point of it is, and how Moon Express is going to be taking advantage of this program quite a bit. Now, Moon Express is one of the companies trying to win the Google Lunar X Prize by the end of next calendar year. They have a couple of flights booked with Rocket Lab to head out to the moon and land on the moon. So that's just a little background on why they're included in this. But let me read a blurb or two kind of about this RFI and what it is and what it's meant to do. NASA is asking for information about small instruments that could be placed on small lunar landers, and our interest is that we want to address our strategic knowledge gaps,

said John Guidi, Deputy Director of the Advanced Exploration Systems Division within NASA's Human Spaceflight Division. Those knowledge gaps which NASA is studying to increase the effectiveness and improve the design of robotic and human space exploration missions to the moon, including understanding the availability of resources such as water ice as well as better understand how the lunar environment will affect human life and the ability to work and live on the lunar surface for long periods of time. By using low-cost private launchers and small privately developed payloads, the space agency hopes to find answers to some of these research questions within its limited exploration budget." So just in those two paragraphs alone,

you heard a few things that should peak your ears about what this is for. They want to close knowledge gaps about how humans could live on the lunar surface for long stays. And the person talking about all this was within NASA's human spaceflight division. So there's a lot of nods here to what this is intended to do. Now, throughout the rest of the piece, Eric kind of describes a little bit about the way NASA's handling this. None of these people that are responding to the RFI are expecting to get funding for the development from NASA. They have not committed to funding the development of anything that they pick in this program. They aren't going to pay for any rocket launches. But depending on what they actually do hear back, they may change their mind on that. And they might do something a little bit of a cost sharing basis with the people

responding to this. Interestingly, they didn't say anything about the size of these payloads. They just kind of said that they should be small in size. But the quote was, we didn't specify a particular mass constraint, but the intent here is to solicit for payloads that would be suitable for delivery with an emerging U.S. commercial transportation services to the moon. And in that instance, they're talking about Moon Express, who is trying to win the Google Lunar XPRIZE, but then is trying to be a commercial delivery mechanism to the lunar surface. You know, the name is kind of meant to play on FedEx, Federal Express. It's meant to be a delivery service to the moon. Now, there are two angles

I want to talk here about with this announcement from NASA. There's the angle about the exploration program, and I'm going to talk about that in a few minutes. But the other way that this goes is that this is kind of a precursor to a potential commercial cargo program focused on the moon. The way that we have a commercial cargo program now for the ISS, this sort of feels like a precursor to commercial cargo missions. They're trying to figure out if there are private companies able to deliver payloads to the surface of the moon. And in tandem with another program called Lunar Catalyst, which is the Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown program, those two programs together really do feel like a precursor

to commercial cargo missions to the moon. Catalyst is an initiative that established multiple no-funds-exchange space act agreements to develop robotic landers that are capable of getting payloads to the moon, and Moon Express is one of those. Mastin is another one developing their Zeus concept, which was originally based on Centaur and now maybe based on Aces. And Astrobotic is another company that is part of Catalyst. for what they might do in the future with commercial companies as it pertains to the moon. Maybe this is the way that NASA would contribute to the ESA moon village idea. If the international community is going to the moon and they're going to be setting up something on the moon, maybe NASA's contribution would be a commercial cargo program to get supplies down to that base or to get whatever payloads may be necessary to set up the base. It could be an interesting thing that they would offer and say that, you know, this is our government program of getting things to the moon and it's all private sector because we're focused on Mars. That is a viable

thing that could come out of a commercial cargo program to the moon. And certainly on the Mars front, we are seeing that there is precedent for a commercial cargo program to Mars. You know, SpaceX is going to start sending Red Dragons to Mars, hopefully in 2018, but definitely by 2020. And that certainly feels like something that could be extended to a commercial cargo program. You know, NASA is going to fly payloads on some of these Red Dragons. So in a way that they already are kind of doing this, but it's just not fully established in the way that commercial cargo to ISS is right now. So I don't know that there's too much there to say about those potentials, but just trying to make you think about this kind of program and how it might

be played out in the future and how this might kind of show the direction that NASA's heading for this kind of public-private interaction. The way that we saw on ISS with cargo and crew, that's something that we could see extended to other places in the solar system. And really, you know, with how well the commercial programs are going, some people say that they're not going great because of scheduling and all that and the issues we've seen. But overall, I think there's so much potential in these commercial programs that it would be amazing if this was something that got extended out beyond LEO and got extended out to the moon or Mars or wherever we really want to go. The commercial programs like this are pretty great ideas. And I think the more of them we do,

the better at them we will get collectively. and the issues that there are within the program will get sorted out, we'll understand how to operate these programs better and more effectively, and it's something that I see as very viable for the future. But more interestingly is the exploration side of this all. So right now I said SLS is, you know, kind of... They've got a few missions on the books, but not a lot of stuff to do yet. They don't have a very well-defined roadmap. It's pretty vague after the first flight. And, you know, even the gap between the first flight and the second flight is going to be about

five years. So that's a lot of time for policy to change and for roadmaps to change. But it's definitely at an inflection point right now where there's going to be some decisions that need to be made over the next few years about what these things are going to do in the next 10 to 20 years by themselves. Obviously, we're about a week away from the election here in the U.S. It's a big election. It's presidential. Plus, a lot of Congress is up for re-election this year and some interesting races that pertain to space. John McCain looks like he'll win his seat back, and he was one of the people leading the charge for the RD-180 ban, so he's certainly a guy that cares about national security and space and that kind of stuff. So there are some races relevant to space.

I'm not going to talk about the races much right here, because honestly, it doesn't seem useful right now. I might talk about it more in the future when we know who wins and when we see who's put in place at NASA and if there are any policy announcements. But it might take a while to get any of that. You know, it typically takes a year to really understand what a president, what an administration is going to do with NASA and with the space program in general. It's not a priority by any means in this race.

It's not something that anyone's really talked about too much. Obviously, there have been journalistic outlets that have sent questions to the campaigns, but all they got back was really boilerplate kind of stuff. And I don't think it's worth getting into who might be better for space or anything like that. But, you know, just to say that the election does present a point at which things typically change with NASA and with their plans. The last presidential turnover led to the programs we have now. The Constellation program was underway under the Bush presidency. Obama came in, had the transition team, the Augustine Commission, and kind of redirected the efforts of what we were doing by taking Constellation out of the

budget entirely, then Congress resurrected SLS and Orion out of that budget change. And that's where we're at today, where we have SLS and Orion, but there's not an overarching architecture the way there was with Constellation. Constellation, for all of its drawbacks, had this document that said, this is where we're going to go first, this is where we're going to go second, that's where we're going to go third, and did have a little bit of detail about how we would do that. The NASA roadmap now just says, this is where we go, this is where we go,

this is where we go, with no details attached. So from a 10,000-foot view level, there's not a lot of difference in the roadmaps as it is right now. The biggest one was that the current roadmap does not include a return to the lunar surface. So all that's to say is that NASA is in need of putting together the next few steps for the SLS Orion programs. They're at the point when they're ready to start saying, here's what we're going to fly on these flights. And, you know, we've seen the Next Step Habitat proposals and the six companies that they're working with for those deep space habitats that would support the

flights in the 2020s for SLS and Orion or beyond. We talked with Mike Johnson of NanoRacks here on Main Engine Cutoff about the wet workshop proposal as part of that. I'll put a link into the show notes to check out that interview if you haven't heard that. I think it's a great conversation with Mike and very interesting to hear about what they're working on. And, you know, there are these pieces that NASA is beginning to work on for the flights in the 2020s, and they're just not quite ready to put these pieces out there. And they're just not quite ready to put these pieces out there, but they are getting all of their ducks in a row to make decisions on the next few flights of SLS Orion. So when you couple all of that together with the ideas I was discussing last week about political capital and how political capital is what you need to sustain a program, all

of the pieces come together in a way that show that a lunar return would make the most sense politically, right? And, you know, you and I, who are of the spaceflight community, who care about space exploration and want to see us get to Mars, when we hear that, we're sad because we want to see people go to Mars. I am a proponent of going to Mars first and establishing humanity there because of how useful it is and how resourceful we can make it, whereas the moon is not that resourceful for us. So I'm a supporter of going to Mars first, and whenever I hear programs about going back to the moon or whatever,

my personal feeling is that that's not a good decision. But when I look at it from a political level, I see all the signs pointing to that being the right direction politically. And that's because that idea would have the political capital to sustain itself in a way that going to Mars first with SLS Orion and bypassing the moon and bypassing international collaboration at the moon and bypassing the opportunity for these commercial programs at the moon, that might not have the political capital that would enable it to be sustained. that I was reading from a little bit ago. He's been talking about this a lot, that there are a lot of signs pointing to the fact that the next president would pivot,

if it's even a pivot at this point, would focus on the moon and returning to the moon sometime in 2017, 2018 is when they would outline this plan. He's been talking about it so much that it certainly seems like he's heard from a few little birdies about what might be coming down the pipe. You know, he's in Houston, so certainly in the right spot to hear about space policy decisions. But it certainly seems like he's got a little bit of corroborating

information there, which is interesting because, you know, it is going to be a policy change. But right now, SLS and Orion are agnostic of their destination. They are built just as much for the moon as they are for Mars right now. That was the point of SLS Orion, was that there would be this agnostic launch vehicle. That was a point of contention and dismay for supporters of other alternative plans, but for the descendant of Constellation, that was the plan, to have this agnostic launch system and a crew vehicle that could support multiple destinations. So this wouldn't even necessarily be a pivot, more of just inserting lunar return to this roadmap.

Now, let me talk a little bit about why I think it has such political capital, enough to be supported in the near future. And any conversation about that can't really ignore the fact that there is a bit of nostalgia, especially for members of Congress who were alive during the Apollo years. There is a bit of nostalgia about moon missions and about seeing U.S. astronauts, or in this case, international astronauts, heading to the lunar surface and getting out on the lunar surface. There is a bit of nostalgia that brings in a bit of political capital when you're thinking about what gains support in policy. And that can't be discounted. It's a minor thing, and you and I

wouldn't make decisions on it. You and I would have a different roadmap and a different plan for getting people out into the solar system. But that can't be denied when you're talking about political decisions, when you're talking about political decisions, when you're talking about Congress, who holds the purse strings, who makes the decisions of what NASA is going to focus on. Nostalgia is a powerful force. The other thing is that it's much closer of a vision for people to understand than the long-term Mars project would be. And it's a lot easier to accept the risks of a lunar program because you don't have to think about the fact

that it would be a two- to three-year journey for people going out to Mars. The moon could take from weeks to months, depending on what you want to do there, how long you want to stay on the surface, how long you want to stay in orbit, all of those parameters. But it's a completely different time scale. So politically, when you're thinking about this, and you're in an environment like we've

talked about in the past about failure not being an option for NASA, it doesn't bode well for a Mars program. The risks of a Mars program are a little politically unstable, which compromises the political capital that a Mars program would have. The moon, on the other hand, is very close. It's very easy to get to. Mars technically isn't much harder to get to because you're talking Delta V here, but time-wise and risk-wise, you are much closer and you are much safer if you stay near the Moon. The other interesting thing about a lunar return is that it could come with some international collaboration. You know, there's this idea from ESA about a moon village,

about people contributing to a small station on the moon, and China's heading out towards the moon. You know, they're working in low Earth orbit right now, but they have lunar ambitions. They're building up to bigger and bigger launch vehicles that would be capable of supporting a lunar return. Russia's talked about it a lot. So pretty much every other player right now is talking about a lunar return, and the US isn't. And it's easy to say, you know, been there, done that, we're heading to Mars, well, you all do that. But I think certain politicians might be concerned about the fact that we are leaving ourselves out of those international plans. You know, whether or not China and ESA would work together, that's probably not likely.

But if everyone's focusing on the moon and you're not, that might be concerning to certain politicians, and concerning enough that they're able to say, maybe going to the moon is a good idea because everyone is doing it, so we should be there. We should have a foothold there, and we shouldn't leave the moon for everyone else. Even in context of Orion, NASA has shown a desire for international collaboration. They outsourced the service module of Orion to Europe, and, you know, cynically, that was because they knew it would be harder to cancel when they've already committed to working with an international partner on this program. It brings about certain schedule delays and risks associated with transporting this thing from Europe to here. But they did that for a political reason, and that was for political capital reasons, for safety reasons, for lock-in.

So if that's the case with Orion and with hardware, that would be even more of the case for a roadmap and a plan long-term. So the international front sort of seems like the way that NASA would prefer to work on something like that. But there are a few other factors at play. And one, as I mentioned, is the commercial programs like the RFI Today and a potential commercial cargo program for lunar return that could support the efforts of NASA going to the lunar surface. That's something that has a lot of political support already. commercial cargo and crew programs. They still are. There's big supporters in there in Congress and certain people that may be the NASA administrator in the future, or at least a close advisor. Think Lori Garver here, strongly support the commercial programs. So if that was something that could be worked into the NASA roadmap for exploration of the moon, that would

again boost the political capital that program would have. Because all of a sudden, you don't have these two programs fighting with each other's budget. Right now, you have the commercial crew and cargo programs that support the ISS fighting with SLS Orion for the budget of NASA. If you're able to bring those things together and focused on the same goal, and you go from, you know, fighting over budget to sharing a larger piece of the budget, and hopefully, you know the commercial programs would be very interested in this roadmap decision because it puts commercial partners right up with the rest of the international community in support of the NASA roadmap or support of the international roadmap to get to the moon. So that would kind of bolster the support for this program if they're able to bring those two things together. Certainly they could do that focused on Mars, and right now SpaceX is the one that

is the obvious choice there, because they will be sending the Red Dragons out to Mars, as I said. But I think it's a little easier to see the moon happening when we do have these private companies developing lunar landers now. The pieces are in place. NASA's already put these two programs in place in Lunar Catalyst and the RFID they released today that kind of point towards commercial uses of the moon and privatization of travel to the moon. So it just seems like something that would fit very nicely to bring these two halves of NASA, these two kind of factions together and bolster political support by joining forces. And you know, the last thing is that it wouldn't upset the entire roadmap right now

too much to insert this. So if inserting a lunar return adds political capital to the program by what I just talked about, the international community stuff, the commercial partner stuff, if you're adding political capital to the program in general by inserting a lunar return, and you still don't have to throw everything that you're doing now up into the air, that seems very politically motivating. And what I mean here is the fact that SLS and Orion were salvaged out of the cancellation of Constellation by Congress because those two pieces had the political capital necessary to be sustained even beyond the cancellation of a program that it was involved in. Constellation as a whole didn't have the political capital

necessary to save it, but SLS and Orion specifically did. And those were salvaged out of the 2010 budget, or the lack of budget, I guess. And that's what we have today because of the things that we all like to be cynical about, that certain senators and people in the House of Representatives, they want the jobs in their district. It's moving through the Gulf states and all of those things that we'd like to be cynical about. I get why we're cynical about that as a community, but in honesty, that is the role of those representatives and senators from those districts, is to support the people in their district. So it's not surprising that NASA was

working this way, because NASA has always worked this way, by kind of pulling in the jobs into your districts. But all that stuff, those were the reasons that SLS and Orion were salvaged in the first place. And those are still true today. You know, the Alabama, Mississippi, that whole thing, they all want those jobs still. They want to maintain SLS. They want to keep it going because it's really good for them and where they're from. And on the other side, it's really good for Lockheed Martin and Boeing and Orbital ATK and the contractors that are part of this program as a whole, that this program continue on into the future. So my point here is that if you can continue making

all of the people that are happy with the current program, happy that you're continuing the program, and then you add in international partners, commercial partners, and you bring even more political support to this program, that in general seems too politically motivating to skip, to kind of give up on by just saying, you know, we're going to go to Mars alone and not do it with the international community, maybe not do it with the commercial partners. We're just going to go there and try to do it ourselves. That doesn't have as much political capital as saying, we're going to use the program that we're building now, and we're going to go to the moon with our international partners, with our commercial partners. This is going to be a whole effort across the entire industry

to get boots back on the surface of the moon. Again, it's important to look at these decisions and these political decisions and these roadmap decisions and the programs that get funded it's important to look at them from a different level than does this make technical sense or does this make financial sense because it needs to make political sense to get anywhere if it's a NASA program and that's why it's interesting to see what Blue Origin is going to do and it's interesting to see what SpaceX is going to do at Mars but when you're thinking about NASA and the exploration program and any program NASA That's why it's interesting to see what Blue Origin is going to do, and it's interesting to see what SpaceX is going to do at Mars. But when you're thinking about NASA and the exploration program and any program at NASA,

you have to think about, does it make political sense to do this? Does it have the political support necessary to happen? And that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get the most efficient program or the program that will get you there the fastest. But it does mean that you will get the program that the political side can handle and can support and can sustain. And that's the reason that I want to talk about this in this way, because I don't want to just look at an idea of a lunar return and say, oh, that's garbage because we should be heading out to Mars. When in reality, if a lunar return is the thing that makes most political sense

to get the funding necessary to carry out a program like this, that is not invalid. That isn't an invalid reason to do it. That is a very valid reason to do it because this is a government program that is funded through Congress. And it's something that, you know, the decisions about this program are made in this way because that's the way it's set up. That is where it comes from. It is a government program. It is a piece of the U.S. government. It is a part of the

administration. And that is the way this works. So, you know, it's just, it's not wise to say, well, we shouldn't go back because it doesn't make technical sense or it doesn't make, you know, sense with if you really want to get to Mars, you should just go to Mars. That's all good reasons to go straight to Mars. But when you're thinking about political things, you need to think about them politically. So this is something we'll be keeping an eye on over the next few months. Again, I don't think we'll hear about this on November 9th. It's going to take a while for the new president to get in there and start talking

about the policies. And, you know, we probably won't even hear anything about this roadmap change until 8 to 12 months from now. There might be hat tips at it from NASA more, like we're seeing now.

We might see things that hint at what's coming. And we'll keep an eye on that. We'll bring them up when they happen. But we probably won't hear anything concrete until next year at the earliest. But that doesn't mean we can't keep talking about it. So I want to hear from you what you think about all this stuff that we're talking about here. Are we going to return to the moon? Do you think we should? Do you understand the political side? Do you not understand the political side?

I want to hear from you about this potential plan, this potential pivot of sorts to go from just cislunar space and then Mars to an actual lunar return. Do you want to see that happen? Are you encouraged by international support? Are you encouraged by commercial support? Send me your thoughts and email those to anthony at mainenginecutoff.com. I will read out some of the responses on future shows, and we can kind of keep talking about this through the political season, through the election, through the transition team that we might see, the new NASA administrator we might see.

Send me your thoughts on these political decisions about where NASA is headed during the next four to eight years. anthony at mainenginecutoff.com. And also, before I go, I just want to say thank you to all of those supporting Main Engine Cutoff over on Patreon. Patreon is where you can go to help support Main Engine Cutoff. I'm doing this blog, this podcast, this weekly column that I started, doing it all myself. This is a one-man show with no outside help, no outside advertising, or anything like that. It's a 100% listener supported, reader

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Thank you very much for listening, and I will talk to you next week.