Main Engine Cut Off - T+310: NASA’s “Prove It” Era

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

NASA selected Blue Origin to (maybe) deliver the once-cancelled VIPER rover, modified Sierra Space’s ISS resupply contract which likely puts the nail in the coffin of Dream Chaser, and released the draft of its new commercial space station strategy. All different stories with one message: prove it. But maybe not in a good way.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 34 executive producers—Jan, Kris, Lee, Will and Lars from Agile, Theo and Violet, Better Every Day Studios, Josh from Impulse, Joakim, Bob, Donald, Creative Taxi, Frank, Pat, Joonas, Fred, Heiko, Warren, Matt, Joel, The Astrogators at SEE, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), David, Ryan, Russell, Stealth Julian, Steve, Natasha Tsakos, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters.TopicsNASA Selects Blue Origin to Deliver VIPER Rover to Moon’s South Pole - NASAVIPER Might Have A New Ride to the Moon on Blue Origin – SpacePolicyOnline.comBlue Origin only bidder for new VIPER lander award - SpaceNewsNASA, Sierra Space Modify Commercial Resupply Services Contract - NASASierra’s Dream Chaser is starting to resemble a nightmare - Ars TechnicaNASA releases details on revised next phase of commercial space station development - SpaceNewsVast backs new NASA commercial space station strategy - SpaceNewsThe ShowLike the show? Support the show on Patreon or Substack!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 the managing cutoff. I'm Anthony Colangelo. There's been a lot going on lately. Artemis 2's Orion got a name. It'll be named Integrity. Starship had a successful flight that at least gets them over the hump on where they've been stuck the past couple of months. And we'll see what they do with that in the coming months with a flight of Starship again, less than 10 days away or something like that.

Also, NASA has no explanations other than life for stuff they found on Mars. So all of that, very good stuff to talk about. But today, I do want to talk about a different trio of stories. I'm realizing as a couple of these stories have clicked into place the last couple of weeks, that NASA is entering its Prove-It era, where, they've kind of, you know, had some form of this in the past, where they've gone through development with different contractors, they've gone through task orders with different contractors, and now we're entering a different kind of era, for sure. So the three stories

that I'm seeing very similar, right, all different programs, but I find these to be very similar stories overall. Although there's some, you know, notes of different things in each story that we'll go over. NASA has selected Blue Origin to maybe deliver Viper to the moon, once again, canceled rover that was supposed to fly with Astrobotics Griffin is potentially back on. I say potentially because what Blue Origin won was a design contract that has an option to actually fly Viper on Blue Moon if they're able to pull it off successfully, and importantly, if the first Blue Moon lands successfully on the lunar surface, or I guess a successful landing on the lunar surface.

Then there is the Sierra Space contract for Dream Chaser, which NASA modified. Dream Chasher will no longer be flying its first mission to the ISS. It'll be a free-flying mission. Sierra Space says it'll be in late 2026, which is a delay of several months, and it's not going to the ISS anymore. And NASA is no longer contractually obligated to fly cargo to the ISS with Dreamchacer. They just have an option to buy some missions later on. But, I mean, read that as you should. Dreamchacer is not going to fly cargo to the ISS.

We'll talk about the timeline and why that's why that's, why that takes. didn't really shake out. And then the other is a thing we've talked about before, which is the new commercial space station strategy from NASA. That is a space act agreement-based contracting round where NASA would buy missions once these space stations are flying and support them in smaller ways until that. But all these things together are some variation of NASA

taking a prove-it stance versus a very, in one case, supportive development stance, in another case, interacting with the market as if it is a market that has existed before rather than one they wish to exist. So I don't know if that's all bad, but it does have interesting effects for the future. So let's go through the stories one by one, talk about some of the details there, and then more on how NASA is approaching the space industry these days. Let's start with Blue Origin. Viper has had a very tortured history, right? It was going to fly on astrobotics Griffin lander. The

original landing award was just south of $200 million. The Vipa program wasn't much bigger than that overall. It grew and grew and grew over the years. Money had been added to astrobotics contract for more verification and more testing and more validation of the lander, more qualification, to make sure that

this thing would land on the moon because the rover correspondingly was getting more and more expensive and was, you know, approaching another class of mission. in terms of budget. So the rover became a thing that was so expensive and valuable that flying it on the first launch and the first landing attempt of a lander

from a company that hasn't landed on the moon before became less and less palatable to NASA as time went on. Now, there's different ways to read that, right? There's the fact that maybe this is NASA not really having a good relationship with astrobotic in terms of being willing to embrace risk on their mission, the way that they embrace risk on other missions. Maybe this was NASA putting too many eggs in one basket

and Viper getting, the growth in Viper itself put them in a situation where they no longer could fail on that landing attempt. The way that, you know, not to say that other people's, you know, scientific payloads on these other landers are not important, but look at the amount of metal that we have clanged onto the lunar surface upside down, sideways, whatever, right? One of them landed successfully in Fireflies, Blue Ghost, but the others were, you know, some amalgamation of success.

And, you know, there was not a round of headlines about, you know, NASA's new lander, you know, tumultuously lands on the surface and waste billions of dollars. But you could see a world in which, you know, NASA crashes billion-dollar rover into the surface feels differently for people in the administration when they see this budget line getting so expensive so to some extent I understand that

on the other hand this was I don't know Viper was always weird right it was always a weird fit for the commercial lunar payload services program which is supposed to be these not throwaway missions but it wasn't supposed to be

a big deal if one of them failed because we knew there would be a high failure rate because even when you know nation states go and fund lunar landers, a lot of them fail. It's really hard to land on the moon, especially the first time. So then NASA canceled Viper and said, hey, if anyone wants to take on Viper without spending any additional government money, that would be great. But if you do take on Viper and you do land it on the lunar surface, you have to operate it exactly as we would and send us all the data. So it was, or also we might sell this to somebody else. Maybe somebody can do

something with the parts, sell it to the scrapyard. It was really up to the world to offer to NASA something that was interesting enough for them to reassign this to another party. But when you look at that, right, it was a weird deal. It was like, you're going to assume all the risk of this thing, and we will get all the benefit. And if it crashes, then we'll say, well, look, that's why we canceled the program because, you know, that was going to be a mistake. But if it succeeded, you were going to get the benefit of the data. So from NASA's perspective, it makes perfect sense. That's why they go that way. Why not do that with every mission that you fly? Why not get 95% of the way through the development cost of a thing and then try to give it to someone else for free so that you get all

the benefit and none of the risk? But that's not really a functional space agency at that point. So that all resulted in a couple of months ago, NASA just saying, actually none of these proposals meet our needs. We don't know what we're going to do with this yet, but we're exploring alternative approaches. So here we are a couple of months later, and Blue Origin wins this Clips Award that is totally different than every other Clips Award that has been awarded. It was not publicly announced beforehand. They were the only bidder. It's not even a task order for the whole thing. It is a design study with a follow-on option to fly the mission. And it's contingent on Blue Moon making a successful landing first. So the whole thing,

honestly kind of stinks it makes me think that Blue Moon or Blue Origin approached NASA with this option either during that phase where they were looking what to do with Viper or in the immediate aftermath I sense that they approached them during the phase

and that's why NASA canceled that and said we're exploring alternative approaches and this was the alternative approach now reportedly NASA did at least ask the other clips vendors in July if they could meet NASA's specific requirements for delivery of Viper to the moon.

That's what the agency said. And so the way I read that is that Blue Origin, this is all conjecture. I don't know any details. No one told me anything. This is just how I read this story. NASA and Blue Origin were talking, and Blue Origin said,

we're flying a Blue Moon lander already. If that goes well, how about we fly Viper on the second and you pay us for the second mission? And NASA said, okay, we're going to ask all the other clips vendors if any of them could support that same thing. And they're targeting late 2027,

which is probably the schedule that Blue Origin said, is we're flying the first Blue Moon as early as late this year, and then we're within, so which probably means sometime in 2026. And then we'll be ready to go a year later for landing this thing. And NASA said, all right, great, we're going to ask everybody out there if they could support exactly your details because that's very specific stuff, and they say NASA's specific requirements.

They're kind of front-running that part of the story. So this is how I read it. Again, I don't know any details. I'm just reading between the lines, and this is how I read it. When they ask all the clips vendors, if anyone would be able to prove out a landing system and then fly a second one by late 2027, none of them could. We've got astrobotic that's got a griffin coming up in a little while here. They're not going to be ready to go with the second griffin, especially for sub-200 million dollars. or the relationship between astrobotic and NASA is just completely broken at this point after what I know is tension during the Peregrine mission and then the way that Griffin and Viper were dealt with where NASA pulled Viper off the mission maybe that just broke down and astrobiics that actually were not interested in that approach

so whatever the case is Blue Origin was left as the only bidder for this and and that's why it was not announced publicly it was only one bid. It's not even structured like the task orders that have flown otherwise. This is a totally bespoke thing that is just flying the clips banner. Once again, Viper flying under the radar of Clips and having, it does not fit in this at all. Because NASA could have said with the Viper Award, right, they could have modified the Viper Award either before they awarded it or after and said, this task order is for two landings, a successful one and then Viper. And you'll unlock the task order award money for the actual landing when you do your first landing. They could bundle

that into the task order, but they don't. But now they are. So maybe that's the change, right? Maybe there's a different class of clips payloads that can fly either you have landed successfully before and you can bid with that or you're bidding for this task order with the assumption that you have to fly a first mission successfully and then the actual mission. Maybe that's a way to structure the task orders in the future for payloads that you're this concerned about. But I think it had a different bid structure than that. I think it was more drawn out of conversation with the Blue Origin. No one else could meet that because nobody has a rover that's big enough for this

that can fly twice before 20 to 27. I don't even know if Blue Origin does, to be honest. All right, that's one thing. The Sierra Nevada situation, Sierra Space Situation of Dream Chaser, is not shocking to anybody. We've kind of heard this reported. Eric Berger had some reports on this. The schedule was just unraveling for Dream Chaser. They were not going to be ready to fly until next year, late next year, is when they're flying a free flyer flight.

Eric Berger does say that the propulsion system is not qualified yet. I've heard they've had software issues at Dream Chaser. There was a whole host of development issues earlier on in the program that were both reported and not. So the schedule for this thing has been all over the place. and at this point you're just staring down the barrel of the ISS deorbit deadline right let's let's just run out the schedule say they were flying to ISS next year late 2026 so you fly that mission which probably slips into 2027 because of the ISS schedule so you fly like march 2027 and you do your first demonstration mission and then you get back you land you see a landing goes reentry and landing goes with dream chaser to maybe get on the schedule for one more resupply mission before the ISS is decommissioned? Like, at that point, March 2027, you got two years basically

from that point to actually be flying your mission. And when you're in those late days of the ISS program, what NASA's going to need is logistical reliability. There's going to be a lot of moving parts to what's going on as we decommissioned the ISS. You can't have a cargo mission that's going to float plus or minus a year.

So at this point, you're just running out of time here for Dreamchacer to have any part of the ISS program. Now you've got Cygnus XL flying, which you can fit even more payload on board the on board a mission to the ISS. You got dragon flying regularly, and Jake on Offnominal yesterday pointed out, you also got a starliner that's going to carry some cargo up to the ISS as well. So cargo needs are well sorted here for ISS. And just straight up, Sierra Space fumbled this program so bad that they put themselves in a schedule situation that just isn't going to be helpful for ISS. So they say they're going to do a free flyer mission. They say they're looking at defense

use cases for Dream Chaser. They say they might have, you know, something to do with future space station programs. I think Dream Chaser is just dead and gone and we'll never see it fly and it will not go anywhere, unfortunately. You know, they had a moment where they were signing agreements with everybody who would about either cargo or crew Dream Chaser variants and how they could use it and what kind of mission they would fly. So I don't know. I just don't see. There's also been weird upheaval at Sierra Nevada, where Sierra Space was rolled out on its own, ostensibly to support selling it off or getting investment for the space department alone. None of that ever panned out. So I think this thing is just dead and dusted. Now, NASA does say, again, to tie into my overall

theme here, they say, hey, if you do this free flyer mission and it goes well and you're able to do this, then maybe we'll buy an ISS cargo flight in the future if it fits the schedule. Maybe we'll buy a cargo flight to other space stations in the future if it fits the schedule. So they're leaving open the option. If you prove it, we might buy it. And to round us out, the commercial space station program, right? We talked about this before, so we don't need to go over all the details, but it fits very much in this theme of, hey, if you're doing a thing and you're able to develop this capability and you do it, then we'll buy it. And that's a very different approach than they've had over the last two decades, right? We had one era that was very development and then delivery

structured. So we had NASA supporting the development of commercial cargo vehicles and commercial crew vehicles, and they would be there to support both financially and technically the actual development of these programs. And then we entered the task order phase where NASA was just deciding that there was a market out in front of them, that they could buy task orders for space suits and they can buy task orders for lunar landers and they could buy task orders for human lunar landers and in many of those cases they're trying to will a market into existence right it was structured like task order based awards that you know the military uses for launching things on on rockets or uh programs where the product does exist and now you're asking for task orders

but they were doing it in markets that didn't exist a spacesuit market never made sense to me. The lander market makes a little more sense, because it at least works like a rocket. You know, you're taking a payload and delivering somewhere. But they didn't exist yet. And so now we're left in this kind of weird evolution of that, which is both, I think, like I said, with the Viper situation, just not a really functional space agency if they're going to say, well, we're going to take on these missions, but we're going to do it only if you prove it. I think what that's going to lead to is more legitimate hardware, for sure, it's also going to be higher costs because people are going to start bundling in recouping some of that

costs, right, once they actually do win an award. Maybe they'll structure it in a way where this the case. And maybe there's another middle ground where maybe NASA, like I said, could put task orders out that are like, you can bid this. You have to have either flown successfully before and you can bid it alone, or if you're bidding and you haven't flown successfully before, your bid needs to include whatever you need to do to prove your mission one time. Now, are those companies going to win? Probably not, right? Their bids are going to be much higher or much more risky.

So it is, I think, much like the Vipa cancellation, it's a defensible strategy when you think about it as if you're NASA. But when you look at it and how it sits in the industry as a whole, I don't really think it leads to, you know, NASA. shepherding the industry along. And that's the way that this has talked a lot about with commercial cargo and crew is that by being there as part of the development program, they were actively kind of being the Lorenzo de Medici, you know, patron of the commercial space industry and helping to create a service that then existed for the market. And the side effects are unplanned, right?

What they got out of the commercial cargo program was the greatest launch vehicle that has ever existed. Um, so I don't know. I just, I don't, I think it makes sense how we got here because it's a risk-averse, um, posture for NASA to take in which they do get the benefits of a lot of commercial activity that's happening right now. But are they really actively supporting the commercial space industry by doing this? Or are they just going to spend 10 years, you know, buying things from the people that have the

most venture capital funding or or SpaceX. That's kind of how it feels. So I just don't know that it actually is going to be long-term beneficial for the, for some of the markets that they're hoping to make exist. So that's kind of my vibe on things and thought it was worth talking about. So that's what I've got for you today. I appreciate you listening. I appreciate all your support. Main engine cutoff.com slash support is where you can do it if you like what I'm doing here. You can jump in alongside 900 and some supporters every single month. If you jump on board, you get access to Miko headlines. It's an entirely other, entire other show that I do running through all the headlines that you need to care about in space. Yeah. So thank you so much

to the executive producers for this episode. There are 34 that made this episode possible. Thanks to Jan, Chris Lee, Will and Lars from Agile, Theo and Violet, Better Everyday Studios, Josh from Impulse, Joe Kim, Bob, Donald, Creative Taxi, Frank, Pat, Eunice, Fred. Hyko, Warren, Matt, Joel, the Ashtraguters, SCEE, Tim Dodd, the everyday astronaut, David, Ryan, Russell, stealth Julian, Steve, Natasha Sackos, and four anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for the support, and thanks for listening. If you got any questions and thoughts, hit me up on email, Anthony at Managing Codoff.com, and otherwise, I will talk to you soon. I don't know. I don't know.