Main Engine Cut Off - T+33: SpaceX’s Commercial Crew Delay, Fueling Process Approved, and the Inmarsat-Falcon Heavy Situation

Episode Date: December 15, 2016

Inmarsat, under regulatory pressure to get flying, decided to take a mid-2017 launch slot on Ariane 5, moving away from Falcon Heavy. Everyone thinks it’s a big deal, but for the wrong reason. And SpaceX’s Commercial Crew flights have been delayed, but we did find out that NASA’s Safety Technical Review Board approved their plan to load crew before fueling. That is a big deal. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 3 executive producers—@spacepat_o, Matt Giraitis, and one anonymous—and 25 other supporters on Patreon. Inmarsat Switches to Ariane 5 from Falcon Heavy - Main Engine Cut Off SpaceX Commercial Crew Delay and Propellant Loading - 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

Welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo. This is going to be a little bit shorter of an episode as I close out the year here, and I do have some stuff I want to get into for SpaceX and other topics. But up front, I did want to say this will be my final episode for 2016. I've mentioned it in past shows, but I'm getting married here on the 16th. So I'm taking a little time off around that

and going to be off the grid a little bit as well. So, and honestly, things seem to slow down around the holidays anyway. So I'm going to be talking to you again in early January, that first week of January as of right now. So I'll miss about two weeks here in the meantime. Short hiatus, but thank you for sticking with me through it. We've got a very interesting 2017 coming up, which I'll talk about a little bit at the end of the show. But, you know, without further ado, let's get into the topic for today,

which are some SpaceX news bits and updates and things to discuss. The first one I want to break down is this story that came out about a week ago with MRSAT switching to Ariane 5 from Falcon Heavy. Now, this is a satellite that we've heard about in the past. Back in August, we heard about the situation that this satellite is in, where they're under some regulatory pressure to get up and flying because they're not approved. Beyond that, there's some weird politicking and regulatory stuff going on that really has them under the gun to get this satellite up and flying. So this isn't a surprise at all. We heard about this in the past. We had heard previously that they were looking at going with Proton or someone else in particular. It

turns out they're going with Ariane 5. It seems like a launch slot opened up in mid-2017 for them to get up and flying, so they're taking that to get up there in time for their deadline. So it's not a very surprising situation overall. But the opportunity was taken by people out there that aren't necessarily the biggest fans of SpaceX, or are a little jaded by the Falcon Heavy kind of delay, delay, delay. Whatever their reasons, whatever their motivations, this was sort of taken and blown up into a thing about how unreliable SpaceX is, how slow they are, they're not on target, they're not on time. And Inmarsat grew upset and left in a huff rather

than the business decision that it was under the gun to kind of go in the way that they need to to get up and flying for the business. And I say that not, you know, I'm not trying to be here as the homer defender of Falcon Heavy or anything like that, but I certainly think parts of it were blown out of proportion to make it a story about how delayed Falcon Heavy is and make it a story about how SpaceX can't keep a schedule. And that is valid criticism. Those are things that need to be said. But in this case, you know, this isn't a cut and dry case like that where somebody was just getting delayed so long that they left in a big huff and went elsewhere with zero other motivation. You know, there are outside forces acting upon this as well. And, you know,

that's not an excuse as to why Falcon Heavy is delayed or an excuse to say it's not a big deal that Falcon Heavy is delayed. But there is a balance to be had. And I don't think jumping on every little story about this, I don't think it's very healthy to dive into every story like this and saying that SpaceX is off schedule or anything like that. But either way, this is not a good look for SpaceX. It's not a good look in any way because it does speak to delays in Falcon Heavy and it does speak to their schedule certainty not being there yet. And those are two things that I've harped on a lot this past year. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you've heard me say reliability and schedule certainty are the

two areas that SpaceX really needs to work on and they are abysmal at that as of right now. I'm not going to be defending them in that regard by any means. And if you've listened for long enough, you know that I'm not going to be oblivious to those facts. So it is not a good look from SpaceX by any means. But it's also not that big of a deal right now. If you're SpaceX looking at this situation, it's not something that's going to worry you for the future of what you're working on. It's not going to worry you for the future of launch contracts with Falcon Heavy, or Falcon 9 for that matter. But in a certain sense, this is a validation of the business model that ULA is trying to

work on. We've talked the past couple weeks about Rocket Builder and Rapid Launch and the things that ULA are doing to play to the commercial side of the industry. And this is an example of what they're shooting for. They've been marketing to people about, and obviously, Arianne Space is the one that benefited here because they had the launch slot. But I'm kind of prefacing this by saying this is ULA's strategy at work. They've been marketing to people that are under the gun with a launch contract. They need to get up and flying by a certain date. They need to get revenue going on orbit. ULA has been saying, we are higher priced, but we are reliable and available, and we have schedule certainty that you can rely on. And with Rapid Launch, they're letting people book flights three months out

for a mission. And they're marketing that very heavily towards people like Inmarsat that are under the gun and need to get something up and flying and have had delays with their other launch provider and they need to switch. So these are exactly the kinds of customers that a higher priced, more reliable launch provider like ULA, like Aerian Space, those are exactly the customers that they can pick off from SpaceX, from a lower cost, not as scheduled certain launch provider. These are exactly the customers that ULA has been talking about that Arian can pick on. This is a validation of that entire idea of that business model, at least to get started in the commercial industry, right?

That's not going to be a long-term strategy for ULA to be flying commercially based on picking up people that are under the gun with their launch provider from SpaceX or Blue Origin or whoever. It's not a long-term strategy, but it does get them into the commercial market. It does get them into commercial launches. And that is what ULA needs. That's what Arianne kind of needs to, while they're not the price leader in the industry, they need to find a different way to sell launches once SpaceX does

get up and flying reliably. And they have a big price advantage over Arianne and ULA and people like that. This in every way is a proof of concept of this kind of transitional period we're in right now where SpaceX is a viable commercial launch provider. They are cheaper. Their schedule certainty is not there yet, but for a lot of people that doesn't matter as much. And this is validation that the next few years of this transition, as everyone else tries to bring their costs down to compete on a cost level with SpaceX, and they still have the schedule advantage over SpaceX, this is the kind of push and pull that we'll see and the strategies at play that kind of are coming to a head here. This is a proof of concept of that. So while it is not a big deal for SpaceX, it does kind of indicate that this

trend of these two business models, there is something there. There is something to be cognizant of. And that's what I want you to keep in mind when you see a story like this, is not so much, look at all these people leaving Falcon Heavy, but more about, this is a validation of these trends that we're seeing over the past few years. All that said, SpaceX really does need to get flying very quickly. They need to get there reliably. They need to be able to keep a flight rate up. They've been promising a significant uptick of launches the past few years, and the past two of them have been cut short by a failure after only eight or nine launches. So I wouldn't say that the next delay or next failure is absolutely apocalyptic for SpaceX, but they really are getting themselves into a jam here where they

need to start becoming much more reliable and much more consistent. So that's really what we're going to be watching from SpaceX in 2017 going forward. One other quick update on SpaceX that came out this week. There's been a lot of news again about commercial crew being delayed another six months or so, this time with regards to SpaceX. Previously, we've heard about a Boeing delay, and we hadn't yet had that meeting with SpaceX in the fourth quarter where they give an update to the schedule. And certainly that came after the AMO6 incident on September 1st. So we hadn't yet heard the updated schedule. We assumed there was going to be a delay, obviously, because they've got so many other

things going on. And, you know, the run of the mill with commercial crew has been delays so far. And this week, that was confirmed that SpaceX is delayed as well. It looks like right now they'll have the uncrewed mission in late 2017, probably around the November timeframe, probably will shift in December, if not later than that. But it's a delay that we all expected coming. Again, this was something that was blown up into big news, even though it's not much of a surprise, which is always a bit funny to follow along with. But there was something really interesting hidden in all of that, that I think

pretty much every news outlet for Space News kind of buried the lead a little bit because, again, the delay was expected. We knew it was coming. Not a big surprise. But hidden in all of that was something about SpaceX's fueling process as it pertains to commercial crew. We all talked about this a few months ago when certain members of NASA and advisory teams and things like that brought up a concern about the fueling process for Falcon 9 and specifically as it pertains to the crew missions. They're using the sub-cooled propellant, which means that they need to load the propellant right before launch since it needs to be kept so cold and densified. So that led to the idea that we would load crew onto the Dragon before fueling, which is against the NASA way of things over the past 50 years.

They always load fuel first and then load crew once everything is stabilized. I'm using air quotes, you can't see that here. So it was a cause for concern from older thinking people at NASA that it would be weird to load crew and then propellant, even though SpaceX argued, and a lot of us out here argued as well, once the crew is loaded, everyone else can clear the pad for fueling and there will be no one in the blast radius of that rocket if it did blow up when it was fueling. It would be a weird situation, wouldn't it, if something blew up when it was fueling? That goes unsaid. This was kind of in response to that. But SpaceX and other proponents argued that it would be smarter to load the fuel

while the crew was strapped into the capsule with the abort mechanisms activated so that if anything went weird, the crew could abort out of the fueling exploding rocket, and no one else would be nearby to be injured. That was the argument that SpaceX was putting up, and through all of this commercial crew stuff, we also got a statement that NASA has approved that idea. I'll read here from a Space News article by Jeff Faust about Falcon 9 propellant loading. SpaceX said that it has worked with NASA to perform a detailed safety analysis of all potential hazards involved in the fueling

process, with a report approved by NASA's Safety Technical Review Board in July. That report, the company said, identified various controls it will implement to address those hazards. As needed, any additional controls will be put in place to ensure crew safety, the company said. So this is the thing that was sort of buried amongst all of the, hey, commercial crew's delayed again, is that SpaceX delivered a report to NASA about loading propellant after the crew's been loaded, and the NASA safety board approved that plan. It sounds minor, but that is a pretty major thing for SpaceX, because up until recently, this was one of the most concerning things about

the commercial crew program at SpaceX because if NASA didn't approve their fuel loading procedures, then no one was quite sure what SpaceX would do. Would they build a different version of Falcon 9 to be used for crew that doesn't use densified propellant? Would they have to implement different procedures entirely and have two processes at play. There was all sorts of messy solutions proposed if they couldn't load fuel after crew, but this does clear that way. So SpaceX can load the Falcon 9s for crewed missions just like they do every other mission, which obviously the less overhead, the better in this regard, the less complexity, the better. So if you can do it one way for every type of mission, then that is a win. And, you know,

arguably, as the NASA Safety Board approved, this is the safer mechanism because you have an abort mechanism available when you're fueling. You have no one in range of the rocket as it has fuel, other than the crew that are strapped into an abortable capsule. So overall, this does seem like a safety win to me. I certainly believe that. And apparently NASA Safety Board does as well. So overall, this does seem like a safety win to me. I certainly believe that, and apparently NASA's safety board does as well. So this clears the way for SpaceX to load the Falcon 9s for crewed missions in the same way, which is a big, big revelation, and again, I think was totally buried under all these news stories. So obviously, the inevitable delay is never good. We don't want delays, but hidden in there was a very, very intriguing and motivating nugget of information. Now, a few weeks back, I talked about what I think

SpaceX's plan will be for 2017, and kind of what my general thoughts are, just to give you a sense for timelines here, and this is my guess, is that Falcon 9, it'll get up and flying again from Vandenberg. That's the first return to flight mission, the Iridium flight out of Vandenberg. And then we'll see a launch out of 39A for the first time for a commercial mission up to GTO. So they'll probably start flying their manifest out of 39A while Pad 40 gets repaired. That needs a bunch of repairs after the AMO-6 incident and won't be done until around summer maybe the beginning to middle of summer so up until that point they'll fly all of their missions on the east coast out of 39a all of their commercial missions all of their missions up to

the iss and then my hypothesis is once 40 is fixed they'll shift all of that back to pad 40 like they had done in the past and then that frees up 39a to be used for falcon heavy demo missions for dragon 2 fit checks and all that they need to do for crew flights there and then ultimately a uncrewed demo mission of dragon 2 up to leo up to the iss uh in the later part of 2017. so that's my theory is that they'll work through their manifest from 39A up until 40 is fixed in the summer, at which point 39A is freed up to work on their future, which is first and foremost Falcon Heavy demo mission. So we'll probably see that mid to late summer. And I may even be crazy enough to hypothesize that we will see it this summer, assuming there's not another

explosion or anything like that that happens. Once Falcon Heavy is up and flying, then we'll probably start to see some Dragon 2 things come about with this demo mission in later 2017, maybe November, December timeframe. That's my theory. That's not based on any inside info or anything like that. That's kind of reading the tea leaves about the way that they are laying out the manifest, the way that they are going to manage the pad infrastructure at the Cape and at Kennedy Space Center. So we'll see how it does play out, but that's kind of my guess right now, and that's certainly what I would be expecting for myself going into 2017. So that'll about do it for the things on my list to talk about for today. Before I go,

I want to say a huge thank you to all of you out there supporting Main Engine Cutoff on Patreon, especially the three executive producers of this episode of the podcast, Matt, SpacePatO, and one other anonymous executive producer. They produced this episode of Main Engine Cutoff, and I am hugely, hugely thankful for their support. If you want to help support the show, head over to patreon.com slash Miko and give as little as $1 a month. All of your support is really, really appreciated and really helps me do this show every single week. So once again, this is the last episode for this calendar year, and I will talk to you in about two weeks in the first week of January. So

thank you so much for listening. Thanks for putting up with me through the short hiatus here. And just a general big thank you to all of those out there listening. It's been a fun year starting this up, you know, back in April and doing it all the way through the rest of the year. I'm looking forward to doing a full year in 2017 and beyond. So thank you so much for listening all these weeks. And thank you for interacting on Twitter and on Reddit, on email, all that stuff. I'm very, very thankful for all the interactivity that we've done, all of the talking about space and spaceflight and, you know, so much exciting stuff has happened in 2016 and it's only going to be better in 2017. You know, we're going to see SpaceX return to flight, probably reuse a core,

Falcon Heavy might fly. We should see a full burn of BE-4, the Blue Origin engine, that will be used for New Glenn and for Vulcan. So it's going to be a lot of cool stuff to talk about next year, and I'm very excited to get into all of it. But for now, thank you very much, and I will talk to you next year. Thank you.