Main Engine Cut Off - T+34: SpaceX’s COPV Investigation and Return to Flight

Episode Date: January 5, 2017

SpaceX wrapped up their investigation into the Amos-6 explosion, and the news is mixed. I discuss their findings, their path back to flight, and some other 2016-2017 odds and ends. 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. Anomaly Updates | SpaceX OneWeb gets $1.2 billion in SoftBank-led investment - SpaceNews.com Virgin Galactic ends 2016 with second SpaceShipTwo glide flight - SpaceNews.com 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 back with you again after a short hiatus there. I took about two weeks to get married to go on a little honeymoon and I am back here in Philadelphia now to kind of recap what we missed when I was gone and talk a little bit about what's coming up in the near future. I was pretty much right in that there wasn't a lot going on towards the end of the year there. The holidays tend to slow things down a bit. People aren't announcing things. Companies aren't really showing off what they've got going. So it really is a slow time of the year. So next year, we'll have to figure out what to do those few. So it really is a slow time of the year. So next year, we'll have to figure out what to do those few weeks. But it was a good time for all that to

happen this year. So I'm glad I didn't miss too much. But we will go over a few items of note that I did miss while I was gone. Before I do that, just a few programming notes. I mentioned this on the blog a couple of days ago, but I did want to mention it here up front just so you know what's going on if you did miss that little note that I sent out. I used to publish these episodes on Wednesday mornings. I'm going to be pushing my whole production schedule back a day, so I publish this on Thursday mornings now. Throughout the year, as the year went on, I kind of noticed that I tended to be recording a little too early in the week for some interesting things that tend to get announced Monday, Tuesday, even a little bit Wednesday. So I'm going to be shifting everything back just to kind of fit the news cycle better and,

you know, catch more in each week's episode. But that is going to push Main Engine Cutoff Weekly, the longer form column I do once a week. I'm going to be sending that out Monday morning instead of Friday afternoon now. So if you have not yet been reading Main Engine Cutoff Weekly, I would recommend going to check it out. You can sign up to have that sent right to your inbox. It's kind of the written version of this show in a way where, you know, this show is a lot about me talking out my thoughts on goings on in the industry. That's where I write out my thoughts. And a lot of times there's a little bit of crossover in content, but a lot of times there's

stuff that I don't fit into the show that I write about over on the weekly side of things. So mainenginecutoff.com slash weekly, you can read all the past issues and sign up for future issues right into your inbox. But just want to get those two programming notes out so you know what's going on as we enter 2017 here. Now, a couple of things to talk about. There's the most obvious one is SpaceX SpaceX because we are on the verge of the return to flight for SpaceX. On January 2nd, they posted an update about the anomaly. They've completed their investigation. They've submitted everything to the FAA. The relevant parties have signed off on this investigation, and they're getting ready to return to flight this upcoming weekend. Right now, it is slated for January 8th.

That may move a little bit. I might even be outdated by the time this show goes up. But keep your eyes peeled because we will be seeing a launch soon. Certainly by the time I do the next show, we should have seen a return to flight for Falcon 9. So keep your eyes peeled because it's going to be interesting to watch. In terms of the outcome of the investigation, it's pretty much what we had heard previously. They narrowed this down. They obviously didn't find the exact root cause because it was very hard to narrow down what the exact root cause was, which will be a source of flack for SpaceX. I'll get to that in a minute. But they narrowed down the credible causes to the COPVs in that second stage where they load helium into. They were loading very cold helium with very cold liquid oxygen, which created solid oxygen,

created an explosion. We sort of talked through some of this before, but the combination of solid oxygen, some of the composite used, it created an explosive environment. I'll have a link to this in the show notes over at managingcutoff.com if you want to read the entire update. But the real crux of it is towards the end of the update that they provided. So I will read that out now for you. The corrective actions address all credible causes and focus on changes which avoid the conditions that led to these credible causes. In the short term, this entails changing the COP configuration to allow warmer temperature helium to be loaded, as well as returning helium loading operations to

a prior flight-proven configuration based on operations used in over 700 successful COPV loads. In the long term, SpaceX will implement design changes to the COPVs to prevent buckles altogether which will allow for faster loading operations. So the real meat of this is that they are going to be going back to warmer helium loading, which they had done previously. They were using cooler helium loading procedures to speed things up a bit for their pad procedures, and it sounds like they're going to be redesigning these COPVs and implementing hardware-level changes in the future. We could assume that means in the final version of Falcon 9 that was talked about coming this year at some point, but we don't

exactly know when they will land, if that will land with that final version or independently of that. Who knows? But right now they're going to be using some older procedures, which just involves warmer helium, and in the future they're going to have hardware changes for Falcon 9. So a little bit of both procedure and hardware to be changed but the the real meat of it is that they are able to change procedures and still fly safely. They've done a ton of test loads in McGregor since the accident you know we've heard time and time again about explosions in McGregor which is them reproducing these environments and reproducing burst COPVs. So they did make good progress on it. They got the sign off on this investigation, and we should see them launch soon. That said, the fact that they are not able to stand there and say, we have found the root cause and fixed it,

but they have to word it as we found credible causes and fixed those, that will be a source of flack for people that are predisposed to give SpaceX some flack. Obviously, the FAA and other government agencies are comfortable with them flying with these older procedures. They've signed off on it. They should be getting their FAA launch license for the return to flight pretty soon here. So, you know, it's not a big deal that, you know, in terms of operations, that they had to narrow down credible causes instead of an exact root cause. But that is certainly ammo for people that like to kind of criticize SpaceX out there. And I'm not saying, you know, they're criticizing them unfairly or anything.

Knowing the history of SpaceX and their investigations when it comes to accidents like this, with the CRS-7 accident, NASA didn't sign off. The NASA official that was on that investigation board didn't sign off on their finding of a root cause with that strut. So there is some tenuous history here that is going to create some flack for SpaceX in some regards. So don't be surprised when you see people saying that they didn't find a root cause is going to create some flack for SpaceX in some regards. So don't be surprised when you see people saying that they didn't find a root cause and it's dangerous that they didn't find a root cause. They shouldn't fly until they find a root cause. But on the other hand, see how comfortable those people are with flying Soyuz Progress

missions time and time again, even though we seem to have a failure every year and no particular root cause found time after time and we're still flying crew on that same booster. So it's a little bit of hypocrisy there when you see criticism thrown one way but not the other. But this is the environment that we live in where sometimes it's nearly impossible to narrow down an exact root cause for an accident like this or like the Progress accident we saw a few weeks back. But what you do is you find the most credible causes and fix those and you keep working on it. So I'm very excited that SpaceX is going to be getting back to flight, as are the government agencies that were part of this investigation. So I don't think there's

anything too much to worry about, but we all are going to be holding our breath through the next static fire for this flight. Now, beyond this initial flight, this is the Iridium flight out of Vandenberg that's going to be up first this weekend. And beyond that, there's going to be a launch from 39A that was originally slated for January 15th. Now it's looking like sometime in the 20s, January 20s, something. That's, again, preliminary planning, so that will move back and forth a little bit. But the goal here is to launch one out of Vandenberg and two to three weeks later, launch one out of 39A. We will see what kind of cadence they pick up to once 39A is back active. That's the real thing we need to be watching. They could fly one out of Vandenberg and one out of 39A and one out of Vandenberg and one out of 39A and one out

of Vandenberg, one out of 39A, and hit a once every two weeks cadence, but that's not what they mean when they say that. They want once every two weeks out of a single launch pad. They want to be flying regularly. And obviously with Vandenberg, that's a specialized launch site that there are only a handful of Vandenberg launches a year, even in the most heavy SpaceX years. So what's really important is to see 39A get up and active, get them flying off of that pad, and see what kind of cadence they can hit off of 39A to kind of go through some of their commercial backlog, get CRS flights back up and flying, and make progress towards Falcon Heavy. In that vein, there was a teaser post on Instagram from SpaceX of the Falcon Heavy interstage being painted for flight. It's got the Falcon Heavy logo on there and all, so there is

hardware moving through Hawthorne right now. We've heard in the past that the TICOM-8 booster, the one that landed on a barge with quite a lean to it, you know, one of the crush cores in the leg broke, so it came back like the Leaning Tower of of pisa that is in hawthorne being converted to use as a falcon heavy side booster for that demo mission so they're going to be flying with a reused core on that demo mission uh see the last show i did i think it was the last show where i talked about what to expect from spacex i don't think we'll see falcon heavy fly until they're back active with 39a and 40 on the Cape. I think they're going to want to get their commercial flights underway and their CRS flights underway from 39A, move back to pad 40 when that's ready sometime in the summer. And once they get commercial flights and CRS back to

40, 39A is freed up to use for Falcon Heavy demo. So I don't expect we'll see anything in that regard until they have that pad clear of all of their operations. But that is always subject to change. Maybe it is really important that they get Falcon Heavy off earlier rather than later. So we'll see how that shakes out. But there is hardware in Hawthorne for Falcon Heavy. There's an interstage painted with the logo.

An old booster is being converted to a Falcon Heavy side booster. There are talks about structural elements being tested in McGregor. So there is movement for Falcon Heavy, and I see it very likely that it will fly this year, even though we've heard that for the past four years. So that's about all to say about SpaceX right now. There's not a lot to talk about. I'm sure next show we'll talk a bunch about SpaceX because there is a return to flight. So if you'd like to add anything on SpaceX or any other related topics, please feel free to email me, tweet me, contribute to the show somehow. I'll read your notes out on the show if you've got any to share.

Anthony at managingcutoff.com. Feel free to send me an email anytime with any feedback. If you see the return to flight go off and you're excited about it, if you're nervous about it, send me an email. Let me know how you're feeling about it and how you're feeling about SpaceX in general as they get back flying here in 2017. One other story that I missed when I was out that I think deserves mentioning here is that OneWeb got a $1.2 billion investment. They did another round of investing, of fundraising and financing, and they raised $1.2 billion in an investor round led by SoftBank. This is a fairly big deal for

OneWeb. That's a ton of money to get injected into your business. It certainly lends credence to the fact that OneWeb is making good progress on their way to launching their constellation. And it's going to be really interesting to see this project move along because we've got the SpaceX constellation. We saw the licensing for 4000 satellite constellation a few weeks back. And this OneWeb constellation is going to be somewhere around 900. Every time you read an article, someone states some different random number in the hundreds of satellites. The one I see most often is around 900, but God, nobody's quite sure how many satellites are in this constellation. So if you're listening to the show and you work at OneWeb or you know someone who does, please send me the exact number so I can use it because

I see anywhere between six and 900 in articles and it drives me nuts. Point being, it'll be somewhere less than a thousand satellites in the constellation. All that said, it's going to be interesting because these are kind of the two competing internet constellation, uh, satellite constellations. And, uh, it's kind of awesome to see this much money being poured into one of these companies like this with this investor round. So I don't have a lot to say on it, but I did want to note it because it is something we're going to be seeing getting underway here pretty soon. They're going to be starting to do some of these launches to get these satellites up

and operating. And between SpaceX's constellation, Iridium Next, and OneWeb, there are a ton of giant constellations being launched in, you know, now and in the near future. And there's, you know, orbital debris problems with that and mitigation problems with that that will play out over the years. So I'm sure we'll be talking about it constantly. But again, we talked a little bit about this during the satellite servicing episode a few weeks back, that there is a push and pull between constellations of expendable satellites versus one expensive satellite that gets serviced.

This is a trend in the industry we're going to be watching, and it's going to be a push and pull here as these things get underway. But I'm very excited to see real money being poured into one of these companies. Now, before I move on to the last topic here, I did want to say a huge thank you to all the producers and supporters of Main Engine Cutoff out there listening right now. Thank you so much for your support week in and week out and throughout all of 2016. You make this show possible, and I am hugely, hugely thankful for your support. This episode of Main Engine Cutoff is produced by three people, Matt, SpacePatO, and one anonymous executive producer. They produced this episode of Main Engine Cutoff, and I am hugely thankful for their support week in and week out. Thank you so much.

If you want to help support the show, head over to patreon.com slash Miko and give as little as $1 a month. This is entirely listener supported, and your support really, really helps me do everything that I do, the podcast, the blog, everything like that. So thank you so much for your support, and I look forward to a good 2017, producing good content here for all of you to listen and interact with. So keep supporting, keep emailing, and this is going to be a great year moving forward. I know it.

Now, on that topic of emailing in ideas for the show or comments about what I'm talking about, I had a few people reach out to me over the last few weeks and tell me that I need to talk about Virgin Galactic more, especially if I talk about human spaceflight, especially if I'm interested in industries and things like that. I got a handful of comments about this as they've been getting glide flights going and things like that. So the gist of it is that they ended 2016 with two glide flights, a couple other of captive flights. Some of those are supposed to be glide flights that got aborted, but all in all, two successful glide flights finished out their year. It's been about two years, a little more than two years since that accident back in 2014. And since then,

you know, they've had trouble getting back going, but they finally are there. They've got Spaceship 2 flying again. And this is what people were excited about that were emailing me to talk about Virgin Galactic more. So I thought that that warranted at least a little bit of a response just to kind of talk about it, because I have been noticeably quiet about Virgin Galactic, and there's a reason for that. I am one who does not necessarily, I don't feel very compelled by Virgin Galactic, particularly when it comes to Spaceship Two and their work. Launcher One is something that I am interested in. It's something that, you know, if only because OneWeb signed a pretty big contract for launches with them, you know, they signed a contract for 39 launches to contribute to their satellite constellation and with the option for 100 more

launches. So Launcher One is interesting because OneWeb has put such a stake in the round with them. That's something going to be watching pretty interestingly over the next, you know, I guess they said test flights would start this year. So we might be seeing some Launcher One stuff happening soon, which I certainly will talk about as it gets going. But let's talk about Spaceship Two for a second and why I don't find it very interesting. As a basis, I don't much believe in the product or the technology or the process that Virgin Galactic has been taking with Spaceship Two. I don't think that it scales up very well beyond its current form factor, which

makes it not very interesting in terms of what it will do for the industry in terms of changing the way the industry works or anything like that. There is this segment of spaceflight tourism that it'll certainly have an effect on because of it being one of the bigger names in tourism right now. You can put money down to go on a flight however late that happens, but it doesn't seem to be one of those things that's going to have big effects throughout the industry beyond itself in the way that Blue Origin so clearly is going to have big effects in the industry. They are on a mission, Blue Origin here, they're on a mission to lower the cost of spaceflight and access to space, and New Shepard is just the first entry into that.

They've already announced these pretty grandiose plans beyond New Shepard, and let alone New Shepard being a flawless product thus far, even so much as, you know, blasting through an abort mechanism and coming back to land pretty safely. So there's going to be someone in a capsule on top of New Shepard going up into space this year. I don't know how far away we are with that for Spaceship Two, but I don't much believe in the technology that Spaceship Two utilizes. I don't much believe in hybrid engines. I think those are a flawed technology that I don't see being very applicable in the long run. And quite honestly, a suborbital flight is not that interesting to me, whereas something like Blue Origin that can easily scale up and be applicable beyond itself

and have big effects throughout the industry, that is where I like to focus this show. So all in all, I don't think Virgin Galactic and Spaceship Two are very applicable to what I talk about here on the show in terms of being something that is going to have big effects in the industry. I don't think it's going to be that interesting to watch outside of the tourism aspect, and even that alone I'm not very interested in. I would obviously love to go and be a tourist in space, but I don't think it's going to be a big motivator or a big trend in the industry as much as other ventures are going to be. So, all in all, I just can't get myself excited about Virgin Galactic and what they're doing with Spaceship Two. I don't see it being something that's going to have big effects throughout the industry. It's not something that is going to change the way things work fundamentally in the way that reusable

rockets are or reduced access to space, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, that's why I haven't talked about them too much here on the show. If certain things happen that I find very interesting and compelling to talk about come up, then I will certainly bring them up. But as of right now, I don't think Spaceship Two is relevant to this show. I don't think that it's something that I'm going to be keeping track of here on the show very much. I'm obviously going to be watching because I think they make beautiful air and spacecraft, and it's going to be interesting to see how they progress with that. But I don't think it's something that's going to have big effects beyond itself. So, you know, for that reason, it has not been a topic on this show yet. It's not been something that I've devoted a lot of

time to on this show or even any time to on this show. And I expect that it will stay that way. So if the people out there that are excited about it and interested in it, if you want to send me some notes as things happen and give me your angle on why it is important to the industry at large, I would be more than happy to read that feedback on the air here and talk about it a little bit. So as it goes, if you want to send those notes in, please do. I am interested to having my mind changed on seeing Spaceship Two as something that will have bigger effects throughout the industry, beyond itself, and kind of change the way something works in the industry. I am skeptical of that, but I am open to changing my mind there. So please continue to send in your feedback and send in your comments about Spaceship Two as they progress towards powered flights this

year. But, you know, it's right now something that I'm not going to devote much time to here on the show. But as I said, Launcher 1, very interesting. People have been talking about this being the year of the small sat launcher or something like that. I always snicker a little bit at the year of the X sayings because it's always been the year of Linux on desktop and things like that. They never seem to come to fruition. So I stay away from those kind of comments. But we are going to see Rocket Lab up and flying soon. They've said that they're going to do their first test flight at the beginning of 2017. I know that Vector Space Systems is making good progress. Firefly seems to be an interesting spot where they're in this legal battle with Virgin Galactic over certain technology.

But there are a lot of active participants in that space right now, and LauncherOne is going to be one of many. So it'll be interesting to see if those things really flourish into a viable industry, and if so, who the winners are going to be. So LauncherOne, I think, will be relevant to this show and the content I do here. SpaceshipTwo, I'm skeptical if it will. But that is kind of my Virgin Galactic rant for now for the people out there that have been asking me my opinions

on the things. But again, email in and I will be more than happy to read out your comments. So that'll about do it for this first episode of 2017. Again, it's been a slow time, so it's why I kind of spent some time talking through that little Virgin Galactic rant there. But I'm sure things will pick up. I think next week we'll have a SpaceX flight to talk about and break down. But who knows where we're going from here. One thing I do want to keep mentioning until it happens is that we should see something about a BE-4 test firing, full duration burn in early 2017. That's what they've said in the past.

I think it'll be very interesting to see what happens coming out of that once Vulcan picks it for real and decides that that is the main engine of choice. And the factory that Blue Origin's building down outside of Kennedy Space Center is going to be under construction this year. So there's going to be a lot of fun things to talk about as we move into the year. And I can't wait to get to it also. Thank you so much for listening to the show. And I will talk to you next week.