Main Engine Cut Off - T+36: Falcon 9 Flies with New Fueling Procedures, and the NASA-Boeing-Soyuz Saga

Episode Date: January 19, 2017

SpaceX is off to a strong start in 2017 with a very successful launch of Iridium-1 and a promising next few weeks. I also discuss the very interesting story developing between NASA, Boeing, and Russia regarding Soyuz flights to the ISS. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 3 executive producers—Pat O, Matt Giraitis, and one anonymous—and 26 other supporters on Patreon. Iridium-1 Hosted Webcast - YouTube John Insprucker on propellant loading - Iridium-1 Hosted Webcast - YouTube SpaceX’s Early 2017 Cadence - Main Engine Cut Off The NASA-Boeing-Soyuz Transaction - Main Engine Cut Off NASA considering Boeing offer for additional Soyuz seats - SpaceNews.com Boeing and Energia negotiating Sea Launch settlement - 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

Welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo, and this week I'm happy to be able to talk about a successful Falcon 9 flight. I've mentioned it for the past few shows. It did get pushed past the show. I thought it would. I thought we'd be talking about this last week, but they finally got it off just a few days ago on the Iridium-1 mission. Everything was perfect with the launch. It was beautiful weather, cloudless skies out at Vandenberg, so it was a pretty beautiful launch to look at, and the webcast was pretty amazing with views of the first stage all the way back from main engine cutoff all the way down to the drone ship where it did land successfully.

So Iridium satellites are up in orbit successfully. Everything went off without a hitch on that front. The recovery was successful, which is the first time they've done this out of Vandenberg. They did get it back into port, and we're going to begin trying to keep track of that booster as it goes through whatever's ahead for it in the future. We don't really know where that exact booster is heading. I have an idea of where it's headed, and I'll mention that in a little bit, but we are going to begin tracking that from here on out. So it should be interesting to see how they manage this entire fleet of boosters that they have recovered at this point.

So we'll see how they use them all. But I did just want to talk about the Iridium-1 launch for a few minutes here to start off. As I said, it was a picture-perfect launch. It went off without a hitch. It was as perfect as you could hope for, especially for a very important return to flight here for SpaceX. The most interesting part, though,

was the fueling procedure they used to get the day started. And it's most interesting to compare that procedure with past missions of the similar variant of Falcon 9, specifically the one with densified propellants that we've seen here. So in past missions, and I'm pulling these numbers from the JCSAT-16 mission, they began loading the RP-1NX at 35 minutes before liftoff. For this mission, in the press kit, it was stated that RP-1 would begin loading at 70 minutes before liftoff. LOX would begin loading 45 minutes before liftoff. In the webcast, they mentioned that loading actually began at 75 minutes before liftoff. So there was a slight variation from the webcast to,

or excuse me, from the press kit to the actual day. So that was interesting to note. I guess they were ahead of schedule a little bit and they thought, you know, let's give ourselves even a little more time than we had planned to load this thing up. Now, this is an important change because this is a particularly tense topic for SpaceX.

And it has been the past few months because number one the most recent accident was loading too fast kind of caused some thermal issues with the helium tanks we've went over that all before and the other side of that is that there's a debate going on within NASA and some of its advisory staff about how Falcon 9 is loaded up and how it should be loaded up for crewed flights. So from what was explained on the webcast, specifically from John I, he said that the propellant loading was paused. I think this was around the T-minus 12 minute mark.

I forget the exact number. I'll put a link in the show notes for you. So if you head over to mainenginecutoff.com, check out the show notes for this page. I'll have a link to that spot in the webcast where he says this. But he says that the propellant loading was paused to allow for helium loading to begin and to end, I guess, the full cycle of helium loading there. So they filled the tanks up a good amount, filled it with helium, filled the COPVs with helium, and then right before liftoff, topped off the tanks. That is the way he explained it. We didn't get more details about that, and I'm not sure we ever will. SpaceX typically is pretty private with these things, and I would imagine they were going to be even more private with this kind of data,

since it's so closely tied to the AMO-6 incident and to their future plans, especially for commercial crew. So they've changed quite a bit here in their procedure, and they were obviously still very successful with this mission. And what we can assume out of these things that we've seen, things we've heard from the webcast, and the way the mission went, there are pretty much two options here. The first option is this fueling procedure is affecting performance of the rocket at least a little bit. They may have decided that they had the margin necessary on this flight to be more conservative in their fueling procedure to make do with warmer propellant, which means the propellant is less dense, which impacts the overall performance of

the rocket. And that may have been the trade-off they made, where they're going to sacrifice a little bit of performance for the safety of slower loading, and especially for the return to flight, especially if they have the margin to do so. The other less likely option is that they figured out some new procedure for them that does not impact their performance in any meaningful way. And this new procedure led them to be safe and have a longer loading period, but still achieve the performance out of the rocket that they need. I don't think that's likely because of the temperatures at play here and the things that we've seen from them in the past, specifically regarding loading procedures. I think they did take the performance hit on this mission where they had a little extra

margin to do so since it was a non-geostationary launch. This was a polar orbit, which takes a little bit more energy than equatorial orbit, and it was a somewhat high orbit. It's quite a bit higher than the ISS orbit, for example. So they may have had extra margin here. This was the heaviest payload that Falcon 9 has ever launched, which is something to note that this was the heaviest launch they've ever done. That said, they may have taken a bit of a hit on performance. We will know whether that's the case on the very next mission, and here's why. The most recent landing failure was SES-9. That was a 5,300 kilogram satellite that was launched to GTO, specifically to a supersynchronous orbit. So this is a bit

more energetic than the typical geostationary transfer orbit. And that was the first stage that came back down pretty hard on the drone ship, and they did not recover. That was the one that put a hole in the deck of the ASDS that required some repairs. We didn't see a lot out of it, but we did hear that it was quite a hard landing. And that was basically because either they ran out of fuel or they came in too hot to begin with, or whatever the case was, that was a pretty large failure there. And from then, we've seen them take different tactics on the way that they fly the trajectory back to the drone ship. But we haven't seen a launch that pushed it quite as hard as that SES-9 launch yet. So from all of that information, we can assume that that is around the upper range of what is a possible successful ASDS landing.

And the next launch is Echo Star 23, which is a 5,500 kilogram satellite that's going up to GTO. 500 kilogram satellite that's going up to GTO. So per this data, unless they've changed the trajectory in a very meaningful way, unless they figured out something from the past few flights of experience that make it a little bit easier of an entry, a little bit easier of a trajectory landing burn, they may have done that. But from what we can see here publicly, this launch, Echo Star 23, will be on the higher end of what is possible to recover on the drone ship. If the new fueling procedure impacts their performance in a very meaningful way, this is going to be a very hard recovery, if not impossible recovery, to pull off, assuming they follow this new fueling procedure. If, however, they do follow this same fueling

procedure, which we'll this same fueling procedure, which we'll find out pretty soon here, we'll get the press kit before launch date, so we should know maybe even by the next episode, depending on when the launch date falls. When we see that loading timeline, and then we see what kind of recovery they target, and we see how they do with that recovery, we will be able to guess a little better here about how much this new procedure impacts performance. So just wanted to mention this up front, keep your eyes peeled for the loading timeline of this next mission. Keep your eyes peeled for what type of recovery they attempt because I think these two pieces of information along with how they actually do on this flight will be very meaningful and will tell us a lot about the effect on their performance that this new fueling

procedure has. I am interested to see if they slowly try to ramp back up or if they keep this fueling procedure up until the point when they have the newer redesigned version of Falcon 9 to roll out. Elon Musk and others have said that they're going to implement changes to the design in the future, to the design of the COPVs, that prevents the issue that caused the Amos 6 incident, which would allow them to get back to their fast loading sequence, though I'm sure they would do that cautiously again. The other thing to consider is that the version of Falcon 9 that's flying now is not the final design version. We've heard

this in the past, even before Amos 6, we had heard that there's going to be a final version of Falcon 9. The last we heard was Summer of this year that will come off the line, and those will be the ones that will be able to be reused quite a bit more than the current version. You know, these ones we're returning now, we're going to be able to see fly in the future on future missions. One is being converted to be used as a side booster on a Falcon Heavy. One is due to fly SES-10 as a reflown core for the first time. So they are going to be reused in some ways, but they are not the final design that will have a longer lifespan than what is coming up either this summer or later. So that said, if they need to be cautious with the loading procedures for this

version of Falcon 9 until they get to the next version, maybe recovery is not such a big deal. And they can, you know, the lower margin missions, they can get back the higher margins, they can fly expendably or something like that. They already have a lot of these boosters around to do tests on, to refly, to put on display. They've got a lot of boosters recovered already. So if they need to be cautious at the expense of recovering every single booster of this particular version, maybe that isn't a big deal. Maybe that's something they're willing to give up to avoid another AMO-6 incident, which would be absolutely catastrophic at this point. All of this stuff is something that I'm going to keep my eye on over the next few launches. I think as we see them do a couple other flights, as we see what procedures they use, as we see how they do at recovering these, on what types they attempt recovery, what types they might

not, we'll figure this all out, even though SpaceX might not be very open and tell us this information straight up. So I'm very interested to see how they handle the next few months before that new version of Falcon 9 is ready to be used and loaded quicker. And I will obviously keep talking about it here on the show because I think it's something that's very interesting to track this year. Now, as I said at the start, we're not sure yet what the booster from this flight is going to do when it makes it back to headquarters.

They're bringing it back from the port of LA to the headquarters in Hawthorne, which is not too long of a drive, much easier than bringing them back from Florida or McGregor or anything like that. So it should get there pretty quick if it's not there already, as I speak. And we know that the booster from the TICOM-8 mission is being converted to be used as a side booster on Falcon Heavy. That's something that's been out there on the Reddits and all various places, that that conversion is happening right now on the production line. My hunch is that maybe this core that we've just seen recovered could become the other side booster. Maybe they want to get this Falcon Heavy demo off, but they really need to work through their backlog. So they're going to not want to spend a lot of production time

on Falcon Heavy if they have a lot of other cores to produce and get pumped out to be flown to get through that backlog. So they might be prioritizing some of these recovered cores that are in good shape to be converted to Falcon Heavy use and, you know, assemble their demo mission out of as many recovered cores as possible. Not sure that they'll do that with the center core. We haven't heard that yet. We've just heard about the one side booster. We haven't heard about the other side booster. So it could be that they were kind of pathfinding with that initial core to see how much it would take to get it converted to a side booster, and they will recover one in the future that they will use for the other side. My hunch is maybe this is that booster. Now, this is the first one

that we've seen a tail number painted on, so it'll be easier to track these cores now in the new world of painting tail numbers on the SpaceX rocket. So again, something we'll keep our eye on going forward, but very interesting times as SpaceX ramps back up to their flight rate. Now, looking forward a few weeks, assuming that the next three launches hold their date or close to it, SpaceX may hit their target of once every two weeks right off the bat of 2017. Iridium-1 flew on January 14th. Echo Star 23, as I mentioned, that is due on January 26th, and we're getting pretty close to that date and haven't heard about it moving a whole lot. So assuming Pad 39A gets back online and they do a test fire on there and everything

looks good, that launch will go off on January 26th. CRS-10 is then due on February 8th out of 39A, and SES-10, the first reflight of a core, is now said to be no earlier than February 22nd. Now those gaps between those four flights, including Iridium all the way to SES-10, those are gaps of 12, 13, and 14 days, which means that if they were able to hit these dates, they are at their once every two weeks cadence right off the bat of 2017. Even if we assume that these launches are delayed between three and seven days for weather reasons or for technical reasons or whatever it may be, that is still a very, very promising cadence from SpaceX, especially as they just got back flying after quite a bit of time off. So a very, very promising start of the year for SpaceX, which is exactly what they need. They need a strong start.

They need a strong 2017 overall. And by all accounts of it, they look poised to do that. So I'm very encouraged by what I saw this past weekend with the Iridium-1 flight. I'm encouraged by the activity I see happening here. SES-10 was shipped to the Cape, and the reflown core is somewhere out there to be used. So things seem to be pulling well together for their launches here in the early part of the year. So we will keep talking about it, keep our eyes on it, but I just wanted to say, you know, all that out there so that you know what to be looking for as you watch the next couple of launches. On the NASA side of the news, there's a very interesting story happening right now between NASA, Boeing, and Soyuz. It's a bit convoluted,

some legal proceedings and some settlements and all this weird legal stuff that I will, again, link to in the show notes. But the TLDR version of it is that Boeing was partnered with Energia on Sea Launch. The ship for Sea Launch is based in Long Beach, California, and Boeing was owed about $320 million from the other partners of Sea Launch, which was Energia and two subcontractors. Since the ship is based in California, that put this lawsuit under the jurisdiction of the U.S. District Court. And the judge made a judgment, which is a bit repetitive there, but they made a judgment that Boeing was owed $320 million plus legal fees for things that they have paid for in the Sea Launch partnership that they were never paid back for. Sea Launch is also in the process of being sold

to a different company. so there's a lot of this kind of timeliness from Boeing, wanting to get their money out before someone else buys the company and things get even more complicated than they are already. But the long and the short of it is, they were owed money from what is essentially Energia, $320 million plus legal fees. We had heard back in, I think, you know, May, between May and July, we had heard a lot of rumors about Boeing making a settlement with Energia and some of that settlement, including things like work on a docking adapter. Boeing is the prime contractor for the international docking adapters that are headed up to the ISS to support commercial crew flights. Energia was a subcontractor to Boeing on that project. So there was some talk about part of the settlement including work for that docking adapter that Boeing essentially

didn't have to pay for. Boeing was looking for part of the settlement maybe to not be cash, but to be things that would be of appropriate value to include in the settlement. So work that they needed on the IDA from Energia or things like that. Since then, we haven't heard a whole lot about the settlement or what was included. But now we hear that in the settlement was included seats on the Soyuz in the fall of 2017, spring of 2018, and options for three additional seats in 2019. So that is part of the settlement package that Energia sent to Boeing in response to this $320 million plus legal fees that they were owed from the Sea Launch Partnership. So as part of the settlement, Energia said, we'll give you

up to five Soyuz seats to pay for this debt that we owe you. And then Boeing turned around and offered those seats to NASA. NASA has seats covering flights to the ISS through the end of 2018 to cover the gap between now and when commercial crew is supposed to come online. Boeing has now offered NASA up to five seats through the end of 2019 as they're passing it on from this settlement to NASA. Obviously, NASA would have to pay Boeing for it. And that's where some of these recent press releases came out and specifically one from the federal government directly about the intention to do this. So Boeing basically took their settlement where they get these seats for free from Energia, from Russia, from Roscosmos. And now they're going to turn those

into basically turn those into cash from NASA, who needs to buy seats on Soyuz up to the ISS. These were seats that were not yet sold or used by Russia. They are cutting their crew size on the ISS until they get another module up there to be used. They don't have a need for three people at all times. They're cutting it down to two. So they have these seats that were not yet used and that NASA did not yet buy. NASA bought the ones up through 2018, but they did not extend past that yet because they have been banking on the fact that SpaceX and Boeing would be up flying people to the ISS by then. So this pretty much accomplishes a few things, and there's been a lot of talk about this the last couple days.

But essentially, Boeing is owed money. They got these free things from Russia. Make it simple and say from Russia. Now they are offering that to NASA to basically get their money back. But instead of Russia paying them or Energia paying them, NASA will be paying them cash for these Soyuz seats that they now own the rights to. And voila, they've got their money back. Now, the most recent price for Soyuz seats that NASA paid was $81.7 million for each seat. They did that for six flights, six seats, rather. And so if Boeing were to offer that same price, I don't know that they would,

you know, the prices for Soyuz seats have been skyrocketing since the shuttle was retired. That's been something that's seen a lot. It started in around $30 million and all the way up to $80 million now. So assuming that Boeing offers them at the same rate that the last flights were bought, they obviously probably adjust for inflation or something a little bit in there. But if they paid the exact same price that they did last time, they would pay Boeing $408 million for these seats, these five seats. So that would more than cover the $320 million plus legal fees that Boeing is owed,

which would put them in the green even from that filing. So essentially, this is a way to satisfy all of the party's needs. Boeing needs their money back. They can get that by offering these seats to NASA. NASA needs seats to the ISS to cover the gap here between now and when Commercial Crew comes online. But they get the benefit of, instead of paying Russia or paying Energia or paying whoever's offering these seats, whoever has the rights to these seats, they're able to pay Boeing,

their own contractor, this money to get their astronauts to the ISS. So there's a little bit of legal finagling going on here. There's a little bit of politicking going on because it doesn't look great for NASA to have to pay Russia to get astronauts to the ISS. That's something that, given the current geopolitical landscape, that doesn't play well in Congress. It doesn't play well throughout the government or even in public. So being able to say that we're paying Boeing instead of Russia, that's something that will obviously play well in Congress, specifically with the congressmen and women and senators that are beholden to Boeing as a constituent. So this is a very convoluted way

for Boeing to get their money back, for NASA to get the seats they need, and for all sides to come out a winner because NASA doesn't have to pay Russia. Boeing gets the money from NASA directly, and they even make a little on the deal if they sell it at the previous market rate for a Soyuz seat. So that's the long and the short of it. I think it's a very interesting story that is worth watching. It's just interesting to see all of it. I think it's a very interesting story that is worth watching. It's just interesting to see all of this play out. In general, I think it's a good idea to buy Soyuz flights beyond the time when Commercial Crew is going to be online, because we don't yet know what is going to be discovered in the first flight or two from both Boeing and SpaceX. We could get the flights off by the end of 2018, but maybe we find a big hitch in the program there

or in each design or procedure or something. Maybe we've discovered something that limits the usefulness of those flights initially. It would be good to have that safety net of Soyuz being able to get our astronauts up to the ISS. I think it's worth having a little bit of overlap here. I think it's a smart thing to do. It's very prudent to have that overlap because you never know what's going to happen with commercial crew. You never know what's going to happen with the funding needed to get those flights. There's a lot of variables at play and a little bit of extra insurance here would go a long way. So, you know, even if you have to pay a little extra for it, I think the overlap is necessary. I think it's smart. I think it's a good decision.

And for NASA, being able to pay Boeing for that instead of Roscosmos is overall a good move because it keeps funding a contractor that they rely on very heavily. Remember, Boeing is the prime contractor on the ISS right now. So it is a good thing for NASA to pay Boeing, given their current circumstances. Overall, is it uncomfortable to have to pay $500 million for flights to the ISS when we don't yet have another option online? Obviously it is. But overall, I think it's a good policy, given the current playing field that we're looking at here, with Boeing and SpaceX trying to get up and flying, with Soyuz having these open seats, Boeing needing money. Overall, this was a really interesting way for all these chess pieces

to fit together. And I think it works out better for everybody except for Roscosmos overall. So I just have one more thing to get to today, which is an email question from Matt. But before I do that, just wanted to say thank you to all of you out there supporting Main Engine Cutoff on Patreon. Patreon is the way to support this show, the blog, everything I do here. And I really, really appreciate any and all support you out there can give me. This episode of Main Engine Cutoff was produced by three executive producers, Matt, Pat O, and one anonymous executive producer. They produced this episode and I am very, very thankful for their ongoing support. And if you would like to help, head over to patreon.com slash Miko

and give as little as $1 a month. It really, really helps me do this show each and every week. And I am very, very thankful for all of you out there supporting the show already. Now to the email from Matt. Different Matt than the producer Matt. This is a different Matt entirely, unless he was using some pseudonym. And his email is in response to what I was talking about last week with Culberson and

Europa Clipper mission and some of the not so much shifting on the political committees and things like that. Matt says, I'm all for extensive exploration of the solar system and I'm totally behind Europa Clipper. However, the phrasing that Senator Culberson single-handedly got it funded and is often the only supporter made me cringe. As far as the Senate goes, any program of this size getting passed with single-handed effort seems off. I personally would prefer some more agreement, especially for a flagship class mission. That being said, it seems like it's the only proposal for a flagship mission after the Mars 2020 rover, so it's not like

Culberson pushed this past any competition, though that money could be used to pay for a few Discovery class missions. Any thoughts on having this one-man army on behalf of space exploration for some more cohesive, yet surely more conservative agreement when funding flagship missions? He also says, side note, looking up the total cost of the F-35 program ruined my day. That's another topic for another show that probably isn't this podcast in general, but I see where you're coming from on that. So overall, I would say that it's not like Culberson, when I say he single-handedly did a lot of work for the Europa Clipper mission, it's not like Culberson, when I say he single-handedly did a lot of work for the Europa

Clipper mission, it's not like he wrote some bill, signed it himself, and sent it to the president's desk to be signed into law. These committees that come up with the overarching legislation that gets pushed through, they're often small committees. You look at some of these committees that I talked about last week, and there are a couple of people in these hearings. There's not a lot of people. These committees come up with the basic legislation. It goes from there and becomes included in something larger in Senate or the House, and those all together get signed off on. So the committees that generate these ideas and generate the original legislation are often a lot smaller than the entire body that votes on them. So, you know, that's a bit about the process and how it's delegated and all of that, which is why the committees themselves are important.

So when I say that he single-handedly did that, it's not like he signed off and it immediately became signed-in legislation. You know, it still had to go through that whole process. It still had to become accepted by the committee at large that he's with. So, you know, however few people that may be, that's still an important part of the process where one person can push through into that committee and say, this is something I really believe in. Here's why. And that committee altogether does have to agree on it.

So if I implied that, you know, Culberson was making some heroic effort all by himself and throwing his subcommittee to the ground and charging on forward without listening to anyone else, that's definitely not what happened there. He is a big champion of it. He is able to persuade that subcommittee in a certain direction, which then kicks off the series of events that leads to legislation. Now, a lot of times when you're talking about government pork or earmarking or different things that happen in Congress, there are times when a single congressperson

will slip something into a bill that will get signed into law as part of this giant package, and it funnels some money to something somewhat useless in their district. And that is something that gets a lot of flack. But Europa Clipper, in a lot of ways, is not that, you know, specifically, because it's like a lot of other NASA missions. And, you know, the districts I play there are a little bit all screwy, because it's a JPL area mission that also interacts with SLS. So there's a lot of linked concerns there that bring together a lot of different sides of that. And in fact, the mandate that Europa Clipper flies on SLS may have been one of those negotiations in that

subcommittee. We don't know what happened in any given conversation about Europa Clipper, but maybe one of the ways that he got that into the legislation to start was to say, I will hitch this mission to SLS, which you, whoever you're talking to, really cares about. Maybe that was his way to get this into that original piece of legislation, by hitching it to something that someone else really, really cares about, because then they're both tied into each other's success. Europa Clipper fails, SLS loses the mission. SLS fails, Europa Clipper loses a launch vehicle. So that could have been some of the negotiations going on there and something that Culberson worked for and to get it into legislation in that way, to kind of build a coalition, build some consensus around that mission and the

way that it would be signed into law. My point here is that the subcommittees are small teams. They are not the entire Congress. They generate some piece of legislation which eventually makes its way to all of Congress, albeit in a much larger piece of legislation. There's definitely some delegation happening here, definitely that's why these subcommittees are very interesting to watch and very impactful for the future of NASA or other agencies that are part of these subcommittees. So I hope that clears it up a bit. If Matt or anyone else out there wants to follow up on this

topic or any other topic for that matter, email me, anthonyatmainenginecutoff.com, and we can continue this conversation since we are at a very interesting time policy-wise over the next few months. So I'm sure we'll be talking about a lot of other issues like this, and we should see some other members of the team. We should see an administrator soon, as always. So if you have any thoughts on any of that, email me, anthonyatmainenginecutoff.com. And with that, that is all I have for this somewhat whirlwind episode of Main Engine Cutoff. Thank you very much for listening, and I will talk to you next week.