Main Engine Cut Off - T+37: Government Subsidies, Private Capability, and the 2010 National Space Policy

Episode Date: January 27, 2017

Four members of the House of Representatives sent letters to DARPA and the Pentagon this week to file a complaint about a program in conflict with the 2010 National Space Policy. It’s a situation reminiscent of the debate over commercial use of retired ICBMs as low-cost launch vehicles, except this time, Orbital ATK is on the other side. I discuss the current issues and how their resolution may affect future policy decisions. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 4 executive producers—Pat O, Matt Giraitis, Jorge Perez, and one anonymous—and 28 other supporters on Patreon. Elon Musk on Twitter: “@gdoehne Expendable. Future flights will go on Falcon Heavy or the upgraded Falcon 9.” Issue #11 - Main Engine Cut Off Orbital ATK For and Against Government Subsidies - Main Engine Cut Off DARPA satellite-servicing project comes under congressional fire - SpaceNews.com Current debate on ICBM use a throwback to the 1990s - 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 Managing Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo, and right off the bat this week I wanted to give you a little bit of follow up on the SpaceX topics that we have been discussing here for the past couple weeks. I know we've been SpaceX heavy the last two or three shows, but they're getting back to flight. They're the most exciting thing going on in these last few weeks. So I think it was worth talking about the things that we did talk about. And to follow up on that, last week, if you remember, I was talking about the new fueling procedures that SpaceX used on the return to flight and how those might affect overall performance of the vehicle for upcoming missions. And specifically, I was saying that

this next mission, Echo Star 23, this is the first mission from Pad 39A at Cape Canaveral. It's going to be an interesting one because it's a very heavy payload. It's 5,500 kilograms, which is heavy payload. It's 5,500 kilograms, which is a very large GTO payload for SpaceX. And from past missions, I won't rehash everything here, but from past missions, this satellite would have been at the higher end of a recoverable GTO flight. So I speculated that the fueling procedures slowing down, leading to warmer propellant, would have a little bit of an impact on overall performance of Falcon 9. And this week, we got some confirmation from Elon Musk that the first stage for this flight will be expended. There will be no recovery attempted. So last week, I was saying, keep an eye on what kind of recovery they attempt with this flight.

It'll be very telling. they attempt with this flight, it'll be very telling. And I think that's what we have here, that the new fueling procedures are impacting the performance of this vehicle just enough to make recovery out of reach. Previously, people have done estimations to say that 5,500 kilograms to GTO would be the maximum payload mass that could go to GTO and recover the first stage. And if this fueling procedure had any effect at all, even one or two percent of overall performance, that's just a number I'm pulling out. I don't know exactly how this affects performance, but even if it was that little, they could have recovery issues for a payload this large going to where it's going. So it's going to be interesting

to see exactly where they go forward Elon Musk said that payloads in this class would be on Falcon Heavy in the future or Falcon 9 Block 5 he was kind of vague about what exactly he meant there's speculation from from me and others that that means the version of Falcon 9 that has the redesigned COPVs that that can deal with the fast loading of propellant again, which would improve their performance back to what we saw previously. So, of course, there are upgraded engines to be flown on Block 5 as well. There will be higher thrust Merlin 1Ds.

So there are a lot of changes going into Block 5 from the performance side. The other changes are to improve reusability, so stronger legs, different materials, I would imagine. We don't have a lot of specifics on what that is yet, but all of that is to say that it seems that the fueling procedures are impacting Falcon 9's performance a little bit, at least enough to make this mission out of reach. And we will keep an eye on what they do with recoveries in the future and with the fueling timeline, because even though they are going to expend this first stage, we still want to check out if they follow the same fueling procedures that they did with the iridium one flight or if there are further changes that they're still tweaking and kind of

figuring out a new procedure from here so we're probably going to circle back and talk about this once this flight does go off as i'm recording this here on Thursday. They are doing some tests of the transporter erector on 39A. So things seem to be moving closer to flight, and we'll see how quickly they do get up and flying from 39A. I hope it's soon, because that'll be a very exciting flight to watch, and I want them to get back into their groove as we were hoping. So I don't want to go on about SpaceX too much right here, right now. There's not too much else to cover on that front. I did write about this pretty extensively in this week's

edition of Main Engine Cutoff Weekly. So head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash weekly if you want to read that and sign up for that weekly column that I do. I did write about it at length in issue 11. I'll put a link into that into the show notes. So if you want to read more about the SpaceX stuff and all the things that we're finding out about Echo Star 23, head over there, see what I had to say. But otherwise, I wanted to move on to a topic about satellite servicing and government subsidies and some interesting policy potential here that we're seeing come together. Last year, DARPA received proposals from various companies to help them develop and demonstrate a robotic spacecraft that could service other spacecraft. So it would go out to geostationary orbit and reposition satellites, refuel satellites,

do the things that you think of when you think about in-flight satellite servicing. And recently, this week, they received a letter from four different U.S. representatives about this program specifically and asking them to not put this under contract this year like they plan to do because it runs into conflict with part of the national space policy from 2010. So the thing that's at play here is that the DARPA program is working on satellite servicing, which we are now seeing to start coming about in the commercial side of the industry. And specifically, Orbital ATK signed their first customer for their mission extension vehicle. They signed Intelsat to a couple of years of operation out there at geostationary orbit, doing a lot of the same

things that the DARPA program was going to cover. So between 2010, when this policy was written into place, which I'll get into in a second, and now, we've seen a commercial partner come about that is thinking about doing this satellite servicing thing, and they are just a few years out from actually flying this mission. So the DARPA program is now infringing on an area in which there is a commercial industry player that is in competition for these types of missions. And in 2010, the national space policy from the Obama White House, this was in June of 2010, they had a statement in that policy that said the following. The government should develop governmental space systems only when it is in the national interest and there is no suitable cost-effective U.S. commercial or as appropriate foreign commercial service or system that is or will be available. So this DARPA program for satellite servicing, these representatives are saying, comes into conflict with that clause because Orbital ATK and others are working on satellite servicing,

and this DARPA program would basically be subsidizing competition in that area, which would undermine the efforts of private companies that we are seeing develop the same technology. Now, the people at play here are all House Representative members, Bryden Stein from Oklahoma who a lot of people think is going to be the next NASA Administrator, Representative Bishop from Utah, and Barbara Comstock from Virginia. They wrote to stop this program from DARPA until DARPA reviews the program to make sure that it complies with that 2010 national space policy. Representative Duncan Hunter from California also sent his own letter to say that the program duplicates NASA's Restore-L mission,

which we saw SSL get awarded a contract for just a few weeks ago, really, that it duplicates that mission and muddies the business case for commercial companies. So the worry from these four representatives are that a government agency taking on this sort of mission is going to undermine the efforts of a private company because you are subsidizing whoever would win that contract for that DARPA mission to develop this capability when there are other competing commercial and private industry members doing the same thing.

And that's against the space policy that was put into place in 2010. And this is very similar to what we're seeing with the retired ICBMs being asked to be used for commercial launches. This is an issue that comes up every couple of years since the 90s, really. It's been around for so long at this point. couple of years since the 90s, really. It's been around for so long at this point. But every once in a while, there will be a recurrence here where we try to take retired ICBMs and put them into use for commercial launch services. And Orbital ATK, interestingly enough, is on the other side of that argument because they would really like to be able to use their Minotaur launch vehicle for commercial flights and other launch vehicles like that that would be part of these retired ICBMs to be used for commercial usage.

Right now, they are not allowed to use those retired ICBMs for commercial missions. They are only allowed to use them for missions in which there is not a commercial vehicle that would be able to fly that mission, whether due to technical considerations or just availability outright. So this is a very similar argument here with the satellite servicing thing and the ICBM thing. In both of these cases, there is an option that says the government would be subsidizing hardware or services from a contractor, which would compete directly with private companies that are building a market out of their products. The ICBM thing has mostly been squashed, I would say. They are allowed to be used, as I said, in cases where commercial players are not applicable. And this new thing with

satellite servicing is interesting because right now, as I said, we are on the cusp of Orbital ATK having an operational service that does this, and DARPA kind of interfering with that. So these are two interesting scenarios that kind of, you can see the similarities here. It's ironic, painfully so, that Orbital ATK is for the subsidies when it comes to the ICBMs, but against it when it comes to satellite servicing, kind of shows you where their priorities are, I would say. And not surprising, you know, that's something that anyone would be in favor of given their business model. But these two things cropping up is kind of a sign of things to come, I think. This isn't something

that is going to go away. I think we're only going to see more of these kind of questions come about. And that's what I want to dive into really here, because the specifics about satellite servicing or ICBMs, you know, we could argue about that, but I think it's more fun to kind of see how it comes and see what comes out of it, rather than arguing about it up front here, since a lot of the arguments have been made for decades, as I said. But I think it's interesting to see how these ideas could apply to the future, and that's what I want to get into here. But before I do that, I did want to say a big thank you to all of you out there supporting Main Engine Cutoff on Patreon. This episode of Main Engine Cutoff was produced by four executive producers. We've got a new one this week, Pat, Matt, and the anonymous one that

we've talked about the past couple weeks, but we do have George now joining as an executive producer. So thank you very much to the four of them and to everyone else out there supporting Managing Cutoff on Patreon. This is an entirely listener and reader supported project that I'm doing here. You know, I don't do any advertising or anything else like that. It's all from everyone out there listening to the show right now. And I thank you very much. 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 really, really helps me do this every single week. And I thank you so much for all of the support. Now, what I really wanted to get into here and why I thought this would be a good topic for Main Engine Cutoff was that I wanted to take the

debates that we're seeing around the ICBMs and satellite servicing and apply it to some other areas that we tend to find interesting here on the podcast, the blog, everything that I talk about with you out there, and apply it to those things and see how it might affect policy in the near future. So these representatives are kind of, you know, approaching DARPA with this complaint because Orbital ATK is about to launch a mission to demonstrate satellite servicing. And that's very interesting because, you know, this, right now, DARPA has every right to say this is not proven yet in the commercial marketplace, this is not ready to go.

But the National Space policy from 2010 does say it does leave that door open that says will be available, any commercial service that will be available. So it kind of projects out a little bit. And it's typically, you know, governmentally vague, which is annoying. And that's where, you know, we end up paying a lot of money for lawyers to fight these battles. Nothing against lawyers, just that it's a very vague policy to say will be available. Does that mean now? Does that mean 10 years? That mean 100 years?

Because theoretically, everything will be available eventually. So it's kind of vague in that way. But in the satellite servicing section, you know, this hasn't launched yet. So that's DARPA's side is that this isn't available yet. We don't, we can't depend on that.

So we want to develop it for ourselves. Let's take this and think about something like SpaceX's Red Dragon mission. NASA sends a lot of payloads to the surface of Mars. They contract with their own programs, they contract with their own launch providers to get their payloads to the surface of Mars, to land it there. They develop their own spacecraft, their rovers, everything like that. And they do this full ground-up mission. You know, no pun intended there, but they do this whole ground-up mission from spacecraft to launch vehicle to operations on the surface. If and when SpaceX does fly a Red Dragon to Mars and opens up a commercial access to the surface of Mars for scientific payloads, for research,

for whatever they end up doing with Red Dragon, how does that come into a debate like we're seeing here with the ICBMs or with the satellite servicing? Because at that point, representatives and senators, they could make the argument that SpaceX has shown a commercial ability to do this sort of thing. So obviously, this wouldn't be applicable to the giant rovers that we're seeing like Curiosity or other things like that. But other government landers might be put into the same sort of situation where certain members of Congress could say, this is a commercial ability that is there to be taken advantage of. And per national space policy, you are beholden to take advantage of that if it's applicable for

your mission and you know that's only in context of Red Dragon but what happens when you get more of these kind of things Moon Express heading to the moon any of the other Google Lunar XPRIZE contestants that are planning on doing more than just that initial mission. As commercial industry, as private companies encroach upon the area in which government has operated for decades, it's been the sole domain of governments, as more private companies encroach upon that position, this national space policy line is going to be brought up again and again, because the capability that the commercial industry has is going to be ever

expanding. And, you know, we expect that to start with Moon Express and Red Dragon and smaller kind of landers like that. Not that Red Dragon is small, but, you know, in terms of it's no Curiosity Skycrane in complexity, you know, it's a simpler thing where you're putting a payload onto a shipping container of sorts and sending it to Mars. But as it grows from there to something that's more robust, something that's more full-featured, you know, obviously we're talking decades out at this point, but as we get there, if this sort of space policy line and initiative is still in play,

it's almost inevitable that things will shift to the commercial market, because that is what is being applied to ICBMs and to satellite servicing. So it's only natural that that would be applied to other areas that private industry overtakes. And I think we're seeing this a little bit with the exploration side of NASA even. There's been this push to have an exploration side of NASA that builds a SLS and builds Orion and using Falcon Heavy and Vulcan and other partners that are there, you know, New Glenn, New Armstrong, all of that stuff that's going to be in place, building an exploration roadmap around that instead of doing this full ground-up effort to manage an entire launch vehicle like is happening with SLS or manage an entire crew vehicle like is happening with Orion. So as commercial launchers get more capability, we're seeing this push from Congress, from the government,

to commercialize the exploration roadmap. That's been a theme the past years, commercializing the roadmap, privatizing the roadmap, and having NASA manage a program but buy launch services from commercial partners. And what's to say, as we see Red Dragon, Moon Express, other things like that come online, start operating, that that would not extend from launch vehicles to the landers to the exploration vehicles on the surface? That's something that is a trend I think we're seeing in the upward direction. And the ICBM debate, the satellite

servicing debate we're seeing here with DARPA, this is really just the start of this kind of debate because the private industry is expanding into other areas that only governments have operated in before. And that puts them at this point where they need to discuss when do they take advantage of the private industry? When do they build their own hardware, their own missions, et cetera, et cetera. So when you read stories like this about whether it be ICBMs, because that's coming up a lot again, whether it be satellite servicing, whether it be the exploration plans of NASA as the Trump administration transitions the NASA team over to a new era, keep this in mind that this is a piece of the 2010

national space policy. And there are a lot of mentions of this throughout other statutes that have been in place over the years. So this is a trend for sure. This is obviously nothing new to people listening to this show because I think the listeners to this show are sort of attracted to this side of space exploration. But it's only to say that

this is not going to be left up to the whims of a particular politician anymore. When these lines of initiatives are throughout policy, and when we see this kind of growth from the private industry, I don't want to say it's inevitable, but we've seen it sprout from ICBMs to satellite servicing, and we're only going to see this more and more over the next few years. So keep your eye on this. Keep this debate in your head. Keep asking this question about how does this apply? How does this story apply to that story? Keep that in mind. I think it's going to be very, very important, especially this year of transition that we're seeing at NASA. So that is all I have for you today. I did push this episode recording date a little bit because I thought that the Boeing announcement of their spacesuits would be more interesting than it was. I think they are ugly spacesuits in my opinion. The blue is pretty bold, it's Boeing blue as we expected. But I am excited to see the clean lines version of whatever SpaceX announces

in the future. But there wasn't a lot there to talk about for me, obviously. And that's why I covered this other idea. So if you have any feedback on anything I talked about today, anything I didn't talk about today, email me anthony at managingcutoff.com. I love hearing from any and all of you about any of these topics, any topics I should cover, anything you think I missed, send me an email. And I will probably do an episode where I read out a bunch of emails because I've got a little bit of a backlog to get through. So thank you very much for listening and I will talk to you next week.