Main Engine Cut Off - T+39: Opportunities for Private Companies within Government Programs

Episode Date: February 9, 2017

This week, NASA officially announced that NanoRacks will be adding an airlock onto the International Space Station to add capabilities and capacity to their already-up-and-running business. That announcement, along with some early insight into NASA policy in 2017, got me thinking about commercial opportunities within government programs, beyond Commercial Cargo and Crew. 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. NASA Announces Acceptance of NanoRacks Airlock Proposal - Main Engine Cut Off T+20: Mike Johnson, Chief Designer at NanoRacks on NanoRacks’ History, NextSTEP, and Wet Workshops - Main Engine Cut Off Issue #13 - Main Engine Cut Off NextSTEP Pushes Forward to Ground Prototypes - Main Engine Cut Off NASA Releases RFI for EM-2 Payload - Main Engine Cut Off Video from Orbital ATK Featuring Cygnus-Derived Habitats - Main Engine Cut Off Email your thoughts and comments 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 past week, NASA officially announced that NanoRacks would be sending an airlock up to the ISS to be added on to the station to be used as part of NanoRacks would be sending an airlock up to the ISS to be added on to the station to be used as part of NanoRacks' already up and running business. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you might remember back on episode 20, I talked to Mike Johnson, the chief designer at NanoRacks, about all sorts of stuff. We talked about his history, where he came from, where he worked, how he got to NanoRacks, how NanoRacks started, what they're working on today, and what they're heading into tomorrow. And one of the main pieces

of that was the airlock. We talked at length about the airlock, what it could be used for, how they would make use of it, why it's so important to their business. So if you have listened to that show already, but it's been a while, or if you've never heard that show, I would recommend going back to check that out. I'll put a link to it in the show notes at mainenginecutoff.com. But go back and listen to that because he talks at length about why this is so important and what we should be looking forward to. Since then, I've talked to NanoRacks a few times, and the latest I've heard is that this airlock is slated for SpaceX's CRS-19 mission. This will be the payload in the trunk of Dragon for that mission. So that's not officially confirmed yet, but that is what

they're working towards for the airlock. Right now, that flight is slated for May-ish of 2019, so we've got just about two years until we see this thing fly. And maybe before then, as we get closer to launch, we'll have somebody back on from NanoRacks, either Mike Johnson himself or someone else from the NanoRacks team to talk more about the airlock specifically. But again, go back and listen to that show because it might be my favorite episode of this podcast that I've done so far because I could just sit and listen to Mike tell stories all day long. I just really enjoyed hearing about his history and NanoRacks and what they're working on. But all this talk about a commercial company and the ISS, all this talk

this week got me thinking about some things related to private companies with commercial opportunities in a government program. And of course, when you talk about the ISS in this manner, in almost every article that mentioned this NanoRacks airlock, ISS and its retirement date was brought up because that's always, you know, and that's not far behind when you talk about something on the ISS, you immediately talk about the retirement of the ISS. Right now, we are slated to have the ISS re-enter in 2024, though there is a lot of talk about extending that out to 2028. There's no official confirmation on that yet. They still have a lot of work to do. You know, they only recently got commitment to the 2024 date from all the international partners,

but now it seems that they are trying to get commitment to 2028 to have that thing flying from where we are today another 11 years or so. So whenever ISS is brought up in conversation, its retirement date follows closely on the heels. And right after that, people start talking about the fact that without the ISS, we would have no commercial cargo program, no commercial crew program, nanoracks wouldn't have opportunities like this, beam wouldn't be flying on the ISS. And they start to bring up all of these things that commercial companies have done with the ISS that wouldn't exist without it. And quite frankly, I think that line of thought is total nonsense. And that's what I want to unpack here, is how the ISS fits into commercial opportunities within a government program,

and how the opportunities might extend beyond the ISS, even though it's always brought up in a way that the ISS is the key to this all, and that the ISS alone is responsible for all of these commercial opportunities that we're seeing flourish right now. Now, certainly in the grand scheme of things, when we get, you know, 10, 20 years out from the ISS retirement, or even beyond, I think one of the main legacies of the ISS will be the way that private companies were cultivated during this time period. You know, it was a very crucial moment in SpaceX's history when they got that contract for commercial cargo. It had saved them in a sense because they were up against some tough times there, if not complete closure of that particular

iteration of SpaceX, which is something I'll get into in a little bit. In the long-term view, I do think this will be one of the best legacies of the ISS, is that it was able to cultivate opportunities like this, but I don't think that that's unique to the ISS, and that's where I have trouble with the way that people talk about this. I see them putting too much importance upon ISS itself. My main issue is that people see the ISS program as the only place where private opportunities are possible, rather than the first of a long line of NASA programs in which private companies will have opportunities to contribute, and opportunities that will make businesses out of these private companies and get them up and

running and get them stable and get them to a point where they can operate independently of any government contract. And for proof of that, I think you look no farther than the NASA Next Step program, which is the reason I had NanoRacks on last time to talk. NASA is working on deep space habitat proposals right now for use on the SLS Orion roadmap, and they are following in the footsteps of the commercial crew and cargo in the early days. They are kind of taking the same approach, maybe tweaked a little bit since then based on what they've learned. But right now they are working with six different companies or groups on prototypes of these habitats. They're doing ground prototypes first. And the you know, the thought is

eventually they will down select and select a few partners to build actual flying prototypes, kind of in the same way they've done with commercial cargo and crew. In the early days of commercial cargo, they had multiple people propose ideas. They worked on preliminary work, and they down selected to SpaceX and Orbital ATK. And in the second iteration of CRS contracts, they picked Sierra Nevada with their Dream Chaser as well. So they've picked two and three companies on the cargo side. On the crew side, we saw the same process and they down-selected to SpaceX and Boeing.

That is exactly the same process they are doing with the Next Step habitats. They've picked six different people to work on proposals and they will down-select in the future. And we already see companies like Orbital ATK jockeying to fly one of their Cygnus-based habitats on EM2. They've already released video about how this could work. They've done this animation to show how Cygnus could be in the payload area of SLS on EM2 with the exploration upper stage and the additional payload space that comes along with that. And they've shown how they could be integrated into

that mission plan. So we are seeing these companies jockey for position to fly one of their prototypes on early exploration missions. And obviously that will continue beyond as we see more and more happen. So my point here is that we are already seeing the ancestors of commercial cargo and crew. We are seeing this follow-on program in a completely unrelated, maybe not completely unrelated, but a separate program in NASA that follows in the same footsteps as cargo and crew did already. And that is where I think more focus should be placed, that the ISS is proving out a new model for NASA to work with private companies. It's proving out a new model for opportunities to be available for private companies. And I don't think that

gets discussed enough, and I don't think that gets as much importance as when people write in articles or discuss that the ISS is going to be retired soon and with it all private companies opportunities will completely dry up. So I want to delve a little bit into what might come in the future, how the future might play out, how programs that aren't the ISS might play into these private companies opportunities in the future. 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 on Patreon. This episode of Main Engine Cutoff is produced by four executive producers,

Pat, Matt, George, and one other anonymous executive producer. And if you'd like to help support the show, head over to patreon.com slash Miko and give as little as $1 a month. All of your help is greatly, graciously appreciated and is hugely helpful to help me do this every single week. And I thank you so much for your continuing support. So looking into the future, I think we can see, as I said with the Next Step Habit Apps, we can see how this would play out in other programs. But I do think it requires a little bit more discussion around that because we are in such a period of flux right now where we sit in this upheaval that we're in

right now with a presidential transition and a NASA transition and everything seems to be up in the air. We don't have any concrete answers yet. So let's project a little about what may happen on this front. ISS, as I said, is slated to be retired in 2024. That might get pushed out to 2028. Either way, the ISS is a huge portion of the NASA human spaceflight budget and other industry partners as well. You know, ESA and JAXA and all the people that put effort to the ISS are contributing money as well and resources. So that is a big resource suck for these companies. And once the ISS is retired, the thought is that the money going into that would be transferred, hopefully. You know, this is all up to Congress and how they delve out money and all that. But the hope is that once it's retired, the money would be transferred

into whatever program is a follow-on at NASA. Right now, that is SLS Orion and the Exploration Program. That could change as we see different priority shifts, different things happen within the administration. But right now, we have to assume that money from ISS will flow into SLS Orion once ISS comes out of the budget. So among that program, we obviously have Next Step, as I keep talking about. We could see other opportunities come up as well. Let's consider for a moment, if we do put a station in lunar orbit, and it's a modular station, much the same way the ISS is, who's to say that a company like NanoRacks or Bigelow or these companies that we're seeing use the different birthing ports on the ISS? Who's to say that they wouldn't have an idea that could be applicable there as well? And in the same way that we're seeing nanoracks take advantage of these ports that

are available on the ISS in low Earth orbit, we could see companies take advantage of those birthing ports that are available in lunar orbit or anywhere else that you could imagine. You know, if we have a station on the surface of the moon, you could see a company saying, you know what, I have an idea for something that would be very useful, given the current setup here for different scientific agencies or whoever to take advantage of, and I can add this on to that station, and they would go through the process much the same way that we've seen Bigelow or NanoRacks or any of these companies do so far. So that's one side of it all. That's the side that we're seeing with Beam and NanoRacks and all that stuff. The other side, the commercial crew and

cargo, who's to say that that wouldn't transfer forward to a station in lunar orbit or on the surface? You could say we need resupplies to these stations and contract with private companies to do it. It obviously is a completely different problem domain and a harder problem because you're going farther, you're doing different trajectories and things like that. The ISS is an easier target than these things that I'm talking about, and that's why it was a natural place to begin programs like commercial cargo and crew. But you can see it extend beyond that. We're going to have private companies landing on the moon, hopefully this year. Moon Express and others seem to be making good progress towards that. Obviously, they're not too big yet, but it's a start. And SpaceX is obviously

shooting for Red Dragon missions either in 2018 or 2020. My guess would be 2020 at this point. But we have private companies starting to put eyes on getting to the surface of the moon. So you can see that there is progress in the lander space. There's obviously progress in the launcher space. We don't even know yet what Blue Origin is going to do. There's so many things going on that could be applicable into the future if you just imagine a little bit what is beyond ISS. So it's not outlandish to think that NASA in the future would contract with companies to get cargo to the surface of the moon, to the surface of Mars, to stations in orbit around either or anywhere else for that matter that they turn their focus to.

So even just looking one step beyond ISS, we've talked here about how we could see commercial crew and cargo carrying on and how companies with that entrepreneurial spirit will find opportunities for themselves given the playing space that they're in. So I don't know whether it's a lack of imagination or cynicism or what, but for some reason, people are stuck in this line of thinking that the ISS is the only place in which commercial opportunities can flourish that private companies could operate in. And it seems like, you know, if you're someone who sees the inevitability in technology development and things like that, and obviously there are problems to get from here to there, but if you see what the future is, you can see how these private companies are going to be operating in the same spaces as NASA. So it's quite frankly idiotic to think that they would not fit into the program in some way. not fit into the program in some way. How exactly that is, it's tough to say, because right now we are, as I said, in this transition period. Everybody in Congress, the potential administrators,

everybody that's in the playing field right now has still expressed support for SLS and Orion. You don't know exactly whether they're being truthful and that's just the position they're in. So they're politicking to jockey for position within the administration. Congress really likes SLS and Orion, so I can't see it losing support there as much, at least so far. We haven't seen where these divisions are going to come about in the new administration, but we'll find out more about that in the future. But even right now on the playing field, where we're going from ISS to SLS and Orion, we can see where these opportunities would lie. We could see how NASA could bring in these private companies for cargo delivery, for whatever else is out there and available. So I'm not sure whether it's just

short-sighted thinking from people that express this opinion or what, but I certainly see these opportunities being available. And I think there's a larger piece at play here, and that is the entrepreneurial spirit that we are seeing in this space right now. NanoRacks is obviously looking for every opportunity that they have, be it from CubeSats to Airlocks to the Next Step Habitats. We've seen Sierra Nevada push Dream Chaser usage any and everywhere they can. They're using it as a cargo craft as part of CRS-2. They still have the crew version out there.

The crew version, the crew size with windows even, is going to fly their approach and landing tests out at Edwards Air Force Base right now. They've been talking to the UN about using it for UN members who need access to space. They're doing a lot of work to use DreamChaser any and every way they can. So I think those two things are examples of companies seeing opportunities, seeking out opportunities, and pursuing them aggressively to find themselves in a good business position. And I think, obviously, we've seen that with SpaceX over the years. People like to paint a picture that NASA floated in on a cloud and dropped a bunch of money

in front of a sad, moping Elon Musk when SpaceX was falling to ruins. But SpaceX did a lot of work to get themselves to that position. They saw an opportunity within the NASA program of the day, and they pursued it, and they won it. It's not like NASA just graciously saved a company just to be, you know, the good cultivators they are. I think they put themselves in that position to win that contract. And, you know, that's a good thing on NASA's part that they saw the potential there and invested in it. But it's not like SpaceX was sitting idly twiddling their thumbs and waiting for the bag of cash to

drop in front of them. We're seeing that now with Blue Origin aggressively pursuing this vision that they have and doing an incredible job at it. So there's so many examples of these entrepreneurs out there who are finding opportunities for themselves in the world and pursuing them and making markets for themselves. Planet Labs has been doing a lot of PR lately to show off their fleet of satellites and their imaging capabilities. They just recently bought a imaging service from Google that Google ran for a while. So there are so many examples of people finding opportunities in this space and pursuing them and putting themselves in position. There are obviously a ton of people that are going out of business and failing at their mission. And I think people get jaded because of that, because we see

things so many times just floundering. And maybe where I am, I work in the software development field by day and have a lot of friends in Silicon Valley and all that kind of stuff. So I'm so much steeped in that culture that I see this happen all the time that maybe I'm just more used to it than people that are from other industries. And I just see it as the normal operation of business, that there's going to be 50 companies that go out of business for every one that succeeds or something like that. But that is a good thing. I think that is the sign of a market that's on the upswing and that has potential for the future. And the fact that NASA is seeing the

opportunities to cultivate that and to make it part of their programs, to find a way for those companies to contribute to their larger programs, I think that is an incredible thing and is extremely promising for the future, whatever the future may hold. That'll be it for me this week. Thank you so much for listening. If you want to check out the show notes, the blog, Main Engine Cutoff Weekly, head over to mainenginecutoff.com and check it all out there. And hopefully that will hold you over until I talk to you next week.