Main Engine Cut Off - T+43: March Lightning Round

Episode Date: March 25, 2017

The last two weeks have been filled with a bunch of smaller stories—SpaceX’s GPS III bid win and upcoming SES-10 launch, ULA’s decision on Vulcan’s engines and Congress’ potential meddling, and the ISS beyond 2024. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 6 executive producers—Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, and two anonymous—and 39 other supporters on Patreon. SpaceX Wins GPS III Launch, More Info on Phase 1A - Main Engine Cut Off Issue #15 - Main Engine Cut Off The Alabama Launch Alliance - Main Engine Cut Off Thornberry Walks Back Vulcan Intervention - Main Engine Cut Off BE-4 Hydrostatic Bearings - Main Engine Cut Off Space Subcommittee Hearing- The ISS after 2024: Options and Impacts | Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Email your thoughts and comments to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Subscribe on iTunes, Overcast, or elsewhere Subscribe to Main Engine Cut Off Weekly Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

Welcome to the Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo, back again after a short hiatus. I'm very sorry about the lack of podcasting the last few weeks. It was a combination of reasons, but overall, really, it was a very boring week last week. We had a lot of the hot drama that we've been talking about between NASA and SpaceX and Blue Origin stuff going on, and then all of a sudden everything was quiet there and really, really calmed down the last few weeks.

So there's not a giant topic for today's show, but what I'm going to do is sort of a lightning round of sorts, go through some things that I've missed talking about the last few weeks, and catch up to where we are now, because we are on the verge of some more exciting things happening. We are just a couple of days away from the launch of SES-10, which will be the first reused booster for SpaceX. So this is the core that launched the

CRS-8 mission, landed on the ASDS. It'll be launching SES-10 up to geosynchronous transfer orbit and landing back on the ASDS. So that's next week right now. It's slated for March 29th. As of recording this, it could always change, as we know. And a week after that, the first week of April out in Colorado, we have the Space Symposium, which actually the first episode of this podcast that I ever did was the week of the Space Symposium last year. There's always some fun things that come out of that, some interesting developments and through sessions and different announcements surrounding that. So I'm sure that week we'll have a ton to talk about. That's the first week of April. So in the next few weeks, we are going'll have a ton to talk about. That's the first week of April, so in the next few weeks we are going to have a lot to talk about, but for today we're

going to do this lightning round of sorts and get through a bunch of these different stories that I've been thinking about. None big enough for a podcast in their own right, but at least big enough to comment on here and keep you all in the loop. So first we might as well start with the SpaceX stuff that's been going on. Recently, they won a GPS 3 launch, a second one. They've won the first bid a couple of months back, and that was uncontested. They were the only one to submit a bid for that one. But this second launch, ULA also bid on this launch. So this is the first time that SpaceX has won one of these launch. So this is the first time that SpaceX has won one of these bids in which they had competition. Notably, the bid price did increase a good amount over the previous launch. So the

first time they won a GPS 3 launch, their bid was $82.7 million. The winning bid for this launch was $96.5 million. So a good percentage increase there in price. The Air Force has said that that is because SpaceX is adjusting to some of the things that the Air Force requires of these launches. And when they went in the first time, they didn't know all of what was required. So they're adjusting and they're learning. And that's a good enough reason. But in all honesty, I'm not surprised to see a launch price rising from SpaceX in terms of these launches. And that sounds weird for a company that is so focused on dropping launch prices. But a lot of this goes back to what I talked about a few months ago at this point about SpaceX's discount on a reused booster.

So, you know, the popular thing to quote is that SpaceX says that the launch costs are going to drop 30% by reusing a booster. So a lot of people think that that means it's going to cost 30% less to book a flight on a reused Falcon 9. And one day that will be true. But right up front, they don't have much of a reason to drop those prices 30% off the bat if they don't need to. They're already beating a lot of people on price right now. And say what you will about being subsidized by contracts or whatever other arguments you want to get into. The bottom line is that SpaceX launches are cheaper than other launches right now. They come with different risks and different things that you need to consider,

but they already are beating people on price as it stands today. With a reused core, if they can drop their costs 30%, they don't need to drop the prices 30% because that just eats into their margin. So if they do a 10% drop in price that you pay for a launch on Falcon 9, they are still beating everyone else on price and they're having a higher margin for themselves. And what that does is set themselves up for success in the future when others bring their launch costs down. SpaceX has that built-in margin to drop and cut their margins a little lower, but still bring their costs down without doing any additional work. So in the hypothetical world we're here, where this

next SES-10 flight goes off, reused boosters start to be sold. SpaceX drops the cost of those or the price of those 10%. And then in five years, ULA is flying Vulcan with a launch cost around $100 million. SpaceX has that room to go down from $50 million launch to a $40 million launch and still make money on that flight. So it's really setting themselves up for success in the future while giving themselves a bigger margin of profit in the current time. And this is a very similar situation with these Air Force launches. It's not to say that they're artificially increasing their price, but they only need to beat ULA in bidding for these launches. So they don't have a lot of a good reason to sell these launches at cost to the Air Force. You could make the argument that on moral grounds they don't they shouldn't gouge the government or anything like that, but if

if SpaceX is able to bid at a very significantly lower price than ULA, the Air Force and whoever else is accepting these launch bids, they're gonna take SpaceX up on that bid. A bid is a bid. You can put whatever number there that you want. SpaceX could go full price is right and say $1, Bob, and just make sure that they get the launch. Or they can try to take their price in their bid as close as they can to the ULA price. You obviously can't get too close to that price because if, hypothetically, SpaceX bid $149 million to ULA's $150 million, at that point, the Air Force might say, well, for a million dollars more, we like the reliability and the flight history and everything that comes with ULA.

Being there before, doing it more, their experience is worth that extra million dollars. But what if SpaceX offered, in this case, $100 million? Is that gap still worth it? So that's kind of the game that SpaceX could play here, where they say, well, we're going to get a little bit more of a margin on this flight because there is that additional work that has to be done to support this flight. The $62 million that is quoted on SpaceX site, that is the base price. They've made that clear. Everything else piles on on top of that price, whatever else you need done. But they can get their bid up closer to ULA's price to give themselves a higher margin and still make it worth it for the Air Force to choose the lower cost option. And that's the balancing act here. If the Air Force didn't want this kind of

process to happen, they shouldn't have a competitive bid in this case, because this is how bids work. You bid a price, they bid a price, and the person seeking out the services chooses which one they like better. You can put any price in there that you want. SpaceX could offer a Falcon 9 for $50 million. They could offer it for $150 million. It's just a bid. It's up to the Air Force to choose what they want. offer it for $150 million. It's just a bid. It's up to the Air Force to choose what they want.

So this is all the calculation that goes into this launch bid for SpaceX. So I really don't think the price in this bid is that big of a story. It's worth noting, it's worth talking about, because it's interesting to see how SpaceX plays this, what kind of prices they are putting out there for the Air Force right now. But it's not, you know, this isn't like, oh my gosh, SpaceX cost-cutting isn't working out. I think there's a lot more to it than that. Now, these two GPS-3 bids were the first two launches of what's called Phase 1A, the 15 launches that are part of Phase 1A. These are the first two of those 15. They both went SpaceX's way because they had cost as a very important point in the bid process. But there are other launches coming up that are NRO satellites and other national security satellites, which are ULA's home territory.

That's their home turf. And I expect that in those cases, when the aspects that are going into choosing which bid will win are different, ULA will have an advantage in some cases. On the price and cost bids, SpaceX has a clear advantage. On these other bids, it's yet to be seen how that will shake out. Notably, there are some things that SpaceX would not be able to bid on yet because it would require Falcon Heavy. And in those cases, obviously, we'll see it go ULA's way until SpaceX gets Falcon Heavy up and flying. So that's why it's a very important time for SpaceX to get Falcon Heavy flying with these bids coming up on the horizon. That's why the Falcon Heavy demo flight will fly in a fairing configuration because they need that to be certified for these kind of bids. It would be a

mass simulator under the fairings. We don't know what flight profile it would fly yet, but there's always a chance that they could try a direct to geo insertion because that's something, again, that only ULA offers right now and some national security satellites might require. So there's a lot to be seen here in how SpaceX will be able to get some of these launches in the later parts of this Phase 1A contracting session, with these 15 launches coming up. So good to keep an eye on this stuff. I'm sure it'll come up a lot over the next few years as we follow these 15 launches on their way to the launch pad.

Just a quick note about SpaceX and their turnaround time. We've talked about this a couple weeks back when they're opening up Pad 39A here. The turnaround between Echo Star 23 and SES-10 was surprisingly quick. After the Echo Star 23 launch, the pad crew went out to pad 39A to see what was needed to be done to be fixed up. A lot of times there'll be, you know, hydraulic lines or wiring that gets damaged in the flight and needs to be repaired. In this case, the pad was in pretty good shape, and that's because after the CRS-10 launch, the first launch from 39A, there was a lot of damage

that done there, and the pad crew, in addition to repairing that damage, put some more blast protection in place to improve this for future launches and make turnaround a lot quicker. And that's what happened here with Echo Star 23. They were ready for an SES-10 launch 11 days after the Echo Star launch. The date shifted around because of the Atlas V delay, which I'll talk about in a little bit. And that pushed SES-10 back to March 29th, which is still a good 13-day turnaround. So that ties their record for turnaround between launches. They would have beaten it if not for the Atlas V delay. is they would have beaten it if not for the Atlas V delay.

That's a really good sign because this is something that SpaceX really needs to work on is being able to pull off a quick turnaround. They can do it in terms of cores and payloads and things like that. The pad infrastructure is going to be a limiting factor unless they can get it worked out. It seems like they've made really good progress on that side of the operations. So I'm encouraged to see that. We'll see what it's like after SES 10. They seem to be aiming for their two week launch cadence, which we've talked about endlessly on this show here as their goal. And that is the way it's shaping up right now. They've got SES 10 and then they've got a flight approximately every two weeks from there on out. We'll see how well they can keep up with that. It's really important for 2017 for SpaceX to be able to get a high cadence and do it

confidently, do it successfully, do it without any other incidents. So this is a big few months coming up and outside of the Atlas V that's due to go off here, they're going to have pretty much their own Cape Canaveral down there over the next few months because there's not another launch for ULA out of Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral until I think it's June or July even. So they've got a few months where they're not going to have as many range conflicts as there has been in the last couple of weeks here. So a very important time for SpaceX coming up here in the next few months. Now on that ULA side, the other thing that almost blew up into a full podcast episode was

this letter that some House of Representatives members sent to the Air Force about the ULA's Vulcan and BE-4 and AR-1 and engine selection for their new rocket. Mike Rogers of Alabama, Mac Thornberry of Texas, their representative members, they sent a letter to the person at the Air Force in charge of acquisition. And their main point was, if ULA plans on requesting hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. government for development of its launch vehicle and associated infrastructure, then it is not only appropriate but required that the U.S. government for development of its launch vehicle and associated infrastructure, then it is not only appropriate but required that the U.S. government have a significant role in decision-making concerning the vehicle. The letter was basically saying that the Air Force should not give any additional funding to ULA, except for the Atlas V and Delta IV, until the company provides

full access, oversight of, and approval rights over decision-making in its choice of contractors for the engines of Vulcan. So the point of this letter was to force ULA to use the AR-1 instead of the BE-4. An obvious case of politicking with the old guard of space, lobbying for Aerojet Rocketdyne engines instead of the newcomer Blue Origin engines. Since then, they have backed down from this. Mac Thornberry said that they are not going to intervene

in the decision that ULA makes. I don't know exactly what happened there, if there was some discussions behind the scenes. The only comment ULA made on it was that we're going to work to get through this or something of that sort. It was not very direct, but it was just saying like, yeah, we saw the letter. We're going to figure it out. No problem. So since then, they've backed down from it. It doesn't seem like they're going to interfere at all. But I think this is very indicative of the kinds of conversations that ULA is going to have

to have with itself, with its parent companies of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, with the representatives that represent them and their parent companies, with the entire kind of playing field that they've interacted with over the last decade. This is very indicative of the decisions and the arguments and the discussions they're going to have to have with all of those stakeholders involved in ULA. I see this as a real coming of age moment for ULA where they either have to fight for their own independence and their own future away from the old typical wishes of Boeing and Lockheed Martin and push towards that Cislunar 1000 roadmap that Tory Brunos talked about a lot, that other ULA executives talked about a lot,

and they push towards Vulcan and ACES and the things that they want to do in the future and move away from this national defense and security launch provider business model to an in-space solutions provider where they're talking about using ACES for distributed lift, for getting around the Earth-Moon system. All of the things that they've been talking about the last year, this is the time when they have to stake that ground as a viable route for their future. Because Boeing and Lockheed are still going to want to be the government's launch services provider, but ULA clearly has other ideas in mind. The last few weeks, we've also heard a lot about potential rebranding of ULA and, you know, kind of creating a new company image

for the future as they transition. Tory Bruno has been making this transition of ULA over the last couple of years, and he's done an incredibly good job of it so far. And, you know, with different things like Rapid Launch, Rocket Builder, and all these different programs that are really targeted at pivoting ULA's business away from the national defense side of things, towards a commercial side of things, towards the future of what spaceflight is going to be, a rebrand would make a lot of sense right now. United Launch Alliance is a very stale name. It's a very old space corporate name.

And I don't think it really fits their vision of what they're talking about with things like Cislunar 1000 and ACES and a lot of this new thinking coming out of ULA. fits their vision of what they're talking about with things like Cislunar 1000 and Aces and a lot of this new thinking coming out of ULA. I think it's always going to be hard to shed the heritage of ULA because in a lot of ways, that is what they're selling their rockets on. So it's a little bit disingenuous to shed your heritage in terms of branding while selling yourself and your products on the heritage that you have. It's a little bit weird. And honestly, it's risky in the short term, but it could play off well in the long term. So I'd be very interested to see if these rumors

are true, if they are rebranding. It would be an interesting point for them to do that because they still have a good couple of years in them of being a launch services provider for national security national defense for nasa all those things that they've done you know this year in the past few they still have a few years of that to play out before they get to those days of syslunar 1000 and aces and all of that so if this does happen i would be very intrigued by it because it's a very interesting strategic play it sounds like it might be meaningless to probably a lot of you out there, but I think it would be a big statement to say we're going to move away from what has made ULA the ULA it is today and move towards the future that we've been telling you about for so many months. Now, just relatedly, the BE-4,

we got another one of those Bezos updates in our email inboxes this week, and it was a lot about the hydrostatic bearings that are going to be used inside the BE-4. George Sowers, the VP of Advanced Concepts and Technologies at ULA, commented on Twitter that he said, hydrostatic bearings were one of the innovations that led us to pick the engine, thrilled to see them working. And he put a cute little smiley emoji in there, I guess, to show us how innovative ULA is these days. But all in all, it's good to see updates on BE-4. We saw the fully assembled one a couple weeks ago heading down to Texas for a test fire.

We got this more details from Bezos in this email, and he even talked about the fact that in the coming weeks, we're going to see a full-scale firing of BE-4. And Tori Bruno, George Sowers, a lot of the other ULA members have made clear that after that test happens, that is when they would down-select Vulcan to use BE-4 and make it official. So we're possibly weeks away from that happening. And that's a pretty exciting moment to see Vulcan officially pick BE-4 as its engine of choice and move forward with one design rather than the two they're carrying in parallel with the BE-4 and the AR-1. So there's a lot more talk around the BE-4 this week, and I'm excited to

see that test fire get off. Hopefully it happens fairly soon. So we'll have a little bit more of our lightning round to finish up the show. But before we do that, I did want to say a huge thank you to all of you out there supporting Main Engine Cutoff on Patreon. This episode of Main Engine Cutoff is produced by six executive producers, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, and two anonymous executive producers. They were responsible for the creation of this episode, and I'm very, very thankful for their support. They are also joined by 39 other supporters on Patreon, so if you want to join the crew that makes this show possible week in and week out, head over to patreon.com slash miko and give as little as $1 a month.

All of your support is greatly appreciated and really helps me do this every single week. So thank you so much to all of you out there supporting Main Engine Cutoff. The one other thing I wanted to talk about today was this space subcommittee hearing in front of the House on the ISS after 2024. Right now, the plan is that ISS is going to run through 2024 and then be retired after that. This hearing was about, should we do that? and then be retired after that. This hearing was about, should we do that? Can we do that? What else would we do? Et cetera. So the four witnesses were Bill Gerstenmaier, the associate administrator for human exploration and operations at NASA, who comes up all the time. Mary Lynn Dittmar, the executive director of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration,

which is a fancy way to say the head lobbying group for Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Orbital ATK, AirJet, Rocketdyne, insert old space company here. Eric Stalmer, the president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, which is a fancy way of saying the lobbying group for commercial companies like SpaceX, etc. Put your commercial spaceflight company here. And Dr. Robert Furl, who is a professor at the University of Florida and does a lot of work with NASA on the ISS. Those were the witnesses, and it was a big discussion from the Space Help Committee asking questions about, you know, how does the ISS serve us, what would we do without it, etc., etc. And it's a lot of the same arguments that you've heard before,

so I'm not going to get too far off into the specifics and, you know, look at the exact numbers that were stated. But I did want to talk about one thing that drives me absolutely insane when we talk about the ISS after 2024 and what it does for us today. Two things that come up a lot in benefits of the ISS and things that it's done for the country and the world is that it promotes good international relations and that it promotes this garnering of the commercial sector, this growing of businesses in LEO, and general kind of playground for startups to start and flourish in space. These are two things that are often held up as prime examples of what makes the ISS great, and what makes the ISS worth it. And I agree with those things. I think those are both great things

to have. I think soft power is very important in geopolitics. That's something that space has always been about, is about this, you know, if we can put something into orbit, we can put something anywhere on the Earth. That was the militaristic early days. And then it was the Apollo-Soyuz test flight days that were showing that, hey, we could do stuff in space together. And the ISS has been a way to collaborate with countries across the world. And it's been a great thing for that. And on the other front, you know, developing these commercial companies, developing capabilities. I think, you know, in the hearing, it was kind of said that if it wasn't for this, SpaceX wouldn't exist.

See my previous rants about that. These are great things, but my problem is that these things are not at all, in any way, unique to the ISS program. They are unique right now to the ISS program, but there is nothing inherent about the ISS that means this is the only way to do those things. Take, for example, a mission to land on the moon. If we did that cooperatively with countries around the world, if we did it in cooperation with other private companies like SpaceX, Orbital ATK, etc., that program would fit just as well with those goals. It would, you know, promote good international relations. It could garner the support and the motivation of these private companies, and it would benefit them in a way. So there's nothing about the ISS that makes it unique in that regard. So I think

it is an absolutely garbage argument for why we need to keep the ISS around. It is a good reason that the ISS has existed. It is certainly a great legacy of the ISS. But there's nothing about future programs that NASA or the international partnerships of the world could undertake that wouldn't include good international relations and garnering support from the private sector. In fact, I think the best legacy of the ISS would be to take those ideals, to take those goals, to take those things that we find so good about the ISS and apply them to other areas like heading out to the moon, heading out to Mars, insert your favorite space flight

or space industry project here. Those things can just as much be a part of these projects as they are of ISS. So to sit there in Congress and act like the only reason we should keep ISS around is to promote good international relations and to support the funding and kickstarting of private companies is completely idiotic. I think that should be the goal of whatever NASA does after the ISS. be the goal of whatever NASA does after the ISS. And that's not to say that the ISS isn't a good thing for the world or isn't pretty amazing when you look at it as a technological achievement, but that's to say that I think we can do these same things and do them en route to a different project. If you let the ISS stick around too long, It's going to completely eat your budget for anything else you want to do in space. So why not move out to other pastures and let, you know, if there's enough of a reason

for a low Earth orbit space station, let that develop separately right now. We have an industry kickstarted and almost running on its own. You know, there's a lot of work in this way. And over the next few years, even by 2024, we should see some private developments in the low Earth orbit space. And if we don't, maybe it's not worth it. Maybe it's worth it to move out towards the moon, to move out towards Mars. If we do it as governments with international partnerships, we can accomplish these same goals on those programs within those frameworks. And I think that's how

it should happen. Because as it stands right now, the ISS budget is just a massive chunk of money that's standing in the way of doing anything interesting beyond low Earth orbit. So yes, absolutely, let's talk about the legacy of the ISS when it comes to international relations, or when it comes to kick-starting companies like SpaceX, and like Orbital ATK's Cygnus area of work, and like all these different services that we've seen sprout up, Made in Space, NanoRacks, all these different companies that have sprung up around the infrastructure that is the ISS. Just imagine what we could do if we kind of garnered that same level of support and excitement and development around a program heading towards the moon or towards Mars or whatever it is. I just, I can't stand to see

these hearings talk about ISS as if it's the thing that only ISS could offer and not something that we could make a part of any national priority or any national space program. I just think that that gap kind of needs to be jumped, that we hold ISS up as this singular achievement that is unique in all these ways, rather than a model for what we should do with other future governmental space projects. That's about all the time we have today for the lightning round. If you want to read some other small bits of thoughts, head over to the blog at mainenginecutoff.com. I've been posting a lot of links there to stuff that is really worth your time or follow on Twitter at WeHaveMiko. I'm posting there all the time about different

things that are going on in the industry. So if you want this more lightning round type stuff, head over to the blog or Twitter and get it there. But for now, that is all I've got for you. So I will talk to you next week. And thank you very much for listening.