Main Engine Cut Off - T+46: Eric Berger

Episode Date: May 2, 2017

Eric Berger, Senior Space Editor at Ars Technica, joins me to talk SLS/Orion, New Space vs. Old Space, space policy in the Trump administration, and why the fight might not be settled until 2020. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 10 executive producers—Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Laszlo, and four anonymous—and 46 other supporters on Patreon. Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) | Twitter Eric Berger | Ars Technica Senior official: NASA will delay first flight of new SLS rocket until 2019 | Ars Technica EM-1 Officially Slips to 2019 - Main Engine Cut Off New Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act Coming Soon™ - Main Engine Cut Off Inside NASA’s daring $8 billion plan to finally find extraterrestrial life | Ars Technica The world’s two most powerful telescopes are glorious—and vulnerable | Ars Technica Email your thoughts and comments to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Google Play, Stitcher, or elsewhere Subscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off Newsletter Buy shirts and Rocket Socks from the Main Engine Cut Off Shop Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

This week on the show, I've got a special guest with me, Eric Berger, the senior space editor at Ars Technica. We all follow him on Twitter. We all read his writing over at Ars Technica. But I thought it'd be fun to have him on the show for a discussion around the topics of the day and whatever else is on his radar. But before we do that, I wanted to say a very special thanks to the 56 of you out there supporting Main Engine Cutoff on Patreon. I'm very, very thankful for your support. It helps me do this show every single week, helps me write the blog every single day, and I want to say a special thank you to the 10 executive producers of this episode of the podcast. Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Laszlo, and four anonymous executive producers. They produced this episode of Main Engine Cutoff.

They made it happen. So if you see them out in the wild, say thank you for bringing you this episode of the show. If you want to help support the podcast, head over to patreon.com slash Miko and give as little as $1 a month. All of your support is very, very appreciated and helps me do things like gear upgrades, travel to conferences and launches like we have coming up this year. And it helps me bring on great guests like Eric Berger. So let's get to it. Thank you very much, Eric, for joining me on the podcast. I'm really excited to have you here today.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me on. So let's get started with the hot topic of the week, the SLS delay that was sort of announced last week, but maybe not fully announced last week. Yeah, NASA didn't really announce it. It's not something that they want to advertise. I mean, there have been a lot of people who have been, you know, doubting the late 2018 initial launch of the space launch system in orion capsule for the first time um just because of the issues and originally with the orion service module but also with the rocket itself and the ground systems and so you know when the um uh the inspector general i'm sorry the general accounting office came out with their report last

week saying that we have grave concerns about this date and NASA should reconsider it. It wasn't surprising, but what was a little bit surprising was reading the response from NASA in which William Gerstenmaier, the head of human space for NASA, said, yes, we agree with this and actually we're in the process of resetting that date. So it wasn't so much NASA announcing this. It was kind of slipped in in a letter response to the GAO report. Yeah, as an appendix to a report that was released through, you know, it's hard to get to that piece of info. But obviously, we did. I'm curious. I think, you know, people like us that follow this very closely have been hawking this for years.

We're not at all surprised. We kind of heard this. You certainly through reporting in the past year have been talking about this. But what do you think this does for the near term future of SLS and Orion? It's sort of been like a political beast the last couple of years, seemingly indestructible. There are some cracks starting to show at the seams, but what do you think this kind of thing does for them in the next year or two years? You know, that's a good question, and I'm not really sure how to come at it. It doesn't really change the battle lines much. You still have the big industry, you know, the footprint of the Boeings, the Lockheed Martins, the Orbital ATKs who are behind this project 100 percent. And they have very strong lobbies in Congress.

And that doesn't this doesn't really change that calculus. You know, they would they would point to the fact that, you know, new space faces delays all the time, too. And this is you know, this is a big project. So it's understandable. But I think it really calls into question for me, the big the big the big picture thing here is this calls into question, you know, whether or not this is going to be a viable launch system in the first term of Trump's presidency. You know, the president or at least senior officials in his administration have made it clear that they'd like to see something done with humans before the end of the president's first term. And that means really something done by early 2020. And so that's why, you know, a couple of months ago, NASA started talking about putting crew on this original exploration mission one. I think the big question for me out of all this is if NASA,

you know, can't get an uncrewed version of Orion and SLS ready for November of 2018, and that's going to slip into early 2019, that doesn't really give me much confidence, if any, that they could get a crewed mission instead of an uncrewed mission ready by the end of 2019 or early 2020. It just doesn't, it seems like that's going to be a really tall, tall hill for them to get up. Yeah. And it is definitely a little bit incongruous. It's a really tall, tall hill for them to get up. Yeah. And it's, it is definitely a little bit incongruous. Uh, you know, it's a safety concern and that's something that they've harped on endlessly, uh, for commercial crew is that, you know, they're, they're very concerned about, you know, SpaceX fueling procedures and, uh, all these different things that have been a major area of concern the last year. And then talking about how important safety is to then go and say,

Hey, let's, uh, you know, at expense of some schedule concerns, and let's speed up this stuff, and let's make sure that we can get the life support system fully online. It seems a little bit like a little bit of cognitive dissonance on both halves of NASA there, which, again, has not been that surprising, because that has been the theme of the last half a decade or more in a lot of ways.

that surprising because that has been the theme of the last half a decade or more in a lot of ways yeah it's it's it's it's almost like you have a double standard right that you know they want to see the the falcon 9 rocket the final version i think i think it was eight times i'm sorry i've written about this before and i'm not sure if it's six eight or ten but basically they want to see a half dozen or more flights by the final version of the Falcon nine rocket before they'll put crew on it. But now they're turning around and, and more than happy to put crew on the first mission of the SLS rocket, um, which, you know, which raises some questions about all of that. But it, you know, at the end of the day, I'm not even so much, it's sure it's going to be a safety question because I think NASA could convince itself that because you're flying flight-proven engines and you're flying SRBs, which are similar

to the shuttle, and you've got a core stage that's been tested, yada, yada, yada, that you could convince yourself to safely put crew on it. I think it's ultimately going to be money. I've heard different numbers. I've heard half a billion a year to $1 billion a year for the next two years to get, you know, a capsule and spacecraft that's capable of taking crew on EM-1. And I'm just not sure you're going to find a billion dollars a year more for SLS and Orion when already they're getting, you know, three or three and a half billion a year in funding. Yeah. And the thing that I've kind of harped on was if putting crew on that flight doesn't do

anything for your post-EM-1 plans, there's really no point in doing it because it's the same roadmap otherwise. So I'm interested in the strategy here that they sort of announced this deep space gateway, deep space transport. They announced the architecture for what SLS Orion are going to do through the 2020s. And if they start putting more focus on that in the next couple of months as 2018's budget gets shaken out, then maybe it's kind of the shifting in focus where they realize to kind of sell this program and for its future, they need to focus on what it's going to do, not necessarily an immediate win like Crewe would be in the first term of the Trump presidency. I'm wondering if that is something that we could see develop, where they start really talking about what these things are going to do

and why they're going to do them. Well, it was interesting. They didn't really announce that in a grand fashion either, and they haven't released any kind of flashy website or really promoted these materials as much. Yeah, it was a journey to cislunar space, but they have gotten rid of the squid chart, but it came out in a meeting of NASA's Advisory Council, which is really quarterly meetings that are really notable to me, because Gerstenmaier gets up there and spends, you know, a couple of days there, you know, meeting, you know, meeting with people and taking questions from people in the industry. And, um, you know, he's, he's a hard person to

pin down because he's, he's obviously really busy, but he's, he's a very important man in NASA's human spaceflight plans. Um, and so he talked about this gateway architecture and what they were going to do on EM1 through EM10 or 12. But my takeaway from that is that was basically NASA's pitch, I think, to the transition teams when, you know, the new presidential administration appointees were coming in to look at these things. And this was NASA saying, here's what we plan to do. Here's what we can do if you continue funding us and keep us on our present course. And so that was finally, I think that plan sort of leaking out more into the public, in the public sector. And we kind of all got to look at, at what they, you know, what they were planning to do, which, you know, to be, to be fair, it was quite interesting. But I don't think they quite have the funding to pull that off yet. And they didn't at all. You know, the most interesting thing to me was really leveraging the

commercial interest that we're seeing in this area. And we've seen it through the deep space habitat, the deep space gateway, as they call it now. But, you know, the private launch rockets and things like that, all of those pieces are kind of moving pieces. And so, you know the private launch rockets and things like that all of those pieces are kind of moving pieces and so you know we don't we don't really know how all that fits in just yet yeah it definitely seems to be focused on it's sort of almost the lowest common denominator of the other plans that are talked about you know the esa has been talking about the lunar village for i don't know how long at this point you You've got Blue Origin sort of talking about doing things towards the moon. And there's a lot of this focus that sort of seems to be served by something like the Deep Space Gateway,

specifically picking out an orbit that both Orion can get to, but that could also be useful for surface operations for other things like that. It seems very much so pointed at something that SLS Orion could do, but also that could garner support from international companies or international organizations and private space companies. That sort of seems to be, you know, they're trying to balance these three different parties. And I think that, you know, showing how it could cultivate an environment like that would be more useful to SLS Orion in the long run than putting crew on EM-1, especially because then you'd have to put crew on EM-1 and wait three years to fly again,

which, you know, that seems flaky. Well, I think that's probably right, but they may be the NASA senior leadership, like Robert Lightfoot, may be looking at this like, if we don't put crew on EM-1, the program is dead. Because, you know, let's say that the decision is made, they don't get the funding or they find it's not safe or whatever, the decision is made to not put crew on EM-1. And so you have an uncrewed Orion, you know, launching off of an SLS in, let's say, March or April of 2019. And, hey, things go well. The spacecraft comes back safe. They find that it would have been okay to put crew on there. NASA has been talking about doing the second crew flight on SLS in 2021. But a lot of these reports from the GAO, the inspector general and things like that have said

they're not on target for 2021. They're really looking at 2023 for their first crew flight of VM1. That now is not in the first term of Trump. It's late in his second term or the second term of president, whoever comes next, if it's Mark Zuckerberg or, you know, Joe Biden or, you know, whoever comes next, if it's Mark Zuckerberg or, you know, Joe Biden or, you know, Cory Booker or, you know, Donald Trump or Mike Pence or whoever it is, this is a long time for a country that seems to not be able to look beyond, you know, this coming weekend. And, you know, if you get to 2021, 2022, you know, you're probably going to have blue origin you know their large rocket you know new glenn flying payloads spacex is going to be you know doing interesting stuff probably by 2022 it will have sent a red dragon to mars um then maybe they'll pull off their lunar flight their

tourist flight around the moon i have some real skepticism about that um that they'll do that in 2019 but you know the private sector is going to be doing a lot of interesting things in the next three or four years. And I think that NASA, if it kind of doesn't, you know, get off the pot and move with SLS, it is going to be caught in some respects by the private sector. And then really, you know, that would be pretty embarrassing to your flagship programs. that said we saw today newt gingrich at this uh what was it called the ultra low cost something or other ultra low cost access to space that's what it was yeah old cats old cats newt gingrich got up and re-emerged onto

the space scene he sort of was like hibernating for a decade or something there. And he was talking a lot about reusable rockets and how he really wants to see a conversation about why you would use an expendable rocket. And it's very interesting to see these kind of shifting party lines, not even party lines, but party is a loaded term, shifting lines of discussion. What is that really? That really doesn't seem to have an effect at all to me. I don't think there's been so much noise in the last six months with everybody trying to gain an advantage and gain Trump's ear from, you know, Elon Musk to Newt Gingrich. So how do you think any of those sort of policy positions weigh in down the line? Well, it was good to see Gingrich finally come into public view and really express where he has been on space.

You know, listen, there has been, if you've been paying attention, there has been a concerted effort by the SLS folks, by the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, and by some of the private space people to play nice. tag and not or basically saying, you know, trying to put out this, this, this sense that, you know, we're all holding hands. It's going to be private space. It's going to be SLS and we're going to work together toward a common goal. You've seen that kind of, there's been that theme that's kind of emerged. Um, but, but, you know, behind the scenes, you know, I have it on pretty good authority that there has been a pretty deep fight within the senior leadership of the Trump administration at the time that they've been able to focus on space between private space, reusable rockets, low cost, the Blue Origins, the SpaceXes, those kinds of companies, and the traditional contractors, the Boeing, Lockheed Martin's, the orbitals, the coalition for deep space people. And so there's been this, this, this, despite the and not or hashtag, there has been kind of this push for influence behind

the scenes. And Gingrich has been kind of the leading provocateur for, for the new space people. He looks at distances, the government should not be wasting money on launching rockets into space when the private sector can clearly do this for a lot less money. And oh, by the way, they're reusing them and we're throwing them away. This is ridiculous. If you remember, after the Senate signed the NASA Transition Authorization Act, Gingrich had a really interesting tweet. He basically said, well, this is great, but this is all going to be torn up in a few months when we get down to space. And so you have had kind of – and I'm not sure how many people have known this, but it's been pretty clear that Gingrich behind the scenes, if he were to get involved in space policy, and depending on the level of influence he still has in the Trump administration, he was one of the six co-chairs of the transition team,

so he still plays a role. You know, he clearly feels pretty passionately about that. And that came out this morning when he gave this kind of fiery speech in Washington, D.C., talking about how, you know, in a few years, SLS will be in a museum. And, you know, thank God these, you know, thank God Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have come along to invest, you know, thank God these, you know, thank God Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have come along to invest, you know, their own money in these rockets and sort of show the government bureaucracy how it's done. At the same time, you have had a lot of people from some of the Alabama lawmakers and some of Sessions' people, but more some of the representatives who moved into the White House

and OMB and places like that who have had, kind of been making decisions, and there's been this push and pull between kind of the Alabama SLS delegation and their interests versus kind of these people who would really like to shake government up. And it still remains very much a mystery which way the National Space Council and Mike Pence ultimately are going to go. Will they sort of fall in line with this new space ethos of, you know, they're not just

talking a good game out there in Hawthorne, California. They're doing it. They're landing 10 rockets. Or will they say, no, you know, it's very important to have, it's in the national interest to have a big government launch vehicle. But we don't know which way they're going to come down on that. But that really is the key thing to watch is, and today what was interesting to me was today is Gingrich kind of came out and sort of staked out his position in a very public way. And so now maybe we'll get some resolution to that question over the next month or two. Yeah, it's interesting to see everybody

try to jostle to win over the last few bastions of big space in Congress, because you see Ted Cruz, who was, you know, chairing a meeting last week about commercialization in space. And he's very much talking about the SpaceX's and Blue Origins. Obviously, his state is Texas. They both have a presence there. That's not surprising at all. And then when it came to that hearing, Senator Nelson from Florida perked up a lot at the talk of in-space manufacturing. Again, his state of the people that were in that committee has the most to win from a burgeoning in-space manufacturing industry because of all the launches that would need to support that.

So more and more, you see different senators and congressmen and members of the House of Representatives realize that the commercialization of space would, you know, a rising tide would lift all boats in some ways, and they would get more out of it than they currently are with their main constituents being the big space companies that we all talk about. But still, Alabama and parts of Mississippi have not been moved by that very much. You've got Airjet Rocketdyne putting more into Alabama. You've got RUAG, who's building fairings for ULA, putting more into Alabama. So I'm still unclear of how any of that is going to shake up, you know, the guards that are positioned in Alabama that are still very key to Congress.

And it's not just, frankly, it's not just Alabama. Although, you know, Ted Cruz talked favorably about commercial space and said he was impressed by reusable rockets, nobody in Congress outside of Dana Rohrabacher, who's kind of this cantacruz representative from California who really likes Vladimir Putin and doesn't believe in climate change, he is the only openly critical member of Congress who says the United States is wasting money on the SOS. Everyone else still supports the program. They're the ands, not ors. They are the ands, not ors. But they are more of the government side. And Democrats,

a lot of Democrats support it too, because they view it as a valuable government program. And the conservatives like it too. So there is no, I don't see any groundswell in Congress whatsoever that questions the utility of SLS and to a lesser extent, Orion. The question in my mind is, is whether, you know, President Trump comes out and makes an important speech or, or more importantly, a Mike Pence comes out and says, you know, look, I've been talking to my military advisors. They're looking at the potential of low-cost rocketry where we have a technical advantage right now. And we see this as a unique United States capability.

And we think that if we invest in this, we can become, you know, by the next decade or two, become the global leader in launch and low-cost reusable access to space, and here are all the national defense benefits it would have, here are the economic benefits it would have, and we think that this is the way to go. That's a possibility. He is getting that advice from some members of the Air Force. If that happens, it would be interesting to see how much of Congress would swing to the president's whim on that. Or if the – so back in 2010, you had resistance to this in Congress, but it was a different Congress. Now it's an all-Republican Congress, and if you have your president come out and say, I believe this, and here's why, maybe they swing around and fall in line and they look at this and they say,

okay, well, that's $2 billion or $3 billion we can whack out of the federal budget. Maybe it's a different conversation now that SpaceX is flying and Blue Origin is flying. I don't know. I just don't see Congress coming to that conclusion on their own anytime soon. Yeah, it's tough to envision a large shifting

of interests in any way. And something else that people bring up when they're having this conversation is, oh, we don't have a NASA administrator yet. How much does that even matter? Because in the recent era, administrators, you know, they're there, but they don't seem to be influencing policy direction in the same way that a National Space Council would or that, you know, a congressional swing of influence would.

So, yeah, first of all, you know, Trump is like every other president who's come before him is he's not particularly interested in space. Every president since Kennedy, I should say, he's not that interested in space, you know, and most NASA administrators don't get appointed until the summer anyway. So it's not abnormal that there's not a nominee yet for administrator. And you're right. I'm not sure how much difference it would make because whoever the administrator coming in is going to be coming in, you know, you're going to have a side that ultimately wins this, right? It's either going to be the new space side or the Alabama side. And so you're going to have an Alabama administrator, you're going to have a NewSpace administrator. Or what probably will happen is that there will be, you know, some kind of a, not a detente, but basically what you will have is SLS is allowed to continue. So you basically, you know, you throw in, you know,

$2 billion and change to that program, you know, continuing. And Orion is going to get some money, and they'll kind of continue on their path. And you'll get more money, probably some from the military, maybe some from NASA's kind of being invested in reusable rockets as kind of a hedge so that, you know, when we get to 2020, you know, we see where we are, right? Is the Falcon Heavy really flying? Is it, you know, are they recovering two or three of the boosters after every flight? And, you know, has SpaceX and Boeing safely launched some commercial crew missions, right? Because those haven't happened. They're a couple years away.

And is SLS kind of still foundering along and not flying yet or it's just had one mission? And is Blue Origin, is New Glenn, is that a viable orbital vehicle? Are they flying? By 2020, has Blue Origin flown 500 people into space? Yeah, we've got Vulcan around the same time period as well. Right. Is Vulcan flying with the BE-4 engine? Are they making progress with their ACES upper stage?

You know, are other companies doing interesting things? And so I think ultimately what will happen is, you know, that we will kind of do this and not or, not because the two sides really are happy with one another, but because it's kind of a hedging of the bets. Right. You know, because if you would talk to someone who's building the SOS rocket, they would tell you, well, what happens to the rocket at U.S. rocket industry if we don't build SLS and and Jeff Bezos decides that he doesn't like this. decides that he doesn't like this. And Elon Musk decides to start drilling holes in the ground to make tunnels, and it loses his interest in – or he loses a couple more Falcon 9 rockets than his company goes under. So their interest – I think there will be this hedging the bets and kind of SLS kind of –

I won't say limps along because you don't really limp along at 2, 2.2 billion a year. That's true. But it kind of continues along, and we kind of see where everything is in 2020. The only thing that really changes that, that would really change that is if Trump and or Pence decided that they were buying what Gingrich was selling. And they listened to the military, and they said, know, Elon Musk is great. We love Elon Musk and he's got a great vision. And Jeff Bezos, this guy seems to know the Internet business pretty well. Maybe he knows a thing or two about rockets, too. And, you know, this is the future and this is jobs and this is great for the U.S. industry. And these rockets are all built in America. And maybe they make a push

and then we'll see what Congress does. But I suspect that it'll be more kind of a middle-of-the-road muddling along until everyone gets flying and the cost of all this shakes out, and we see what's safe and what's cost-efficient and who's actually succeeding. Yeah, I definitely could not agree more. We're having this argument, but we're still a few years away from being able to settle it because there's so much up in the air on both sides still. And I think that was seen in that Senate hearing I was talking about on commercialization of space. We had Virgin Galactic there, Blue Origin, Made in Space, and Bigelow Aerospace.

And they were talking about what they need policy-wise to be able to create commercialization in space and to do things in space and i was struck by a similar feeling that you know we're talking about this now and it's good to get this you know get out in front of this but a lot of times when senators would be asking questions pointed questions about what do you need from us to do what you're doing there seemed to to be this feel that, well, we know sort of what we need, but we're just not ready yet because we don't have enough money, or it's not economical yet. And there was kind of this, you know,

each of them had a little something that they wanted to say. Made in Space wanted to make sure that things that they produce in space would retain, you know, they wouldn't be, you know, taxed on it bringing it back down to orbit. And Bigelow was worried about, you know, limiting bases and restriction zones and all that kind of stuff. They each had one little pet subject to talk about. But there was an overwhelming sense of we're still a few years away from actually being able to tell you what we need and doing any of it. Yeah, well, I think as much if not more

important than that was a couple of things. First of all, you know, the U.S. Senate is listening. You know, Senator Cruz is listening and is interested in the commercial space industry and is interested in, you know, regulatory reform to help them out. And this did not strike me as just all regulations bad, you know, we will destroy all government regulations. This was, you know, how can we really help you guys succeed? And the number one thing that, you know, Blue Origin wanted was, you know, we need to come up with a way to make, to streamline the process to launch rockets from the United States, because the FAA doesn't have enough money. They're probably who should

be regulating it. And so they ought to have a properly funded commercial space office, and they ought to be the go-to agency to handle rockets. And oh, by the way, you know, we need to prepare for a future where launches are not rare and expensive, but common and inexpensive. And that means a lot more launches. That means turning the range around at Cape Canaveral much more quickly. And so I think that, you know, I think that Congress, you know, I think the future is pretty inevitable here, right? The future seems to be moving toward more rocket launches, lower-cost rocket launches so you distribute the risk when you're flying non-crewed payloads. It just is really striking to me how kind of the government is off in the corner as kind of a real contrast to this trend of more launches, lower cost launches with the SLS, which, you know, at best probably launches every year. And when you amortize the cost of development, it's probably a $2 to $3 billion cost per launch.

And so two competing visions, but it's clear that the Senate was interested in at least enabling the lower cost, more launch model looking down the road. Yeah, I really liked the way that Blue Origin, it was Rob Meyerson, who said that he would rather see the FAA get their licensing in order before they're given any more responsibilities, specifically pointing, orbital collisions and things like that, that people keep trying to force onto the FAA. And there's a lot of debate around that. I like the way that he put that. That was, can we get this launch licensing thing straight first before we worry about that? Because if we can't get the launch licensing straight, we're not going to have satellites, 4,000 satellite constellations to worry about colliding into each other. I thought that was one of the best points in that whole meeting. I was just going to say Rob Meyerson's a smart dude. So yeah, that was the first hearing of many this year. So maybe as we hear more coming out of

that, we can have you back on to talk about whatever legislation comes out of that push. Happy to come on anytime. Thanks for having me. Thank you very much, Eric. You can find him on Twitter at SciGuySpace and at Ars Technica. Senior space editor there. Definitely head over to read his writing. Specifically, the two long form pieces you had in the past couple months. You had one about the Europa lander, which was just an incredible read, and one about the Hawaiian telescopes, both the observatories that are there now and what may come in the future. Those two pieces in particular were incredible. So thank you for bringing us stuff like that.

Thank you. Love doing it. As always, you can find these show notes over at mainenginecutoff.com and find a link to all of Eric's work there and some of the things that we talked about on today's show. Thanks again to the 56 of you supporting Main Engine Cutoff over on Patreon at patreon.com slash Miko.

And don't forget to check out the shop. I've got some great shirts and socks and everything up at shop.mainenginecutoff.com. Thank you very much for listening, and I will talk to you next week.