Main Engine Cut Off - T+55: ISS and Beyond

Episode Date: August 4, 2017

I spend some time thinking through what the future of the ISS holds, and what may come after it. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 17 executive producers—Kris, Mike, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Jamison, Guinevere, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, and four anonymous—and 65 other supporters on Patreon. The Space Review: Pondering the future of the International Space Station T+20: Mike Johnson, Chief Designer at NanoRacks on NanoRacks’ History, NextSTEP, and Wet Workshops - Main Engine Cut Off NanoRacks | The Operating System of Space NanoRacks To Catalyze Concepts for Deep Space Habitats Bigelow Aerospace Axiom Space The Space Show, 01/06/2017, Michael Suffredini, Amir Blachman, Axiom Space 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

Welcome to the Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo, back again with one of these monologue style shows after a few weeks of having some friends on the show, which is always a nice change of pace, but I wanted to get back into some of this kind of thinking shows that I do sometimes where I take a topic and I think through it on my own, and oftentimes I end up at a place that I didn't know I was going at the beginning. I might have even changed my mind en route.

So that's what you're in for here. But I want to do some thinking surrounding the ISS and commercial stations that might succeed it in low Earth orbit or even beyond low Earth orbit. This was sprung in my mind based on a comment by Jeffrey Mamber in front of the Senate back on July 13th. He was taking part in one of these hearings where they're talking about commercialization of space and what the private industry has to offer in LEO and beyond LEO.

And they were talking to a range of people, everyone from SpaceX to Bigelow to NanoRacks in this case, and a whole host of other people that have a foot in the door in space today and actually are looking to shift into an operational mindset. One of the things he said that I just loved the way he put it, he requested that by 2019, there is a date chosen on which the ISS would be decommissioned. And he didn't specifically say that he wants it to be a particular date. He didn't care what that date is, whether it's 2024, 2028, even beyond that. He doesn't care what that date is. He just needs the certainty of knowing that date so that they can start planning for it, both in the investments that they want to make on

their platform on the ISS. They've got some hardware up there now. They're adding a commercial airlock that they're going to use for other customer payloads and some different missions. We heard a bit about that when I had Mike Johnson on the show back episode 20. And so they want this date, the certainty of that date to know how much investment they should put in the ISS, but also so they can plan for what comes after the ISS. And I just found that comment very intriguing. And I agree with it very heavily that the date itself isn't so much important to these commercial providers, as is the certainty of having that date and being able to make plans around that date. So I wanted to just take some time to think through where the ISS is at today, what NASA and the other ISS partners should do with it, where they should head after the ISS,

what the market might look like once the ISS is down. Just do some thinking around that because it is an important topic that while it's still far off, 2024 sounds closer than it is. We still have a whole six years to go to get to that point. And in an industry like this, that is quite a bit of time for things to develop. It's far away, but I think now is the time to think about it because you have to be making these plans five, ten years out before anything is actually flying. So it's an important time to talk about this. And given the policy shift that we may see, I think that's something that could play heavily into whatever the policy is within the U.S. here over the next year or two years when we start to see some sort of space policy develop under the new administration. So maybe we'll start with NASA and And with NASA, the ISS partners that

they typically are involved with, ESA and others, that would be part of their roadmap beyond ISS. We've talked a lot in the past about the fact that the ISS is a couple billion dollar chunk of change in the NASA budget. That in all honesty, if NASA wants to make progress on their future roadmap with SLS, Orion, Deep Space Gateway, Cislunar, maybe lunar landings, all that kind of stuff that's on the horizon, if they really want to take that on, they need to free up the budget that is held up in the ISS today as soon as possible. Because that's a big chunk of change that could be put towards either the Deep Space Gateway or even potential landers for lunar missions. It's a huge amount of money that they are going to need because there are no signs that NASA is going to get a big increase in funding anytime in the near

future, just like they really haven't in the past. You know, the budgets have been rising and certain parts of NASA do better than others. But overall, the pie itself is not getting that much bigger. So if they want to put this much focus into the Deep Space Gateway and other plans, they need to free up that ISS budget as soon as possible. So timeline-wise, they are looking to launch EM-1, as we know, in 2019, 2020. EM-2 would follow in 2023-ish, maybe a little later than that. And with EM2 would be the first piece of the Deep Space Gateway. We've started to see some RFIs go out, RFPs go out surrounding that. They don't necessarily have the budget for Deep Space Gateway yet. That isn't an officially

verified plan in terms of budgeting, but they are getting ready to make that a centerpiece of SLS Orion in the 2020s. So timeline-wise, they're going to need that budget in the same time range that ISS is scheduled to run. It's scheduled to run through 2024 right now. There's been a lot of talk of extending that to 2028. But if you really want to start putting money towards the Deep Space Gateway, and you're going to be building the Deep Space Gateway between 2023, 2024, and five or 10 years after that, you need that money to go towards the infrastructure that you're putting out towards cislunar space, or else you're really going to be budget constrained in both departments. So in terms of NASA's overall human spaceflight roadmap, they really need to transition off ISS in that 2024 time range,

just given the way that they're shaping the transition to the Deep Space Gateway to be nearly seamless from ISS to the DSG. So what that means for them, you know, they talk a lot about the way they use the ISS today to do research on medicine and human physiology, and also for life support systems that they're going to need for Orion, for the Deep Space Gateway in the future. So those are the two primary things that NASA brings up as the things that they themselves are doing on the ISS today. So when you think about ISS retirement, what you have to consider is, can NASA cover their needs with either their exploration roadmap or by augmenting that exploration roadmap with other missions, which I'll talk about in a second. In terms of human physiology and medicine research and all

that kind of stuff, maybe the specific medicine side we'll leave aside for when we talk about the actual medical companies and drug companies that are doing research on the ISS today. But in terms of human physiology, that is what they would be doing out at the Deep Space Gateway. That would be a lot of research in how humans cope with long-term spaceflight outside of low Earth orbit when the benefits that it brings. So that side of what NASA does on the ISS is covered by their push into cislunar space. The other side of it is, do they need something in low Earth orbit for what they're working on? And specifically, can those needs be covered by whatever commercial offerings would be available once the ISS is

decommissioned? So hypothetically, if a commercial station sprung up nasa could book crew time on that station they could maybe fly up to a nasa astronauts three nasa astronauts whatever they need you know they could book a ride on a dragon or starliner or whatever it is book a flight up to a bigelow station or some other station in low earth orbit spend the three months that they need there or whatever the time frame that they would book on that station would be, and then come back down and that would solve that side of what they need in low Earth orbit. So when NASA looks at it, they have to figure out, does work at the Deep Space Gateway and cislunar space, maybe even on the lunar surface, and the possibility of augmenting that with flights to commercial stations in low Earth orbit,

does that cover all of the needs that we are getting out of the ISS? So if that can cover it, then it is worth freeing up the $3-4 billion out of their budget that they devote towards the ISS. And that's really the trade-off that they have to make. Is that chunk of change worth it to them, or can they cover their needs with what they would be pushing onto with that freed-up budget? But now on the commercial side, we start to get into a chicken-and-egg problem here with the possibility of these commercial stations. Because right now, as Mamber said in front of Senate,

there's this ambiguity about when the ISS would go away. So any companies that are thinking about commercial stations, notably Bigelow and NanoRacks themselves with ULA and SSL who are working on that wet workshop idea, companies like Axiom Space, these companies that are thinking about commercial stations in low Earth orbit, These companies that are thinking about commercial stations in low Earth orbit, they can't really plan to have a station up if there's ambiguity about when the ISS is coming down. Because the ISS's existence kind of skews the market for what would be needed out of a commercial station. You can't really make plans to have a commercial station launched by 2024 and then have all of a sudden the ISS be extended to 2028 to 2030 even, all of a sudden you have four to six years at the front half of your business that just got eaten up by the ISS sticking around longer. And the fact that NASA's budget covers so

much of the overhead there, it kind of skews the market in a way that maybe doesn't keep you as price competitive, so no customers want to fly with your commercial station. And that's what Mamber was getting at with his comment, that they need that clarity of date to know when they should be prepared to move on to something else. And not only that, if they have that date, they can start talking to potential customers of a commercial station and say, what is it that you need? What are you doing on the ISS today? What kind of platforms would you need? And these companies can start planning to have a station up by 2024, 2025, whatever the date is, they can plan to have a station up that can cover those needs.

And that's where we get in the chicken and egg problem is we don't know how big the market is because of the ISS. And we won't know how big the market is because of the ISS, and we won't know how big the market is until the ISS has been decided upon. So NASA itself cannot even plan on there being a commercial station to transition to until they've decided when the ISS, or when they are going to be done with their part of the ISS. So that's the catch-22, is they need to decide when they're done with it, but they can't decide to be done with it until they know that they can be covered in the future. And I think the fact that NanoRacks, and I'm sure some of these other companies are going to ask similar things of NASA, the fact that they're striking up that conversation to say, we want

to offer you a platform for whatever it is you need in low-Earth orbit, but we need to know what date we need to be ready for before we can tell you that we will be there for you. And that's the struggle, is that that clarity needs to be found. And I very strongly agree with Mambra in this sense that we need clarity on that date, more so than that date being a particular year.

I don't have a particular year in mind. I like 2024 because I think NASA should get out from under it as soon as they can. I think the market is ready to take over the things that are lucrative. And that's where I want to focus the next couple of minutes on is what things are actually needed out of a commercial station in low Earth orbit. What is the ISS doing for us today? And what should we look for in the next generation of stations in low Earth orbit. But let me take a quick break and say a huge thank you to the supporters of Main Engine

Cutoff. Everyone out there that supports the show makes it possible. This is a listener-supported show. I don't take any outside funding, any outside advertisement, anything like that. It is all supported by the people that listen, that I hear from all the time, and email and everything. And I thank you so, so much for all of your support. There are 82 of you supporting the show over on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Miko is where you can go to join that group of people. And this particular episode

was produced by 17 executive producers. Chris, Mike, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Jameson, Guinevere, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, and four anonymous executive producers. Thank you so much for making this show possible. You're a huge help week in and week out. And I thank you so much for your support and everyone else over at patreon.com slash Miko. All right, so we've talked about the Catch-22.

NASA needs to decide when the ISS goes away in order to spring up these commercial stations in which NASA can utilize to get whatever it needs out of low Earth orbit. So there's a little bit of a gridlock on that front. But let's talk about who the commercial companies are that would have these stations and who their customers may be and the things that they might serve in that market. customers may be and the things that they might serve in that market. As I said, Bigelow is one of the biggest ones. They are planning to launch two B330 modules or at least have them ready to launch in 2020. They've stuck to that date pretty hard. And we don't really know what the configuration of that module would be, but this is an inflatable module. They're testing the small version out on the ISS now. This is something that everyone's been looking forward to because it's, you know, stuff that we've been looking at since the 90s. Some of the NASA IP from the 90s, Bigelow licensed and turned into the B330, what was formerly Transhab. So that's one of the most exciting prospects because we've seen some components fly.

As weird as Bigelow the company and the owner of that company is, they have some pretty interesting hardware that I think all of us are pretty excited to see fly and get up there. But we don't know a whole lot yet about what the inside of that station looks like. The other big one is the Ixion team, which is NanoRacks ULA and SSL. They are actually working on this as part of NASA's Next Step program for the Deep Space Gateway habitats and things like that. But given NanoRacks' current mindset around this, they want to be a commercial space company in general. They try to find all these different markets. They're launching CubeSats out of the ISS now. They're doing hosted payloads up there. And now they're getting this airlock to add on to what they can do at the ISS. So they seem to find every way

possible to get themselves in the business. So I would not at all be surprised as a company who depends so much on these platforms in low Earth orbit, if they seek out their own platform in low Earth orbit, and they're using the Next Step program to kind of help get that idea going, because they are going to need a platform to operate out of after the ISS. So I would bet pretty heavily that they are working on that concept as a free-flying space station in low Earth orbit. They're working on an idea that is a wet workshop, so they would convert an upper stage into a space station with the addition of a small module on top. So in general, because it's nanoracks, I think that would be a very interesting system to follow because they're so focused on what the market needs today, and they adapt very well to what the market is asking for. So I think when they put their efforts towards

thinking about what a platform in low Earth orbit would look like that exists outside of the ISS, I would trust them above almost anyone else to define what that looks like, how it works, and what is needed out of it. So I would follow that very closely and I will be following that very closely over the next few years. And to add on, I very much think that the stuff that Jeffrey Mamba was saying in front of the Senate was indicating their interest to get a platform beyond the ISS up and operating in time for when the ISS comes out of orbit. So I think we can read a little bit into the questions that he was asking, the answers he was giving in front of Senate. And there are other players too. Axiom Space, which is a very close name to Ixion.

Axiom, A-X-I-O-M, is led by a former ISS manager. I honestly am not that optimistic about them because from what I've heard from the people within the company, it just doesn't sound that inspiring to me. A lot of the stuff they talked about was basically, we're going to take what the ISS is doing today and just commercialize it. And they don't seem very passionate about it. They don't seem like they're pushing the boundaries for what is needed in the current market. They seem to just take, oh, we're going to do what the ISS does, but we're going to sell it to people. And it seems kind of bland, at least from what I've heard so far. Maybe they're keeping parts of it secret, but I've just not been very motivated by the things I've been hearing by Axiom. But it is always interesting to have something that

maybe would take more of a heritage look at a commercial low-Earth orbit station, rather than one of these very newfound, new ideas that Bigelow and Ixion are pushing. Of course, there are others out there as well that could enter this. There was always those Dragon Lab flights that we heard from SpaceX, where they would take Dragon and they would make it a free-flying space station for a few weeks at a time. Those have been scrapped due to low interest, but I would not be surprised to see those come back on if there is increased interest in something like that. They seem like someone who would accommodate that pretty well. And I could certainly see someone like OrbitalATK building a

Cygnus-based small station in low Earth orbit. They don't tend to do things in their own regard. They tend to wait for some sort of program to contribute to. They don't seem to just kind of develop these markets on their own. So I would not bet on it, but I would not be shocked if they did pursue something like that. And there are clearly tons of others that have interest in this. Sierra Nevada wants to sell a Dream Chaser to anyone that glances their way. So you could see a Dream Chaser-based small space station or free-flying space station for short duration come about. There are a lot of other players, but I think between Bigelow, Ixion, and Axiom, those three tend to be the ones that I'm looking

at closely as something that would be viable shortly after the ISS is decommissioned. So now that we've got those defined, let's look at who would be the customers for any one of these stations. There are businesses operating on the ISS today. There's NanoRacks, as I talked about a bunch. There's Made in Space, who's doing 3D printing and manufacturing on the ISS. And then there's medical research, as I talked about. There are these big pharma companies that want to use the microgravity environment to do research on vaccines or different medicines or just human physiology and general research that they do in low Earth orbit.

Made in Space is really starting to spread their wings, so they will be pushing ahead as always. I think those two would be the mainstays of any of these low-Earth orbit stations, and not just those two, but other companies in those same verticals. The medical research side is where I think it gets particularly interesting, because the ISS today, in general, the existence of it, the fact that NASA takes on the overhead, and that they're, they use the ISS as a US national lab, which means that there are these available slots when there's extra payload space, in which you can get your research on board at a reduced price. So it skews the market a little bit. And that's why we've seen so many people take advantage of that.

At the ISS Research and Development Conference, we heard people talking about, what was it, Rubbermaid or Tupperware, one of those two. They got them confused at one point. It was kind of funny. But these companies that you don't think of as doing things in microgravity are taking advantage of the thing that's up there today. So it's a bit hard to tell. But listen, I'm sitting here in Philadelphia, which is a city, if you've ever been here, you're from here, it's a city run by the Philadelphia Eagles, Comcast, and Big Pharma, in that order. There is a massive presence of big pharma companies. So I've seen the way that they invest and that they look at markets and the way that they take on new ventures.

So they are very, I'm trying to find a nice word to use, they are very decisive about what they put their money into and they go all in on it. So if this is a lucrative way to spend money, if this is something that warrants the money that it would take to get their research up to a commercial station, then they would put money into it and they would take advantage of it. Those are the kind of people, though, that these commercial stations want to strike up a conversation with once this ISS date is decided. Once it's the fact that 2024 is when the ISS is coming down, somebody like Bigelow can go to any of these big pharma companies and say, what do you do in the ISS today? What would we need to offer you? How much crew time would you need? What kind of facilities would you need? What would you expect to pay for such a service? What is it worth to you? They can strike up these conversations to see what the actual interest is in taking part in one of these commercial stations. And then, like I said, there are the government agencies

that would look to maybe take advantage of some crew time on these commercial stations. NASA might want to augment their exploration roadmap, as I said, with crew time on one of these stations. They might want to test some life support modules. Other U.S. agencies might do it, and other governments, the ISS partners that we work with today, might want to fly some missions up to some of these stations to either train astronauts, get some time in space before they go off and do a bigger mission towards the Deep Space Gateway or something else, or they might want to do their own research in different ways.

So these are all potential customers, potential businesses, potential markets that these companies could start talking to once they have some hard data to go to them with and start doing some research on what the economies look like, what they can charge, what these people are could start talking to once they have some hard data to go to them with and start doing some research on what the economies look like, what they can charge, what these people are willing to pay for these services, and what services they would demand out of a station. You can start to define what your station looks like. But the bottom line is, if there are things that we are doing on the ISS today, like any of this medical research, any of this in-space manufacturing stuff, if there are things that we are doing there that aren't viable once it's in a commercial space, that's okay.

We don't have to completely transition everything that is happening on the ISS today into a commercial station because maybe it just doesn't warrant its existence. Maybe it's not useful enough to warrant the investment. But when you're dealing with all of this overhead from an ISS program, when you have extra capacity, you do things to fill time, to fill space, to fill payload capacity. But maybe those things aren't valuable. Maybe they're not valuable enough to warrant themselves existing in a commercial space environment.

And that's okay. We have to be okay with that. We have to be okay in finding out what markets are and are not there for these commercial space companies. We can't just tie ourselves down and say, once we've started to do something in space, we have to make sure that stays in space. Because that's just not how it works. You're fighting to hold on to something that might not warrant its own existence. And that's the worry I have, is that NASA and other stakeholders there are going to say, well, what are we going to do with all these things? These are not

commercially viable. And they would try to fight to find some way to keep those things around. But you really have to be okay with some of those things dying off because that is what's to be expected when you make a transition like this. NASA and the ISS partners should not be tasked with artificially creating a market for something to exist merely because it exists in space. That is not what they should be tasked with. But what they should be tasked with is the goals that they are set out to achieve from the governments that have set up these organizations, and along the way, facilitate the building out of infrastructure. I think that's one of the greatest legacies of the ISS, is the way that NASA and the other partners have been able to facilitate this burgeoning infrastructure. We've got cargo suppliers flying to the ISS regularly

now. We're going to have crew suppliers flying regularly next year. We've got companies like NanoRacks and Made in Space that have built businesses out of the space given to them on the ISS. The fact that these different infrastructure pieces have sprung about around the ISS and are now useful outside of the ISS, for NASA's exploration plans, or even for their own commercial missions, or even in SpaceX's case, as a completely new commercial launcher that is dominating part of the commercial launch industry. That is a great legacy of these partners that put the ISS together. What is not a great legacy is artificially creating markets for things to be done in space that might not warrant their own existence. So they shouldn't be bogged down on focusing on that side of things and let some of these things

die off once you transition away from them, rather than fighting tooth and nail to keep everything that you're doing around if it doesn't warrant it. So I think when the ISS partners overall consider the end date for the ISS, They really need to take a step back, figure out what they need out of a program like this, figure out what they need out of their own human spaceflight goals or any of their research goals, and figure out if those needs could be solved with the push towards cislunar space that we're seeing NASA and the international partners take, and if they could be augmented with the facilitation of these commercial stations that spring up once the ISS is down. If those two things can cover your needs, then push forward. Don't just stay on the ISS because you feel like you've sunk so much cost

and time into it that you need to keep it operating longer than is necessary. If anything, taking advantage of these commercial stations in low orbit and pushing into new areas will free up time and resources to do more of the research rather than worry about the ISS overhead. You're worrying about a piece of hardware that's been up there for decades at this point. And, you know, they're about to double their crew time available to research by flying an extra crew member when SpaceX and Boeing get flying to the ISS. And that's because that's how much time it takes to keep the ISS running. That's how much overhead there is to keep running there, is that adding an extra crew member will double their scientific and research time available on the station. So when you're looking at just commercial LEO stations, if NASA and ESA and JAXA and all of

them don't have to worry about the overhead and the infrastructure, and they can just focus on the research, and they can do it for hundreds of millions of dollars a year in buying flights and crew time on these stations rather than billions, that's a valuable trade-off. And you can cut yourself loose of this multi-billion dollar hole in your pocket and move towards something more interesting, both out at cislunar space and lower cost research and operations in low Earth orbit if you need those things. So it's a tricky subject, but I think now is the right time to take a step back and look at it. And as I said, this is me just kind of thinking this stuff out. I didn't really come in with a particular thesis here other than to talk through some of these thoughts that I have.

So if you've got any thoughts that you want to share on this topic, email in anthony at mainenginecutoff.com. I love hearing from you and all your thoughts around the show. So feel free to email. We can keep the conversation going on this topic until we start to see some policy come together. But that's about all I've got for this week. So thank you again to everyone supporting the show over at patreon.com slash Miko. Don't forget to follow on Twitter at WeHaveMiko or check out the shop at shop.mainenginecutoff.com. Thank you very much for listening, and I will talk to you next week.