Main Engine Cut Off - T+56: Small Launchers and Advanced Propulsion

Episode Date: August 11, 2017

Rocket Lab completed their investigation into what went wrong on their first launch, Virgin Orbit’s carrier 747 arrived in Long Beach, and I discuss a few NASA-backed advanced propulsion projects. 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 66 other supporters on Patreon. Main Engine Cut Off | Listen OnDemand Free | TuneIn Rocket Lab Completes Post-Flight Analysis | Rocket Lab Rocket Lab Addresses Vehicle Roll on Twitter Telemetry glitch kept first Electron rocket from reaching orbit - SpaceNews.com Rocket Lab clear on why first launch failed and confident to go again - NZ Herald Virgin Orbit plans 2018 first launch - SpaceNews.com Virgin Orbit Tweet Shows Launch Vehicle Hardware Virgin Orbit - NewtonThree Hotfire (5 June 2017) - YouTube Virgin Orbit - NewtonFour Hotfire (29 June 2017) - YouTube LauncherOne Service Guide (PDF, 2.5MB) Vector raises $21 million for small launch vehicle development - SpaceNews.com Ad Astra Rocket Company NextSTEP Year 2 Press Release (PDF, 82KB) NASA’s plasma rocket making progress toward a 100-hour firing | Ars Technica New NASA Contract Will Advance Nuclear Thermal Propulsion Technology | NASA NASA Contracts with BWXT for Nuclear Thermal Propulsion Project - Main Engine Cut Off Email your thoughts and comments to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn 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 is Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo, as always. Got a few topics for this week, but I did want to start off with a few notes of housekeeping of sorts. The podcast is now listed on TuneIn. So if you were using TuneIn to listen to any other podcast or that's where you like to hang out, the podcast is now available there. And I think with that, I am listed in all major directories, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn. If you are using something that I'm not aware of to listen to podcasts that has its own directory, please let me know and I will do everything I can to get the podcast there because I want to make sure wherever you are

listening to things that Main Engine Cutoff meets you there. So email me anthony at mainenginecutoff.com if you're not seeing the podcast somewhere that you want to see it and I will do what I can to get it in the directory for you. One other note before we start, I'm going to be trying some new things out as we get back into the fall here. Got some ideas for where to push the show and what else to do with this main engine cutoff project that I've got going. I've got the blog and the podcast, and I've been thinking about a few other ideas. So I'm going to be trying some new things, but I'm going to be using the $5 and up patron level over at Patreon to kind of beta test some of this. So if you are a $5 and up supporter per month,

keep your eyes peeled over the next few weeks because I'm going to be trying out some new things. You'll get an email with that inside of it. So keep your eyes peeled if you are interested in that sort of thing. And if you are not yet a supporter over on Patreon and you want to get in on it, head over to patreon.com slash Miko

and join in the fun that will be the next year or so of whatever comes next. So thank you for all you that are supporting the show currently and I hope that the new things that I'm trying you will enjoy as well. With that, let's dive into the topics this week. I wanted to circle back to some of the small launch stuff going on since we've had some recent activity. We've got some news about Electron's first flight. So I want to start there and then talk about some NASA projects for new propulsion technologies and just have a little discussion around each of those. around each of those. We talked about small launch a little bit over the course of some other shows, but haven't really brought it up lately because there just hadn't been too much movement in that regard. But we are starting to see some things come together. So specifically, we've just heard the results from Rocket Lab on Electron's first flight. Rocket Lab put out a press release talking about their investigation into that first flight. If you remember, they progressed most of the way through the flight before something went wrong. We didn't

know what, but they did make it through all of the phases of flight except for orbit insertion. So it seemed like a good test flight. And now we have a little bit more detail on that front. And if you read this press release from Rocket Lab, it is not clear enough that it was the problem of a third-party contractor. Every other sentence in this press release is, this is a third-party contractor's fault, this is a third-party contractor's fault, to a somewhat annoying extent for me. But before I get into that, let's look at the details here. here. The telemetry said that they were at 224 kilometers, about four minutes into flight, and a piece of third-party contractor hardware was not configured properly, which led to a momentary dropout of telemetry. And per the flight rules, the flight was terminated at that point. So they had some bad data coming through, a lack of data, and they had to go ahead and use the

flight termination system on board, which for a test flight, that's actually kind of good that they got to test that out as well. But apparently, per Rocket Lab's telemetry, the vehicle was on course for a good orbit. Everything was looking fine otherwise. So telemetry issue caused the end of the flight. Again, this was a third party contractor. I cannot make it clear enough. Seriously, go read the press release because it's a little heavy handed. And I get that as a company as sensitive as Rocket Lab, they are very media shy in general. They have a massive valuation. So they've got a lot of stress and pressure building up around them

in these first few launches. So I get the extra safe tiptoeing. My day job is in the tech industry, so I'm used to people being very weary to put the blame on themselves. But in this case, as a test flight, I don't really get that overly cautious approach. and in this case, the blame game is played pretty heavily. Now, not to say that this was not the fault of a third-party contractor. It was, in this sense. The other thing that I should mention is that in their press release, they did not at all talk about the fact that there was a pretty heavy rotation on the vehicle at launch, and throughout the launch, they had a pretty heavy rotation on the vehicle at launch. And, you know, we, throughout the launch, they were, they had some pretty heavy rotation. Uh, they did not mention that at all in the press release. And somebody asked them on Twitter, uh, in response to that,

what about the rotation? And they responded that the rotation was within their flight rules. Uh, it was in, within the ability of the rocket to handle, but they are making changes for that in the future. So there's a little bit of admission there that they did have a problem they needed to correct. I think we're all expecting some things like that, minor technical things that they need to work out in this first launch. Obviously, it didn't affect the trajectory of the rocket too much, but it is something that you want to watch because it can quickly turn into something that affects the flight of the rocket. It's a little disappointing they didn't mention that up front, and they put the blame so heavily on a third-party contractor.

And I'm harping on that a lot because at the end of the day, the buck stops with you. That's your launch vehicle on the pad. That's your payload going to orbit. You need to be able to be sure about your system from the ground up. So yeah, maybe this was the problem of a third-party contractor, but the fact that that is, you know, something that could have happened, that you were not clear enough with them what you needed, and something slipped through the cracks. I don't know the specifics of it, obviously. They didn't divulge exactly who the contractor was or whatever. They said they will use them in the future. But the fact that something slipped through the cracks, you know, that's, that's, you got to share the blame

in that. You can't put that all on the third party contractor because there's something in that, that you didn't find out about until late. So, you know, the buck stops with you as a launch provider. So I was just bothered a little bit by how heavily they put the blame on that contractor. was just bothered a little bit by how heavily they put the blame on that contractor. Before we start looking ahead with Electron and Rocket Lab, I did find, you know, given what I've been talking about with this press release, the New Zealand Herald, the paper down that way, they had an article about Rocket Lab and some quotes from Peter Beck, the head of Rocket Lab, and I'll just read this small excerpt here. Beck said the contractor would be involved in future launches.

Quote, we're not going to throw our contractors under a bus. It's not our style. End quote. I don't know if they actually read the press release or if he read the press release that his own company put out, but damn if that's not throwing a contractor under a bus in every paragraph saying specifically the words third-party contractor and configuration error. So a little bit of dissonance in the comments surrounding the launch, but whatever. Let's look forward a little bit past that issue. They got that sorted out. It sounds like they'll be working with that contractor in the future. Sounds like they're correcting their own rotation issues that they saw on the launch.

Looking forward, Jeff Faust of Space News talked to Peter Beck as part of the small sat conference this past week. And from what it sounds like, there's going to be another vehicle out on the pad in early October for the second test flight. They've got it heading to the pad now, and they've got some other testing to do around that. And from what he said, given the results of that first test launch, if the second one goes well,

they will not go forward with the third test launch, and they will skip right to commercial payloads. They were originally planning up the three test launches to kind of work everything out. I think they rightly expected everything to go south on the first launch and have to work things out and get two under their belt. Given that they did progress well through the first launch, if they do the same for the second launch and make orbit, then they're just going to skip to customer payloads, which I think is a good move. You know, it's encouraging that they are confident to make that progress. encouraging that they are confident to make that progress.

At the end of the Rocket Lab press release, they also said that they've just proceeded with the construction of four more vehicles. So those will be the first four commercial vehicles used. And to Jeff Faust, he even mentioned that they are in a good spot to launch Moon Express by the end of the year. Whether or not Moon Express is in a good spot to launch by the end of the year is up for debate. I would highly doubt it. We've yet to see real hardware. We've yet to see a lot of things that we're going to need to see to actually get them off by the end of the year. So I have doubts, especially because Bob Richards, the head of Moon Express, has started kind of floating the idea that it would be a real shame if,

you know, some company landed on the moon in the next year and Google was not a part of it. And I think the fact that he's even floating that idea that, you know, there would be a landing on a time period in which Google would not be associated with that anymore, kind of tips his hand a little bit that they're not going to make the deadline to get off the Earth by the end of this year, and it probably will slip into next year. So we'll see who Rocket Lab actually launches this year. Sounds like they may get a commercial payload off by the end of the year. If they do a test flight in October, put another month or two in there between that and the first real flight. Seems likely that they could get one off sometime in December. So we'll see how they go from here. Now, the other small launch company

that's most promising right now is Virgin Orbit, and they had some news recently. The 747, the modified 747 that's going to be the launcher for LauncherOne has arrived at the Long Beach Airport, which is where Virgin Orbit's facility is, their manufacturing facility. So presumably they flew it there to work on the mating with the launch vehicle and work out everything that they need to do to go forward with a launch. Previously, we saw a tweet from Virgin Orbit of a fair bit of hardware put together. And it didn't look like a structural test article. It looked like their first real vehicle. And there was a lot of other hardware in the factory that we could see. You can see various tanks and payload fairings and all sorts of hardware strewn about the facility. So they seem to have a lot of hardware in place. They've

got their 747 modified and ready to mate with the vehicle. They've got at least one vehicle built in full. And so that's an encouraging sign that they're actually working on this mating process, which is a big piece for them as they're doing air-launched vehicles. So this is a big moment to work out for them. Once that happens, then they would fly to Mojave to do their first test launch out of Mojave. Originally, they said it was going to be the end of the year. Now it looks like they've talked about the beginning of 2018. Now that when they kind of said that when the 747 landed in Long Beach, they said, hey,

we're going to probably launch early next year. So a little bit of a delay for them, but still, they are making good progress. They've been posting a lot of videos of engine firings in the last few months. There's some great YouTube videos. So I'll have a link to those tweets and videos in the show notes at mainenginecutoff.com if you want to check it out. The engine firings especially are really good to see because any good launch program is built on a good engine. So the fact that Launcher One is using traditional propellants and it's just a liquid engine, it's not some crazy hybrid system, which if you've listened to the show long enough or read the blog, I'm not the

biggest fan of Virgin Galactic and I don't really believe in their technology or their architecture overall. But Launcher One is different. Virgin Orbit is different. They're using good old-fashioned rocket engines. Air Launch is still yet to be proven out to me, but I at least see potential in what they're offering here. I'll also mention that they posted an updated PDF of LauncherOne's capabilities and sort of the payload user's guide, so you should check that out. I put a link to that in the show notes as well. It's a pretty extensive PDF, but there are some really cool diagrams of the launch vehicle, the payload, enclosure space,

some good performance stats in there. Just about everything except the price, which they did comment on recently that they're still targeting around $12 million for a launch, which is an interesting stat. So they seem to be progressing well to their first launch. And I think it's going to be interesting to see these two companies operating, Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit, in the next year. They should have these commercial missions flying, which will be really, really good to see. So let's dissect the comparison there. Rocket Lab Electron is about $5 million for a 150 kilogram payload to a 500 kilometer sun-synchronous orbit. That's kind of the reference orbit for these small launchers,

500 kilometers sun-synchronous. So $5 million for 150 kilograms. Virgin Orbit and Launcher One will be $12 million for 300 kilograms to the same orbit. So double payload capacity and a little bit more than double in price. Interesting differences there. And the difference is notable when it comes to a customer like OneWeb. OneWeb satellites are around 200 kilograms. There was at least one article that said they were as low as 150 kilograms, but that did not seem right because I saw a lot of other stats that said they were closer to 200 kilograms. And most of their satellites, if not all, are going to a 1200 kilometer orbit. So the satellite by payload actually is too big for Rocket Lab. I don't think it could fly on Rocket

Lab, at least not the initial version here that we're seeing that is actually being offered up to launch. And it is just big enough, or just small enough, I should say, for Launcher 1. Launcher 1, notably, they've signed 39 missions with OneWeb. So I think that instance is an interesting comparison point, that Rocket Lab is too small for one of the biggest smallsat constellations that is coming online in the next few years. Obviously, things are always shrinking, and there's plenty of smallsats to go around, but when you see such a big

anchor in the market that doesn't fit on one of these two competitors and already assigned a bunch of launch contracts with another uh industry player it's interesting to note that i think you know rocket lab i don't think is going to have problems selling uh missions for the first few years because they've got a little bit of a backlog considering that they've had a year or so or two delay from when they're originally targeting, which is not surprising as always. But just I find it interesting that OneWeb is too big for Rocket Lab. And that's a customer that has a lot of launches to do and Rocket Lab is missing out on because of their system. So let's keep an eye on that. If you see other small sat systems coming online that are in that same range and just haven't gotten small enough to fly

with Rocket Lab yet, that'll be interesting to follow along with if that is the case. The other thing that's interesting here is that these small sat launchers are kind of playing the same tactic in a way that ULA is, which sounds really weird, right? But when you think about the way ULA has been positioning themselves over the last year, they've been positioning themselves as a launch provider that you have to pay a premium to fly with. But with that, you get schedule certainty, you get reliability and all this kind of stuff. But schedule certainty is the big one that they're pushing, that you will launch on the date that we agree to. And that is sort of the same tactic that small sat launchers are playing in that, you know,

you're going to have to pay more and in some cases significantly more to fly with us than you would if you flew as a secondary payload. But you'll be in control of your own schedule. You'll be in control of your final orbit. You won't have to make compromises as you do with a ride-along payload, like you would fly with some aggregator or even in some cases just as a secondary payload to a bigger mission. And it's a similar tactic to a different segment of the market for sure, but it's a similar tactic in that you pay a premium for being more in control and having more certainty of when you where you will launch and where you will head so that's a tactic that we'll have to see how it plays out because as i said in

some cases the the launch price for these things is significantly more than you would pay as a secondary payload or or as part of an aggregate launch or something like that so they're kind of putting a big bet on the fact that this segment of the market is elastic enough in price to cover that higher launch costs and that a schedule is that important to somebody who has those kind of satellites to launch. So it's definitely a small, in terms of the overall market, it's a small window where you need somebody with small enough satellites that has enough money and has a tight enough timeline.

And, you know, when you think about that, you think about these small sat constellations. And that's why I brought up the OneWeb thing is that that is one of the biggest constellations

with satellites in this small sat range to be launched. And Rocket Lab is missing out on them entirely. Certainly, you know, they'll be launching Planet and other things like that. But, you know, you see such an anchor tenant in this space in OneWeb and it's tough to not be a little bit disappointed in that regard

that they could not cover that sort of launch. The other player right now in this space that I would get a lot of comments if I did not bring up here is Vector. They've been making a lot of noise lately, and quite honestly, for not a whole lot. They've done two test launches right now, but they aren't test launches in the way that you would think. These are basically hollow airframes that have very small propellant tanks in them. They use one engine instead of three that will be flying on their actual launch vehicle. And the structures they're using are not composite structures like they will use on the flight vehicles. And they don't actually have any

upper stage hardware yet flying on these missions. So there's a lot missing from these test launches. But, you know, this is kind of a push that Vector has been doing in the last year, from these test launches. But, you know, this is kind of a push that Vector's been doing in the last year, I assume based on their funding round that they just picked up. Sequoia Capital, just with some other funds, invested $21 million in Vector surrounding their previous launch. So they've been making a lot of noise to raise that round of funding, and I think they needed to do some of these test launches to get the PR headlines that they needed. And honestly, to make it look like they're not as far behind as they are to Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit. They are significantly far, far behind these two companies. They are still flying, you know, basically, I don't even really know. They're

not early test flights, but they're component tests, I would say. They're testing the airframe and its aerodynamic properties and some guidance things and things like that. But they have not yet flown a lot of the things that they will need to actually pull off their Vector-R initial version of the rocket there. So they've still got quite a ways to go. I just wanted to bring it up because I knew if I did not, people would say, what about Vector? What about Vector? And yes, they are making a lot of noise right now, but they are nowhere close to where Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit are. And, you know, maybe they'll catch up quicker because they've got a very different tactic in general. They're pressure-fed engines. They've got a much smaller payload capacity. They don't have, well, this kind of applies to Virgin Orbit too, but they don't have a big launch infrastructure to maintain.

So they're taking a couple different tactics there, but they, as I said, they are very far behind. Maybe a year behind if they are really quick, but I would bet a year or two behind of these other companies. One other thing I want to mention about the small launch space, small sat space in general. Small sat conf was going on this last week. There's not a whole lot of breaking news out of it, but I think that's because we're still kind of in this introductory period. These small launch companies I'm talking about are just about up and running. Some of these constellations are just about up and flying.

There's going to be, over the next few years, a bigger and bigger focus in this space. There's a lot of interesting companies out there working on propulsion systems and all sorts of utilities for smallsats. And as we start to see things in this payload size fly more regularly with their own devoted launchers, that sort of stuff will get

a chance to be test flown. We'll get a chance to be operational. You know, we've got an operational constellation up there now in Planet at the smallsat size. And there's several others that are flying as well. So as we start to see more and more of these things fly, we're going to see more and more of these propulsion systems come out of the kind of stealth phases that they're in now and actually put themselves on a test flight and be able to talk about what they're working on. And I'm excited to talk about some of that stuff. There's just not a whole lot yet I can talk about because everyone's still in this kind of secretive phase. They don't want to give away what they're working on or why they're doing it or anything like that. But it is something that I think we'll see emerge in 2019, 2020 as a very

big focus. Things will start to be flown in tests and implemented on operational satellites. And I'm excited to get into all that as these companies come out of stealth mode. So it's something to keep in mind that these dedicated launchers will bring about a lot of these new companies emerging onto the scene that we know the names of yet, but we don't see a lot of work from yet because of the phase that we're in now. So I just wanted to mention that as something that I'll be tracking over the next years. So I want to dive into some NASA projects before we're done for the day. But before I do, I want to say a very, very big thank you to all of the supporters of Main Engine Cutoff over on Patreon. There are 83 of you supporting this show week in and week out over at patreon.com slash miko,

and I am hugely thankful for all of your support. This episode of Main Engine Cutoff was brought to you by 17 executive producers. Chris, Mike, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Jameson, Guinevere, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, and four anonymous executive producers. They made this particular episode possible and I could not do it without their support and everyone else over at patreon.com slash Miko head over there as I said at the beginning of the show to support and keep an eye on some of the things that I'll be working on over the next few weeks or months so if you're excited about that and you

want to help support head over to patreon and give as little as $1 a month. Everything that you can add really, really helps me push the show forward and expand what I'm doing here. So thank you so much for all of your support. So I wanted to touch on some of these advanced propulsion projects that NASA has ongoing. And this actually came out this morning. I'm recording this on Thursday. The VASIMR rocket, this plasma rocket engine that Ad Astra rocket company has been working on, they released a review two years into their three-year project with NASA on their VASIMR engine. And their second year goal was to have a 10-hour cumulative test of their 100-kilowatt engine.

This is a very advanced type of propulsion, very interesting, and could be revolutionary if everything works out the way that they say. And it's sometimes tough to cut through the hype on this, but it's an interesting project to follow regardless. So they're going into the third year, the last year of this. It's actually part of the Next Step program with NASA. And the goal for this year is to fire the engine for 100 hours continuously at a power level of 100 kilowatts. So this is a pretty powerful system

for 100 hours straight. And they say that they are on target to do that in next summer or fall. So we'll see how that comes out. But a very interesting project that's now two-thirds of the way through what they actually contracted with NASA. So keep an eye on it, read the press release, it's pretty interesting, and we probably will be talking about that more in the future. The other one I wanted to bring up was a nuclear thermal propulsion contract that NASA signed with a company called BWXT, who does a lot of work for the government at large on nuclear front.

They signed a contract with NASA, again, three years, very small, $18 million total. I should mention the Ad Astra contract was only $9 million total. And this one for BWXT is $18.8 million. And for this contract, they're going to be looking at manufacturing and testing the fuel elements that could be used for nuclear thermal propulsion. This is something that has quite a bit of history in it. This was a big project decades ago that NASA dropped after the Mars missions back then were dropped. The Mars missions back then were dropped.

And it kind of surfaced again here in an interesting way that they're at least open to pursuing it. It's kind of been taboo to mention in a lot of regards. So it's encouraging to see NASA put the words nuclear thermal out in a press release, I would say. It's an interesting technology that could be a useful addition to a lot of architectures out there. If you draw up an architecture for a Mars architecture of any sort, nuclear thermal does add a lot of payload capability to get out to Mars. But I have a couple of problems with the way that this stuff is communicated by NASA and the kind of planning around it in general. In the press release talking about nuclear thermal, NASA says that the nuclear thermal system could cut the transit time to Mars from six months to four months,

and how this could be a huge revolution for Mars architectures. And I always hate when this stuff is framed that way because cutting the travel time from six months to four months is not unique to nuclear thermal. It's not unique to something like the VASIMR engine. It's not unique to solar electric propulsion. That's not something that you can only do with some futuristic propulsion types. You can do it with the stuff we have today. And that just bothers me a lot when it says like, oh, well,

we need this to cut two months off our journey. And that bothers me especially because if you get to Mars two months earlier, it's pretty useless unless you arrive with a lander or anything else other than a transit habitat. And for some reason, it seems that NASA is totally preoccupied with the transfer habitats and the futuristic propulsion that would go on said habitat. They seem to, you know, I'm not saying that these projects shouldn't exist within NASA. Surely this is something that would not get a lot of funding outside of NASA or some sort of development program like this. So I appreciate that NASA is putting money into new forms of propulsion because I think if anyone is the right fit to do that, it is NASA.

The problem is when it's framed as a necessity to an architecture that gets us out to Mars in general. And the problem is that it exists in, I don't want to use the pun that it exists in a vacuum, but it's kind of a one component of an overall architecture that is missing a lot of other components. It feels a bit like they're buying better and better pens to write a book when they haven't even bought a notebook yet. We're talking about how to get to Mars faster and faster when we haven't built any habitats for Mars or any landers for Mars, or really just about anything else other than a launch vehicle and a crew capsule.

And this is my problem, that there's a lot of PR and, you know, not a ton of money, but there is a lot of money going into these advanced propulsion techniques. And I don't see a lot of that happening on the lander front. Certainly they are working on landers. You know, they're working on stuff with Masten for more precision landings and getting landing ellipses smaller. They're working on landers for all the different rovers that we had going out to Mars. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of plan in that regard, so there's not a lot of new landing techniques because there's a distinct lack of missions headed out to Mars, which I'm sure we will talk about later this month after the National Academy's mission. And there are some smaller projects that they had going on to develop

at least entry systems to Mars. There was the inflatable decelerator tests that they ran. That's come into some hard times budgetarily and has, I think, now been canceled. They partnered with SpaceX for supersonic retropropulsion tests. And I'm sure they will partner with ULA when ULA starts looking to do the inflatable decelerator to recover the engines on Vulcan. So there's some work and PR going into these entry systems, but there's almost nothing going into a human-scale lander. So yes, nuclear thermal and VASIMR engines, those are useful things to invest in, and now is the right time to invest in them because they are long lead-time projects. But they are nowhere

close to necessary for a mission to Mars. And there's so many other things that need to be a focus of NASA, that need any sort of focus and coherence around them, if they're actually going to put a full architecture together. So in the age of a National Space Council and this new administration coming in that is taking a different look at things, if you could say that, one of the biggest things I'm going to be looking for in the next year, or maybe even two, depending on how things move in this regard, is some coherent plan in general. You know, there's been a lot of talk about the Mars Exploration Program and how that's got no plans after Mars 2020. And that's sort of the feeling I get about a lot of NASA right now. We talked last week about the ISS and how we need to develop a real plan for human spaceflight for the ISS and after. Mars exploration program needs some additional focus put into it to really understand what we're trying to accomplish and what we need to do in the next decade. And that kind of look needs to be taken at, honestly, NASA overall, because we have these

disjointed projects, 18 million here, 9 million there, going into these different technologies. We need some way to tie these things together. And when you tie them together, it becomes very obvious which pieces are missing. The biggest one right now is a lander, even either for the moon or Mars. But there are other missing pieces too. And those are the things that I want to see more effort put into. And I'm hoping that some coherent sense of focus and a plan when it's put together would highlight that and would start to direct some money in these areas. Or scrap the plan entirely and double down on Mars, double down on Europa, double down on outer planet exploration. If that's what we want to do, if we want to be a planetary exploration program, go all in on that. exploration program, go all in on that. Because this kind of like piecemeal investment and planning and things like that, it gets frustrating when it builds up to a point when you see

all these things happening in a haphazard way. And there are useful pieces there, but none of it is put together in an architecture that we really can string together to achieve a goal like that. So yeah, these are fun projects to see happen. I'm excited to see nuclear thermal be words that are uttered within the halls of NASA again. But I would like the same for a lander, or for surface habitats, or anything in that regard. So anyway, that's my mini rant on where we're at with the programs like this overall. I had got a lot of great notes last week about the ISS. So I want to say thank you to all those that wrote in with your thoughts on the ISS.

Heard from a lot of people that said it's way too early to decommission the ISS. And I heard a lot of people, some of which work within the programs, that said, you know what? You're right. We need to make a decision and we need to start planning for the future. So I appreciate hearing from all of you on that regard. And if you've got any thoughts on these things, either the small launchers or anything else, send me an email, anthonyatmainenginecutoff.com. As always, the show notes will be over at mainenginecutoff.com for you.

Follow me on Twitter at WeHaveMiko. Head over to patreon.com slash miko to help support the show and follow along with the new projects I'll be working on in the next few months. But for now, thank you very much for listening and I will talk to you next week. Thank you.