Main Engine Cut Off - T+62: Chris Gebhardt on SpaceX’s BFR 2017 Update

Episode Date: October 5, 2017

Chris Gebhardt of NASASpaceflight joins me to discuss Elon Musk’s presentation last week, in which he provided an update to the BFR. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 20 executive producers—Kris, Mike, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Jamison, Guinevere, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, and five anonymous—and 82 other supporters on Patreon. Chris Gebhardt on Twitter Making Life Multiplanetary The Moon, Mars, & around the Earth – Musk updates BFR architecture, plans | NASASpaceFlight.com SES-10 Press Conference in which Chris grills Elon until he says “Wow, you’re really in the details there.” Email your thoughts and comments to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Listen to MECO Headlines Join the MECO Discord 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

Chris Gebhardt, NASA Spaceflight. Thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for being willing to break this down. And thanks for being here. My pleasure. It's good to be here. We started talking about this a couple weeks ago. I was thinking about who am I going to talk with about the Elon Musk presentation and I couldn't think of anyone better except the person who Elon Musk himself, you'll have to remind me what mission this was, commented on how well you have the details down when you were asking him a question. that was like a couple months ago right i think uh yeah i think that was the uh first uh falcon 9 booster reflight yeah that's right back at the end of may yeah so

i that came to my mind i was like well i think if this is ordained by elon musk himself let's go for it um so let's give some thoughts on the general event. You know, what was your, your main takeaway from the presentation itself? And, uh, what, what things did you find most interesting out of it? Uh, I think the thing I found most interesting, which I, which I'm sure, um, took almost everyone by surprise was, um, BFR as the point-to-point transport for Earth. I'm not sure anyone really saw that coming, but it was certainly a nice surprise to see in terms of SpaceX thinking about how this technology and what we've seen in the development with Falcon 9 propulsive landings over the last few years, how that technology is useful to us

here on Earth, because that's sort of the age-old question, right? Like, we see the missions launch, we see the satellites go up, and if it's not a GPS satellite that you can complain about that your navigation system isn't working on your phone or it takes you down road A instead of road B, right, that age-old question is really, well, what benefit do I get here on earth? And it was really good to see SpaceX thinking about how the BFR technology can do that and how it could potentially help to really start a conversation about what air traffic is, how air traffic control works. cause obviously that's a huge part of, you know, BFR as basically a plane. Um, so it was really good to see that conversation

begin and, and to have that put out there for, for what it could do for our connectivity and our travel. I found that really interesting because of save for maybe the Mars city, the hypothetical Mars city showed of all the things he talked about, that is probably the most long-term vision of BFR itself, because that doesn't really come into fruition until BFR is flying regularly, reliably, on a giant scale with plenty of ships to be had, you know, well into the production of it. But like you're saying, that is something that if it is a vision of this thing, they do need to get that conversation started earlier because of everything else that it's related to. Whereas, you know, when you're looking at BFR as a single moon mission lander or sending a couple to Mars, you know, there's obviously a lot of stuff to get through there, red tape and whatnot, that you have to build launch infrastructure and do everything like that. But it is not a worldwide infrastructure issue.

It is localized on Earth, political in the country in which you're launching from. But beyond that, it's not something that is such a massive scale like, you know, flying these around the world would be. So I had some conflicted feelings on that. Yeah. And, you know, I think in a large way, you're right. You know, there's a huge difference between using of BFR launches for the lunar architecture and for the Mars architecture don't include major public safety concerns, right? The Cape is very isolated. It launches out over water. The BFR as a plane is really talking about overflight of land and a huge structural change and operational change to what air traffic control would be.

So those conversations are necessary. Those conversations about how air traffic control will revolutionize are already occurring, right? And how we can integrate technology and real-time tracking, especially over the oceans, into this. But yeah, there are going to be safety concerns. There are going to be national and militaristic concerns with BFR. And you're right, it obviously has to, there have to be hundreds if not thousands of these things, right? Probably hundreds, thousands is a bit of an exaggeration. But, you know, there have to be hundreds if not thousands of these things right probably hundreds thousands is a bit of an exaggeration um but you know there have to be hundreds of these things already produced and already flying and the technology really has to be proven in a far more concrete way than you know

what we saw with the faa in 2015 um allowing spacex to come back and land their first successful landing of the Falcon 9 booster on land, right? There hadn't been any successful landings up to that point. But again, the Cape is so isolated, that if there had been a problem, it wouldn't have been a safety risk to people. So it woke people up in the middle of the night. And even yes, like, okay, big deal. I remember the shuttle flying over Florida back in the day. It was much louder than that particular incident. Exactly. But these conversations are necessary. You know, we were talking a little bit before the show, right, about, you know, we're recording this on the 60th anniversary of the Sputnik launch and the beginning of the space era. And, you know, Sputnik was ambitious and Sputnik was a huge technical challenge. There were

major legal questions about was it a violation of international law to launch a satellite into orbit that would go over another country, right? And all of these conversations eventually played out, right? All of the technical challenges that spaceflight has are met in one way or another, but you have to have that ambition, you have to have that drive, and you have to start those conversations early in order to, you know, make the future and science fiction a reality, which, as I'm very fond of saying, SpaceX has a way of taking the impossible and science fiction a reality, which as I'm very fond of saying, SpaceX has a way of taking the impossible and making it a reality. So, you know, we'll see where we get with that. But that was the thing that really shocked me most about BFR and shocked

me in a good way. Yeah, I could tell from your tweets and all that you were pretty pumped. And I would get emails in our email thread like, what the hell is going on? And freaking out about this. So it's pretty funny to see everyone's reaction. Indeed. So like I said, that was kind of the most long-term vision, though I think a lot of people took it as a nearer-term vision because it's Earth, after all. And they see Mars cities and stuff like that, and they think, okay, well, the Mars stuff is the stuff that's really far away, timeline-wise. And much like, if you remember back to the last year's presentation,

the end of it, he ended on a note about, you know, Europa landers and going out to Saturn and things like that. And I was kind of annoyed at that because I felt like it took his message that was, this is an architecture that's here and now. We are building it. We've got a tank. We've got an engine. It took that message of, we are working on this now,

and it put it on a timescale that most people could kind of say, that'll happen someday or it'll fall apart before it gets there. Kind of wave it off because of that long-term nature. And I had a similar feeling with the point-to-point thing in that the difference between last year and this year was, let's scale back some of this stuff, both in size and in development costs so that we can do it on the same or similar time scale that we can achieve what we want. But the end of it then threw everyone for a trip and

it kind of distracted from that message again. I thought personally that it distracted from the core message because, you know, he came out on stage and the first thing he said was, the thing I want to convey this year is that we figured out how to pay for it. And at no point in the presentation did he specifically comment on the paying for it. It was through implication of, we've downscaled, so development costs less. Or look at how we would service the ISS for that.

Which you and I and everyone listening, they pick up on the fact that, oh, well that's their current contracts that they're working on and they're going to still do the things that they're doing now to make money to fund this. But to somebody just watching from the outside, I don't think that that implication really would hit home, that that is their business model and that is how they're going to pay for it, is that they're going to take this system and do the things they're doing today, but shift everyone to this new architecture. So I was a little bummed that it kind of distracted from that main point, which I'm not expecting, you know, the general TV news stuff to cover like

a full on SpaceX business plan in review of that. So that's probably a little stupid of me to say in general, but that was kind of my takeaway at the end, the thing I was left with. little stupid of me to say in general, but that was kind of my takeaway at the end, the thing I was left with. I mean, I can see that. You know, I think one of the struggles a lot of us and a lot of people have with how this information rolls out, right, is we are still so used to the NASA model of communication, where you get all these little incremental updates. I mean, to put it in perspective, how many updates have we seen from NASA and Orbital ATK about the solid rocket boosters for the SLS missions?

We know they're casting the boosters for EM-2. We know the boosters for EM-1 have been cast, and they're doing the photogrammetry painting on them right now. And you get those little incremental steps all the way, right? Because the government has to be accountable for that, right? So we're all still trying to adapt, I think, to the new model of SpaceX is a private company and they don't technically have to tell us anything right It's in their interest to tell us things but they don't have to yeah

Especially like consider the difference that you're talking about here. How many times we heard about SLS engine tests and all of a sudden we find out there's been over 40 Raptor engine firings right Which you know this is this is the benefit of having people out near McGregor where, you know, you can, you can hear like, wait a minute, there was a huge rumble at McGregor. I don't know. Was it a Falcon? Was it a Raptor? Um, but, but yeah, um, you know, these, these sort of, you know, yearly updates on the architecture in ways can seem kind of jarring when major elements change. Now, one thing I was fascinated by in the presentation was just almost how much

the plan has not changed. There was what is now a very logical addition of like, well, hey, you know what is now a very logical addition of like well hey if it can go to mars it can certainly go to the moon you know um but you know these yearly presentations you know to speak to your point about how they've ended the last two years you know when when it's your main method of getting across everything this system can do you know i think in a way it's your main method of getting across everything this system can do, I think in a way it's very hard to structure a presentation in any way where the takeaway wouldn't be like, oh my gosh, it's going to be like a big plane and you can get to Sydney from New York in 45 minutes. to Sydney from New York in 45 minutes. You know, I guess my feeling on that personally was whether that had been the opening of the presentation, the middle of it, or the end, I still think it would have been the thing people would have walked away immediately wanting to talk about, right? Because, you know, even Musk admitted that, you know, 2022 and 2024 for the first six BFR missions to Mars is ambitious. You know, now what I found fascinating by that is that in the last year, that date has not changed.

You know, I was certainly expecting to already be talking about, you know, okay, well, maybe it slipped a couple years, maybe it slipped to the next window. And, you know, I think everyone walked away from that with a realistic view that, you know, okay, it's going to slip, right? So there were the technical sides of it that everyone was like, okay, we've got to give this more time to shake out um you know exciting that they're going to be start production on the first bfr next year um you know that certainly makes a 2022 timeline possible um if you start building in 2018 especially with the composite materials that they're using and all the testing that they've done with the Falcons. Rocketry is hard, but the less complicated you make the system, right, the easier it can be to get by. So I think in terms of this feeling of, is it a distraction?

Is it a, or is it just there wasn't any good place to put that in us about this um you know because obviously the downscaling happened and that's like making it more realistic and the only other change would have been all right so you're like cool with moon bases you know that would have been the takeaway yeah yeah it's making it's making it a bit more realistic it's it definitely makes it um you know because my main thought last year with bfr when they were like, oh yeah, it's going to have 28 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. And my first thought was like, well, which launch pad are you going from? 28 million pounds is like the in terms of the existing architecture that's present, right? Because if you were also talking about this system needing to have a completely new pad or really radically alter the pads at Kennedy, you'd have a major problem with that 2022 timeline. Now, the pads have to be modified anyway. have to be modified anyway.

I'm wondering, though, we've heard fits and starts of Boca Chica news, and I'm starting to wonder if they're just, given the changes in their workflow that maybe we can touch on in a couple minutes, are they going to just go full in on Boca Chica being the launchpad for BFR and starting there and keeping Kennedy and Canaveral and Vandenberg as untouched as possible? Or do you think that they would say that the first launch is out of

Cape Canaveral? I think the first launch is going to be out of Cape Canaveral. You know, Boca Chena is definitely, per their plans, it's definitely a base that they have looked at, right. For launching BFR, um, the, the launch angles and the launch azimuths that you have to use out of Boca China are very limiting, um, because you can't overfly the Yucatan. You can't overfly the Caribbean islands. Yeah. There's like a one lane basically to fly. There's one lane, and you really have to thread that 90-mile gap between the end of Florida and the top of Cuba. And all of the oil platforms that are out in the Gulf and stuff. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, Boca Chena has its uses, and that is not to say that BFR cannot launch from there, right?

But, you know, the way I look at it is, you know, look, you, you've got a rocket that can launch from 39A or 39B, right? That's well within what those pads can withstand. We know Florida's land can withstand the thrust profile of a BFR, right? If you've got the pad, if you've got the propellant tanks already there, right? And you're talking about adding some more propellant lines and a new launch mount and building a new hangar that's a lot easier than trying to do all of that and build the pad at bocaccino from scratch um so i think definitely

bfr goes first from the florida facilities um and and yeah and yeah, and what you were talking about too in terms of what's changed, yeah, there's a scaled back version that makes it more economical, that makes it more, almost for lack of a better word, doable. That I think you're right. There's an element to these presentations

where you also have to capture the public imagination, right? And you have to make this system, especially for what SpaceX's larger plans are, right, of lower cost access to space, right? But, you know, half a million dollar price tag to be one of those colonists, if that still is what the price tag is, right? You know, I don't have that lying around in the bank account.

You know, I'm pretty sure most people don't. BFR as point-to-point transport on Earth was included specifically at the end of the presentation, which Musk admitted after the fact he forgot to talk about the price point for that. But afterward, in an Instagram post he did, when he's talking about using BFR as a plane and a ticket on it would be full fare economy. I mean, full fare economy, not full fair first class full fair economy on that that really does begin to touch on what the potential price points and what the benefits of of reuse are right where where you can make um i i think the figure oh boy correct me if i'm wrong the figure last year was that the BFRs would be reusable a thousand times. Yeah, the boost stage was a thousand, tanker was something like that.

And I think the ship number was way low, but that was counting, you know, the years that you spend at Mars and things like that. Right, right. So, you know, if you're talking about a thousand reuses of that as a baseline, you know, I think the reason that that was included in the presentation was to really hone in on, no, we can do this cheaply, right? We can do this in a very economical way. And, you know, you can kind of start to translate that out a little bit to, okay, well, then if I wanted to go to the moon for the weekend, or for a couple weeks, what would that cost? If New York to Sydney is, you know, maybe a little liberally speaking, 300 $350 ticket, you know, okay, well, then what's the moon? Well, then what's Mars,

it starts to put it on a scale where people can get excited and understand what the benefits and what the price points are in terms of everyday life. Yeah, I like that. You might have changed my mind on that section a little bit. Let's get into some of the hardware stuff. Just a couple things I want to talk about, mostly just Raptor and the tank. I have been having a hard time finding out exactly what the deal is. Based on all the available info i have the raptor specs stated in the in the presentation are either extremely close to or the same as the raptor on the stand in mcgregor is that true is that am i off on based on that i don't really

know the exact details there what it felt like was that the they maybe have done all this testing and figured out what they can get out of something that size and settled in upon it because I believe that the diameter of the nozzles is decreased because they're packing 31 in the new boost stage and the old

geometry wouldn't fit in that booster so they down scaled the size at least a little bit I don't know how that maps up to the one on the stand, because if so, that's kind of big. Yeah. You know, that's an excellent question. You know, a lot of the testing that goes on at McGregor and what those test stands are, at McGregor and what those test stands are, I mean, are really, until we get any form of confirmation, just our best guesses. I know some of the more recent ones before. So I know the most recent round of testing that ended in September was the end of one of their

test phases completely, and that they were moving on to a new phase. I know there's a lot of speculation that the various test bays, especially the new one, that we've been watching them build because McGregor isn't that controlled of a facility, so you can fly a Cessna pretty close to it and take pictures. And it's totally legal to do that. This is a call out for the l2 l2 eons out there that are also looking at these photos and a shout out to our l2 people who do this yes um um but you know i i know from what we can see there there are differences in the test stands there we we definitely know that the test stand that's been operational is what's been termed the subscale Raptors that they've been testing are actually capable

of producing in terms of their thrust and their power, we really don't have a way to know. And this speaks back to what we were talking about earlier, that SpaceX can be a little secretive in what goes on because they're a private company. So it's an excellent question. I wish I knew the answer to it. I'm not sure anyone outside of SpaceX does. I can't find anyone really talking about this aside from just conjecture, you know, and the SpaceX subreddit and stuff like that.

But if that is the case, that they determined the scale that they were using previously in testing will work out for this thing. And what they've been testing for the past, what has it been, a year and a half or so, is the Raptor that's going to fly. That's a pretty big deal that I don't think, you know, that might be the biggest news out of this event itself is that they've been testing Raptor Raptor for the last year. And it very well could be that they've either been testing you know exactly what the raptor will be or a very very close version um you know it's been a while in in the public eye right since we have

seen um with this much interest right the development of these kinds of engines right and and how you how you play with different configurations how you play with different configurations, how you play with different nozzles for optimization. So it's possible that what this testing showed them as they moved through the optimization of the system is that they were very close, if not almost right on target for what they needed for what BFR evolved into, right? Yeah. This is kind of a merging of plans here, is that they have these plans going for this rocket,

they have these plans going for the launch vehicle, and those might have started to get closer together over the past year when somebody realized, hey, the size that we're working with could match up. Now, I would love to have any confirmation on that. We're not going to get any confirmation on that for quite a while, I would assume. I would assume that as well. Yes. So the other hardware, but it is, but it is worth noting, right? Because, um, just, just real quickly that a lot of, um, because McGregor is so isolated and we don't see a lot of the testing that goes on there because it's not California, it's not Florida, right? Um's a pretty isolated area of Texas. The Raptor

testing has been very ambitious and quite continuous over the last year. They test fired the first Raptor right before the big announcement of BFR last year, and they have had numerous firings and testings of that engine. So it is a very robust test program that's going on. Nearly one a week, based on the numbers that we saw. Yeah, almost one a week. And we know that they're moving into the next phase of testing. We don't know exactly what that means, but we know that sometime this month they should be into the new phase of testing for Raptor. So that's worth noting that it's very robust. Yeah. And any good launch vehicle is built on its engines. So that's definitely the most

important piece to get out of the front, right? Yes, indeed. The other one is the tank, which we finally, much to all of our enjoyment, got a video of the bursting of that tank. We had seen the photos of the debris that came back from the at-sea testing they did. They said that it bursted past design strength. Though I believe that test was done

with nitrogen inside. So there's still the, obviously they didn't use liquid oxygen out there. That would have been a little bit more ferocious of an explosion. So that seems to me, you know, they've had this 12 meter tank, they tested it, it worked to their standards that they needed that tank to work. They are downscaling to to nine meters which should bring some additional strength to it since it is a smaller structure the biggest dragon there to slay no no pun intended i guess is dealing with liquid oxygen which you know historically the guidance is don't mix liquid oxygen and composite so could that be the next phase of testing for them, is building one of these tanks with the tooling they've got.

They validated the tooling works. They wanted to order the tooling for that 9-meter size. Now they can build some test tanks to go in and actually use propellants on these tanks that they would build. I think given their history with, uh, history with, um, locks and, um, composites that, that there's definitely that there definitely will be some form of testing, right? I mean, and, and any rocket development system, right? You always build test articles. You always build, um, the elements that will actually be, you know, loaded with propellant and tested on stands before

you put the vehicle on the pad and before you fuel it and light the engines. Exactly what that testing is going to be, I think, is largely in a way determined by what SpaceX learned and what changes they made to the Falcon 9s after the Amos 6 incident last year. You know, we don't know entirely everything that was done. We know they tested, we know they fueled and tested a lot of composite pressure overwrapped vessels with locks in them and tested them to failure trying to replicate the problem that led to the amo6 loss on the pad um will they actually do that

with a tank the size of bfr maybe um you know but an important thing to, to note with this too, is that with all of the testing that they did before they returned to flight after Amos six, um, they, they also gathered an incredible amount of engineering data on how locks interacts with those composites. Um, and, and if I were a betting man, I would venture to guess that there's something on the Falcon 9s now that also gives them that information. Right. So they're continually monitoring that. That is I didn't even consider that in one bit. And that is like so that's such like a fate story. Like, hey, there's going to be a giant composite locks problem right when you're talking about using giant composites with a lot of locks last year.

And so if that is something that comes out in the future, that, hey, AMO6 was maybe the shittiest day to ever work at SpaceX. But look at what it made us do back then. Look at how good at locks and composites we are now. And that contributes in a major way to BFR. That's, what a way to turn a victory or turn a defeat into a victory in some sort. Yeah. And, you know, there's the, you know, there's this, it's not a rule, but, you know, in rocket flight and in rocketry, you know, you're going, you're going to have failures and we know that. Right. But the key is really to not have the same failure twice, right. To, to learn from that. Um, and you know,

I don't think anyone in any business is keen on repeating a failure and saying, Oh, I guess we didn't learn from that. Right. Um, so, you know, like I said, it's not it's not confirmed this is just me saying like if i'm a betting man like i'm i i would assume that there is something there is some sensor system on the falcon nines now that monitor this as we go through each launch so the whole point of that is really to say like you know the decision that's going to have to be made is, do you model the LOX tank and its composites with computer analytics because of everything you've learned? And do you determine that that is enough, or do you want to actually do real-world testing, testing those components to failure again. I think it's a testament for what we heard last week that when they tested the LOX tank article for BFR to failure, it failed past the design specs of what they actually needed.

So that speaks in a lot of ways to the robust elements of the system that they're designing. Yeah, that was a very encouraging portion. Hardware-wise, I don't think there was anything too much else to really comment on, other than the fact that they haven't figured out what to do with landing legs. They're in some graphics, they're not in other graphics. Those are still way up in the air. Yeah, you know, Musk talked a lot about um the need for precision

landing um and and perfecting that element of it and i i think you know a lot of us who follow every single talk and i launch and for those of us who don't um uh this is, you know, how, how many missions do we comment on? Like, man, like that was almost dead center on the X, you know, on, on the barge. And, you know, I think a lot of us have just been like, wow, look at how accurate they were. Maybe, maybe not, maybe not consciously realizing that that was on purpose, right? Exactly. Exactly. how close to the dead center they're aiming for a point not a barge not the path exactly they're aiming for a part

and they're hitting it i think the last one was within 0.7 meters of of where they were aiming so like something ridiculously close yeah and and that was the booster that went the highest And that was the booster that went the highest. Yeah, and when you're accounting for wind shear and all of that as the rocket is in year, maybe a little more realistically the beginning of next year, when Falcon Heavy takes to the sky. And watching two boosters fly back in formation meters from each other you know um and and have to do this choreographed landing sequence i think that's what we were all really looking at in in that precision but then to note what musk was saying with bfr and why you know the most recent renderings for it do not have landing legs is because they want to do away with that. They want it to be able to come back and do something that technically speaking

is incredibly challenging, um, you know, to come back and land on its launch mount. And we won't go into all the technicalities there, but, you know, needless to say to say it's it's not just you know landing softly on the launch mount to the point where you don't damage it right it's landing in a very precise orientation where the rocket has to be aligned on its circumference perfectly, right? You can't have a one inch misalignment or a half inch misalignment when you're talking about the propellant feed lines going into the rocket. Those have to match perfectly. So, you know, when, when he talked about that, my, my initial thought wasn't, oh, they'll never be able to land on the launch mount because i've learned to say never say never when it comes to spacex um you know it was really the my question then became well how how close are the falcon nines coming to on their circumference right landing perfectly the way you want them

you know how many degrees off of that ideal landing mark are they um especially when they come back to land on land you know the barge has its own set of um you know it's usually windier out at sea so they're they're having last wave action wave action you know that you don't get on land so how close are they actually coming to that ability to land perfectly in the circumference perspective became my question. Yeah. The ship part is curious. If that, you know, the only landing legs we saw on the ship were graphics of it on the moon or on Mars. The other diagrams that we saw, which were much more early days design, which I actually appreciated that they didn't show this is the final product that you will see in five years.

They kind of showed it as a work in progress that it is. The landing legs are still yet to be figured out on that. I don't obviously not a deal breaker or anything that I'm like, oh, crap. What are they going to do with landing legs? They're building a crazy system that, you know, landing legs are the least of my worries in that regard. So I'm not too concerned about that, I guess. So they are rather important once you get to them. Yes, you want them there, but I'm confident that they will be figured out when we need them.

Yeah, especially when you look at, you know, the landing legs on the Falcon 9s. You know, we haven't had major failures at the landing legs on the Falcon 9s. You know, we haven't had major failures at the landing legs in a long time. Long time. Jason 3 is probably the last one. I mean, long time. I say that. I mean, what?

Two years. Literally, that's two years. But man, it seems like a long time ago. It does. Yeah, you know, the sort of incremental approach that they took and that they they use every single time with landing like deployment and and and the robustness of that system i'm i'm with you like it's definitely a work in progress for bfr and in terms of the the the craft the spacecraft itself but i i think you're right in terms of like that's the least of the developmental

hurdles that have to be yeah one thing that i wanted to comment on real quick that i thought also was taken a little out of context not even taken out of context but maybe misconstrued um and blown out of proportion i would say after the fact that there's been a lot of talk about his comment about ending the Falcon and Dragon production lines and shifting to BFR. And I don't know why, but... A gutsy move. Yeah, and it is. It totally is. But there seems to be a lot of feeling that this is happening next year or the year after. And I think that's totally overblown that, you know, this isn't going to happen until they move from development to production of BFR.

There's still the whole development phase that has to go on. And obviously, there's going to be a team working on producing the development ships up front. But just like I think, you know, one good example here would be Dragon 1 and 2. The Dragon 1 production line is still around. It's not producing new ones, it's refurbishing old ones, but that's not going to shift over to be a full-on Dragon 2 production line until Dragon 2 is done being developed and it shifts into raw production mode. So there's a

mindset shift that has to happen there. And I honestly cannot see, you know, based on the current schedules we're giving, this happening any time until sometime in the 2020s, when you go from development phase of BFR into, we know what we're building, we know how we're building it, we've got all the specs worked out, this design checks out, it works, it flies. You don't want to go into production until you've figured out all of that stuff, because you don't want to be producing, you know, five ships that are multi-billion dollar ships, that then all of a sudden you realize, oh crap, we have to rework some major component of it. So to me, that felt a little overblown that people were like, oh crap, Falcon's going away next year.

It's going to be around for, at this point, the better part of a decade until those production lines flip over. I don't know if you had any thoughts on the production line comments there. Yeah, I mean, overall, I think you're right. production line comments there uh yeah i i mean overall i think you're right um i think you know it was when he when he said that it was definitely and i i referenced this in the article i wrote last week on this which you know a couple years ago i think almost everyone would have would have said you're going to wait you're gonna throw away not throw away but you know what i mean um you're you know you're gonna throw away your

flight proven like i mean and and a reputation you earned with the falcon nine through a lot of hard work right um you're gonna just discontinue that because here comes bfr um but but you're right you know this isn't a this isn't you know the falcon nines are shutting down next year in fact one thing that and you really had to be looking at the screen to catch this because it was very fleeting but there was a screen that talked about that showed the progression of the number of falcon flights each year right and the big ones that were highlighted were the ones from the past from falcon one through falcon nine and what they've done this year with 13 i mean 14 and 15 are slated to go here um in in within two days of each other um and you know with a mark of

getting to 20 flights of the falcon 9 this year but there was a little gray bar right beyond that of what the projection for the falcon 9 next year was and it was over 30. They're talking about over 30 flights of Falcon 9 next year. So, you know, this isn't a, you know, it stops next year or it stops in 2019. And even Musk stated, we, you know, we're going to keep Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy around for our customers. You know, maybe BFR isn't the best option right especially for government and national security launches right there's still a place for the falcon 9 and the falcon heavy but i think what is very different here in terms of what we're talking about right is this is not this is not like what we're seeing with uLA, right? Where their business model is as part of the transition to the Vulcan rocket, right?

The Atlas V stays in all of its various configurations. The Delta IV only stays in the heavy configuration, right? And the Delta IV mediums are going to be phased out. In fact, right now, December is the scheduled last flight of the Delta 4 medium in the 5.2 configuration out of Vandenberg, and then that variant is retired, right? That's not what we're seeing with SpaceX. What we're seeing is them saying, look, we have recovered 16 boosters in the last 16 times that we have tried this, right? They're going to reach a point where they have enough of the block fours, of the block fives, and even the block threes, right? Where you have enough that you can do your manifest and you can

service all of the customers that are still wanting to fly on the falcon nine on the falcon heavy um and we can do all of that while not having to produce more right by just refurbishing the ones that we've got and and i think that was a very key point maybe that wasn't articulated you know as as well as it could have been but that's definitely what i came away with um from thinking is my initial thought was like what you're you're you're you're you're stopping them and and and then when i listened to it again i that's not what he was saying he was saying production on them ceases. But, I mean, heck, by that point,

you might have 50. Yeah, you could fly another 5, 10 years with the amount of course you have. 50 or 60 of them sitting around. Right, especially with what we know of the Block 5 design being designed to fly 100 times each. You've got a huge production scale. Now, stage two, you might need to keep the production

line going on stage two because as you know as we know the first falcon heavy flight might might be the first time they attempt a recovery of the second stage um but we're a ways out from you know stage two recovery and reuse being you, what we see with the first stage. So, yeah, you're right. It is it is a shift from production to fleet management. It's maybe even a third step of what I was talking about, where you go from development to production to fleet management. Yeah. So if that's the case, like I was saying, you move one thing from development to production. When you move another from production to fleet management, another can come into production at that point. But it just seemed like everyone thought that was happening next year

and they were going to build 50 Falcon 9 cores in the next year, which is totally ridiculous anyway, and it's going to go away. So yes, that is going to happen, but it is going to take a few years from where we're even at now. And like you're saying, there's a lot of hardware yet to be flown with Block 5s and recoverable upper stages, if that really does come into fruition, and recoverable fairings, for that matter, something that they're working on getting back. So there's a lot of changes to the Falcon architecture, but they still are some time off from that particular moment in time. Yeah. And a good way to think about right, Musk loves to use theiant Air, right? Allegiant Air's entire fleet is the MD-88 aircraft, right? Delta uses the MD-88 for a lot of their regional

short hop flights and everything like that. The last MD-88 was built and delivered in June of 1997. Literally over 20 years ago is when they stopped producing that variant, right? They're still one of the most popular aircraft in domestic aircraft. Right. And 97 was the last one built, not all of the ones that you're flying. Not all of them. The ones you're flying are well before that. So your comment, right, that this is a shift away from production to fleet management is exactly what this is, right? And if you have 40 to 50, right, let's just use that. I don't know how many they're going to end up having when this is all said and done. sitting there and each one can be used 100 times and you've got the refurbishment time on these things down to even if they only get the refurbishment down to three to four months right

you're not flying 40 to 50 missions in three months right yeah you got a whole fleet turnover every couple of months you know if you're going if you've got your launch rate up to elon musk levels exactly so it's it's it becomes fleet management instead of production and like musk said this goes back to to your point about like when he opened the conversation saying we figured out how to pay for it right figuring out how to pay for it was shutting down the Falcon 9 production line and starting to shift and try to convince customers like, look, you can go on a Falcon 9 or total number off the top of my head here, or 10 of you who all need to go to low earth orbit at this inclination can just ride share on a BFR for less than what it would

cost to put you individually on a Falcon 9 or a Falcon Heavy, right? And therefore, the business model begins to shift, but the millions of dollars you're spending on production of the Falcon 9s then becomes millions of dollars you spend on production of BFR. Right. And you still have a business model of launching satellites with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy for that matter. You don't shut down production and the business model goes away. That does stick around for a while if they can pull off a fleet management type of mindset with this. And then the other part that comes with that, I was thinking about their infrastructure at the Cape and at Hawthorne and all that kind of stuff, if they're going to shift production of BFR to Hawthorne

rather than what previously was thought to be on-site manufacturing, that means that all of the Falcon hardware that they use out in Hawthorne is going to move out. And they have a lot of buildings down at the Cape now that they're either taking over or building for management of Falcon 9 cores and refurbishment of Falcon 9 cores. So if they just move Falcon 9 production and refurbishment to these facilities at the Cape, maybe that's the point when they were like, well, what do we do with Hawthorne at that point? We've got empty buildings over here. We're already getting close to the point when a lot of this work is happening at the Cape because this booster that's about to fly the next mission never left Florida when it landed.

It was refurbished entirely in Florida, right? Refurbished entirely in Florida, but then taken to McGregor for... Oh, it was fired. Test stand. Okay. Yes. But even that, that's, you know, that's incredible in its own right that the refurbishment, I don't know how much they had to do or how little they had to do with this particular one, but all that happened in Florida already.

So you do have that shift of facility infrastructure. Yeah, which is an important note. And if it did, I missed it. So fair game on that if I'm wrong on this. But I don't actually believe they ever took a Falcon 9 core back to Hawthorne for the refurbishment. I believe of the ones that landed back in Florida or were East Coast launches and came back on the barge, I believe all of those were refurbished at the Cape. Or at least refurbished to still be a Falcon 9. Right. I mean, maybe components were taken back for various things,

but I don't believe any of the Florida-launched cores rooted through Hawthorne for refurbishment. So we're already doing all of the refurbishment of the Falcon. Just happens to be a couple of cores this year, not 40 to 50, like you're saying. this year not 40 to 50 like you're saying right not 40 or 50 but you know there are i mean the so we've recovered two cores thus far off the west coast the first one being the iridium launch in january and then the iridium launch or no three we've done three because foremost that landed two um so three um so but we already know that the first iridium core is at cape is at the cape right so

you're talking about 13 of the 16 recovered cores were east coast launches so that means you know a vast majority of them them are at the Cape and, you know, are just in that little assembly line of refurbishment. Yeah. So the last thing we should maybe get into is some of the strategical side of this, maybe the talk about ISS, the talk about these lunar bases, and how this maybe interplays with NASA's plans for the foreseeable future. A lot of talk has been had this past year about Elon opening his mouth about moon bases and things like that, just as the political winds seem to be shifting towards moon bases or anything like that.

We've had Blue Origin time and time again talk about how they would be willing to work with NASA on a lander that could back off of something like the Deep Space Gateway. We've had JAXA and Russia now. A lot of the international agencies, ESA, obviously, they've been big on the Moon Village idea. Everybody seems to be looking towards the moon. And you have these two, you know, Blue Origin and SpaceX and even a little bit of these other companies like Lockheed offering up plans to be used as part of this architecture.

So in that way, how would you see these two paths running in that BFR development is happening, whether or not they get Deep Space Gateway contracts, whether or not Deep Space Gateway happens at all? How do you think that kind of interplay works, that there's this as yet unfunded government project that's going on that SpaceX would hope to contribute to, but SpaceX is kind of pushing forward on their own plans? Do you think that's going to rub people the wrong way that they are saying, hey, we'll be there, we'll see you at the moon if you get around to it, but otherwise, have a good day? Or do you think that, you know, there is some sort of synergy, for lack of a better non-corporate-y term, for these two plans riding along together. I think the answer to your question is both. I think it's definitely going to rub certain people the wrong way. There's definitely going to be the sect of people out there who say, oh, well, if BFR just does the lunar aspect, right, which was not a huge part of the presentation. It was really just a, hey, if it can go to Mars, it can go to the moon, and here's how. That's definitely going to rub people the wrong way.

There are definitely going to be people. And when I say people, I'm not talking about NASA. I'm not talking about as a collective, right. I'm talking about, you know, just people in general, right. Um, who that's going to rub the wrong way. And they're going to say, well, so BFR is designed to kill SLS. It's designed to kill the deep space gateway, you know, this, that, the other. It's important to note that NASA does not view BFR as an SLS killing machine. They very much view it as another part of an architecture that will do something different than what Deep Space Gateway is proposing. You know, we saw in the presentation, you know, it was BFR on the surface of the moon.

It was a moon base. It was a, you know, it was a colony, a permanent, well, maybe not permanent. I'm saying permanent because if we're going to do a permanent Mars colony, I can't see how the proposed, you you know moon base alpha is not permanent um you know that's not what deep space gateway is doing right deep space gateway is offering a a space station in cislunar space in one of the lagrangian points um and that's a different architecture that's a different feel it's a different mission than what the moon offers you, especially if you're looking for microgravity instead of one sixth gravity. So there's definitely a way that this could be a synergy.

You know, we need to see exactly what Deep Space Gateway becomes. You know, you are right. There is no official funding line for Deep Space Gateway becomes. You know, you are right. There is no official funding line for Deep Space Gateway right now. It's funding is coming from the, you know, sort of, not theoretical, but, you know,

they're the what if studies about what could the architecture look like, the requests for information on, hey, if we do this, what could you give us, right? And how could we use existing technology? Because you look at some of the renderings for Deep Space Gateway, right? And you can almost immediately go, that's a Cygnus spacecraft, you know, structure.

Boeing's got that part. Lockheed's got that part. Exactly. That's a former multipurpose logistics module that we used for the station, right? You can see how, you know, the station right you can you can see how you know that there's the station architecture is very much a part of deep space so much so that the roadmap has uh just falcon nines in them like you know logos stripped and all as like oh hypothetical commercial resupply and that and that's a good point right right? Is that the, the, the plans that we have seen for deep space gateway are not that SLS does it all right. It's that there is a commercial synergy here. Um,

so, you know, a lot of it is going to end up shaking out in, in what, what does BFR become? What are its actual capabilities, right? How much can it lift to Leo and Gio and the moon? And, you know, there is a question that needs to be answered of, is it the most optimal vehicle for Cislunar, you know, in terms of building the gateway structure or building structures there? It might turn out that Newenn is better suited for that it might turn out that arianne six you know or um or sls is

the best vehicle for what we want to do but you know as everything, what we want to do will be incredibly complicated with Deep Space Gateway by what the government wishes to do. Politics and rocketry are quite different. Exactly. So I don't personally see BFR as the, well, this is the rocket, so everything else is obsolete in this goal. I think more so than anything, what Rocketflight has taught us time and time and time and time again is you never just have one system that does it all. Yeah, and that's actually one of my concerns, though, is that, you know, well, I shouldn't say one of my concerns, but there's a lot of hay made about how part of the shuttle's ultimate downfall was that its potential was sold

as it can do everything. And that was kind of that spreading of, you know, it spread itself too thin in some ways politically. And there has been some, you know, talk about is BFR doing the same thing? Is it spreading itself too thin by saying we can do point to point travel, we can do lunar, we can do Mars, we can do Leo, we can do geo, it can do everything. Is it going to fall down that same, you know, same pitfall? An excellent question. I laughed somewhat nervously. Because, you know, yes, shuttle was billed in the 70s and the early 80s as the vehicle that could do it all. Right. And do it all in terms of like, Leo, low-Earth orbit, geostationary orbitary orbit launches and interplanetary mission launches and national defense and all that i mean it certainly did all of those things yeah yeah that's not to say that it didn't so it to me

it wasn't a matter of shuttle not living up to the promise that it could do the physical things that we wanted it to do. Uh, it, it did all of those things, um, up to and including building the space station, um, where shuttle fell was in the price and the price point and the sheer amount of time because of how complex the vehicle was to turn it around. Um, you know, you look at, you know, just before the Challenger accident, you know, that Atlantis holds the record for turnaround of 26 days in the processing facility. I mean, that's basically, you opened up the payload bay, you reconfigured it, you swapped out the engines and back to the VAB you went to, you know, to be mated. And, and we very quickly realized that there was absolutely no way that that was going to happen.

And from that point on, it was between 80 to 90 days minimum processing time. So, you know, time so you know i i think more so when we talk about shuttles you know failings um that's more where it fell down instead of spreading itself too thin um now will that price point for bfr hold or will we see a repeat of that i don't know um i i don't think so i think you know we we see the falcons launching at a brand new sticker price you know in the 60 million dollar range which is already close to 60 million dollars cheaper yeah you know then then then you know some of the next alternatives out there. Um, you know, SpaceX has said, while they haven't disclosed a dollar figure that all of the people,

all the, the three customer, well, two customers, cause one will have flown twice with SES, um, have received, um, reduced rates for the reused Falcon 9. So, you know, lowering the cost by reuse is certainly coming. We, you know, they seem to be on track to meet that stated goal, which is something that Shuttle could never do. So maybe not. Yeah, I think that was kind of one of the things, though, that people conflate ability and ability in economics and politics, which are distinct segments that make up what a launch vehicle is, what good a launch vehicle can do. And those all have different arguments for shuttle, for BFR, for New Glenn even, which is why I think this is something that even last year we were talking about this. A lot of these questions about will this launch vehicle kill

that launch vehicle, that stuff's going to be decided not on the pad, but in the years following when that thing hits the pad. You know, I don't think much changes today because of what we heard last week from Elon Musk. But 2020, the year that all new launch vehicles are and shall ever launch, that will be a very interesting year. It will be. That'll be a very interesting year. It will be. And, you know, that point, too, of, you know, BFR will not replace everything that we have, right? Because, I mean, even if you look at it now, right, where, I mean, Falcon 9 has certainly cornered a significant chunk of the launch market.

I was looking at this the other day based on the number of launches that we have left worldwide this year, I mean, Falcon 9 alone, if everything holds, will account for 25% of the total number of orbital launches performed. I mean, that is insane, right? That one rocket will have done that much. But, you know, there's a reality that, falcon falcon nine can do many things falcon heavy will hopefully be able to do many things but there are things that the atlas 5 can do places it can get us that falcon can't that falcon nine can't do that falcon heavy can but we don't have falcon heavy yet right so um but again it goes back to not wanting to have one particular and single architecture to do it all um spacex seems to be great at recovering from you know when they recovered from crs7 and amo6 in what seemed like a mind-bogglingly short amount of time

but it's rocketry yeah there's always a lot of variables at play so yeah well i can't think of a much better spot to end it uh you got any last minute thoughts on uh bfr or anything else that we heard about um yeah you know i i think for me personally right when i was listening to the presentation, right, there was a huge element of hope and inspiration and ambition that is wrapped up in this. And, you know, there are very few presentations that I personally would stay up in the middle of the night for. And that was definitely one of them. And, you know, thinking about how our mindsets have changed about space, right, how we, how, especially in the US, right, where we went through that, that slump after shuttle, and watching SLS development and

watching Falcons development, and, you know, certainly being excited when new rocket systems, you know, come online, the power of the presentation and what we're talking about with Mars colonization is, I mean, let's not forget that the prime thing here is we are talking about a human colonization effort on Mars within the decade. Even if you miss the 2024 window, which is when the first two BFRs to carry people are supposed to go to Mars, even if

you miss that by two years, and you have to wait to the 2026 window, that's nine years. We're talking about doing this in less than a decade do we have a shot at doing that yeah is it possible we might miss it by a few years also yes but but that ambition right and that drive of saying we don't discount the technical risks we don't discount the technical risks. We don't discount that this is technically challenging. Of course it is. But, you know, today being the 60th anniversary of the Sputnik launch, right, that was incredibly ambitious. That was incredibly challenging, right? But no one stopped to say, well, it's that, so we're just not going to do it or we're going to go slower than we think we need. We're going to take the risk. We're going

to do it as safely as we can. But if we've got the technology, why not try? And that drive and that ambition, you know, is what lies at the heart of space exploration. And I think for me personally, and I'm sure for a lot of others, that's what makes this so exciting is to be talking about not an, well, if in my lifetime we get to Mars, right? To say, no, like in my lifetime, when we try this,

that's it. It's that desire to continue to push forward. And that's what this is all about. Chris, I don't even want to say anything to finish the podcast after that. Because that is, that is it. And that is, you know, I don't know, that's perfectly conveyed for what I think a lot of us that are looking at this presentation, you're right, staying up in the middle of the night, looking at all this stuff, being excited about it. Yeah, there are schedule questions. Yeah, there are technical questions, but nobody ever said there weren't. That wasn't part of his presentation. The first slide was not like, now, if you discount the technical and schedule considerations for the next 10 years, here's our plan. It's, you know,

it comes with that. And I think a lot of times that is lost when you're looking at something as grand of an ambition that way. So that's, yeah, I agree with just about everything you said there. And it's good to be excited about this stuff in general. And I feel sorry for people that limit themselves by not getting excited about it in some way whatsoever. And for those people, go to Florida and watch Rocket Launch. Yes, definitely. All right, Chris, everyone can find him on Twitter. I will have a link to your Twitter account in the show notes. Everyone has, I assume people that are listening to this have read nasaspaceflight.com at the amount of times that I've linked over to you guys at the website there.

But if not, check it out. Some of the best writing out there on the web regarding spaceflight. Is there anything else that you would like to point people to? Not really. I would just say thank you for having me on. It was great to be here. I'm a fan of the podcast, so it was nice to be a part of it. It's great to have the Elon Musk ordained detail man come on and talk and hear from you. I like doing these shows because I like hearing from people that I only read tweets by or read articles by.

It's always good to hang out. Even if we're not actually face-to-face, we're at least looking at some pixels of each other and talking about this stuff. So hopefully we meet up at some point. Enabled by space and satellites. Exactly. There it is. Yeah, right? Thank you very much, Chris, for coming on the show. Thank you for having me.

Thanks again to Chris for coming on the show. And thank you so much for being here with us this week to break down all of the SpaceX news. And before I get out of here, I want to say a huge thank you to all the supporters of Managing Cutoff over on Patreon. There are 102 of you over there. We've broken into triple digits now. I'm so thankful for all of your support. And this particular episode was produced by 20 executive producers, Chris, Mike, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Jameson, Guinevere, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, and five episode was produced by 20 executive producers chris mike pat matt george brad ryan jameson guinevere nadim peter donald lee jasper chris and five anonymous executive producers you make this show possible week in and week out and i am so thankful for your support and everyone else over

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