Main Engine Cut Off - T+65: The New GEO Model, Orbital ATK’s Composite Case, Good and Bad SpaceX News

Episode Date: November 11, 2017

SES gives us a preview of their new GEO strategy (which may be a harbinger of the future), Orbital ATK tests a new composite case to be used for their Next-Generation Launcher and future SLS boosters, NASA approves the use of previously-flown Falcon 9 first stages, and SpaceX sets off some LOX fireworks down in McGregor, Texas. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 23 executive producers—Kris, Mike, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Jamison, Guinevere, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Robert, Brian, and five anonymous—and 96 other supporters on Patreon. SES Rethinks GEO Model - Main Engine Cut Off SES tells satellite builders to prepare for a total rethink of their business - Space Intel Report Orbital ATK’s Next-Generation Composite Case Passes Structural Acceptance Test - Main Engine Cut Off Orbital ATK Successfully Tests First Motor Case for Next Generation Launch Vehicle | Orbital ATK News Room Orbital ATK on Twitter: “Our Next Generation Launch Vehicle achieves critical milestone with completion of structural acceptance test” SpaceX Falcon 9 successfully launches Koreasat 5A | NASASpaceFlight.com NASA Approves Use of Previously-Flown Falcon 9 Boosters - Main Engine Cut Off Elon Musk’s SpaceX suffers a rocket-engine failure during testing - The Washington Post SpaceX suffers Merlin engine test mishap - SpaceNews.com Email your thoughts and comments to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Listen to MECO Headlines Join the MECO Discord Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, 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

Welcome to the Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo. We've got a grab bag of a show this week. We haven't done one of these in a while, but there's been a lot of little stories that I've been thinking about lately and little things that have happened this week that I think deserve to be talked about in a slow news week as it's been. I am on the road this week, so if I sound a little different, that's why. I've got a little bit of a road rig set up, so hopefully it sounds all right. But let's dive into some space news here. First thing I want to talk about is a couple of weeks old at this point, but I've been thinking about it a lot. This is from Peter B. DeSelding of Space Intel Report.

Towards the end of October, he wrote a post that was covering a talk given by SES's chief technical officer, Martin Halliwell. This was at Space Tech Expo Europe and he was talking about the new model for SES when it comes to geostationary orbit and I found some of these changes very very interesting given the trends at play in the market right now. So I'm gonna read a little bit from this Space Intel Report piece by Peter B. DeSelding. This is from October 26, 2017. Here's the profile of tomorrow's geostationary orbit satellite for SES. It weighs around 2,000 kilograms, is delivered on orbit 18 months after contract signature, which means a 14-month procurement if it takes an all-electric design

four months from launch to reach its operating station. It is launched in stacked formation with two or three other satellites aboard the same rocket and is designed to operate for just seven or eight years. Hollywell said he could envision a per-satellite capital investment of around $55 million, assuming a $50 million or $60 million launch cost, divided by three and a sub-$50 million cost for the manufacture of the spacecraft. Now, this is really interesting because we have seen so many changes in the industry in the last couple of years. We've seen a lot of trends at play in just about every space in space except for geostationary orbit. Geosatellites have kind of been in a period of stasis for the last 10 to 20 years.

They haven't changed a whole lot. You know, right now they are anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 kilograms. They have a lifespan of 15 years, but often that goes up to 20 years. They are hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, like $200 or $300 million to manufacture. And because they are such big investments, they often fly on more expensive rockets

with more expensive insurance. All in all, the investment it takes to get a geosatellite up in today's market is, you know, half a billion dollars, 500, 600 million dollars, if you factor all of that in. What Halliwell is talking about here is a magnitude less in cost. 5555 million per satellite with launch, with the manufacture of the spacecraft. With a short lifespan, the insurance is going to be a lot less.

This is a major rethinking of the geo market and something that I've been waiting to hear for quite a while. You know, we've had this revolution of small satellites, both in the CubeSat size, but also that one web type size, you know, 100 to 200 kilograms that are kind of looking like the satellite of tomorrow. They are able to be more powerful and do more things that bigger satellites used to do. The smallsat revolution is making

people rethink a lot, you know, and with that, there's a rethinking of how constellations are going to work. There are these mega constellations that we have in mind that are at low Earth orbit or very low Earth orbit to provide broadband. We also have launch cost decreasing quite a bit. SpaceX is driving a lot of that, but everyone else is on this major cost cutting bend right now. And then you have the decreased cost of building satellites as we go towards more production line type things rather than these one-off masterpieces. There are so many trends at play in the satellite market, and every other space has kind of latched onto this. We've seen, as I said, the broadband constellation market kind of shift its thinking. Optical imaging we've seen change a lot.

Planet, who is operating a constellation of CubeSats for imagery of Earth, they might not have the most high-res imagery, but they can image the whole Earth every day. And that provides interesting benefits and interesting competitive advantages. So we've seen so many rethinking of, so much rethinking of the market here. And geo has been completely void of that. We haven't seen anyone look to all these things and take on, you know, what could we do if we totally rethought the way that things work? And SES has always been very forward thinking, you know, they were the ones that embraced SpaceX reusability from day one. They flew the first reflown Falcon 9 and they are embracing

it more and more. So they are consistently looking ahead of the curve. And I think this is another good example of them doing that here with this geo-rethink. You know, we're still waiting on a lot of these changes in the market to come about. We're still waiting on operational reusability from SpaceX in a lot of senses. We're still waiting on Blue Origin to enter the market. We're waiting on a lot of these small launch players, Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit, to get flying. They're very close to being operational. And, you know, it's the time to step back and rethink. And here's why I think this is so cool. The geo market, as I said, has been in stasis for 10 to 20 years, but that's kind of how things go. There's this 5 to 10 year period of change, then 10 to 20 years of stasis, which is then followed by five

to 10 years of change, followed by 10 to 20 years of stasis. That is how technology tends to work in every space, you know, desktop computers to laptops to cell phones these days. That is kind of the way of the market you've seen, you know, we've had 10 years of, of iPhone, that has kind of followed that same thing that it was a major revolution revolution followed by a period of stasis. So that is the trend, and that is the way things tend to go. And during those periods of transition, you want to be as agile as possible. And I think that's what SES is doing here, is that they're looking at how can we get our costs down so that we can be more agile, that we can have the agility we need to respond to market forces. If these mega constellations get up and they do change the economics of, you know, what consumers expect and what the customers expect, you need to be able to respond to that in a way that, you know,

is agile. If you're investing half a billion dollars into 20 year long life satellites, and you only do that once every five to 10 years, how agile are you really? You kind of, you know, pay half a billion dollars and are stuck with that strategy for 10 to 20 years. In this sense, if you can get your costs down, like he's saying here, $55 million, a magnitude less than your investment in a single geo satellitesatellite previously, you can be very agile. And a lifespan of seven to eight years, that is short enough to respond to changes in the market, respond to changes in spectrum usage.

There's a lot of argument around the FCC and everywhere else in the international community about spectrum usage right now and how those spectrum sections are going to be allocated and how mega constellations are going to change things and interference are going to change things. So there is so much at play here, so much dynamism in the market right now that being agile is a huge advantage. And that is exactly what SES is trying to do here. They are trying to get these satellites down so they can launch multiple on a very cheap rocket so that they can, you know, they can cut the costs of the

production of each satellite quite significantly. They can cut the mass quite significantly because of decreased fuel needs for a decreased lifespan, which means they can group them all on a cheap rocket. That is not revolutionary thinking. It is not evolutionary thinking. It is plain and simple innovation. It's taking all the. It is plain and simple innovation. It's taking all the pieces that are there in the market now, putting them together in a new way, and saying, what if this was our model? What if this was the base for our model? And in a period of time when everything's getting shaken up from launch to actual services provided to spectrum allocations, agility is king. And I think this is a great move from SES. I'm very interested to see how this works out in the market. I'm very interested to see when they

start taking advantage of this new strategy and actually putting it into play, buying a launch and doing this sort of thing. I would assume it's within two years. If they're saying they want this entire lifespan to be 18 months, that means they could decide today to do it, or maybe they already have and will see a launch in a year or two of this new strategy. Very, very interesting move from SES here. Keep an eye on them, and I'm going to be for sure, I'm sure we will talk about it some more in the future. All right, moving on in the grab bag here. Next story I want to talk about is an Orbital ATK story. They announced that they had completed the structural acceptance test of a new composite case segment for their boosters. I'm going to read a little bit here from the Orbital ATK press release.

The company is an early production of development hardware for its next-generation launch system, and on October 27th successfully completed the structural acceptance test on the first motor high-strength composite case for this program. The applied structural loads during the test demonstrated over 110% of maximum expected motor operating pressure and 110% of operational flight and pre-launched compressive tensile loads. The full-scale motor case segment will be cast with inert solid rocket propellant in early 2018 and shipped to the launch site for checkout of ground operations. So the conceit of this press release is that this composite case is specifically for the next generation launch system, but we all know this is also for SLS. SLS is going to debut with shuttle-derived five-segment boosters, but as plans currently stand, they will move to upgraded boosters after a couple of flights, four or five flights,

if it makes it that far, obviously. But right now, the odds-on favorite for the advanced boosters for SLS is Orbital ATK's Caster 1200 booster. This composite case segment is one of the four segments that would make up a Caster 1200. But the cases are also going to be used, as they're saying, for their next generation launch system. So it's this commonality between these two things that I think point to a good future for Oracle ATK in this program. I don't think the next generation launch system, the STIC, as everyone refers to it, I don't

think the STIC is a good launch vehicle. I don't think it's a good fit for the market. I don't think it makes a lot of sense on the commercial market. But the commonality between future SLS boosters, an EELV class launch vehicle built by a company who the U.S. Department of Defense wants to keep around, wants to keep making solid rockets because it's important to their own arsenal, that is a combination that I think is very enticing to the U.S. government. So last show, I talked about how as commercial comes into its own and goes its own way in the market, and as military needs kind of stay where they are or shift a little bit, there might be a diversion between the market. This is one of those cases. I don't think

next-generation launch vehicle is a good fit for the market. I don't think that you know the SESs of the world are gonna be buying launches on an orbital ATK launch vehicle like that. But finding that common ground between SLS, between EELV launches, between Department of Defense interests in keeping solid rocket producers around. That is a deadly combo that could make for a very enticing proposal from Orbital ATK. We know that they are submitting this launch vehicle for the launch services agreement request for proposals that we talked about a couple of weeks back. And I think it's very likely that they will win one of those awards because of this commonality that I'm talking about.

The U.S. government likes to see this kind of thing where they can invest in one, you know, one product and solve a couple of different needs. And this is the perfect example. So it's interesting that they're making progress on this structural acceptance test for sure. It's interesting that they are doing this, you know, so early on, they already have some funding from the Air Force to work forward on this launch vehicle. And I'm assuming that that's the funds that cover this kind of test. But it is in their interest to, you know, push this hardware along if they are going to try to fly this for the Air Force, and they are going to try to fly this for NASA in the 2020s, 2030s. The interesting thing, most interesting thing of this press release is that last sentence I read.

This full-scale motorcase segment will be cast with inert solid rocket propellant in early 2018 and shipped to the launch site for checkout of ground operations. The launch site in this case is Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center. They also are planning one out at Vandenberg Air Force Base. I don't know which one they're going to ship it to. I would assume Kennedy Space Center. I don't know what checkout of ground operations specifically means in this case. We didn't hear a lot about that. I know there's a mobile launcher that is set aside for this launch vehicle. They have already talked about using one of the bays in the vehicle assembly building for this launch vehicle. They have already talked about using one of the bays

in the vehicle assembly building for this launch vehicle. They have talked about using pad 39B where SLS will launch for this launch vehicle. So I'm going to assume that they're going to ship this to Kennedy Space Center, put it in that high bay that they're going to use in the VAB, do some maybe testing with, you know, transporting this around the space center.

I don't know what they would do with one single case component, but that'll be very interesting to see what they do out at the launch site. And if that's timed with an announcement of them winning an EELV Launch Services Award, that'll be very interesting in its own right. So not a whole lot to talk about yet here aside from that,

but I did want to bring it up as very interesting that they're making progress on this launch system, that there is this commonality between three different interests of the US government and that they are shipping something to the launch site to start working out some of the ground operations. Very, very interesting progress from Orbital ATK here. And I'm interested to find out more

when we do get those RFP responses to the Air Force. All right, I want to move into some SpaceX stories. But before I do that, I want to say a very, very big thank you to all of you out there supporting Main Engine Cutoff on Patreon. There are 119 of you over on Patreon supporting the show. Patreon.com slash Miko is where you can go to join that group. And this episode of Main Engine Cutoff was produced by 23 executive producers. Chris, Mike, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Jameson, Guinevere, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Robert, Brian,

and five anonymous executive producers. That list has gotten so long, I need to take a breath in the middle of it. Thank you so much for supporting this show, for making this show possible each and every week. I could not do it without your support and everybody else over at patreon.com slash Miko. If you head over there, I've got some really cool perks for you now. At $3 a month or more, you get a headline show every single Friday. I run through the headlines of the week, talk about some quick stories that don't make it onto this main show. It's a really awesome thing. I've been having a lot of fun with it. People have been enjoying it. And if you are at the $5 a month or more level on Patreon, you get access to the

Miko Discord. It's like a chat room to hang out with people, discuss space news, discuss anything else related, and generally just hang out with some like-minded people who have a similar space interest. It's been a lot of fun. So if you are at either of those levels and you have not checked them out yet, please do. And if you are not at those levels and you want to, head over to patreon.com slash Miko and do that. Thank you so much for your support. As always, I am hugely, hugely thankful and I could not do it without all of you out there. So thank you so much. All right, let's get into some SpaceX stuff. We've got some good stories, some good and bad stories, I guess. The first is a couple of weeks old at this point, maybe two weeks old or so.

NASA has approved using previously flown boosters on their flights. This was first reported by William Graham for nasaspaceflight.com. This is not official official yet. NASA has said they, I guess they still want to wait to make their own announcement of this. But the first reuse of a Falcon 9 first stage has been approved, and it will happen for CRS-13 coming up in just about two weeks. This will use the first stage that launched CRS-11 back in June. This is big news.

It's very interesting where SpaceX is at right now. We've seen insurance rates not really rising much, if at all, for flights using previously flown boosters. The Air Force and the rest of the Department of Defense here in the U.S. are very open to and are actively working on certifying those previously flown boosters. And now NASA, who is extremely risk-averse, has approved their use. So I think given all that, that's pretty huge progress for SpaceX. Everybody had always said that, you know, getting through bureaucratic red tape was one of the more challenging goals for SpaceX.

Really, that just seemed to me like a goalpost movement by the people that doubt reusability. They always say, you know, well, you can't do this. Let me know when you do that next segment. Let me know when you do that next task. Let me know when you get through that new challenge that I'm putting up. That was one of the ones that they said is that, well, the government will never be okay with that. NASA will never be okay with that. NASA is okay with that. The Air Force and Department of Defense are working on it. These things do take a while, but it is big news that a risk-averse agency like NASA is approving the use of these reflown boosters. And, you know, I think that is a huge piece of work for SpaceX, and it should be applauded because it is big news.

It is important that they are able to start doing this on CRS flights. The biggest piece of work left for SpaceX is to get Falcon 9 Block 5 flying. With that, they can prove out their minimal refurbishment between flights. They can do this quick turnaround of boosters rather than refurbishing boosters between flights. Hopefully all of their work pans out on Block 5 and they are able to fly those cores for the stated 10 times without even touching the booster, and they say up to 100 times with refurbishment of components. We've seen some Block 5 components fly already. We're waiting for the fully compiled Block 5 booster.

But that is the biggest piece of work left for SpaceX right now when it comes to Falcon 9 reusability. They got through all of this bureaucratic red tape. They've got insurance companies okay with it. They've this bureaucratic red tape. They've got insurance companies okay with it. They've got government okay with it. They've got commercial customers okay with it. I think they've proven at this point that there is no additional risk to flying with a reflown core stage. They need to get Block 5 flying. It is so, so important because that is the key to not only their minimal refurbishment between flights, but flying crew on Falcon 9.

It is so big, and that needs to be their focus for the next year. They've had an incredible 2017 with a high flight rate, a lot of reusability. By the end of the year, they're going to be having flown, you know, between 20% and 25% of the Falcon 9 first stages will have been reflown first stages. They had made huge progress, but Block 5 is the biggest thing to focus on heading into 2018. And on that front, Block 5, this had an issue recently. There was an explosion down in McGregor, Texas at their test facility. This was first reported by Christian Davenport of the Washington Post in an absolutely horrible

article that has yet to be updated with any of the actual info from SpaceX. They've just taken out the comments that this explosion happened during a test firing. It did not happen during a test firing. The explosion occurred during a LOX drop, SpaceX has said, which is a test that they use to look for leaks in an engine. They run liquid oxygen through the engine to find leaks, and something happened that set off the liquid oxygen. So, you know, the liquid oxygen is very touchy, notoriously explosive. If it's mixed with almost anything, it explodes on contact sometimes. So we'll wait to find out what exactly happened here. It happened to a Block 5 engine that was on the test stand. This is why it's related to what I was just saying, that they need to get this Block 5 booster flying. They had

a Block 5 engine on the test stand here, and they were doing this lock-drop procedure, and it exploded. So, you know, this is not going to affect the current manifest of missions. They're flying with Block 4 engines right now, so they are going to keep rolling on. Doesn't affect testing of first stages or second stages down in McGregor. It obviously does affect the test stand that this happened on. They're going to rebuild that. It's going to take a couple of weeks to repair. Not sure if it did damage the Merlin engine test cell next to it. There are two Merlin test cells right next to each other, and this happened on one of those two. I'm not sure how much it damaged the one next to it, but they are going to be able to keep doing tests in McGregor for their current manifest. The thing here with Block 5 is that

Block 5 is needed for crew. That engine is needed for the human rating of Falcon 9. So all the crew flights have to fly on Block 5 Falcon 9 and Block 5 Falcon 9 has to fly about seven times before you can put a crew member on top of that. So they do need to get it flying to get crew flights off the ground and in the schedule that they've said so far. But based on the info we have here, unless a major design flaw is found in the Merlin engines, unless a major design flaw is found that is the reason this explosion happened, I don't think this affects the crew flight schedule in an enormous way. It might push it off a few weeks, a few months, but it doesn't, you know, drastically delay their crew flight schedule.

I find it very unlikely that this was the cause of a major design flaw because of how many Merlins have been produced to this point and fired to this point. Seems very unlikely that this would be an issue. This was an incident that occurred on the test stand during a test that isn't done on vehicle stages, that isn't done on the launch pad, so overall, unless there is something that is found in the investigation of this incident that points to an issue that could happen on the launchpad or could happen in a vehicle stage, I don't think there's going to be any huge delays. Now, if there are delays to Block 5, it would delay crew launches, as I said, but we'll have to see how this shakes out. We don't know yet

exactly all the details here. What we do know is though that there have been a lot of leaks lately on Merlin engines. We've seen a lot of fires on the drone ships specifically after landing and on the most recent launch you could see what looked like a leak on the video of the upper stage firing of the last launch. It looked like there was a leak coming out of the Merlin engine there. So I'm hoping that this doesn't point to any issues that are ongoing in the Merlin family. I know that the Block 5 engines have a new turbo pump manufacturing process that is supposed to address some cracking seen in turbo pumps previously. There are some other changes going into Block 5. I don't know how relevant this leak is to all of those changes, but you know, I think let's wait and see before we jump to any conclusions here. But from the outset, my gut feeling is that this may

delay crew launches a couple of weeks, but it's not going to be a delay of a year or so just from this incident alone. But again, wait and hear what happens here. But some good and bad news for SpaceX on that front. We'll look to see how they finish off 2017. They've got a couple of launches coming up to finish off the year. And Falcon Heavy, as always, lingering there. The latest we've heard is that Falcon Heavy work on pad 39A that needs to happen got cut down to 21 days that they need before they can get Falcon Heavy out to the pad. That's down from 60 days previously is what we've heard. They've done a lot of work between launches this year on 39A and specifically on the Transporter

Erector. So they've cut the amount of work needed down to 21 days. So I would bet that we see Falcon Heavy at least on the launch pad in 2017. Whether or not it flies before the end of the year, not so sure, but I think we will see it on transport erector heading out to pad 39A before the year is out. So good year for SpaceX overall, very strong year, much needed strong year from SpaceX to prove out a lot of what they've been working on. So hopefully this explosion isn't something massive, but we'll hope to hear more. I doubt we will, quite honestly. I don't think we'll hear too much about this in the same way that we didn't hear all that much about CRS-7

after the fact. So they are a quiet company. They are private, so I'm not sure how much we'll hear, but I think notably we'll hear anything. We would hear it from NASA as it pertains to crew flights. So keep your eyes peeled on that front if anything should come out. But that's it for this week. That's all I've got for you. Thank you so much for listening. As always, follow on Twitter at WeHaveMiko.

Head over to Patreon.com slash Miko if you want to help support the show and email me, Anthony at MainEngineCutoff.com if you would like to talk about anything that I've talked about here or in any past shows. I always love hearing from you. Thank you so much for listening and I will talk to you next week.