Main Engine Cut Off - T+71: Commercial Crew, Congress, and the GAO

Episode Date: January 30, 2018

The Commercial Crew program—NASA, SpaceX, Boeing, and more—went in front of Congress to discuss the current status of the crew launch systems in development. Concurrently, the GAO released a report warning that more delays are likely, and could put NASA in a tough spot. I share some thoughts on the matter and talk through what is likely to happen this year. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 24 executive producers—Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Jamison, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Brian, Russell, John, Moritz, and five anonymous—and 120 other supporters on Patreon. Hearing - An Update on NASA Commercial Crew Systems Development - YouTube U.S. GAO - NASA Commercial Crew Program: Continued Delays Pose Risks for Uninterrupted Access to the International Space Station U.S. GAO - NASA Commercial Crew Program: Continued Delays Pose Risks for Uninterrupted Access to the International Space Station (PDF, 1.2MB) NASA’s Launch Vehicle “Stable Configuration” Double Standard - Main Engine Cut Off Atlas-3B-DEC (Atlas-IIIB-DEC) Trump administration wants to end NASA funding for the International Space Station by 2025 - The Verge Email your thoughts and comments to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Listen to MECO Headlines Join the Off-Nominal 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 Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo and welcome to Falcon Heavy Eve, everybody. Falcon Heavy Eve. This is it. We're coming down to the wire here. This will be the last show before the Falcon Heavy extravaganza, whatever that is going to be. I'm planning right now, as things sit with a launch on February 6th and 7th, on heading down to Florida for the launch and being there out of the Cape as Falcon Heavy takes off at last. I'm going to be hanging out with all sorts of people. If you're going to be in town, going to be hanging out with all sorts of people. If you're going to be in town, I will be hanging out with you. I just need you to let me know where and when we are meeting up.

It's going to be a blast. We're going to have a great time. And I'm sure I'm going to record a ton of stuff while we're out during the day. I'm planning on aeroscoping and whatnot. So if you want to keep up with what I'm doing for Falcon Heavy, follow me on Twitter at WeHaveMiko. That'll be the best spot to hang out and see what is going on. That's for next week, though.

This week, I want to dive into what would be classified as if I had my sounder, you would be ringing your hot drama sirens right now. I need to get something so I can ring it. But this would be hot drama. We've got some commercial crew delays to look at. it, but this would be hot drama. We've got some commercial crew delays to look at. And the Boeing and SpaceX representatives appeared in front of Congress, the House Space Subcommittee. There was a GEO report released that I want to read through with you and mark up a little bit because we're getting down to crunch time on this commercial crew program. And there are some big issues to look at. And it's very interesting to see what is in this report.

So let's dive in. Commercial crew program is delayed. We all know that. They were in front of Congress, I guess it was a week or two at this point ago. Alongside of that, GAO, Government Accountability Office, released a report on the current state of commercial crew, how things are looking as they come down to the final, final months there. And it was reported as very, very bad news for the ISS program. And I think there's more to it than that. I don't think it's as simple as the dates are going to slip to exactly when GAO says. I do think there is a little bit of play going on here where the geo may say some dates to get some attention and not in not in a bad attention seeking way but in all honesty to alert people to a situation of saying if we don't do anything about it this could become a reality um and they're getting down to the wire here uh nasa is for staffing the iss because uh we only have so Soyuz flights out through the end of 2019. If commercial

crew is not up and flying by that date, we've got a big problem on our hands because we have no way to get to the ISS to staff the U.S. orbital segment and to keep that thing operating. So there is a bit of a situation that we're getting to here. And I do think the GIO a little bit here is using its power to get heads turned the right direction. Again, not as an intention seeking kind of devious way, but really in just a way to say we need a little attention over here. We need a little love while you're debating about everything else out there. This needs your attention or we've got a big problem on our hands. So that said, I dove into this GAO report, looked at what's in it and highlighted some sections. So I'm going to run through this a little bit with you, just as I highlighted the document, and then

give some other thoughts on where things are at, what we heard from the hearing, what we found out on what the concerns are, and how things may play out. And the first thing that's most important is the first page of this GAO report. On the left side, there's this kind of gray column, if you want to read along with me. I'll have the link in the show notes. There's a section that says what GAO recommends. GAO is not making any new recommendations. In February 2017, GAO recommended that NASA develop a contingency plan to maintain access to the ISS beyond 2018

when its contract with Russia for seats on the Soyuz was scheduled to end. NASA agreed with this recommendation and purchased Soyuz seats through 2019. So that's an important note there. This is still a big problem, but the GAO right now is making no recommendations, no new recommendations for NASA. And I think that's something that was glazed over a lot. Everyone kind of came out this saying, oh, because also GAO said that SpaceX and Boeing, their certification, when they can begin flying scheduled flights to the ISS, could slip to quarter one of 2019. Right now it's due at the end of the year, 2018. Um, so that was kind of an alarming figure to say that certification is going to slip to the beginning of 2019, but they are making no new recommendations. So nothing has drastically, drastically changed from the GAO's point of view since the last time.

And if you just read what was, you know, being talked about both in the media and also on Twitter and everywhere else in the world, uh, if you just read all that, the reaction to this and the reaction to the congressional hearing, you would think that there was a major, major recommendation that the GAO was making to maintain access to the ISS. But that, in fact, is not the case here. So I thought that was worth pointing out right off the bat. So let's skip ahead a couple of pages in here. This is a very fun audiobook style episode.

So where are the spacecraft at at this point? For Boeing, they've got two spacecraft and two test articles in construction. The flight spacecraft one, which will be the uncrewed, or sorry, that would be the environmental testing and then a crewed flight test spacecraft. That is constructed and integrated. The crew module is. The service module is in construction still. And they say that they're going to have environmental testing starting in the spring. And then after that testing is done, they will be reworking that spacecraft to be the first to fly crew at the end of 2018. And then it would go on again to serve as the second operational mission that Starliner would fly to the ISS. The second spacecraft that is scheduled to be the uncrewed flight test vehicle is both still in construction, as far as the crew module goes and the service module.

They're planning on joining these things together in the first quarter of 2018, they say. So we can see that Boeing itself is in the final construction phases of these vehicles, and that'll become important later on when you hear what the concerns are in this regard. The SpaceX side of things, they've got three spacecraft in construction at this point. The uncrewed flight test module, crew module for that is constructed, integrated, and it's ready to roll. The support module, which I think here they mean the trunk, which is where the solar panels are and everything else, that is in construction, and they plan to join these together at the end of second quarter 2018 and the rest of

their spacecraft are in construction kind of on timeline for what SpaceX does with cargo dragon spacecraft. So now we get into what are the risks that SpaceX and Boeing are facing and here is where you get quite a bit of divergence on the two and one thing that I get particularly fired up about in this regard. SpaceX risk here, they say similar to their findings in February 2017, is the ongoing work on Falcon 9 itself, on the launch vehicle. There are no concerns in this GAO report about the Dragon capsule, Dragon 2. All of their concerns are about the launch vehicle itself. And specifically here, they're talking about Falcon 9 Block 5, which is the fully upgraded version of Falcon 9

that includes everything they need for crewed spaceflight. It includes all sorts of improvements for reusability, refurbishment, new landing legs, better shielding, the newly upgraded Merlin engines. So that is the big, beefy Falcon 9 booster that we've been talking about for months or years at this point that SpaceX is working towards. What the GAO says is that they need to complete

the design and development testing and operation of this launch vehicle in time for these flights. Specifically here, they're concerned about the COPVs that led to the Amos 6 incident, and they're working with NASA on a couple of different designs to see how they could pull things together there on the end. The other concern about SpaceX is the fueling situation. This is a topic that we've talked about every few months.

GAO and the Aerospace Safety Panel, they do not think that putting fuel into a vehicle after crew is loaded on board is safe enough. SpaceX counters with the fact that the crew is in the vehicle, the pad is cleared, the abort motors are active when we begin fueling the booster, therefore we have a chance to save the crew if anything goes wrong. Whereas if you walk crew and a bunch of ground support people out to a loaded vehicle and something ignites, notably, you know, a solid rocket booster or whatnot, you've got no way out of there. So that's kind of the tit for tat that they've got going on right now. And in this, SpaceX has agreed to, I'll read this right out of the GAO report.

To better understand their propellant loading procedures, the program and SpaceX agreed to demonstrate the loading process five times from the launch site in the final crew configuration prior to the crewed flight test. So they've agreed that they will fully fuel, like an operational mission, a Falcon 9 Block 5 booster five times in the crewed flight configuration, whether that means their current COPVs or the newly redesigned ones that they work out with NASA, they will demonstrate that five times before they put crew on the vehicle. Hand in hand with this is something that came up in the commercial crew hearing in the House of Representatives on January 17. The Space Subcommittee Chairman, Brian Babin of Texas, Subcommittee Chairman Brian Babin of Texas asked, How many launches with a stable configuration should NASA require SpaceX and Boeing to achieve before certification?

And Dr. Patricia Sanders, who's the chair of the NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, kind of fumbled around with this answer a little bit and came out to say that they believe they need to fly seven times in a stable configuration before certification. That in particular is about this Falcon 9 Block 5 vehicle. They need to have seven flights before NASA is comfortable putting people on board because it is a newly configured launch vehicle. That's a fine requirement for NASA. And from NASA's side, it makes a lot of sense. Falcon 9 has went through a lot of design iterations. So it makes sense to want to see this thing put through its paces so you don't find out about something unfortunate on the first flight that you have crew climbing aboard. The problem here is that this requirement has only ever been applied to SpaceX in a very, very blatant way. Starliner, Boeing Starliner will be flying on top of an Atlas 5 by United Launch Alliance, a vehicle with a very long history, very successful history.

We're at 75 or so successful flights right now. There was one partial failure that ULA classifies as a success, but some others classify as 75% successful or something like that. But whatever, stellar record for that vehicle. I wouldn't be worried about popping a seat up in the payload fairing, riding that thing to space. I believe in it. But the problem is, is that Starliner needed some changes to the Atlas 5 to handle crewed flights. Specifically, there were certain zones in the Atlas 5 flight where aborts would not be possible. They call these blackstones, where aborts are not possible given the trajectory and the vehicle dynamics at the these black zones, where aborts are not possible given the trajectory and the vehicle dynamics

at the period of time, where you are in flight, how high up you are, how fast you're going. All those things lead to, in the Atlas V, you know, unchanged configuration, some black zones

where the crew would be stuck without an abort option. That is a no-go for NASA. They needed a redesign or at least a change in the launch vehicle to handle that. So what they did is went with an Atlas V two-engined Centaur stage. So it's an Atlas V

with two solid rocket boosters and two engines on the Centaur. This would be called an Atlas V N22, which is no fairing, two solid rockets, two Centaur engines. Now, dual-engine Centaur is not a new concept. Centaur flew for most of its history with two engines, from the start all the way up to the 90s. I guess in this case, the 2000s, I'm about to prove to you. The last flight of a dual-engine Centaur was on February 21st, 2002. An Atlas IIIb was launching Echo Star VII. We're at Echo Star 23 and stuff today. That was the first flight of what's called Common Centaur,

which is a new stage that Atlas 5 introduced back in 2002 that would fly on Atlas 3 and 5. So that is the last time that dual-engine Centaur has flown. I'm sure there's been design changes to Centaur in the last 16 years that would disqualify that launch from counting. But let's just say that Echo Star 7 in 2002 counts as the first launch of dual-engine common Centaur. So Starliner's first flight, uncrewed, first flight would be on the first flight of dual-engine common Centaur on Atlas V. If we count the Atlas III flight, it's the second flight of dual-engine common centaur on atlas 5 if we count the atlas 3 flight it's the second flight

of dual-engine common centaur it's first with crew would be the second dual-engine common centaur on atlas 5 or the third if you count the atlas 3b 2 and 3 is a long way from 7 this is where i get into problems here is that this requirement is only ever applied to spacex and i think it's a fair requirement but it the problem is, is that it would prevent ULA from flying Starliner missions for years, because they don't fly that often, or at least one year, because they typically have somewhere in those single digits of Atlas 5 flights a year. They'd have to totally redesign a lot of trajectories to handle two engines on the Centaur. They'd have to, you know, I don't know what the other changes would be, but I don't

think it would be a simple drop-in. So not only is this a conflicting answer from NASA and a conflicting resolution in these issues, not one person has brought this up in Congress. Not NASA, not SpaceX, not Boeing, not ULA, no Congress people. Nobody has brought this issue up. And quite honestly, if I was SpaceX, I would be bringing it up. I understand they want to play nice in some cases, especially in front of Congress, who, as we've seen with Zuma and all these other things going on, tend to have a bit of a problem relationship with SpaceX. But the fact that nobody has brought that issue up yet kind of boggles my mind, quite honestly. So anyway, off of the soapbox, the takeaway here for SpaceX is that they need to get Falcon 9 Block 5 flying.

That is their biggest thing that stands in their way. In fact, per this GAO report, that is the only thing standing in their way of flying these flights. And with SpaceX Cadence, that should not be an issue, assuming Block 5 works out the way that SpaceX intends. The first Block 5 booster has left Hawthorne on its way to McGregor. It's going to begin testing. They have a lot of reuse flights coming up soon, but in the not-too-distant future, there will be a Block 5 Falcon 9 on the launch pad taking a payload to orbit. Given their manifest, it's only a matter of flights, a matter of months, until they've hit seven. Now, will they fly seven before what they want to do right now is fly uncrewed in August?

That does seem tight because they have so many reused flights. And it's kind of ironic that they're flying so many reused flights that this is going to hurt their chances of flying crew. That is a funny irony to me. So what stands in the way of SpaceX is getting Block 5 flying, getting it flying reliably, and getting it flying off. I think they will get an uncrewed flight test off

by the end of the year. Given their manifest, given the way that they're rolling right now, it seems likely that they will get that off by the end of the year to me. Me, given the current manifest. We'll see how things shake out. Could be that that's why they're throwing away so many Block 3s to force people to fly

on a Block 5. They're throwing away Block 3s after its second flight because Block 5 is going to be so much better. It's going to be so much better for their workflow and for, you know, their customer experience side of things to have turnaround quicker and a reliable single variant of the vehicle. So the takeaway here, SpaceX Block 5, that is the key. The Boeing side of things are not so rosy. Now, before I dive into Boeing too much, I did want to say a very, very big thank you to all the supporters of Main Engine Cutoff over on Patreon. There are 144 of you supporting this

show week in and week out, and I could not be more thankful for your support. And that number includes 24 executive producers who produced this particular episode of the show. They are Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Jameson, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Brian, Russell, John, a new one, Moritz, I think he wants his name pronounced, he it checked off and five anonymous executive producers thank you so much for all your support you made this show happen and I could not do it without your support if you want to be like some of those people help out the show and get some stuff back head over to patreon.com slash miko and donate as little or as much as you want per month there are some special perks that I should tell you about three dollars

a month or more you get access to the headline show. Every single week, I do a show where I run through the headlines of the week, small stories, the stories that I don't like to talk about, the stories that I do like to talk about, everything that's in the news. You get up to date on the Space News in about 10 to 15 minutes most weeks, unless it's really busy. Then I go on to 20, but nobody's complaining about the extra content. And $ dollars a month

or more you get access to the off nominal discord this is a discord that uh Jake from We Martians and I have merged it is uh the named effort our other joint venture the off nominal podcast it's a great place to hang out to talk with people that are also interested in space we have a lot of good conversations get a lot of great tips in there. So if you feel like hanging out with us, head over to patreon.com slash Miko and sign up there. The Boeing risks, obviously Boeing is the one building a spacecraft. They are getting a launch vehicle provided by ULA, which is a child company of them. The Boeing issues are all what I would consider serious issues from a NASA point of view with Starliner.

I'm going to read a bit from the report here. Our ongoing work indicates that Boeing is mitigating several risks in order to certify its crew transportation system, including challenges related to its abort system performance, parachutes, and its launch vehicle. Boeing is addressing a risk that its abort system, which it needs for human spaceflight certification, may not meet the program's requirement to have sufficient control of the vehicle through an abort. In some abort scenarios, Boeing has found the spacecraft may tumble and that could pose a threat to crew safety. To validate the effectiveness of its abort system, Boeing has conducted extensive wind tunnel testing, plans to complete a pad abort test in April 2018.

Boeing is also addressing a risk that during reentry to the Earth's atmosphere, a portion of the spacecraft's forward heat shield, that's the back shell of the spacecraft as it's coming down, may recontact, I don't know why they say reconnect, by the way, I think it's recontact, recontact and damage the parachute system. NASA's independent analysis indicates that this may occur if both parachutes that pull the forward heat shield away from the spacecraft deploy as expected. Boeing's analysis indicates that risk exists only if one of the two parachutes does not deploy as expected. If the program determines the risk is unacceptable,

Boeing would need to redesign the parachute system, which the program estimates could result in at least a six-month delay. Finally, one of the program's top programmatic and safety concerns is that it may not have enough information from Boeing's launch vehicle provider, United Launch Alliance, to assess if the launch vehicle prevents or controls cracking So in reading both of those things out, it is not a rosy picture for Boeing. They've got a problem with abort systems, with parachutes, and some concerns around the launch vehicle. It's funny that the concerns on the launch vehicle are due to the fact that those engines, when they're done being flown, are ditched into the ocean.

And SpaceX has this wealth of knowledge that they are looking at these engines because they've gotten so many Merlin engines back. And NASA has discovered cracking, and SpaceX is working to prevent cracking. So it's a bit of a catch-22 there, is that the reusability on SpaceX has created a concern for both them and Boeing, because I don't know that this would be a concern floated on the Boeing side

if SpaceX wasn't working that issue actively. But my point here is that the issues for SpaceX are, does Block 5 work out as intended? Can you get Block 5 flying regularly, operating as you say it will, and under control? Can you continue doing what you're doing, roll out a new vehicle, and continue that same momentum? And on the Boeing side, it's issues with abort systems and parachutes. Those are two things that I'm sure drive up the loss of crew numbers quite a bit. Not to mention the issue with flying on the second or third flight of a dual engine common centaur. Those are some big issues that I think are,

you know, the schedule perspective from GAO is less rosy on Boeing. And I think that GAO is probably more right on Boeing than they are on SpaceX. So we'll see how this shakes out. You know, I don't know that we'd get another meaty hearing like this before flights start. But you never know, we might get something that, you know, these both of these partners are brought again to Congress and another GAO report is ran before we get to an uncrewed flight. But as of right now, I would put money on SpaceX flying an uncrewed flight by the end of the year and Boeing, pending how they come out with these spacecraft issues, maybe slipping into 2019.

All right, so that'll be about it for this week. I got carried away longer than I thought I would on that. I was planning on talking a little bit about the ISS hot drama. The rumor has been floated. Lauren Grush of The Verge got our hands on a draft of the budget proposal that is due on February 12th, and it proposes ending the ISS funding by 2025. So that was some good hot drama. I was planning on talking about it, but I got quite carried away with the commercial crew program. So what I'm gonna do instead is wait for Falcon Heavy next week, and then after that, we'll have the budget proposal in our hands,

assuming the government doesn't shut down again. But we'll dive into that when we have the full proposal and we can really see what the administration is thinking as far as the ISS goes. So for now, that is it. I hope to see you down at Cape Canaveral.

I hope to see you there for Falcon Heavy. If you are going to be there, send me a tweet, send me an email, anthonyatmanagingcutoff.com, or just follow on Twitter at WeHaveMiko, and you will see what I'm doing throughout the week with my good space friends that I cannot wait to hang out with. So that's it for this week. Thank you so much for the support. Thank you.