Main Engine Cut Off - T+74: Stagnation and Opportunity

Episode Date: March 9, 2018

NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot appeared in front of the space subcommittee of the House Science Committee to discuss the 2019 NASA budget request, and I’ve got some thoughts on their decisions regarding the SLS Mobile Launcher and how it affects SLS’ flight rate. And then I get off onto a train of thought regarding the stagnation of and opportunity within the policy gridlock we’re stuck in today. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 28 executive producers—Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Jamison, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Brian, Russell, John, Moritz, Tyler, Laszlo, Joel, and six anonymous—and 141 other supporters on Patreon. Off-Nominal Events Hearing - An Overview of the NASA Budget for Fiscal Year 2019 - YouTube Safety panel warns of “bottleneck” of reviews for exploration and commercial crew vehicles - SpaceNews.com House members question balance of NASA programs in 2019 budget proposal - SpaceNews.com 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 the Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo. This week I want to dive into a little bit of stuff that we didn't get to in the NASA budget request when I broke down my thoughts on the end of ISS. Previously, I've wanted to dive into some of the SLS side of the budget request. And then, due to the political gridlock we find ourselves in, there's been some hearings in Congress recently that have been pretty depressing to watch. I've been deep in thought about some of this political gridlock as it relates to NASA. So I want to dive into some of that and dissect some of that. But first, I want to tell you about something pretty, pretty exciting.

If you are anywhere close to Philadelphia, we are going to be doing the first ever off-nominal meetup in Philadelphia on March 24th. Jake from We Martians is going to be in town. He's going to be in Philadelphia. And we thought it's a good opportunity to have a meetup with some of the space nerds out there that listen to our shows that are in the area that want to hang out. So it is going to be March 24th

at 6 p.m. in Philadelphia. We're going to do it at the Yards Brewery. There's a new brewery here in Center City. That's a pretty great spot. So it's a 21 plus event. But if you are close in the area here,

head on out to the Yards Brewery at 6 p.m.'s a 21 plus event. But if you are close in the area here, head on out to Yards Brewery at 6 p.m. March 24th in Philadelphia and meet up, have a couple of drinks, have some food, talk about space or not about space, whatever you want to do. But if you are interested in that, head over to events.offnominal.space. There's some more info there, addresses, whatnot. So I hope to see you there. If you are in the area, it's going to be a great time. So I really, really hope to see you out there. All right, so let's dive in to the topics at hand. I already dissected some of the ISS stuff that comes out of the budget request, but there's one other interesting part that I've been thinking about a lot and that we got an

answer to in Congress this week. The acting administrator, Lightfoot, was in front of Congress to discuss the fiscal year 2019 budget request and explain some of the thinking in there and provide some answers, and in a lot of cases, no answer to questions about the budget request. And there was one really interesting part about the mobile launcher that I thought requires some attention. The current plan for SLS launches, as I'm sure a lot of us are familiar with at this point, to the point where we think about it in our sleep, is EM-1 is going to launch right now in 2020. That is going to be an uncrewed mission. It's going to fly Orion without a life support system up to lunar orbit or something like that,

something nearby. And it'll be the Block 1 version of SLS. So that is the core stage, the solid boosters, and the interim cryogenic propulsion stage, which is the Delta 4 upper stage. That's going to fly in 2020. And then right now, EM2 is going to fly in 2023. That's going to have a new upper stage, the Exploration upper stage, which as of yet, we don't have any official contracts for. And to support that, the mobile launcher is going to have to undergo 33 months of work to get it up to spec with what it needs to be to support that new upper stage because it is wider and taller. It changes the height of Orion. So there's all this work that has to go on in the mobile launcher to get it ready for launch. And that has been the mantra from NASA. There's a 33-month gap

to retrofit or to refit the mobile launcher before we can launch EM2. So you might remember a couple of months back, the NASA safety panel and even people within NASA and some other people close to NASA were recommending that they maybe consider thinking about adding into the budget request the idea that they would build a new mobile launcher for SLS for the second flight or whatever it may be that can support the exploration upper stage rather than redoing that 33-month refit process. They can just jump right into building a new one. They could start now, and they could maybe accelerate the schedule of the second flight of SLS. What I've been thinking about all along, because NASA seemed pretty opposed to that, they said, yeah, we'll think about it, but they didn't really put any effort into pushing that

idea of accelerating the second flight of SLS. So what I've been wondering, and I had a post on the blog about this maybe a week or two ago, is what is the schedule of the rest of the program outside the mobile launcher? Because my theory was, my suspicion was, that they're using that 33-month gap as cover for how long it's going to be between flight one and flight two for every other piece of hardware in the program. And we got an answer to that in Congress this week. Lightfoot said that the new mobile launcher would only accelerate the second flight of SLS to 2022. So only one year shaved off with a new mobile launcher. And not only that, he mentioned that the second flight in that case would be with the interim cryogenic propulsion stage, the same upper stage that flies on EM-1. So the second flight would be in 2022, and it wouldn't even fly with the new upper stage.

They would use the same mobile launcher, the same hardware configuration for the second flight as they did for the first. And that still is only at 2022. So that kind of confirms my suspicion there that the rest of the program is so far behind schedule and so hardware poor that they wouldn't be able to get a launch off for two years. And that 33-month gap does give them cover for another year of delays or shifting budgets or really anything else that might go on. Gives them cover to still hit that launch date. Now, that's a really bad look for this program for a couple of reasons. Number one is that, I think the primary thing here, the most important thing,

this program was sold and advertised and sold on the fact that it's heritage hardware, that we have built all of these things before, that we're reusing a lot of hardware that we've already built in the past. Now, with that, there's been nearly major changes to every one of these pieces that we consider heritage. We're using this new welding on the core stage that was supposed to mimic the space shuttle external tank. We've added a segment to the solid boosters. Right? We've added new flight controllers to the RS-25 engines. We've upgraded the thrust. There's been major changes across the board.

And we have all this hardware that we're supposedly going to use and reuse in this program. And yet the program is so hardware poor that, you know, dropping a lock stone last year pushed the schedule out a year and a welding issue pushed the schedule out a year. There is so little hardware for this program that the delays are piling up and there clearly is not enough hardware there to launch sooner than two years after your first launch with the same hardware requirements, the same hardware specs. So that's really not a good look for this program. And I think it points out the fact that the program at this point is a glacial pace that is even slowing down more and more. And Mobile Launcher is probably giving them some cover there because it's two years

between flights of a Block 1 SLS. Now, I would like to know what of those two years is the slowest because I know the service module is perennially behind. Orion still needs to get its life support system in there. There's probably going to be some changes to the hardware after the first flight, so they might be accounting for some of that. I would love to know, after the mobile launcher, what is the biggest element, the biggest schedule driver for that two-year gap between Block 1 flights. Now, related to all this, this Congress session that I talked

about, this session in front of the House of Representatives where Lightfoot was defending the 2019 budget, I think it put on display a lot of things that have been just utterly depressing to people following this stuff for the past few years, but it's really coming to a head more and more as we're seeing so much other growth elsewhere in the industry. And I think in that House hearing, there was a lot of these same stuff that we've been talking about year after year that's just building up to this point where it's kind of overflowing. And to me, kind of depressed me for a little bit sitting there. So I've been thinking a lot about the political gridlock of our system. You know, here in the U.S., we're having a complete breakdown of politics across the board. And really nothing productive is coming from it.

And NASA, you know, they have their own management problems, but they are a political football and they always have been. But, you know, sometimes in the past that football produced some things. And at this point, it seems to be slowing down to such a glacial pace that there's not much coming out of it. And I've been thinking about that a lot. So I want to talk about the political gridlock and how it relates to NASA and how it extends beyond NASA, how it provides opportunities and things like that. So I want to get into all that.

But before I do, I want to say a huge, huge thank you to everyone supporting this show over on Patreon at patreon.com slash Miko. It's where you can go to support this show week on Patreon at patreon.com slash Miko. It's where you can go to support this show week in and week out. And this episode of Main Engine Cutoff was produced by 28 executive producers. Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Jameson, Nadeem, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Brian, Russell, John, Moritz, Tyler, Laszlo, Joel, and six anonymous executive producers. Thank you so much for your support. I could not do this without your help. I could not make this happen

every single week. So thank you so much for all your support and everyone else over at patreon.com slash Miko. And as always, there's a couple of good perks if you want to help out, support the show. $3 or more a month gets you access to the headline show. Every single Friday, I run through the news of the week, all the small stories, the big stories, everything I didn't get to, everything I did get to, and give some quick thoughts on it.

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So if you want any of that stuff, head over to patreon.com slash miko and find it there. Thank you again for all your support. All right, so the big rambly topic I have this week that I've kind of been thinking about a lot is this total political breakdown that we're having here in the US. We're really just coming to a grinding halt

and NASA is a great example of it, where, you know, a lot of parochial interests are slowing things down and, you know, leading to not optimal circumstances. And, you know, a lot of people say pork funding and things like that. But just overall, there's been this slowdown of pace from NASA. And I think it's kind of a vicious cycle at this point, where the slower they go, the slower they go. The longer it takes, the longer it takes because it's taken very long already. And it's kind of this exponential build, you know, snowball rolling downhill kind of thing. And at the same time, there is this explosion of activity throughout the entire space industry. You know, we've got private companies doing a lot,

private individuals doing a lot. There's new governments getting into the game, like China, that seem to be dynamic and attracting a lot of attention lately. They're working on a whole suite of new launch vehicles. And there's been increasing interest from ESA and Russia to work with China because they see China doing things. And I think that's the primary tenet here, is that people that are interested in doing things

are drawn to people who are doing things. So if this political breakdown has brought NASA to a grinding halt, it's not surprising to see interest shifting elsewhere in the industry and to see ESA sending astronauts to train with China and to see the shifting dynamics throughout the rest of the industry and who's doing what and who's actually building towards something. And I think that's something that is really just accelerating at this point because the slowdown of NASA is accelerating, the speed-up ofdown of NASA is accelerating, the speed up of the commercial sector is accelerating, and these shifting dynamics, I think, are creating an environment

that opens up a lot of doors. So, you know, this is very rambly, but take something like the Deep Space Gateway, and we'll use the ISS as an example to kind of show what has happened in the past, because I think the last 10 years can inform the next 10 in a couple of ways. When NASA built the ISS, when they had the idea for Space Station Freedom way back in the day, and it became the ISS, and they've managed their segment, I don't think at the outset of that, there were many people that would have foreseen the ISS as being the kick-starting element to companies like NanoRacks and Made in Space and SpaceX a lot of ways. I don't think

there's a lot of people that would have foresaw how it turned out and really seen this as a possibility and an outcome and something that is what, as I always said, is the greatest legacy of ISS is the way that it has led to some of these foundational companies in launch and low Earth orbit services. And it was not necessarily because of the ISS. You know, the ISS wasn't the primary reason, but it was the primary thing there that people on a mission could take advantage of and could use on their path towards their mission. Because NanoRacks and Made in Space and SpaceX, the three examples I pulled out, and there's dozens of others, if you were to talk to them, they would be able to give you a single sentence to explain the mission that they're on. And any good entrepreneurial company is going to use any opportunity there to further their mission. So it's not necessarily a primary goal of the ISS to create these kind of companies. But it is a side effect,

because there is something in orbit that these companies could take advantage of, that they could use, that they could factor into their plans. But in a lot of ways, it was in spite of the ISS that these companies succeeded. And in the same way, you could see that extending out to Deep Space Gateway. You know, disregard the end goal of the program itself, but the side effects of it have been very interesting in the ISS case and could be very interesting in Deep Space Gateway's case because maybe SpaceX wants to build something that Dragon could get into lunar orbit and provide

resupply services to the Deep Space Gateway. Maybe Blue Origin wants to pursue their Blue Moon lander more heavily and they see an opportunity to rope in some other Deep Space Gateway elements to their lander funding and to their bootstrapping of that project. and to their bootstrapping of that project. NanoRacks probably would want to provide services around the moon so they can get CubeSats delivered to the Deep Space Gateway and deployed from the Deep Space Gateway. And you could see a lot of the same things happening because in a lot of ways, Deep Space Gateway is just another ISS,

but at the moon. So there's very natural extension there. And that's kind of been my default policy on this the past couple of months. This probably isn't anything new if you've been listening to the show for a little while. But I think there's another side to this all. You know, that's the way that it goes if NASA's predictions are correct on how Deep Space Gateway will go. But there is another thing that could happen. Complete and utter stagnation of the old model. And that's looking more and more likely to me.

The old model that has worked forever in space, that has been the model for space in the first 50 years of operating in space, is at a point when it is completely breaking down. And that's my view on it. I think that's a lot of your view on it. But it is completely stagnated. And the interesting things that are coming out of the old model, I think in the same way that I said about the ISS, are happening in spite of the old model, not because of it. I don't think the current bureaucratic framework of NASA is creating interesting

projects like New Horizons or like Juno or anything of that sort. You know, I think there are sufficiently motivated people within NASA that are on a mission themselves that are going to find opportunities within the bureaucratic framework to do a thing. But I don't think that the bureaucratic framework itself, if left to its own devices, would create such a thing, like New Horizons. Now that's maybe a fine distinction and kind of weird to say, but I think that is the case. It always takes sufficiently motivated individuals within a larger framework to make things happen. But if on the human side, the human exploration, human spaceflight side, I think that is most affected by this complete stagnation all around.

If that stagnation leads to nothing, the absence of anything is also a big opportunity to take advantage of. So I was depressed about this when I was thinking about it, but I'm also kind of optimistic about it because in both of these cases, I think there's massive opportunity there for anyone sufficiently motivated towards their mission. Either the governmental framework, the current bureaucratic structure creates something like the Deep Space Gateway, and that leads to interesting opportunities that could be taken advantage of by somebody on a mission, like these lander contracts that NASA's talked up, like operations at the Deep Space Gateway. Or they completely stagnate, nothing happens, but yet there's still demand for that thing, and somebody sufficiently motivated can take advantage of that demand and with that opportunity create something interesting.

And I think that stagnation model is what we saw with launch services. The previous model of launch services from governments and, you know, programs that were governmental and spun out from there, specifically thinking, you know, Boeing, Lockheed, and Arian Space, they had become so stagnant and there was so little change that there was a significant opportunity to be taken advantage of. And that is exactly what SpaceX has done. They took that stagnation, they figured out a new model, and they did it. And they are now changing the face of launch services day after day. So I think we've got two really good examples here of how a maybe ineffective program leads to interesting opportunities in the ISS, and how complete stagnation enables opportunities in launch services.

And I think when you look at both of those cases, you do have to get a little optimistic that no matter what, there are opportunities to be taken advantage of. And the number one thing that you want to be looking towards is sufficiently motivated people on a mission. And we've got a lot of those right now. We've got a couple with a lot of money behind them. We've got a lot of small companies in the similar fashions that don't have a lot of money behind them, but have a big idea that needs the right opportunity. And when that opportunity presents itself, they're ready to jump on it.

And I think that's the right mixture for taking advantage of whatever happens in the next decade. I don't think it's going to go the way that NASA, ESA, JAXA, and Roscosmos say it is. I don't think it's going to exactly pan out as they think. But I think whatever they end up doing, whether it's something or nothing, there are opportunities there for others to take advantage of. Now there's something else interesting here in what I'm talking about, and maybe I'm a little too, you know, out there, and you guys might think I've been smoking something funny before I got on here and rambled about this, but

I find the balance between the ISS and the exploration program at NASA very interesting when you put it in context of the idea I'm talking about here, of opportunity through stagnation or through opportunity. NASA has said right out in front of Congress yesterday even that to pay for the exploration program that they have in mind, they need to cancel ISS. And ISS itself, they want to replace with some commercial something, whether that's a commercial company taking over the ISS or building their own station or doing whatever it is. That by doing that, they can unlock funding for an exploration program. Now, what's interesting here is that they may be bootstrapping their own demise. And when I say their own demise, I mean of the human exploration program in the current architecture, the current bureaucratic framework,

the current way that it works. Because the ISS program itself has, as a side effect, as we mentioned, bootstrapped an industry and launched services in low Earth orbit. And now they want to transfer that completely, thus opening up an opportunity for somebody to come in, build their own stations, and maybe build many stations for many different people and open up a market in that way. And once that snowball starts rolling downhill, that we have a big market for launch services, we have a big market for LEO services. And NASA heads towards the moon. And you start getting a couple companies inching their way out towards the moon with NASA

and taking advantage of what they can and finding the opportunities within there. You start to see this whole industry come together in cheap launch services, things that are going on in low Earth orbit that are interesting as a market, and the inklings of an industry out towards the moon. And as I said, I think the bureaucratic structure that we have is slowing down and it's getting slower and slower as it gets slower. And I think the commercial side, the private side of things is speeding up faster and faster. And this kind of inflection point that we're at is going to be even pushed further by this idea to transition the ISS to something commercial.

It gives the commercial side yet another opportunity to take advantage of. And that's going to accelerate the commercial side even more. And, you know, in both of these cases, they're runaway trains going in the wrong directions or in the right direction in one case, in the wrong direction in another, but they're going in opposite directions. The bureaucratic side is getting slower and slower and becoming less effective

because that's just kind of the natural way of things. And all companies lead that way too. Don't forget that as a company gets bigger and bigger, it gets slower and slower. And eventually it is, you know, completely unprepared for whatever comes next. And that's happened with nearly every company on earth. And one day it will happen to SpaceX. They will get so big and they will get ineffective and there will be another company that takes advantage of that and puts them, you know them out of their current spot in the market. And one day there will be a company that realizes that someone like NanoRacks has gotten too big.

And they will find the opportunity there and they will leapfrog them. That is kind of the way of things. Always been the way of things. Probably always will be the way of things. But it's interesting that the push towards the exploration side from NASA has them pulling back from the ISS. And in doing so, the people sufficiently motivated to create a market in low Earth orbit will do that. And other people interested in getting into that market will go with those partners rather than NASA. And that will extend further and further out as we build out this whole industry from launch services up to low Earth orbit to cislunar space to Mars and beyond. So it's very interesting. I think we are at a point when the Opportunity Engine is just firing up, just getting going, and it's going to be impossible to shut off.

If that's something that you want to do. If you're someone out there that wants your way to keep working and be the way forever, it is not going to be possible to turn off the new way. And it's very interesting, and I'm trying to be optimistic here going forward and not get too dragged down in the day-to-day politicking that we see happening, because for too long, space has been at the whims of politicians and parochial interests and, you know, stupid battles between senators and congresspeople. And it's exciting to see that engine of opportunity just kicking into gear and really getting going and being an unstoppable force and that's been a common theme of the show over the years but it just seems to be coming to a head right now and i see the end of the iss program as maybe the inflection point here that we're coming towards when that happens i think the private industry side of things is an unstoppable force that will continue to rise. And interesting things will come from that.

So that's my rambly, optimistic take on everything. And, you know, I've always been optimistic about it. And I think that shows throughout the couple of years that I've been doing this show and stuff. But I think I'm going to try to double down on that. And when I see political stagnation and gridlock and whatnot, I'm really going to double down on looking for what are the opportunities there that are presented by that. And I'm going to try to do that. I think you should give it a shot too, because it's more fun to be optimistic and not get so torn up about any little thing in the SLS program or the

Orion program or the ISS program or anything like that. So that's my goal for this year and for every year from now until the ISS de-orbits and we see what happens. But I'm pretty hopeful here, and I think in all of these cases, we've got examples of people taking opportunity, of stagnation and of opportunity itself, and that'll continue to drive us forward. So that's it for this week. Once again, thank you so much for listening. Don't forget about the meetup in Philadelphia, March 24th. Come out and hang out and we can have conversations like this over some bites to eat and a couple of drinks and whatnot. I hope to see you there March 24th in Philadelphia, events.offnominal.space,

where you can go to check that out. And you can get the show notes for this over at mainenginecutoff.com and support the show over at patreon.com slash Miko. But thank you so much for listening. I will talk to you next week. Thank you.