Main Engine Cut Off - T+8: Masten’s Xodiac and XaeroB, Blue Origin’s Next Flight of New Shepard

Episode Date: June 15, 2016

Masten Space Systems released a video of test flights of their two latest vehicles. Blue Origin was awarded a NASA Flight Opportunities contract, is planning the 4th flight of New Shepard, and began clearing land for their factory just outside Kennedy Space Center. Introducing Xodiac and XaeroB | Masten Space Systems Xeus | Masten Space Systems Lunar CATALYST | NASA NASA SBIR & STTR Program Homepage Blue Origin joins NASA’s suborbital research flight program - SpaceNews.com Jeff Bezos on Twitter: “Trying for 4th flight of same hardware this Friday. Live webcast at https://www.blueorigin.com #GradatimFerociter” Jeff Bezos on Twitter: ”Flight to test one-chute-out failure scenario & push envelope on booster maneuvers #GradatimFerociter” Blue Origin clearing land for massive rocket factory Email feedback to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

This week I want to step away from our usual topics of orbital spaceflight and exploration and talk about things a little closer to Earth. Masten Space Systems released a video last week of their two newest vehicles, the Zodiac and the Zero B. I tend to think that Masten is terrible at naming vehicles because they start all of them with the letter X and it just makes for an awkward pronunciation and doesn't really make it very memorable or lovable even in that case. It just sounds a little weird, but these vehicles themselves are pretty cool to watch and the video, I would highly recommend checking it out. It's pretty awesome to see what they're working on and kind

of think about how that could affect their future. These two vehicles are said to be descent and landing test beds for planetary exploration missions, so this is really a test bed for them to work out software and hardware for use on future planetary landers for places like the moon and Mars. In the future, these two vehicles could fly up to the tens of kilometers range and even carry experiments up that high for contract purposes if people wanted to run experiments at certain parts of the atmosphere. But really, this is all a way for Masten to work out their software and hardware for these different types of landings with different flight envelopes and different things that they would need to land in the future at other places. They're also putting

a lot of effort into making sure that these things are precise. So they're doing a lot of precise station keeping, as you see in this video they released, and they're doing a lot of precise landing and targeting of landings. So all in all, they're doing a lot of work that is laying the groundwork for future things that they might build, future landers they might build, whether for their own purposes or for contracts for NASA or SpaceX or other people that want to build landers to be used at the moon and Mars. These two vehicles use the same architecture that have powered other Masten rockets in the past, which is a pressure-fed, regeneratively cooled engine that burns LOX and IPA. So it's an alcohol-based fuel that they're using in these two engines. Now Masten itself does a lot of other things away from these two landers. They're part of a couple of different programs. They have some different contracts going, and most notably they're part of NASA's Lunar Catalyst program,

which stands for Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown. And this is really built to develop different landers that could be used to get cargo to the moon's surface. Under that program, Masten has pitched the use of a Zeus lander, which is a lander based on the Centaur upper stage that United Launch Alliance flies in their Atlas V stack. The Zeus lander in expendable mode could land about 13 tons on the lunar surface and in reusable mode could land about 5 tons on the surface. So this is something that could be very flexible with getting payloads to the moon. And it's pretty cool to see Mastin thinking about how they could apply their software and hardware that they're building in these types of testbed landers now to something that is based on a widely available body like the centaur

they also have said that they have plans to upgrade the zeus from the centaur upper stage to the aces upper stage once ula switches over to flying that on the vulcan rocket but it's just i think it's really cool to see mastin be forward thinking like that and realize that they're building now software that could be used in the future in ways that they have not yet imagined so they're kind of building this hardware agnostic system that could be used for landers on the moon or Mars. And that's a really nicely forward-thinking model for them to take since there's so much interest about getting back out there and landing at the moon and Mars, landing cargo or landing humans, different things like that. They're putting

themselves in a good position to be a reliable partner once we get to the point of building hardware for those places. So I see the Zeus lander as a good part of their future, but more interesting to me is the fact that Masten has received a contract from the US government to build the Cutlass engine, which is a methane-powered engine that is about equal to the RL-10 that powers the Centaur upper stage right now. Now, this is an engine that would have about 25,000 pounds of thrust, which is the same as the RL-10, but it runs with methane and liquid oxygen. So this is something that would be very applicable to Mars missions, both Descent and Ascent. So you start seeing how

some of these projects come together. They have this software and hardware they're developing now in these testbed landers. They're working out all of their precise landing capabilities, their guidance capabilities, all the things that they're going to need they're working on now in those landing systems. But then they have these projects in the future, like their Zeus lander or like this Cutlass engine, that could be the other hardware pieces they need to enable them to land on Mars. Methane engines are going to be important when we get to Mars because we can use the resources there at Mars to make ourselves rocket propellant for the flight back. So it's much preferred to use methane engines for those Mars trips. And all of our evidence says that SpaceX's

Raptor engines are the things that are going to be used on their missions to Mars, which are also methane burning. Blue Origin's BE-4 also uses methane, so sort of this next generation engine is using these methane systems rather than the old kerosene engines or the old liquid hydrogen engines. Now the Cutlass is still in early development, and the Zeus lander is really still on paper at this time But all in all I'm just seeing these couple of different projects from Masten That are sort of coming together over the next decade that could be really interesting for usage at the Moon and Mars So I'll put the video of these two Masten vehicles in the show notes, and it's very interesting to watch So I'd recommend checking it out

It's only about a minute and a half, so it doesn't take long, but the other thing that they show in that video is rapid reuse of the Zodiac. They did five flights with this Zodiac vehicle over the course of an hour or so, so they really are focusing on this rapidly reusable type of rocket engine, and that's something that, of course, we've talked about a lot in the past with SpaceX and Blue Origin, but there's just more and more focus on making these things reusable and reusable quickly. And that's certainly something that would be of interest if you're going to use this around different bases at Mars. You know, you could fly one of these things to a location of a base, stop there, pick up some cargo or some people, and shuttle back off to a

different location on the surface or low orbit. So all in all, Masten just seems to have a good track about them that is very future-looking and also takes into account a lot of what's going on today and what we assume the future will look like in the next 10-20 years, and they're kind of placing themselves in really good position to be a very interesting party once we get there. Now, switching over to Blue Origin, I have some things I wanted to talk about about them this week as well. And this was something that had happened a couple of weeks ago, but I just didn't bring it up on the show until now because of other topics taking the place. But on June 2nd, NASA announced that they had awarded Blue Origin a suborbital research flight contract as part of the Flight Opportunities Program.

This contract has a maximum value of $45 million, so up to $45 million can be awarded to Blue Origin in contracts, but the actual number depends on how many contracts they actually fly as part of this program. Blue Origin in the past has said that research and experiments were going to be a key market for New Shepard once it's flying commercially. And they already have some people signed up for early flights. But really, to get that NASA stamp of approval and saying that this is a preferred partner for suborbital research, it's really a telling moment in Blue Origin's progress as of right now. Now, we'll see how quickly they start to get these flight opportunities payloads but it is something that's interesting because it does open the government and educational market

to Blue Origin and say that this is something that isn't just purely experimental anymore. It's something that you could contract with and be pretty sure that you're going to get your experiment carried out and returned safely to you. Blue Origin is the sixth company to join the Flight Opportunities Program, but it is the fourth of six to do so with a rocket-powered vehicle. You've got Masten Space Systems, UP Aerospace, and Virgin Galactic alongside Blue Origin that are providing rocket-powered space flights, as opposed to the other two are doing high-altitude balloons. So there's a little bit different flight pattern and flight trajectory there that could be consideration for what type of payload you're delivering to suborbital space. Now, aside from the suborbital contract, which there's not much to talk about yet because

they just got the contract, there haven't been any flights yet. We don't know how often they would fly these flights, when the first one would be, but it's something to keep in mind as New Shepard's flight rate is due to pick up as we get later into the year. But speaking of New Shepard, Jeff Bezos announced that the fourth flight of New Shepard is going to take place on this Friday, and they're going to live webcast this for the first time. In the past, Blue Origin has been pretty secretive about their test flights until after they're back landed safely and they can produce this high quality video of the flight. But this kind of shows that they're opening up a and they can produce this high quality video of the flight. But this kind of shows that they're opening up a little bit as they get farther into their program and as they get more comfortable with the safety and performance of New Shepard.

This flight will also be different because they're going to push the flight envelope a little bit of both the rocket and the capsule. They're going to perform a one-shoot out test of the capsule's recovery system on the way back down. So they're going to perform a one-shoot out test of the capsule's recovery system on the way back down, so they're going to make sure that this could land under only two parachutes, which is important to verify the safety of the crew vehicle before they start flying people or even other payloads on that capsule. The rocket is going to come in with a more aggressive tilt, as they put it, when it's headed back to the landing pad, so it sounds like they're going to push the flight envelope of that a little bit to test their safety margins if they need to

make some big course correction on the way back through the atmosphere. But depending on what that means, it also sounds like they might be doing some early orbital class research because you remember these orbital class flights are going to come in with a lot more horizontal velocity. So maybe this is something that they're going to start doing to test their software and their guidance issues as it relates to these more horizontal flight patterns that they're going to need once they start doing orbital class missions. This is certainly the time that I expect them to put an eye towards the orbital class missions because they're getting pretty close to the point when these pieces are going to start coming together. We've talked in the past that BE-4 is going to test fire for the first time by

the end of this calendar year, and that's the engine that's going to drive the first stage of their first orbital vehicle. And they just started clearing land this past week or two at Exploration Park, which is just outside Kennedy Space Center. It's on the same piece of land, but just outside the fenced area of Kennedy. And that is where they'll manufacture the rocket stages for their orbital vehicle. This orbital vehicle will probably be something similar to the Falcon 1. It's a smaller vehicle. They said it's going to be the smallest vehicle of their orbital launch family. So this is probably going to be used for these early flights, these early test flights to work out all of their different guidance issues, their rocket issues, their separation issues, all of those things they need to put together to build bigger and bigger orbital class vehicles as they go. But all in all, this is something that is coming together now.

They're building the facilities to support this. They're building the engines that will fly on this. And it seems like they might even start testing the software for the landing and recovery of that first stage. So really the theme this week is these smaller companies laying the groundwork for very interesting developments in spaceflight over the next decade or so. You've got Masten looking forward to what they need to put together to be part of the landing platforms that we're going to need for the Moon and Mars. And then you've got Blue Origin putting themselves in the position to have a successful launch of their orbital class vehicle as we get closer to it. And they're even potentially using New Shepard as the platform to work out different pieces of the flight envelope and different pieces of

software that they'll need to support the recovery of that first stage of their orbital vehicle. With that, that'll be it for me this week. There's not too much going on, just kind of wanted to talk about these two companies and their future roadmap that I find quite interesting. So if you have any feedback on Mastin's future roadmap or Blue Origin's fourth test flight or their future roadmap beyond that, I'd love to hear the feedback. Anthony at mainenginecutoff.com. And I'll note that I've got a new Twitter handle for the show. It's at WeHaveMiko, all spelled out. That's a change from the old Miko podcast. So kind of foreshadowing some changes that will be happening. If you're enjoying the show, a rating or review in the iTunes store would be very, very helpful to help spread the

word a little bit. Or just spread the word to a fellow spaceflight nerd that you know and see if they enjoy the show. Thanks, and I'll talk to you soon.