Main Engine Cut Off - T+89: Lockheed’s Small Sat Strategy, NASA Tipping Points Contracts

Episode Date: August 13, 2018

Lockheed Martin has been slowly revealing their small sat strategy over the last three years, and it’s shaping up to be quite interesting and potentially very compelling. And NASA announced 10 Tipping Point awards last week, which include some very interesting projects from Blue Origin, ULA, and Astrobotic. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 37 executive producers—Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Jamison, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Tyler, Joel, Jan, David, Grant, Barbara, Stan, Mike, David, Mints, Joonas, and eight anonymous—and 181 other supporters on Patreon. Terran Orbital’s Series B Round, and Lockheed’s Small Sat Master Plan - Main Engine Cut Off NASA Announces New Partnerships in Space Exploration Technologies | NASA 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, Spotify, 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'm Anthony Colangelo. We've got two topics to break down today. A little bit of Lockheed Martin's grand plan for small sats, which is an unexpected sentence I think. And then we're going to get into those NASA tipping point contracts that came out last week, run through the list, see what's interesting, what's not, and we'll see where it goes. Let's start with the short one first, though. We're going to start with the Lockheed thing. So in general, small sats right now, I feel like are largely driven by startups and new companies and new

entrance into the market. There's not a ton of existing big companies focused on the smallsat sector. It's a lot of startups, both in use and production, launch and all that kind of stuff. On the launch side, it's nearly all new companies. The only existing company that is developing a new generation of small set launchers would probably be Arianespace with Vegas and Vegas C. That's the really only actively developed

small launcher out there right now. The rest are all new. Rocket Lab, Vector, Virgin Orbit, whatever's going on at Strata Launch, who knows what that is uh who else is out there relativity there's like a hundred or something so the the launch sector is very very very heavily new entrants the production side is a mix but you know probably even uh airbus is working with one web to develop their small satellite production line. You've got Surrey

Satellites, who built a lot of small satellites. And then you have some new entrants, right? Like Spaceflight was working on that new partnership where they're going to develop their own buses and then sell them to other people. So production side is more split. Launch is nearly all new entrants. And then there's Lockheed and what they've been doing the last couple of years. I wouldn't say Lockheed is the most, well, they're conservative, to put it lightly. They are very calculated in what they do. They focus very heavily on what they do today. They don't start a lot of new lines of business that roll off to their own thing. But what they've been doing with small satellites is particularly interesting

because it seems a little outside of what they've typically done in the past, I guess with space specifically. So three years ago, in 2015, they made an investment in Rocket Lab. It wasn't disclosed how much the investment was or how much they got of the company or anything like that,

but that was one of the bigger strategic investments they've made as far as investing in a company like Rocket Lab that early on. And then they re-upped another round of investment once Rocket Lab was looking for more investors. They put even more money in. So they're pretty close up to Rocket Lab at this point, to the point where you could see a future in which Rocket Lab gets bought out entirely or something like that. If Lockheed really wanted to take launch seriously again instead of just using ULA. If Boeing and Lockheed split ways, I could see Lockheed extending that to Rocket Lab and bringing them in-house as their own launch sector. So that was what they kind of started doing with launch. And then last June, they invested in Terran Orbital, who is a small sat production company.

They are now expanding to even more investment just a couple of weeks ago. And they opened up a 40,000 square foot facility out in, I think it was California or something like that. And they're looking to set up a small sat production line out there. And specifically, Terran Orbital was tied to the Lockheed Martin, the LM50 bus. So if you remember, this was last September, we talked about these new satellite buses that Lockheed was going to start developing. They had this whole scalable lineup where they go all the way from the 2100, kind of similar to what they're flying now. And then they have four sizes all the way down to the LM50, which is like a small satellite bus. Roughly, they map to the amount of kilograms that the satellite buses are.

So the LM50 is from 10 to 100 kilograms. Not exact, but I guess they're trying to name it after the typical range. So this was their attempt to get back into producing these smaller buses rather than just the higher-end stuff and the one-off spacecraft like they have done over time. And these two things came together in a kind of interesting way recently. Terran Orbital raised another $36 million,

some more from Lockheed. And then the Scottish Spaceport that was announced, they gave Lockheed Martin $31 million to develop this private spaceport. So when you put all this together, oh, and when that announcement came out, you know, there was rumors about Rocket Lab's Electron being selected to fly from that site. And even Peter Beck was talking about Rocket Lab maybe flying from here in the future. So there's a lot of smoke, you know, among that. And it seems pretty plausible to me. So you put all these three things together, and you can kind of see Lockheed's full plan here is to gather up as many partnerships

and strategic investments as they can to be able to offer a start to finish small satellite service. So you go to Lockheed, and you say, hey, I want this kind of satellite with this kind of payloads put up to this kind of orbit. And they say, great, we're going to build you the bus. We're going to launch it on our launch vehicle. We're going to launch it from our launch site. And you get this full spectrum service from one spot. There's a lot of companies looking to do this now. Surrey Satellite, I think last week or something was, I tweeted about this or something, but they were looking for a similar thing where they're going to produce a bunch of satellites and they signed a bunch of launch contracts so that you just go to Surrey Satellite and say, hey, I want this satellite. And they say, great, we'll launch it when we can.

So the full spectrum thing is not unique to Lockheed, but I think their interest in this market is notable and something that we should watch because they could very plausibly roll out this kind of full featured service, charge a little bit of a premium because you're saving efficiency, really. You know, you're trading money for efficiency in acquiring a satellite and getting it launched to where you need it. So that is, it comes to the premium in the same way that ULA markets themselves as having a premium because of how good their track record is, how good their accuracy is, yada, yada. It's just another competitive advantage to be able to go to

Lockheed and one-stop shop it. that's kind of the hot topic of the year. Everyone's talking about one-stop shops, regulation-wise or commercial-wise. That seems to be the thing. So I'm interested in what Lockheed will do here. I'm curious whether they'll buy out any of these companies in particular, or if they'll just try to keep running it like this. And now we're streaming this on Twitch today,

trying it out. uh jake is now trolling me jake from we martians that he had to watch an ad for dog food and that's not on me jake that's on you that's on you uh so anyway lockheed is investing in all these things like crazy and i'm very curious to see how it develops. If they do start launching Electron from that Scottish spaceport and it's kind of their whole ground-up offering I think that is pretty competitive so I'm intrigued by Lockheed's new plan here. So before we get into tipping point stuff this is the time the show when I

have to thank all the patreons at over over at uh patreon.com slash miko there are 218 supporters over there supporting this show week in week out uh this episode was produced by 37 executive producers chris pat matt george brad ryan jameson nadim peter donald lee jasper chris warren bob russell Thank you so much for your support. You make this show possible. You keep it running. And don't forget at Patreon, $3 or more a month, you get access to that little headlines feed.

You sign up at Patreon, you get an RSS link, drop it in your podcast player, and you hear me reading the headlines to you at the end of every week. Small stories, big Patreon, you get an RSS link, drop it in your podcast player, and you hear me reading the headlines to you at the end of every week. Small stories, big stories, all the good stuff. So go check that out, patreon.com slash Miko, if you want to help support the show. And before we get back into the topic, one other little meta announcement. I've been thinking about doing this new format of a show at the end of every month, uh, where you send in questions, topics, stuff that you want me to give a little take on, um, the last show of every month. We just collect

these things. We talk about all these topics. Cause I always hear from people saying, Oh, I wish I would hear your take on X, Y, or Z. So want to try it out in August. So if you've got any thoughts or questions or anything that you want, take on, email it to me, anthonyatmanagingcutoff.com or tweet it at me at wehavemiko. Put like Miko QA or something in the tweet or the email subject line so I can find it later. But we're going to give it a shot. So send them in, questions, whatever, send them my way and we'll give it a shot at the end of the month. We'll see how it goes. If we like it, we'll keep it. If we don't like it, we'll come up with something else. So let's move on to tipping points. This is the fun stuff that I think was getting everybody excited the past week.

This is the third solicitation that NASA put out there for tipping point technologies. And the idea here is that these are public-private partnerships. for tipping point technologies. And the idea here is that these are public-private partnerships. So NASA invests some money and they expect the companies to invest a certain percentage, no matter what. They have to put that much into the project to get the full award from NASA. And the idea with tipping points is that they invest in technologies that they see are close to the finish line, per the name. And they're kind of at that point where a little bit more investment will get them to a point that's a lot more useful

for NASA or the companies in general. And the point with public-private partnerships is that the companies retain all of that intellectual property, all of the work, and they can use it into the future, whether to support NASA or otherwise. This is what we've seen happen many times, but these particular technologies are geared towards future NASA architectures. So they broke it down to three sections. They awarded 10 different contracts to different

companies. The combined amount of awards here are $44 million. So each particular contract is not a ton of money. And the work will take place over the next three years. The NASA investment is 25% of the total investment in any given project. Is that right? No. Yeah. No. No, no, that's not right.

Each industry partner is required to contribute a minimum of 25% of total cost. So at minimum, they have to invest 25% of whatever the total cost is of the project. They can invest as much as they want on top of the NASA contract. But the three areas here are expand utilization of space, enable efficient and safe transportation into and through space, and increase access to planetary surfaces. into and through space and increase access to planetary surfaces. So some of these are kind of weird because like the first one in this expand utilization of space is for a lander, even though there's a lander category. So I don't really get how they group these things. But let's run through. The big winners were Blue Origin and ULA, I think right up front. Astrobotic did really well, who was our guest

on the last podcast, but they did really well for a couple of reasons that we'll get into. And then there was some other stuff in here. SSL won a contract for, or two contracts, I think, for some electric propulsion work. And then who was the last one that i'm always forgetting i think that was it oh there's a paragon award for cryogenic management so that's a that's a big theme here is cryogenic fluids and management and uh it applies to blue origin they got contracts for landers and for ula they got contracts that are geared towards aces both cryogenic powered stages or landers and for ULA they got contracts that are geared towards ACES. Both cryogenic powered stages or landers both very important I think to the future architecture that NASA is looking towards. So let's start with the Blue Origin stuff. They got 10 million dollars for a the

proposal name is terrible but Blue Origin will mature cryogenic liquid propulsion through a combination of technologies in a lunar lander scaled integrated propulsion system. The project will culminate in testing of the integrated propulsion system and a separate experiment on Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital vehicle. And then they got $3 million for terrain relative navigation to enable very precise landing on the lunar surface. So, you know, both of these are very, very targeted at blue moon. And I would say that these are the first contracts that are focused on blue moon. I'm not 100% sure on what exactly the first one they got was mature cryogenic liquid propulsion. I just assume engine testing. I don't know if this is a BE-3U thing or, you know, if

they're just kind of coming up with concepts for the actual lander stage or the overall architecture to push that Blue Moon concept forward a little more. This is very, very obscure there. But to see this amount of money go in, you know, I think most people look at this amount of money for Blue Origin and they say this is peanuts to what their actual funding is. But it's a good sign that NASA sees this as a valuable technology into the future and they're willing and ready to, you know, actually use it in an architecture. There's been some standoffish times in the past with NASA and private companies about their plans, notably SpaceX's with Mars plans. NASA's very hesitant to comment on any of the plans for many reasons, but there is a cold feeling there. And to see so early on Blue Origin in the mix for these kinds of contracts is a

really good sign if you're someone who thinks that Blue Moon should play a part in whatever NASA does near the moon. And similarly, ULA's awards fit that same theme, but for ACE's development. So they got $10 million for the Integrated Vehicle Fluids flight demonstration. This is something that they're going to fly. They say qualification of key elements of the IVF subsystem and integration and flight on a Centaur upper stage. So they're going to take certain parts of that integrated vehicle fluid system and fly it on Centaur to, you know, push its development forward a bit. That's the one thing that I think is slated for Aces alone and not Centaur itself, not Centaur 5, the upgrade that's

coming with Vulcan. But, you know, to see this kind of work happen again is a good sign that that sort of concept, which so far was pretty unique to ULA to use basically what has been used in the past as autogenous pressurization, to use that to power instead of batteries, power an engine that provides power to the stage, to provide pressurization itself, to provide gases for the reaction control system, to basically turn what was a complicated system of multiple fluids, multiple gases, multiple power systems into using the propellant on board to power all of that itself. Pretty cool idea in general, and it's good to see NASA also thinking that, you know,

this could be valuable, whether for ACES itself or some future version of SLS upper stage, since those always seem pretty closely aligned, as we've talked about. The other awards that ULA got are $2 million for cryogenic fluid management. So this would provide their, let's see say demonstration project seeks to prove that very low cryogenic fuel boil off is achievable and can support long duration missions so this again will perform testing with centaur tankage and it's looking for long storage of cryogenic propellants which is something that again for these different architectures that nasa is looking at fuel depots or just long transfer times that is something that, again, for these different architectures that NASA's looking at, fuel depots or just long transfer times,

that is something that we will need if we're going to the moon, going to Mars. So another good, valuable investment here. Even if it doesn't make it to ACES, some of the stuff that they work on could play a part in fuel depots. And we talked a lot with John Goff from Altius, who worked a lot on concepts around fuel depots. And we talked a lot with John Goff from Altius, who worked a lot on concepts around fuel depots, even worked on that cryogenic propellant coupling. So I'm curious to see if Altius would actually play a part in any of this. They do work with ULA quite a lot,

and I could see them having a part in this project as well. So that would be a particularly curious one for me to follow along with. And the last contract that ULA got is the mid-air retrieval demonstration. So this is a demo that would prove out mid-air retrieval of up to 8,000 pounds, which they say increases the current capabilities by a factor of four. This is the idea that ULA has for reusability, where they pop off the engines, comes back through the atmosphere, and then gets snagged by a helicopter uh which is then brought back to a boat as I always say the second craziest recovery method first being Mr. Steven and it's completely impossibly looking arms impossibly long looking arms uh up to 8,000 pounds is obviously it's a big improvement of where we're at now, but I think the RD-180 is something like 12,000 pounds.

So there's still quite a bit of ways off from recovering what is their current engine. I don't know how heavy, you know, BE-4s or the AR-1s really come into that. You know, I assume AR-1s pretty close because they're basically making a carbon copy of the RD-180. I assume Aero One's pretty close because they're basically making a carbon copy of the RD-180. So I think they would still have to go quite a ways to recover the engines that they're actually going to use. But a big improvement over what is currently there. And they also say that this would fly with what I think is the inflatable decelerator project that NASA has going on now.

They used to have one in the past that was the low-density supersonic decelerator project that NASA has going on now. They used to have one in the past that was the low density supersonic decelerator. That test ended poorly when it ripped or something like that. And then it wasn't re-upped budget wise in future years. So this is, I think, the low Earth orbit flight test of inflatable decelerator is the spiritual successor to that project. And again, could have big implications for Vulcan here, because that is testing some sort of inflatable decelerator, which is what they would have to use if they were going to go forward with that engine recovery of Vulcan. So a collection of things for ULA that are targeted at mostly aces or this in-space tug that they're talking about, and a little bit for Vulcan, which is interesting itself. But I think the biggest thing here for me for ULA is that these contracts show a certain confidence from NASA in the concepts that ULA has been developing. And my biggest problem with ULA of late has been the total lack of any sign that the parent

companies are willing to invest in ULA's projects that they've been talking up. I think they've been very hesitant to invest any more money than they need to in ULA. And I think that's holding ULA back, especially when it comes to Vulcan or any of their interesting projects out there. And I don't think it's very promising. But having these NASA contracts for ULA gives them some firepower to go to those parent companies and say, NASA believes in these

as a component of their future architecture. This is a viable route to develop, to land a future large contract from NASA when it comes to the Moon program or Mars program or whatever program NASA is working on. They show an interest in this. And this is just a little bit of money right now. But if we develop this and we do it well, it can turn into a huge contract down the line, especially for something like the in-space tug that ULA has been talking up with all these upgrades that are slated for ACES. That's something that could be hugely beneficial to a NASA architecture that we're seeing develop. So it's a really good way

for ULA to show that this is a lucrative place to put money. So if that helps them make the argument to the parent companies a little bit, I think it's actually a pretty good thing for ULA and somewhat promising. We'll see, you know, when it comes down to it, we'll see how much each of these companies put into these public-private partnerships. And I think that number will be telling. You know, if ULA puts in the minimum 25% and not a cent more than that, that would kind of harsh my mellow, I would say, a little bit on this front. There was one other related to the Ace's upper stage that Paragon got $1.6 million for a

launch shroud that encapsulates a cryogenic stage. So this is something that would protect the upper stage on launch and the way up. And, you know, maybe beyond launch, I don't know how far beyond launch this is envisioned to go, but it does say launch shroud, so I assume it means just launch. But this Paragon thing seems to play into Aces and Centaur V a bit as well. So we'll see if maybe they partner on some of these

projects, but it does seem very targeted at something like Centaur V or ACES. And then Astrobotic, I mentioned, got some money here. They themselves received $10 million for terrain relative navigation, so similar to Blue Origin. This is for very precise landings on the lunar surface. So that's a really good project that they received there. That's for their Peregrine Lander. And then Frontier Aerospace received $1.9 million to develop the Deep Space Engine, which is the engine that was selected for Astrobotics Peregrine Lander. So this money here is really going forward to provide a significant amount of funding to Peregrine Lander. And right now that's slated for 2020. I assume that NASA thinks this would play a part in the small lander service

that they're going to be flying in the 2020s. But overall, that's for a small company like Astrobotic, that's quite a bit of money and i think quite a bit of investment again from nasa in terms of interest and that is one of the most valuable things out of this contract round and i'm going to keep harping on that because showing that amount of interest from nasa is a really big deal when it's pared down to just 10 selections here uh none of which include big names like SpaceX or Boeing or, you know, Sierra Nevada or who else? Northrop Grumman. It's notable that Astrobotic is among these companies. And then the last couple of contracts, as I said, were for SSL.

They got two different contracts for electric propulsion. They got $2 million for a high efficiency six kilowatt dual mode electric propulsion engine for broad mission applications. So this is a hall thruster that's up to the six kilowatt range. And then they did get $2 million for in-space xenon transfer for satellites, servicers, exploration vehicle replenishment, life extension. Another bit of investment here in satellite servicing, I guess, but this time specifically for propellant transfer, which is something that for non-traditional propellants like Xenon, that's something we haven't seen a lot of development in. So again, I see this as pretty promising. I'm still skeptical in general

about electro propulsion for the human scale missions, but for, you know, smaller support missions, it could be kind of interesting to be able to refuel different tugs or different, you know, communication satellites, something like that. So I do think it's something worth developing. And it's very much within SSL's wheelhouse. So they must have something good up their sleeve for that. So that's the selection of 10 here. I'm curious to see how these go. It's three months or 36 months, three years of time that these projects are going to take place over.

I don't know how much we're going to hear out of any individual project, but overall, I'm very encouraged by the selection choices. Curious to see how ula plays with you know that extra factoid behind their own architecture to see if they take advantage of that and and use it to get some more money and investment from their own parent companies and blue origin obviously showing that they're serious on this blue moon thing that they're serious about making it to market with some of these different projects. So let's see how ULA does.

Let's see how Blue Origin does. And Astrobotic seems like they've got some extra backing to make it to the moon by 2020. So all good signs there. That's it for all my breakdown of these different contracts. If you've got any thoughts, send them to me, anthonyatmanagingcutoff.com, on Twitter at WeHaveMiko. Don't forget, send me some questions for the August questions show. Miko QA, put that somewhere. Wherever you

send it, put that somewhere so I can find it later. But that is it. Thank you again for all your support, patreon.com slash miko. Thank you.