Main Engine Cut Off - T+91: August Q&A

Episode Date: September 1, 2018

The first official MECO Q&A! I answer questions from listeners about any and all things space—mostly. (PS: Start sending me your questions for September’s Q&A episode!) This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 36 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, Mike, David, Mints, Joonas, and eight anonymous—and 183 other supporters on Patreon. The Adventures of SpaceShipTwo: Inverted Flight, Wonky Gyros & an Impatient Billionaire - Parabolic Arc Virgin Galactic’s Rocket Man | The New Yorker Exos Aerospace SARGE Whip - YouTube BETA 87A Vocal Microphone | Shure Americas Roland - Rubix24 | USB Audio Interface X2u XLR-to-USB Signal Adapter | Shure Americas MV88 iOS Digital Stereo Condenser Microphone | Shure Americas Rogue Amoeba | Audio Hijack: Record Any Audio on MacOS Ferrite Recording Studio: Ferrite Recording Studio — Wooji Juice Simplecast | Podcast Hosting & Metrics Made Easy Rescue Operations Take Shape for Commercial Crew Program Astronauts | 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

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo and this is the first official version of Miko Q&A. This is a new idea. I talked about it a couple of weeks back. And the idea is the last day-ish of every month, I will spend some time going through some questions that all you have sent in. Questions about anything space-related or even non-space-related.

Little stuff that you're wondering what my take is. Maybe something I haven't talked about on the show or the blog or something like that. So if you've got any questions over the course of the next month, send them my way and I will include them in the next version of this that will happen at the end of September.

But let's get started with some questions here. First one up from John. What will Lockheed do if the Vulcan launch vehicle does not make it past these next two EELV development downslacks? Will they build something bigger than Electron, buy something bigger, or seed the market? And I think this is related to my speculation

about Lockheed's small sat strategy that I was talking about a couple episodes ago, but specifically in relation to the higher end of the market, the bigger end of the market. So yeah, right now, Lockheed and Boeing are looking at Vulcan as their large launch primary path. And I don't see a lot of hope in Vulcan if they don't get Air Force funding. I previously have been hopeful about that. I thought ULA was starting to get the investment

that they needed. And I mean that more than just a money sense, but from a prioritization sense from Boeing and Lockheed. But the last two years, I haven't seen any evidence of that anymore. You know, I thought they were starting to give ULA some more room to run. And I thought that was a good sign for Vulcan. Now, I don't necessarily see that as the case,

which is a disappointment. So yeah, if the Air Force doesn't give Vulcan funding, I really don't think Vulcan will continue as a launch vehicle because I just don't see Boeing and Lockheed making the investment themselves, especially when ULA, you know, it's a bit chicken or egg, but ULA has barely sold any commercial launches, especially in the last couple couple of years as all these cheaper options that come online so you know without that motivation Boeing and Lockheed don't see the value in putting money into the program that's that's what it looks like from the outside at least so yeah if Vulcan doesn't make it if they never actually develop that and Lockheed seems pretty into the small sat market, I don't know that they're

definitely going to pursue the bigger end of things. There's a lot of doubt right now about how big the market is for large launchers. There's a lot of doubt for how big the market is for small launchers. I think in general, there's a lot of doubt about launch. And some of that I think is a little short-sighted. I do think it's a little hyperbolic. But there is a notable dip in the larger vehicles being produced, coming off assembly lines, the large geo-satellites and things like that. Department of Defense is looking at smaller satellites as well. So I think some of the large launch concerns are going to be deploying full constellations, full planes of constellations in

one launch, rather than having to fly 30 different electrons or Virgin Orbit launcher ones or whatever like that. So there is definitely a market there, but big enough for Lockheed to invest in right away? Probably not. I think more likely they would see how their small sat strategy does and let it grow organically from there as they see if that's a viable market for them to enter in the first place and not feel like they're stretching themselves too thin right off the bat. Next up, Dave sent in a question about Falcon Heavy and vertical integration. Falcon Heavy right now can't launch some of the NRO satellites out there because they require vertical integration. This is also true for some of the NRO satellites out there because they require vertical integration.

This is also true for some of the larger satellites that they fly, which obviously specifically tend their sizes to Falcon Heavy. Will SpaceX expand its services for custom payloads? This is a curious one that I continually think about because SpaceX has gotten money from the Department of Defense, specifically the Air Force, to integrate vertical integration into their service offering. It has been talked off and on about a thing that they would build at 39A. I have seen almost no movement on that. They've obviously been working 39A a lot to get Falcon Heavy online. Now they're working it a lot for crewed launches. So maybe now that the crew arm is up and the launch pad seems in a good state for that, maybe they'll move into vertical integration now and install a crane that they need at the pad

to do that sort of vertical integration. But this is still a huge question mark for me. They have money for this and they haven't made that much movement on it publicly. And if that doesn't happen, I'm very curious how that relationship is affected by the fact that they got this money for vertical integration and didn't do anything with it. So I have to assume that they're going to do something with it. I think if we don't see any activity on that in the next six months to a year, now that the crew work is largely done at 39A, that would be concerning to me. Or maybe it happens first out at Vandenberg. But then again, we haven't heard anything on

the Vandenberg status of Falcon Heavy flights out of Vandenberg, where some of those larger satellites do fly out of. So it's a really curious thing, especially as it seems like over time, SpaceX is both committed and not committed to Falcon Heavy. But we also haven't seen that many contracts that have come through needing vertical integration. So I question their utility of it overall. And if it weren't for the fact that they already got some money for vertical integration, I would say of it overall. And if it weren't for the fact that they already got some money for vertical integration, I would say ignore it entirely. But that's just my two cents. Jordan sent in a question about Virgin Galactic. I also got one of these other ones from somebody else. I think it was Chase maybe that was asking me about this. So this is a good topic to cover.

You have mentioned a few times in the past that you don't have a very positive outlook on Virgin Galactic. Is it their hardware or the way they run their company? What is your reasoning for this? I figured it was good to cover this. I've talked about it in the past and I mention it all the time. But if you're somebody who's just recently started listening to the podcast, it's always good to recap this sort of thing. And particularly good this week when there was this giant new yorker profile of mark stuckey uh the the pilot over at virgin galactic in which he goes into some detail on some pretty sketchy occurrences over the last you know couple of flights or even the last couple of years um so the tldr version of this is that, yes, I don't believe in their technology. I think that

it doesn't, it feels like a dead-end technology because it doesn't scale. It arguably doesn't scale from Spaceship One to Two, and it definitely doesn't scale beyond Spaceship Two. So it's not really leading to anything interesting in the orbital realm or anything beyond these very short, both in duration and distance, suborbital flights that Spaceship Two is trying to make. I don't think hybrid rockets are the right fit for anything like this. I have skepticism about air launch in general, so even beyond that, I'm weird about air launch. But I'm also just, as I see Blue Origin do so well with New Shepard and see how good that technology is working for them,

how good that architecture is working for them, and see continual struggles on the Spaceship Two front, both from the vehicle perspective, the engine perspective definitely, and operationally, it seems, you know, very error-prone. The engine specifically with Spaceship Two, I've heard conflicting reports, but it seems very unlikely that they would be able to make it to 100 kilometers. And I think 80 kilometers is their target now. And even that is, you know, questioned from some people I've talked with.

So I'm very curious to see what their maximum altitude is, but I have very little hope that it would be anything much over 80, if they even get to 80 at all. I also think, um, that they are historically, this is kind of a Branson specific thing, but they historically have been one of the main causes of people rolling their eyes and saying like, yeah, space, space flight stuff is always so hopeful and they never fulfilled their promises. And Virgin Galactic and Branson specifically are very, um, high profile people that make these predictions. I'm going to be in space in three months. And it's like, you. I'm going to be in space in three months, and it's like, you're not even going to be close

to the plane in three months. And that grates on people after a lot of time. They keep hearing this and hearing this and hearing this, and it's like the boy who cried wolf, that they don't actually believe it when Blue Origin comes out and says, yeah, we're probably going to have a person in space by the end of the year.

So that's kind of a side effect of that that bums me out about Virgin Galactic in general. But operationally, let me just read you a couple things from this New Yorker profile, or I'll tell you about one because it's a pretty long profile, but definitely worth a read if you've got a long Labor Day weekend coming up here and you want to read something nice. This is a pretty interesting profile to read about Mark Stuckey. So in this profile, he talks about the first powered flight of VSS Unity. This was back in April when they were going for a 30 second burn of the engine. And just a couple of seconds in,

he started feeling, he was very open in this profile, by the way, he started feeling the wings tipping, like, they, the, you know, there was a lot of roll in the flight profile, and we could see this in the video, um, so he was struggling to keep wings level through the boost phase, and, uh, they were getting to the point where, uh, the pilots, the pilots, both Mark Stuckey and Dave McKay, agreed that they were going to shut down the engine during the boost phase. And right as Dave McKay was going to push the button, the engine timer ran out. So they were at the end of the burn, but they were ready to hit the shutdown button. So they were at the end of the burn, but they were ready to hit the shutdown button. And this was just, you know, a 30 second burn of the engine looked from video very rolly.

But now we've got this confirmation from inside the cockpit that things were fairly off nominal, I would say. So after the engine shut down, they got the craft under control. And Mark Stuckey recalls looking out the window and seeing, you know, big bright blue surface of earth. Um, and he was amazed by the site, but then realized, oh, I'm not supposed to be facing this way. I'm supposed to be flipped the other way. And apparently the gyros were showing that this, the craft was right side up while they were looking at the earth above them. So they were clearly at the earth above them so they were clearly upside down uh so they had this pretty faulty gyro situation there uh eventually landed it well but then you know a flight or two later we have video again of a very rocking and rolling looking boost phase of spaceship two so i i just have a lot of skepticism about the vehicle in general

it tends to scare me i wouldn't fly on that thing. And I think there's something telling here in one of these captions of an image of Mark Stuckey sitting in the cockpit of Spaceship Two. So the caption to this image is, for a pilot like Stuckey, Blue Origin's vertical launch scheme holds little appeal. It's automated, he said. They've got some astronauts, but I don't know what the hell they're going to be doing besides acting like they're doing something. I think that statement lends a lot of credence to the mindset there. It's like, no, we're test pilots, and we're going to fly this thing, and we're going to fly it manually, and it's going to be great. It's like, yeah, but Blue Origin is flying to space regularly with New Shepard. Which piece of this is important? Is it the fact that you're flying, or is it the fact that you're trying to go to space regularly with New Shepard. So which piece of this is important? Is it the fact that

you're flying or is it the fact that you're trying to go to space? So I don't know. I just I get ranty. So that might have been a little too scatterbrained to answer your question, but maybe there's some insight there. But again, read this New Yorker profile because I think it lends a lot of insight to what's going on there. And it's a it's a pretty long history, you know, because Mark Stuckey has been around for a long time at Virgin Galactic. So you get a lot of insight to what's going on there. And it's a pretty long history, you know, because Mark Stuckey's been around for a long time at Virgin Galactic. So you get a lot of different pieces of history here in this profile in the New Yorker. Before I move into the next question, I need to say a very, very special thank you to all the supporters of Main Engine Cutoff over at patreon.com slash Miko. There are 219 of you supporting the show there every single episode, and I could not be more thankful for your support.

This episode of Managing Cutoff was produced by 36 executive producers. Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Jameson, Nadeem, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Tyler, Joel, Jan, David, Grant, Barbara, Mike, David, Mintz, Eunice, and eight anonymous executive producers. Thank you so much for your support. You made this episode possible, and I could not be more thankful for your support. Don't forget, patreon.com slash Miko, $3 or more a month. You get access to the Friday headlines shows. There's one coming out right about the same time as this episode. I run through all the stories of the week, big, small, little, everything, and give you my thoughts on them.

It's a great way to stay up on Space News, especially on weeks where it seems like nothing's happening or weeks where there's a lot happening. It's great no matter what. So check it out over there, patreon.com slash Miko, and thank you so much for your support. All right, so moving on, we got a question here from Lars about Exos Aerospace. He's got three different questions. Number one, did you see that whip? And he has a video that he posted to his YouTube channel that is, I would say, grade A memery, Lars. So let's watch this together. Lars' video of the Exos Aerospace Sarge launch from last week.

Three, two, one, ignition. Oh, my God! Look at the whip! Look at the whip! What the hell? So this is some grade-A meme work from Lars here. He posted this video to YouTube, and the reason he sent me the link was because

John Quinn, the co-founder and COO of Exos, posted a comment here about what was going on in this video. So take a couple seconds to watch the video of the launch of Exos. But what you see is it comes off the pad and immediately is tipping over, you know, off trajectory. And then the gimbal of the engine brings it back under control with some serious control authority. So John Quinn here, here's his comment from the YouTube video. Although this is a test we never wish to repeat, this is a clear demonstration of the control authority that the gimbal has to correct the angle of attack of the rocket. EXOs had modeled in this condition and our engineers

designed the rocket to be able to control like this to ensure a nominal flight even if the rocket was acted on by outside forces. In this case, the rocket pedestal was not bolted to the pad so that Exos could use scales under it to measure for a light load of locks for the test flight. On launch, the pedestal impacted the launch rail and broke off the rocket's lower attachment tab, immediately kicking the rocket into an angled ascent. Within one second, the GNC system corrected for the induced error. The gimbal responded with an appropriate control authority and demonstrated an ability to make rapid adjustments for the forces Sarge is expected to encounter when it flies, for example, through the jet stream. This is a great validation of the integration of systems.

And finally, to answer your other question, Hell has no authority when it comes to biblical principles applied through application of good engineering. So in that regard, good question. So really cool to see, you know, it's always cool to see a test flight that goes wrong, but is still successful. You know, I always think of the Apollo in-flight abort test off a Little Joe, as the Little Joe rocket was just falling apart in flight, and then the launch motor kicked in, kind of proved it doubly so at that point. And this is another example where you see something go clearly wrong and the system

completely fix it during flight. It's a doubly good test flight here for their first launch of Sarge in this way. His other questions, if they build their product, is there a market for them to compete in? And what would you do if you were them? I don't know enough about what that market is for suborbital flights, but as a little background, Sarge, the goal is a 50 kilogram payload to suborbital flights. This test launch is supposed to support them getting their foot in the door for the NASA Flight Opportunities Program so they can begin flying payloads. And their vehicle is supposed to be reusable. So it's recovered with parachutes on

this first launch. They did recover the rocket with that parachute system. So it's a very good sign that there is going to be another reusable suborbital vehicle because right now we got one. Uh, we don't have anyone else working on that kind of thing, um, publicly at least, or, or at the point where Exos is. And I think that's a big deal because, um, with a rocket like this, if they can reuse it, they're using ethanol and LOX. So, you know, lower price propellants. If they can keep their

price really ridiculously low, then yeah, there certainly could be a market for this. I don't know yet what Blue Origin has planned for payloads on new Shepard flights. Are they going to fly them with the paying customers who are going on their tourist flights? Are they going to fly them with the paying customers who are going on their tourist flights? Are they going to fly dedicated flights that are just research, maybe build a new capsule that's just research focused, that doesn't have all the crew systems in it, and be able to have some market like that? A lot of questions there, but I do think there is room for two. There's always room for two because that's generally how markets like to stabilize. So yeah, if they're able to keep their pricing really low, keep their flight rate high enough,

and have enough flexibility in what they offer for payloads on the rocket, then I think that is an ample product. The only difference would be all these other market forces that there are in launch right now come together in a really interesting way. But given where they're at, given their plans, I do have some hope that they would be successful here in this thing. But I'll be very curious to see some more details, you know, pricing and scheduling, et cetera, before I am able to, you know, make a dinner bet on the future of Exos. I got one non-space question this month from George.

Talk shop, what's your podcast setup like? Microphone, recording device, software for editing, distribution. Do you remember why you started the podcast and what is the next launch you are most excited for? Okay, so a little bit of space in there as well. Tech stuff, if you're curious, I use a Shure Beta 87A. I am talking into that right now, sitting in front of my Mac here in my wonderful little new office studio. Mike's going into a Roland Rubix 24. And when I'm on the road, I use a little Shure X2U interface. And I use this Shure MV88 that goes right into an iPhone or iPad. Sounds beautiful.

If you've heard any of my on-the-site podcasts or interviews or things like that, I've been using that little Shure device, and it sounds fantastic. I am recording into my Mac in Audio Hijack. I edit on iOS devices with an app called Ferrite. And I use Simplecast to get the podcast to your ears. Do you remember why you started the podcast in the first place? Yes. I realized that I was spending so much time reading blogs and RSS feeds and subreddits and forums and so much time reading about space. And I had some skills doing some podcasting, talking extemporaneously like this to myself, writing, etc. So I thought, hey, nobody's doing the kind of thing that I want

to read or listen to right now. I'm going to start it, see what happens. It'll be a fun project. Turns out it worked out, and it's the best. What is the next launch you're most excited for? I mean, crewed or uncrewed test flights of the commercial crew vehicles is definitely what I'm looking forward to. Those are going to be really cool to see, and I'm really hoping that SpaceX gets DM1 off this year. And if that's the case, then I'll be booking my tickets to Florida in April for DM2. be booking my tickets to Florida in April for DM2. And you can find me at the Cape for whenever the first astronaut gets on a spaceship from American soil on American rockets, American vehicles, American launch pads. I'm taking an American flight down to that American spaceport and you can find me there. So that's going to be pretty awesome. Last one for this episode of Q&A from Mark. Please discuss whatever is known about the recovery of astronauts after splashdowns

or landing of crewed SpaceX and Boeing spacecraft. During Apollo, they were taken to a Navy carrier with medical facilities on board and then to Hawaii. Not sure what to expect now. Well, we don't know all the details yet, but the recovery stuff was in the original commercial coup contracts that it's up to the companies to determine how they're going to go about that. In both cases, we've seen that they are going to be working, both cases being SpaceX and Boeing. They're going to be working with NASA and the Air Force for recovery and rescue. So I think there's a post on Parabolic Arc, a repost of a NASA PR release

that I can't find the real link to, but you can read it here. So let's see. If they are on launch, if they are within 200 nautical miles, an HC-130 will take off and there'll be two helicopters with that. They will fly from Patrick Air Force Base in Florida.

And that will have a team of up to nine Guardian Angels, which are power rescue specialists, that will jump out, head down to the spacecraft, and help with recovery. Further than 200 nautical miles, a C-17 would deploy from Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina or Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, depending on the splashdown location, uh, with the same type of team and equipment. And those are specifically noted for rescue scenarios. A nominal recovery, I have to imagine, well, for the Starliner case, they're going to be landing somewhere in the American Southwest or just west. I've seen White Sands, Mojave, Dugway in Utah, anywhere that there's large swaths of desert out west, that's where Starliner is going to come down.

So I imagine that there would be some like helicopters there to track down the landing site just in the way that Soyuz happens now out in Kazakhstan. the landing site just in the way that Soyuz happens now out in Kazakhstan. And for SpaceX, probably use a lot of the same hardware that they use for Cargo Dragon today. Maybe with the additional assistance of these kind of teams that are able to jump into the water, help get the astronauts hoisted back up into a helicopter and brought aboard a ship that way. And then they would recover the spacecraft itself like they do with Cargo Dragon. Some of that may be wrong. We don't know all the details yet, but that seems to be the primary way that they're going to be doing that. And there's been a lot of talk recently of SpaceX bringing Dragons back down in the Gulf of Mexico. So maybe they're trying to have a little

bit more proximity there to Houston or Florida, depending on where, you know, crew needs to go to Houston. Spacecraft needs to go back to Florida for the processing, probably to California in some cases too. So that's going to be a curious part to follow, but that's the best info I've got right now. If you've seen something else out there though, it's kind of murky to find info on this, but if you've seen something else or you know something else, email me anthony at managingcutoff.com. For now, that is all I've got. That's all the questions here for the first ever Miko Q&A. If you've got questions for next month, email them to me, anthonyatmanagingcutoff.com.

Tweet them to me at wehavemiko. And I will put them on the list for next month. But for now, that is it. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks again for your support at patreon.com slash Miko. And I will talk to you next week.