Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Space Policy Edition: Mars Sample Return, but at what (fixed) price?

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck joins the show to unpack his company’s bold, $4-billion fixed-price plan to bring Martian samples home, why he believes commercial partnerships can unlock new frontiers... in planetary science, and his “soft spot” for interplanetary exploration. Then, Richard French — former JPL engineer and now VP of Business & Strategy at Rocket Lab — provides deeper insight into their proposed Mars Sample Return architecture, explaining how a single, vertically integrated team could cut costs and secure mission success. And yes, we get an update on the status of their Venus mission, too. Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/can-rocketlab-save-msrSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to the Space Policy edition of Planetary Radio. I'm Casey Dreyer, Chief of space policy here at the Planetary Society, welcoming you to yet another month to talk about the at this time, right. Uninteresting and sedate area of space policy and politics, particularly that affecting NASA this month, of course, I'm going to be talking about Mars and maybe not the Mars you're thinking of, but the samples that are currently sitting there on the surface and actively being collected
Starting point is 00:00:47 by the Perseverance Rover. The idea that we need to bring those samples back is the culmination of more than 50 years of NASA ambition and scientist ambition to study pieces of Mars in a pristine state to help understand not just the history of Mars, but helping to set the chronological history of the entire solar system. There's also the little fact, of course, that maybe we'll find evidence of life or past life in some of the samples that they're collecting right now.
Starting point is 00:01:17 It is a big deal. The project, of course, for those of you who've been following along, The project, of course, for those of you who've been following along, has hit some snags. It's been more than two years since NASA paused most of its work on Mars sample return after an independent review project found that Mars sample return was functionally spiraling out of control. It was originally intended to be a lean project costing no more than $3 billion or so, returning samples by 2026. By the time the team looked at it in 2023, cost estimates had spiraled to nearly $11 billion, which is a bad place to be before you actually commit
Starting point is 00:01:56 to your design and start building everything. NASA has spent an unusually long amount of time, let's say, going through multiple rounds of program reviews, reconsiderations, and finally, right in the final weeks of the Biden administration, Senator and Administrator Bill Nelson made the announcement about what the path forward from our sample return was going to be. That announcement was to pursue two further studies with a decision to be made in 2026. These two studies are somewhat different than what had been proposed before but still had large parts of consistency. They would both
Starting point is 00:02:37 still use the European provided Mars Earth Return Orbiter. They would still use a NASA created Mars Ascent Vehicle, the rocket that sits that would launch the samples into Mars orbit. And they would still use a variety of NASA provided equipment to gather the samples, store them, launch them and bring them back to Earth. However, the distinction, the two concepts that they were going to do was one was going to pursue how you land the sample retrieval lander or in this case the thing that's carrying the rocket. The first concept provided by JPL was to use a slightly larger version of their sky crane system. The sky crane is
Starting point is 00:03:14 what we have seen with Curiosity and Perseverance. You know it hovers above the surface of Mars, it slowly lowers your payload onto the ground, flies off. Very clever system, very exciting looking, and most importantly, validated. It has worked twice. You don't get many shots at Mars and so that's really important. The second option though that Bill Nelson stated was to pursue some sort of commercial partnership. And when I think most people heard this, they assumed that it would be a full commercial reconfiguration of the mission. But it really isn't. It seems to be one particular piece, which is the landing on Mars. So instead of using a sky crane, this concept would use a commercially procured heavy landing system to place that rocket and collection system on the surface of Mars.
Starting point is 00:04:05 Notably, nothing like that exists. There's nothing off the shelf. There's no commercial market for this as it stands at the moment. And so it wasn't exactly clear who or what would provide this commercial service. NASA said it will study both options further for at least another 18 months, which again really starts pushing our timelines far into the 2030s for sample return.
Starting point is 00:04:30 Now probably, maybe, Bill Nelson was talking about Starship. I think that's what would jump to mind for most people. But Starship wasn't said, but that was mainly probably because of procurement and contracting rules where you can't show deference to one potential contractor over another when you haven't made any formal project commitments. But as we know, Starship has a long way to go to Mars. It's still working to launch. It is still working to get to orbit at the time of recording.
Starting point is 00:04:58 That doesn't mean it's impossible. And it seems very likely that that could be a serious contender for landing something on Mars. Now, there's a lot of questions with that, but at the same time It's almost besides the point because either option that NASA had done these early estimations on that they will study either option seemed to cost Roughly the same in terms of when you're rounding to billions both of them were estimated to be between six and eight billion dollars So that's cheaper than 11 billion, three billion cheaper. That's, you know, that's a
Starting point is 00:05:29 dragonfly mission to Titan right there. But that's still a lot of money. That still makes it among the most expensive planetary science missions ever done. It makes it among the most expensive science missions ever done. And for those of you paying attention to US politics right now, we now have a new administration since that decision was made. And that new administration and Congress aren't particularly excited about spending lots of money right now. So there is an uphill battle for either of those pathways to
Starting point is 00:06:00 get approval in this new NASA administration. Now it's going to Mars. There's a Mars focus in the new administration. Perhaps that has that going for it. And for those of you curious about what's going on with this new administration, please stay tuned for our February 12th planetary radio where me and my colleague, Jack Coralli, will be speaking about, you know, since what we're seeing and what we're doing. But this episode, we're talking about Mars. So we have this uphill battle.
Starting point is 00:06:28 We have a $7 billion concept, one of two. And seemingly, where do we go from here? Well, enter Rocket Lab. This company is best known for making a small launch vehicle, Electron, which launches frequently and is a successful company on its own. They also produce spacecraft components. That's a big part of their business. They have over 2200 employees.
Starting point is 00:06:50 They're one of the most successful private space companies besides SpaceX, just without the level of attention that a lot of people broadly, I say, would see. Rocket Lab, I think, made a very interesting and surprising pitch to NASA saying that they could do Mars sample return. They pitched their concept, which we will discuss in much more detail with our two guests. But generally, the rocket lab concept for Mars sample return is to send four spacecraft, a communications orbiter that would stay at Mars and provide a permanent piece of infrastructure
Starting point is 00:07:26 for future missions to communicate back to Earth. They would launch a lander. They would launch a return vehicle. And they would have their own rocket. Rocket Lab, of course, knows how to launch small rockets. This idea is not just really interesting for what it does, but what it doesn't do. It doesn't use the European provided
Starting point is 00:07:46 Orbiter it doesn't use a NASA provided launch vehicle They do and they do emphasize that there's lots of NASA input and collaboration and partnerships built within this plan But at the end of the day, it's one company vertically integrating the entire Mars sample return project Their estimate which I emphasize is their estimate, is $4 billion. And coming back years earlier in the mid to early 2030s, then either option provided by NASA. Now, here's the real kicker. $4 billion is obviously a lot cheaper.
Starting point is 00:08:22 And some people would say, oh, they can't, you know, what if they can't do it? What happens to this? Just grow anyway. It is a fixed priced bid. That is interesting. And it's paid out by milestones. If Rocket Lab doesn't make progress in our sample return, Rocket Lab doesn't get paid. So that is an interesting and very different approach to something as big.
Starting point is 00:08:44 And if it was even implemented, historically notable. No other big science mission has ever been designed that way. So to say this is ambitious is an understatement. But it's very interesting. And it really, to me, highlights the this porous and dynamic threshold between what commercial and private space companies highlights the porous and dynamic threshold between what commercial and private space companies are able to provide and feel confident in doing
Starting point is 00:09:12 versus what government and public systems have been classically doing. We are still in this active discussion or an active experimentation of where it makes the most sense to apply commercial or privately procured hardware and where it makes most sense to do government procured stuff and there's places for both. But this overlap we just don't know. And that's what's fascinating. So to talk about this, I have two guests from Rocket Lab
Starting point is 00:09:45 joining me today on the show. The first is Sir Peter Beck, the CEO and founder of Rocket Lab. Peter and I talk about why Rocket Lab made this pitch, why Rocket Lab wants to do MSR and why he feels confident they can do it. I think also we have a very fascinating and interesting discussion about the distinct nature of science missions
Starting point is 00:10:07 vis-a-vis commercial and human spaceflight needs in that science missions tend to be bespoke one-off and highly designed to answer specific questions where other types of projects tend to be Making a lot of the same thing multiple launch vehicles multiple crew capsules multiple satellites you don't of the same thing. Multiple launch vehicles, multiple crew capsules, multiple satellites. We don't have the same types of economies of scale, but Peter will talk about why he sees opportunity for various commercial opportunities within that.
Starting point is 00:10:37 My second guest is Richard French. He's a former JPL engineer. He worked at NASA headquarters for the Science Technology Mission Directorate, and he is now the director of business development at Rocket Lab. We go into a much more technical discussion about how that mission could work and how companies like Rocket Lab structure themselves in a way to increase efficiency, decrease cost, and how they would approach risk when you have a fixed amount of money to work with. I have no idea if Rocket Lab would succeed in doing this. Anyone will face a massive challenge, as they will freely admit,
Starting point is 00:11:18 only two countries have ever successfully landed on Mars. And one of those, obviously, was done pretty much all by JPL. So there is a lot of uncertainty going forward, but I think there's such an interesting aspect here in terms of our developing markets, developing capabilities and our institutional abilities to take those risks themselves as well. Notably, as Rocket Lab will point out, NASA did not choose a pathway that supports their vision. But now with the new administration and a new NASA administrator coming in, perhaps
Starting point is 00:11:50 it's time for a second look. Before I speak with Peter, I have one pitch for you. March 24th, there's the day of action that the Planetary Society is running with its members. This is a day that we all come to Washington, D.C. and we talk to the people who are making the policy decisions and fund the programs that we want to see at NASA and in space exploration. Our day of action is something we love doing. Actually most people love doing it themselves and they
Starting point is 00:12:18 have a lot of not just fun but a huge sense of reward and satisfaction. Going to congressional leaders and saying, we care about these things. We care about space exploration. We care about scientific exploration. We care about openness and transparency, and we care about a NASA that is a uniting force within the country. These are all critically important things to say right
Starting point is 00:12:45 now. And with a new Congress, and of course, it's functionally a new administration, at least in the implementation side, it's very important that members who are able to come and join us have this opportunity to say these things matter. You can register and learn more about the Day of Action at planetary.org slash day of action.
Starting point is 00:13:04 Registration goes through the end of February. So please consider joining us at the day of action here in March 24th, 2025. And now joining me on the space policy edition, Peter Beck. Sir, Peter Beck, welcome to the space policy edition of Planetary Radio. I'm delighted to have you. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks very much for inviting me. Let's get right to it. Why does Rocket Lab want to pursue Mars sample return? Well, I think it's firstly, it's an incredibly important mission and the science is incredibly important. I think everybody also knows that I have a real soft spot for interplanetary missions.
Starting point is 00:13:44 And I think it's if you have the capability to to do those, then it's almost your duty to go and do them. And then certainly, I think as I look across all of the kind of Mars programs we've been involved with and some of our acquisitions have been involved with and the things that we're good at, it's kind of perfect. If we think about transiting to Mars and having a big ball of Delta V to get there, I mean, that's basically the escapade spacecraft. If we think about a small rocket launching off a small planet, well, I think we're pretty good at building
Starting point is 00:14:15 small rockets that launch off small planets. So that's a key strength. And then Rondeverne and proximity missions, you know, we have a big mission with Victor Hayes, we're doing a bunch of that and we've done a bunch of that in past for other customers as well. So that's kind of a sweet spot. And then there's two private companies that have rented a capsule and landed it back on earth and one of them is us, with respect to all of the GNC required to accurately and do a reentry interface. So I look across all the things we're really good at and think, man, this utilizes a lot
Starting point is 00:14:49 of existing technologies and existing capabilities. And as we sit down and we put together a plan to go and do it, we believe we can do it at an extraordinarily affordable price, which I think kicked off the whole commercial, let's let commercial take a look at it at discussion. I want to get into that aspect of it, but I'm struck by something you said, which was you have a soft spot for interplanetary exploration. And I wonder how important is the kind of the founder model or the in commercial spaceflight companies in a sense for pursuing missions like this, rather than if you were just a broad
Starting point is 00:15:26 publicly traded company with an appointed CEO, is there something important about how commercial space companies operate that requires some kind of, I don't want to call it a rational, I find it very rational, but some kind of deeper level commitment to the idea and effort of going into space to push
Starting point is 00:15:46 companies like yours to pursue things like this? I think that's a very personal question, I guess, in some respects. But rest assured, the board of directors is not going to let me go off and do something rogue that makes no money. At the end of the day, my fiduciary duty to the shareholders is paramount. So we're not going to lose money on it. But I think interplanetary emissions are difficult. They're really difficult and they require a level of concentration and resources that's pretty extreme. But I mean, if I look across our company, this is just kind of what we're made to do. So it doesn't feel unnatural. And look, if we can return good value to the shareholders and also do this at the same time, that's just a win-win. And where I guess some people may be scared of these interplanetary missions, I'm enthralled by them. And that's kind of the company's
Starting point is 00:16:34 DNA as well. We don't shy away from really doing really difficult things. But yeah, look, I think if you didn't have a passion for doing them on the outside, they look pretty complex. But I think with Escapade, we proved that you can build not one but two spacecraft in just a few years, and make money doing it, and provide a great solution to the nation. So I don't see it as necessarily as digital as that. Yeah, it wasn't in the sense of, I guess irrational was the wrong word. But it's this idea that there's a fundamental motivation and drive maybe that comes from a founder model of organizing
Starting point is 00:17:12 a company. And I don't know if that resonates with you as a founder of this company. But something that pushes or a vision or some kind of, as you said, that you create in a sense the DNA of this organization. And that's what strikes me as something, I think, unique about this new kind of commercial industry
Starting point is 00:17:28 that has grown up in the last 20 years. I wouldn't consider prior to that aerospace industries representing that kind of ethos or belief system beyond pure fiduciary duty, nothing beyond that. I think that that's probably fear. Although, if we look at historically who has done these interplanetary missions, they are typically companies that have CEOs
Starting point is 00:17:52 that are pretty purely driven by fiduciary responsibility, right? But they don't do fixed price bids. No, they don't. That's true. That's fair. But look, you have to have some level of, I think, passion, but also caution, because there's a tremendous amount of passion in the space industry.
Starting point is 00:18:08 And it's one of my pet peeves is you see a lot of cool technology that are put together by founders, and then they go looking to try and create a business around the cool technology. And that's just something that we've always been allergic to here. So, yeah, I'm sure there's a... Look, I'm very passionate about it, and I have a soft spot, and I'm sure that that comes in into the equation and probably we look at these interplanetary missions with more vigor than some might, but make no mistake, these are not philanthropic projects.
Starting point is 00:18:35 You know, we obtain our financial responsibility. Your incentive is to do that. So I've spoken with your colleague Richard French about kind of the nuts and bolts of how this project is structured and formed and proposed. But I'm interested in how you tried to approach it again as this milestone based fixed price contract in a sense that a motivation at this scale, this would be a very challenging thing to absorb huge overruns in for any company. How do you approach that then in a way that you are confident that you can make it? What key approaches in terms of management and design is Rocket Lab proposing in a way
Starting point is 00:19:18 that you are that will make this succeed? Yeah, so firstly, we've only ever thanks price contracts for everything we've ever done. So appreciate your point on the scale, but I mean as far as like scale, you know, the Neutron rocket is a fairly large scale project as well, so there's internal R&D projects that have significant scale. And look, there's just a few fundamentals that quite frankly isn't rocket science. I mean, it's just don't take guesses. And where you have risk, acknowledge you have risk and take the appropriate actions both in margining or in technology developments or in technology risk mitigations to make sure those things don't
Starting point is 00:19:57 eventuate. And look, never underestimate the power of a fixed price contract to force the right behaviors because everybody in the company knows, you know, every project is tracked with a cost and underestimate the power of a fixed price contract to force the right behaviors. Because everybody in the company knows, you know, every project is tracked with a cost and a margin against it. And we make that very transparent for everybody on the shop floor. So there's no hiding. And I think it's positive reinforcement. And people are not just gathered around, let's create this piece of technology and on equal importance, let's create this technology and achieve this margin. You said something again that struck me that Rocket Lab is always done fixed price
Starting point is 00:20:31 and we've seen other companies obviously struggle to adapt to fixed price who didn't in a sense organize around that principle. Is this a fundamental aspect of a company has to be structured one way or the other? Can you occupy an expertise in multiple spaces or the incentives are so wildly different and the requirements so wildly different that if you don't organize this way from the beginning, you can't easily adapt into that given structures, approach, management, culture, you name it.
Starting point is 00:21:03 That's probably a fair comment. I think you see some people who are traditionally done cost plus in the movement to fix price contracts and they just have a really, really hard time. And I think, look, there's a number of elements there, right? I think it's cultural as much as anything because if you don't have, you know, there's nothing like a bit of impending extermination to drive the right behaviors, right? And if that, you know, that pending extermination doesn't exist, then there's no incentive.
Starting point is 00:21:32 And it's not dissimilar to, you know, the worst thing you can do for an early stage startup, it's give them tons of money because it just, it drives all the wrong incentives. All of a sudden there's big long lunch breaks and ping pong tables and all that. You just destroy a startup if you give them too many resources. So more than anything, it's a cultural thing than anything else. I think if you have the right culture, you can make any structure work. And, you know, as I've seen it throughout the history of Rocket Lab, you know, the structure of teams can be very different. And if one team isn't performing, it's often people, you know, think there's a necessity to restructure and that will solve the problem.
Starting point is 00:22:10 Well, it's not because I've seen, you know, like I say, wildly dysfunctional structures that just work amazingly because the culture is right. And I think that the same goes for that with a difference in contracting. I think you can make anything work. I was going to basically phrase a question out the same way. The idea of an existential threat as clarifying motivator. And it does seem at the incentives at the end of the day, if you want to continue with people want to continue having jobs and you want to continue having a company, it's there. I mean, that sounds, I guess, rather intense, but I guess that's ultimately what a commercial marketplace is like to operate in.
Starting point is 00:22:47 Welcome to Rocket Lab. Yeah, no. I'd like to switch a little bit into this idea of space science as a potential or maybe even the idea of it, space science being a potentially unique market for commercial providers like Rocket Lab and others. And this is a question I discussed with Richard a bit, but I'm quite curious to hear how you approach that field. Do you consider space science and the requirements that those types of missions have
Starting point is 00:23:14 as a distinct business case from launching lots of small? I mean, there's not an abundance of science missions, right? So the economics strike me as different. How do you see that? And is that something that needs to change or you can easily work with it and just given different types of incentives? It's a great question. And I think it's similar in some respects and different in others.
Starting point is 00:23:35 If you talk to the hardcore science contributor at the end of the day, they don't really care about a reaction wheel or a propulsion system or a trajectory or whatever. They don't really care about that ultimately. I mean, they do because we're all geeks and everyone loves it. But if you scratch it right down to the raw, they care about the data that comes off the bird or the explorer, whatever.
Starting point is 00:24:00 That's what ultimately is valuable. And commercial industry has advanced a long way. And programs that required a government worth of resources, much like launch vehicles, it's just not the same anymore. So my view has always been, let commercial do what commercial can do, and government should do what governments can do. If it makes no financial sense, and it requires a government's worth of investment and an infrastructure.
Starting point is 00:24:26 That's great. That's what a government should do. But if commercial can do it and just provide the real value, then the doors should be placed wide open in that respect. I'm struck by that threshold is changing and rapidly. Rapid. And I almost wonder, and I guess we saw this a little bit with Rocket Lab's relationship in this MSR reconfiguration reconsideration process, that it almost struck me as if there may be a cultural, not even resistance,
Starting point is 00:24:57 but just is it even fair to say an awareness about what commercial is capable of or even hesitation? Do you see that there's a fundamental cultural change that has to happen on the government side to say commercial is offering opportunities that we, that maybe they couldn't even provide a few years ago. Is that a required change that needs to happen? Yeah, I don't think it is necessarily as deep as that.
Starting point is 00:25:20 I just think it comes down to just fundamental human nature. People wanna build cool stuff. And if I'm human nature. People want to build cool stuff. And if I'm in the government and I can build cool stuff, I want to do that irrespective of whether or not commercial can do it or even do it better. But with MSR in particular, like I see that very, very much as a commercial and government collaboration because the government agencies have tremendous amount of information that we just don't have. And it's been learned over decades very painfully in some cases. because the government agencies have tremendous amount of information that we just don't have.
Starting point is 00:25:45 And it's been learned over decades very painfully in some cases. I don't view it as this like one or the other commercial versus government kind of a thing. It's like, let commercial do the things that commercial can do well and let the government interface with that, with the things and experience, the knowledge and experience that they have. And let's all just make it happen. I don't think it needs to be as digital as, well, all commercial should do it and it should be fully commercial and government should step out or only government should do it and just procure components for whatever from commercial.
Starting point is 00:26:18 I think it's a much more nuanced, nuanced approach. But I mean, fundamentally, if we want to do things more affordably and do them more often, then we should be looking at how can commercial reduce the cost of some of this stuff. And I guess it's worth emphasizing here that the architecture of MSR that Rocket Lab did propose involved a number of government and US experts partnering at various levels, right?
Starting point is 00:26:42 Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It's not just you're doing it closed off and you know, better than everyone else attitude. It's you're doing it in outreach. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:26:50 Just like we're the first to admit, hey, there's a whole bunch of stuff here we just don't know. So it's super helpful to have the people that do. Yeah. So it's more like a porous, you know, it can be like this porous or hazy threshold perhaps of as it's interfacing, as you said,
Starting point is 00:27:04 in various ways and dynamic, it does strike me that the approach just may seem so wildly different than what has been done for large science missions. And also the fact that MSR itself is strange as a science mission, and that the science in a sense is done already already and the cores have been collected and this is bringing them back. There's no science happening during this mission and then all the processing when you get back. And that almost maybe, is that true? Would you say that that simplifies it from a perspective of implementation? Because one of the challenges I always see with
Starting point is 00:27:39 science and interfacing that with commercial partners in the long term, is that the science requirements of these precise uniquely designed hyper sensitive instrumentation, there's not a lot of multiple application beyond that. So this seems almost like this unique intersection of what commercial could offer without having to go into these more challenging kind of one-off project approaches. Oh, yeah, you're exactly right. I mean. I mean, this is a glorified freight mission. So, no, it's true. So, this is a good point. And I mean, even if I look at our escapade programs,
Starting point is 00:28:14 you're exactly right. Like our responsibility for that program was to build a bus and host the scientific instruments and all the rest of it. And, you know, but the actual scientific instrument element of that mission is something very, very bespoken and not done by us. And nor would we expect to be experts in that.
Starting point is 00:28:31 But with respect to our sample return, yeah, I mean, no, look, the cores are valuable. They're sitting on the surface there and they're a hard one. So they're valuable and we want them home. But yes, at the end of the day, there is a count of scientific instrument on the whole mission is pretty low. It's like, let's get these samples, sterilize them and land them home. Yeah. Is that again, why in a sense the business case could make sense? Because the other question
Starting point is 00:28:52 I had about science as a commercial opportunity is that what we've generally seen, at least in how NASA's approach building opportunities for more commercial marketplace is that they're committing to some sort of long-term program. And so they're asking for private investment upfront to help develop capabilities with the promise that there's a market, at least a government buyer for, what, 10 or 15 years. And I guess you make it up on the back end,
Starting point is 00:29:18 if you win the contracts. And you have some sort of, when you're selling this to investors or trying to raise money, you're saying there's a clear source of revenue down the line for a while, but that requires again, a long-term program and MSR, as you said, is a one-off. And so this is where I see that match of what RocketLab already does kind of making sense, because you're in a sense reapplying or applying your knowledge and technology to just a different domain.
Starting point is 00:29:48 Yeah, but I wouldn't underestimate the fundamental shift. Look, if let's just play this forward if we want it. And if we were successful in bringing those samples back at a dramatically reduced price and timeline than what had been previously proposed. And I'm not talking like one or two billion dollars cheaper here. I'm talking, you know, dramatically cheaper. Seven billion dollars cheaper, I think roughly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:30:11 So what does that do? All of a sudden that redefines what can be done, right? So this is where I think you do create new opportunities in the future. Because if that's successful, then other scientific missions and other endeavors, well, firstly, you've just got, now you've freed up $7 billion to go and do a whole bunch more stuff. But secondly, I think there's some certain things in space flight history that kind of redefine
Starting point is 00:30:35 the way we think. And look, I think a good example of that is commercial resupply to the International Space Station and commercial crew. There was a redefining moment and I think anybody now would say, why would you go into a firm fixed price for sending astronauts to the space station? That seems nutty. But at the time it was very forward leaning and bold from NASA to do. And there's a number of points and you can look back in our history, even just building rockets. I mean, that was the domain of governments.
Starting point is 00:31:04 Now it's not. It's clearly like, I think if anybody has suggested that the US government start an entirely new rocket program as a government, most people would look at that and go, that's stupid. But let's not forget like 10, 15 years ago, that would be normal. And I see MSR as exactly one of those defining moments
Starting point is 00:31:24 where if commercial can come in and do a great job, if we fast forward 10, 20 years time, that will be the standard. And the result of that is there will be tremendously more science missions because if Rocket Lab is successful, you can guarantee other people are going to want to make money too. So all of a sudden you've got competition and you know, you can afford to do many more missions So you've got volume and you know scientists presumably making great discoveries so there's there's more impetus to go and do these missions and The one thing that I've always kind of hopped on about is that I'd much rather go and do like 10 small missions in a decade
Starting point is 00:32:00 Then one large mission and in a decade because if you think about the way you iterate science in a laboratory, very few times will you work for 10 years and do one experiment. You'll generally do a lot of different experiments and learn a whole bunch of different things along the way. And I'd love to get to that point where there's not one Mars mission every decade of scale. It's just like, we're just going there all the time and doing different things. And I think you only achieve that by democratizing the science missions in a way that industry can contribute. I mean, I guess we're seeing an experiment of that with clips at the moon. I'm trying to exactly pace.
Starting point is 00:32:37 And that does strike me though, as in sense is Mars about as far and I guess we'll talk about Venus here in a second. But are the inner planets, their closest neighbors basically as far as and I guess we'll talk about Venus here in a second, but are the inner planets their closest neighbors basically as far as you can run that in terms of frequency? And that just the scale or operational challenges going beyond, do you see that as a domain specific opportunity or do you see the whole solar system at some point being able to increase frequency while saving, you know, costs? Or is this a Mars and Moon and Venus thing just to start? Well, I'm forever the optimist. So I don't necessarily that's in the case, but I'm also the realist in the fact that if you're going to do a mission to
Starting point is 00:33:18 Jupiter and do some crazy stuff, there's certain things where it just makes sense for a government to go and do. Because either it requires a government's worth of resources or there's just so far off the ever being a commercial business case that has a risk profile tolerant enough that anybody would invest in that you should just do it as a government. So there's always going to be those missions. But I think as we kind of expand in our own solar system, I think those destinations will get further and further. But yeah, I mean, clearly there's a tipping point.
Starting point is 00:33:47 Yeah. And just right now an advantage to being, I mean, you can, I mean, even as the number of launch windows, I suppose, right? You can launch the moon roughly every month versus 26 months from Mars and different planets. In our last few minutes here, I'd like to just direct our focus from Mars to Venus and ask if you can give us an update on Rocket Lab's Venus mission and how that, or if it, impacted how you thought about approaching Mars sample return. Yeah, so firstly, the caveat to the Rocket Lab mission
Starting point is 00:34:16 is it's purely philanthropic and it's nights and weekends. Unfortunately, we're very busy building a whole new rocket, so the amounts of nights and weekends is not great. So progress is slow. But in saying that, we have a great looking capsule now and Neutron especially gives us some new opportunities with energy to simplify the mission, which we really like. So we continue to push hard. But look, I would have loved to be in Venus by now personally, but I just cannot divert resources off actually doing real work to go and do that mission to Venus.
Starting point is 00:34:51 But look, it's a burning passion of mine to get there. I think, you know, answering, having a crack at least answering some of life's biggest questions is super important. And every year we seem to slip a little bit, but that's the reality of just the nature of the mission. But I think the latest launch date, I think we have a transit window next year. I need to check with the team, but every sort of few months I get to catch up with the team and get to see cool looking capsule bits.
Starting point is 00:35:20 Do you see this maybe being one of the initial validation flights of Neutron? Could be launching something to Venus? It could be. There's the initial validation flights of Neutron could be launching something to Venus? It could be, you know, there's a lot of demand for Neutron. So we have to, we once again, I'm not going to win any. Nice to have a paying customer. Then pulling a Neutron off the line to go and pursue Pete's trip to Venus is going to go down like a cup of sick. But look, there certainly are some missions and opportunities
Starting point is 00:35:42 where it might tag along, which makes it a lot easier to get it up there. Well, Peter Beck, I appreciate your time and really interesting insights. So thank you. Oh, thanks very much. It's great to chat. We'll be right back with the rest of our space policy edition of Planetary Radio after this short break. I'm Jack Corelli, Director of Government Relations for the Planetary Society.
Starting point is 00:36:06 I'm thrilled to announce that registration is now open for the Planetary Society's flagship advocacy event, The Day of Action. Each year, we empower Planetary Society members from across the United States to directly champion planetary exploration, planetary defense, and the search for life beyond Earth. Attendees meet face-to-face with legislators and their staff in Washington DC to make the case for space exploration and show them why it matters. Research shows that in-person constituent meetings are the most effective way to influence our elected officials, and we need your voice. If you believe in our mission to explore the cosmos, this is your chance to take action.
Starting point is 00:36:49 You'll receive comprehensive advocacy training from our expert space policy team, both online and in person. We'll handle the logistics of scheduling your meetings with your representatives, and you'll also gain access to exclusive events and social gatherings with fellow space advocates. This year's Day of Action takes place on Monday, March 24th, 2025. Don't miss your opportunity to help shape the future of space exploration. Register now at planetary.org slash day of action. Now joining me on the show is Richard French.
Starting point is 00:37:25 Richard French leads the business development and strategy for Rocket Lab and had worked at JPL, NASA's JPL, for over 10 years. He also spent time at NASA headquarters working on technology applications and development. And his personal experience ranges from spacecraft like S-MAP to maybe perhaps more relevantly for our discussion today, missions like the Mars Curiosity Rover landing system. He joins us now. Richard French, welcome to the Space Policy Edition. Nice meeting you, Casey. Thanks for having me.
Starting point is 00:38:01 So let's jump right into it. Rocket Lab proposed a concept for Mars sample return in response to NASA's bigger re-envisioning of its architecture. NASA did not select or even really, they didn't say any particular commercial company but they really seemed to focus on two potential paths forward of which it didn't seem like the Rocket Lab proposal was one of them. In response I've actually found it very refreshingly transparent to see how your company has said, well, we had an idea too,
Starting point is 00:38:31 and we want to have it considered more broadly. What is that idea? Yeah, thanks. Yeah, our MSR architecture and our website has a nice overview of this. You can see some good graphics has three main elements, three launches in fact. We have a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter, which has allowed us to take some of the requirements that were on the ERO for relay and put that into a dedicated asset that will
Starting point is 00:38:56 provide capability beyond the MSR mission. In fact, it decouples that launch from the rest of the architecture, which helps as well. The sample return lander launch is very similar to NASA. It's got a sample arm, it's got a MAV, and then the Earth return orbiter is the third launch, and that has the RPO kit, the caching, the capture and retrieval system, as well as an Earth entry system. And so at the architecture level, aside from our breaking out the Mars Telecommunications
Starting point is 00:39:31 Orbiter as a way to simplify the architecture, but also add more value to the Mars program in general, it looks a lot like the NASA at that kind of high level spider chart view of the mission. Maybe just for our listeners, what is distinct? So you mentioned the Mars telecom orbiter. I think that was, telecom was originally envisioned to be provided by the European return orbiter that was going to be there first, just temporarily, and then it would leave. What
Starting point is 00:39:56 makes this distinct in a way that you think is important for mission success and also cost? Yeah, so zooming in just one level down, it starts to look very different. So the biggest difference is that it's a single commercial led implementation. It's got key NASA collaboration, however, and we'll come back to that. But having a single organization,
Starting point is 00:40:16 a commercial organization lead that implementation with some of the characteristics that we have is really key, not just for achieving the technical, but also achieving the cost and schedule. EDL is a difference. It depends on kind of what baseline you're comparing against, right? Let's say we kind of have this moving baseline, but... Let's say that what became the $11 billion concept, the one that we were kind of working
Starting point is 00:40:42 with for the last few years. Yeah, where everyone was kind of designing against, exactly. So what we decided is we wanted to fit within the Perseverance AeroShell and Heritage EDL system. And so that's what we constrained our landed system to fit within. So we use the Heritage Perseverance AeroShell and the Heritage TPS, and that also allows us because of our mass not to exceed to fit within the Heritage parachute.
Starting point is 00:41:06 Innovative MAV, we have a single-stage-to-orbit Mars Ascent Vehicle with a very simple launch sequence that eliminates the complex ejection system that we see with the NASA solid system. The engine on that MAV is also a common engine with the ERO. We love liquid propellant and liquid propulsion at Rocket Lab. And in fact, that engine is evolved from our heritage Rutherford that flies on Electron. And so that common engine across the ERO and the MAV is an important feature.
Starting point is 00:41:37 And just generally using chemical propulsion. And so we like chemical propulsion for simplifying the MAV. It's a heritage approach, which has been flown on many Mars missions. But we also like chemical for the ERO, which reduces the duration of the mission and it reduces the complexity,
Starting point is 00:41:54 low thrust and emission design complexity. We are solar power experts. Rocket Lab has the highest efficiency space solar power cells in the world. And so a solar powered lander eliminates nuclear power sources. We also have simplified robotics, and so a simple arm that has perseverance drive up near our lander and drop the samples within the working volume of our sample arm that simply
Starting point is 00:42:19 puts the samples into the Orban A sample canister. The simplified robotics also appear on the ERO for the capture and retrieval and the sterilization process. RPO is unique. We think we have some innovations on the RPO once we get into orbit with the sample that we consider somewhat competitive. So we won't get into the details, but there's proven sensors and capabilities
Starting point is 00:42:43 and talk a little bit more about the missions that we're doing today that use those. And we're really excited to bring some of our expertise in supporting lunar landers to bear. And so we're participating right now in the Blue Ghost mission. And so some of the software capabilities and approaches that we're using on lunar landers, we'd expect to make use also here. So there's a lot of features that start to look a little bit different than the NASA baseline, which you zoom in one layer down. There's two kind of themes I'm hearing here, and I'd like to explore both of them. But let's think about the idea of simplification.
Starting point is 00:43:21 And let's kind of expand some of those acronyms just to make sure everyone can keep up with them. But ER is Earthly Turnover, MAV is our Mars Ascent Vehicle, our rocket from the surface. And PRO is that the capture device. RPO, yeah. Random Approximity Operation in Docking. You talk about chemical.
Starting point is 00:43:38 And so, and again, just to make it clear, so I think the European orbiter was going to be solar electric propulsion. But you mentioned it with the MAV. What was the baseline MAV? Not chemical, we're talking about solids versus liquid propellants. Is that the key there?
Starting point is 00:43:52 That's exactly right. Explain that one a little more. So NASA had a solid rocket. And in fact, the solid rocket was a multi-stage vehicle. So it was a two-stage solid. But it also had an RCS system, which was liquid propellant. So there's a lot of different systems all coming together in the MAD, and it also required an ejection system, which would sort of throw the rocket into the air before it was lit.
Starting point is 00:44:18 And so there was a fair amount of complexity with that. We went with a bi-propellant chemical liquid propulsion system with propellant types which the thermal characteristics are very well understood. In fact, they can freeze if you want them to. We size our thermal system so they don't, but that's a robustness. And it's a single-stage orbit. So you only have one engine, gimbaled, which provides a huge amount of control authority, and that gets you to orbit with a single stage. In terms of the idea of simplicity, is this a fundamental ethos of working at a company like Rocket Lab or is it almost a requirement when you're working at a company like Rocket Lab that has to be, in a sense, able to stand on its own two feet. Where does that, is that helpful in a sense of helping constrain or prevent
Starting point is 00:45:05 kind of cascades of complexity from developing in terms of these types of requirements setting? Yeah, I think it manifests itself in a few ways. I mean, the first is that as the global leader in dedicated small launch, we think we know how to build small rockets and all of the philosophies and experience that we had doing that we applied to this MAV concept. And so that, you know, we benefit from a lot of experience in that domain now. I can think of very few companies that actually have an experience that would be relevant to launching a small rocket off Mars.
Starting point is 00:45:38 You know, Rocket Lab isn't that small group of people that have relevant experience. I think you are right though, that being a commercial company and having a set of incentives and pressures on you to execute, because if you don't, then you go bankrupt and everyone goes away. That does drive innovation, but you're holding yourself to some very specific objectives. We've got to do it in a certain amount of time and we have to do it within a certain amount of money. And I think that resource, those resource constraints actually do result in a lot of innovations. And some of them, sometimes you want to put a little bit of complexity in because that's the
Starting point is 00:46:15 right answer. But simple, of course, is often better. You talk about this idea of a single organization implementing it and that's worth considering too. I mean, MSR was... I characterized Mars Sample Return as the way it was originally implemented, as NASA's science mission pursuing a project as if it were the human spaceflight directorate, and that they assigned every, almost every NASA center got some piece of this big project in order to build it was almost like a political coalition first design strategy if I remember correctly I think Marshall was responsible for the MAV Goddard was responsible for the capture and containment device JPL was responsible for the lander and mobility stuff on the surface maybe overall system
Starting point is 00:47:01 integration I forget exactly and then there's a whole headquarters office doing this originally I think even Glenn was supposed to build the wheels of the European Fetch Rover when that was the thing. They were just distributing this all over the place. And if you're big enough, I think you can get away with that because we're going to probably touch on this.
Starting point is 00:47:18 The idea of when you have so many different organizations, you're creating inefficiencies in management, probably, right? That you have these various other systems that are all trying to interact with each other, coordinate above that. But at the same time, that was, you know, without politics, you can't get anywhere. So in this concept, you said,
Starting point is 00:47:37 is Rocket Lab the implementing organization? And you're, in a sense, subcontract or would contract out to other NASA places as needed from your design philosophy. Was that the fundamental approach you're proposing here? Yeah, we certainly think that a single vertically integrated prime contractor with launch vehicle and space systems expertise saves a lot of money.
Starting point is 00:47:58 And a large portion of the MSR cost baseline was simply the marching army costs across those multiple organizations and industry teams. And so asking a single organization to manage it, eliminating a lot of those programmatic interfaces, but also resting on a vertically integrated technical capability that can eliminate a lot of the programmatic overhead and reduce the team size is absolutely essential. If your goal is to reduce cost, right?
Starting point is 00:48:26 I mean, if you don't care about cost, then yeah, and everybody can have a piece of it, as you point out. Certainly the political aspect of the European orbiter is an important one to note. We don't have any dependency on that. And I think it's also important to note that the European orbiter is not free. There's a lot of US machinery required to receive it it and it didn't include a lot of the costly elements of
Starting point is 00:48:49 what our system includes in the ERO. That's the rendezvous proximity operations, the CCRS, the EES, a lot of those were still US industry or NASA contributed elements. That's an interesting point. I didn't even reflect on that. You're proposing in this a unified concept with a return orbiter provided all in one package instead of having it given free, you know, as you point out, quote unquote, free by the Europeans and it still comes in. I think your estimate was around 4 billion as opposed to I think the original concept was 11 eventually and then these two new paths forward maybe seven-ish that Ness talked about. That's exactly right.
Starting point is 00:49:25 Is it true that a large portion of your business is these kind of component level? I mean, can you just mention that a little bit? So I mean, Rocket Lab is more than just a rocket launch company, right? Absolutely. Is there a larger component to your business that just isn't as visible, I would say,
Starting point is 00:49:39 probably to fans or folks watching on the outside? Yeah, it's visible to the folks that look close, but I think that, you know, since our name is Rocket Lab and the Rockets are such a high profile part of what we do, particularly this year when we'll be bringing Neutron to the launch pad in middle of this year, yeah, it kind of gets lost sometimes in the narrative. And so-
Starting point is 00:50:00 Well, everyone goes to watch a Rocket launch. No one is going to be watching Ron seeing a component delivered to the launch. Exactly. Right, like it's- Exactly. This is going to be watching Ron seeing a component delivered. Exactly. Right? Exactly. This is not that moment isn't the same. And a lot of the time, it's our customer's mission.
Starting point is 00:50:12 We were really grateful that Firefly wanted to highlight our role doing software for BlueGhost. That was really appreciated, because a lot of times, when you're a component provider, you're not acknowledged, because it's the customer's mission. But Rocket Lab has the largest space solar power factory in the Western world in Albuquerque. We have the highest efficiency solar cells,
Starting point is 00:50:33 space solar cells in the world. We have reaction wheels and star tractors, radios, separation systems. We've got a very unique flight software, ground software, and digital engineering tools that we sell. We sell spacecraft buses, and we're a prime contractor for end-to-end missions. And so, we've got 43 satellites in our production backlog right now. If you come and visit us in Long Beach, you'll see a clean room full of satellites being integrated. If you go to any of
Starting point is 00:50:59 our factories, you'll see a ton of hardware in process for delivery to customers. And so there's a lot of scale being built at the component level for serving constellations, commercial, government, and a broad range of missions. And then we're continuing on our journey of growing up the value chain. So MSR, I think, is classically just said a very difficult problem, right? You have a number of choke points, the single points of failure. Things have to work. And if they don't work, you lose these samples
Starting point is 00:51:32 that Perseverance has been spending four years collecting. I can see critiques of this proposal saying, well, it's all well and good that this upstart commercial company has all this experience, but they've never actually landed on Mars. They've never had to operate on Mars themselves. To take this maximalist critique, how do you respond to that? It's like these are too precious in a sense of samples.
Starting point is 00:51:54 They have to work. Can we take a risk on someone who is, while capable, technically unproven on the surface of Mars? How do you respond to that? Yeah, I've got some responses, but I would also ask the question, what are these samples worth? Because if the science community and our stakeholders don't think that they're worth $7 billion, then they're never coming back. And so we have to balance that perspective against what resources are really available to bring them back.
Starting point is 00:52:26 And so we think we can balance that. Quite frankly, we think there's a lot of outdated thinking. The realization that some of the traditionally hard problems are now very executable by commercial is real. We have the tech required to do MSR. What's an example of a hard problem that was maybe had outdated thinking, like in a concrete way that you saw? I mean, propulsion is a hard problem.
Starting point is 00:52:51 The simple energetics. So it's hard enough to get to and stop at Mars. We're demonstrating that at Escapade. But coming home really increases the gear ratio. And so just in the mission design, you know, every gram that you need to bring, you know, take to Mars and then bring back with you has a huge gear ratio on propellant sizing. So you need a team that does hyper-pump mass-fraction vehicles well. That's an area that we've just specialized in and we have, we've flown a number and we
Starting point is 00:53:16 have many in development. I think everyone views EDL as a hard problem. And of course, propulsion is an enabling technology when you're doing EDL and we have a propulsive lander. That's our approach is a pretty traditional propulsive lander architecture. But there's a lot of other tech required. Entry capsules with TPS and parachutes. Well, we've been working those for our Venus mission.
Starting point is 00:53:38 We've got all the GNC propulsion and flight dynamics that we are demonstrating at time and again on the Varta missions, landing sensors and algorithms, landers that have to deal with surface interaction like plume and touchdown. We're not saying that there's not zero development to put all that technology into the context of this mission, but all that stuff is being done by industry today. And we're on our way to the moon with a team that's going to take a shot on that goal. RPO is a hard problem.
Starting point is 00:54:06 We need a rendezvous at Mars. Well we have RPO missions. We've supported multiple RPO missions through our flight software team. We recently launched the address submission for Astroscale and just got really good position them really close for their own RPO mission. So we've worked with a lot of customers that do RPO and we're doing them ourselves on our own missions like Victus Hayes.
Starting point is 00:54:31 And the robotics is our problem. So, you know, it's an area that we're pretty vertically integrated. We do a lot of robotics. We do a lot of our own motors and pumps, reaction wheels, our separation systems have a lot of robotics, but there's also a lot of partnership opportunities for other people that do those already. And so a lot of those snowflake problems that I think people have the perception that no one else can do actually are being done much more broadly in industry today.
Starting point is 00:55:07 Do you think that's a function of, in a sense, the institutional focus or this in the sense that people working at, you know, classic research institutions are just not interfacing with commercial or that there's a sense of skepticism or that commercial is only good for one area before, you know, a handful of specialized areas maybe in Earth orbit. And you know what? I'll confess that I've been going through this learning process too. And I mean, you're seeing from some of the questions and the ones that we talked about that it seems to me the domain of low Earth orbit strikes me as very different than the domain at Mars or the moon.
Starting point is 00:55:38 And we're testing it at the moon right now where these applications work. And Mars is a different area to test. And it's interesting to hear this evolution and confidence coming. We're doing types of these things already that are just not, in a sense, making it breaking through maybe into the older institutional systems in terms of capability. Is that an accurate way to kind of frame this? Or do you see another way to describe why that perception exists?
Starting point is 00:56:01 I think there's a few aspects of it. So So you know, firm fixed price contracting, it's a simple idea, right? I think we all have, you know, understand the debate between cost type contracts and fixed price contracts. Clips is interesting because it's going all the way to the service model, which is, you know, the pendulum is swinging pretty far. And if you ask me, that is quite an experiment. So that's not just taking a traditional AO framework and saying, we'll do some FFP contracts for industry to manage more of the cost risk.
Starting point is 00:56:34 That's a very incremental, almost not very innovative step in the procurement process. And so to get what we're asking for, you don't actually have to take a giant leap, like assume that there's a market that supports the service economy. And so we do think that fixed price contracts and milestone payments are the right path and that they have the right mix of cost sharing and risks to minimize the cost and schedule, but also have adequate risk management. I think there's at times a bit of a myopic view about the roles of NASA centers.
Starting point is 00:57:07 There's a lot of ways to think about NASA capabilities, and particularly how they mix with commercial capabilities. And it's not just NASA leads all or nothing. The NACA roots of NASA, I think, are a really good historical model to consider. And that's really what we're bringing with our proposal is taking the specific technologies that they've already flown, like supersonic parachutes, which are made by industry partners already or particular sensors, you know, things that we've been building for NASA.
Starting point is 00:57:41 And so I think that there's a lack of nuance by some people who don't really understand how NASA even builds their own missions. But it is clear that there is some resistance. It's interesting that in the... We went there for human systems, right? We went to fixed price contracts led by industry for objectively a much more costly and much more complex problem. And so human exploration has embraced these types of ideas. And it does seem that there's a little bit of resistance to even just go to fixed price contracting approaches within science and leverage a little bit more commercial capability in the implementation of those missions.
Starting point is 00:58:22 But this idea of fixed price contract with science, I'd love to hear your perspective on this. And I outlined this to you in advance that hearing you already is perhaps a limited idea of how cost savings are implemented in a fixed price environment. And you mentioned this framing of commercial implementation, which I'd like to hear more about as well. So in human spaceflight, I mean, it was a big political battle back in 2010 and 2011 to push for this.
Starting point is 00:58:48 And then obviously paid off very successfully, particularly in low-worth orbit. But this idea, you're building the same roughly dragon. You're launching on a rocket multiple times. You're building the same thing a lot of. And so I can see how this idea of maybe economies of scale, and you get really good at producing one thing. You're producing lots of components
Starting point is 00:59:06 or it's communication satellites, lots of very broad things that you can replace a lot. But science, at least in the way science has generally been done in space, is to me, it's like question driven and you work backwards. So OK, we want to solve this question. Well, we're going to build everything custom to enable ourselves the best chance at answering that.
Starting point is 00:59:26 So you customize components. There's no off-the-shelf James Webb Space Telescope. And you've touched on maybe how that's not maybe too limited to think about how you get cost savings. But how do you integrate a commercial model of doing science when science in general has been so specialized? And even MSR is almost kind of a weird one.
Starting point is 00:59:47 It's to return the science, it's returned samples to do science on Earth, right? But it's functionally an engineering-led mission because there's no scientific instruments on the mission itself. So where do you see this intersecting? Do you see limitations of the domain of science kind of being more limited as a function of that? Or do you really see opportunities here of how that can help enable more science that is that cutting-edge boundary of science? Yeah, there's a lot of different ideas there and we do think there's massive opportunities. So generally I agree with you that science missions require that we meet science requirements. Now, and where you said the requirements are very important. If every mission were James Webb, then yeah, like there would be a lot of, you know, less missions,
Starting point is 01:00:37 right? And so NASA having a portfolio of missions that are set at different levels of ambition and requirements are important. And maybe we can return to this idea of how NASA can achieve portfolio balance and how commercial can be an enabler for that. But to achieve low cost, it's more than just scale. And so comparing science implementation with our launch practices is one thing. And there are a lot of lessons from launch, which is hard. I mean, there's very few successful launch service
Starting point is 01:01:09 providers. For sure. And that are particularly applicable to MSR. And I like the way you characterize MSR. It is an engineering problem. It's not a traditional science mission. We have to meet science-y type requirements, like the contamination control is really important.
Starting point is 01:01:23 And the way we handle the samples to maintain the science integrity of the samples is really important. And the way we handle the samples to maintain the science integrity of the samples is very important. But a lot of it is just an engineering problem. And so, but yeah, 70% of Rocket Lab is space systems. And many of those are already focused on science missions. We just delivered a science mission, Escapade to NASA. We're operating at Class C plus mission assurance on a number of commercial and national security programs. So we're not afraid to tackle hard problems in the context of also managing our costs and schedule and a firm fixed price agreement. I think that's important. I mean,
Starting point is 01:01:55 that is us saying that we are willing to manage some of the risk. We're willing to share some of that risk and that's because the incentives are there. Like we were running a business. I think it's also important to remember that we're an industry leader of components. And so our solar power, our reaction wheels, our charge factors, these component pieces, they can be leveraged at low cost regardless of the mission that you put them into. And so we leverage scale in certain areas, and then we do bespoke engineering and meet requirements in other areas. And so there's not necessarily a one size kind of fits all for everything. And I think that what I'm hopeful about
Starting point is 01:02:39 is that there'll be more opportunities for missions that are sized appropriately. It kind of goes back to this big leadership question of, well, what are we trying to do? If the answer is bring the samples back at all costs, well, then yeah, do it the most expensive way. If it doesn't matter when they come back, then take as long as you want. If what we're really trying to do is maximize science opportunities for young scientists and more engineers to work on science missions,
Starting point is 01:03:09 well, that sounds like a different problem to solve. And freeing up multiple billions of dollars with the right risk profile on an MSR implementation seems like a good step. Yeah. So, I mean, so in a sense, maybe to just, if I can say back to you what I was hearing there, there's lots of opportunities perhaps at the component level, particularly for commercial
Starting point is 01:03:29 implementation or is it just, is it a function of the domain itself? No, no, no, it's a philosophy. Okay. No, it's a philosophy at the mission level. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe just explain this idea of commercial implementation. Like yeah, well, so commercial implementation is just us doing our job.
Starting point is 01:03:45 I mean, we're running a business, and so it's not that complicated of a concept. The relationship with NASA, I think, is where it becomes interesting. So, how do we take a non-commercial technology like thermal protection systems, which are pretty bespoke? There's not a lot of need for blunt-body TPS systems. We're going to manufacture part of the aeroshell and then our partners at NASA, NASA Ames in this case, would do the TPS. And they have all the relationships to manage the manufacturer of a
Starting point is 01:04:18 single flight article and we can collaborate. And pretty exciting next week, I'll be going up to NASA Ames to take delivery of our heat shield that we're going to fly Venus. And we built it exactly that way. So you're leveraging NASA. Again, you're saying you're leveraging the specialty development pathways for your managed systems, I see. Yep.
Starting point is 01:04:39 And there's other great examples of that. When we think about plume surface interaction and being sure that the ejecta from our engines, when we either launch the MAV or when we land our lander, don't come back and hit us and fail the mission, we have a lot of analytic capabilities in house for that. In fact, I was super impressed by our team and how much work we were able to do on that.
Starting point is 01:05:00 But then there's experts at NASA who have similar analytics capabilities that we can check our answers against. And they have specialized test facilities that we couldn't go do the test in the context of our study, but in the plan. It's sort of just standard approach to go understand and validate your models in specialized test facilities, which are not commercially viable. And so there's opportunities like that all over the MSR system. But to go back to the cost savings,
Starting point is 01:05:28 like got to manage the team size, we're generally going to take responsibility for all the hardware deliveries so that we're really diligent about what the roles and responsibilities are and how to manage those costs. And so just to clarify, this pitch from Rocket Lab, is this a firm fixed price pitch from our sample return? Absolutely. With milestone payments, I mean we don't get paid unless we achieve a milestone. I think
Starting point is 01:05:52 that's an important thing to understand with these firm fixed price contracts is you don't get paid upfront. You get paid after you're successful for the milestone. And so that's where some of the incentive comes in, is you get paid after the fact. Now I think the managing the financial risk of that, it becomes really important how you select your partners. NASA needs to have a lot of diligence in how they select partners, and that they select partners
Starting point is 01:06:20 that have the financial viability to be there over the long haul. Right, I mean, that I figure was one of those other risks. NASA, in a sense, is trading cost risk from maybe some other types of risk. I outlined a couple of my thoughts on that. You kind of just addressed one, right? The business cycle or market risk of you want this company to stay in business, or if you do hit a road bump and you're absorbing some costs, I mean, Boeing is probably not the right example to use in this.
Starting point is 01:06:45 But the fact that Boeing has absorbed $1.6 billion, very few companies can do that. Boeing isn't necessarily the commercial example we're looking towards, though, I suppose. But yeah, so I guess that's an aspect you would have to, you make these partnerships very carefully. I want to give you the opportunity to make sure to mention, you mentioned again,
Starting point is 01:07:06 these Rocket Lab is not doing this all alone in this concept, right? So you mentioned that you would be like, Ames, are there other NASA centers or areas of expertise that in this concept you would be looking towards as partners in this project? Absolutely, yeah. We've got a broad range of partners.
Starting point is 01:07:23 So JPL is the center of excellence for entry, descent, and landing. They've also pioneered a lot of the contamination control, with forward and backward contamination control, and done a lot of the development over the years. And so, they're a key partner in this and we want to make sure that their expertise is brought to bear. NASA Langley is very important. They've done a lot of work on the EES system and how to have an impactor approach which meets the reliability requirements for backward contamination control. But they've got a lot of great capability which is traditionally applied in the IV and V of EDL, flight mechanics, aerosciences, aerothermal,
Starting point is 01:08:05 and specialized testing. I mentioned the plume surface interaction. And so there's a bunch of great capability at Langley that's important. We've been partnered with Johns Hopkins University. They're not a NASA center, but they provide a lot of expertise in deep space communications and navigation. And so we've spent the last six years actually working
Starting point is 01:08:24 on affordable approaches for planetary science and having in-house radios that can do radio nav was part of it and Johns Hopkins has been key. We have an established relationship at Stennis. That's where we do all of our engine testing and so it's natural for us to want to expand our presence in Stennis for the work that we would do for on propulsion for MSR. And then, you know, Goddard has had an important role in CCRS, and so that's another opportunity. And so there's, as you pointed out, almost all the centers had a piece of it, and so there are opportunities to leverage that, but you've got to size it all appropriately, right? Like, if our objective is to do it quickly and to
Starting point is 01:09:03 do it affordably, then we need to make those choices. I'm curious about your personal evolution. You worked at JPL, you said, for many years. You had a stint at STMD and NASA headquarters, and you've been at Rocket Lab for six years. When you were starting your career, early in your career, what was your view of commercial space at that time and how is that you know, Chloe you are bought into it now or you believe in it now, you work there but I'd
Starting point is 01:09:31 like to kind of hear what made that change or where did you see that opportunity come up? Was there a turning point in terms of an experience you had or how did your views develop over the years? I think I was always a zealot when I came to commercial and going back even in college. But when George Shannon JPL, he was my hiring manager that brought me and asked me, how would you like to land spacecraft and other planets? Like, I was like, okay, I'm hooked on that. And so I went to JPL and got to work on a bunch of flight programs. But I got really serious about commercial when I went to NASA STMD.
Starting point is 01:10:05 I had the opportunity to go work under Steve Jurczyk and stand up the tipping point in some other programs and kind of put my money where my mouth was in terms of figuring out how to do that fusion. And the announcement of collaborative opportunities is a good example of where we try to institutionalize the use of NASA resources for advancing commercial capabilities that ultimately would align with executing NASA missions. And so this kind of philosophy that I'm applying to MSR is not new to me. It's kind of been one of my strong beliefs. The most important thing for science, in my view, is to increase the opportunity.
Starting point is 01:10:42 We need more missions happening faster. There's just too few opportunities for scientists to propose new missions. And that's really across all science divisions. And so we can't increase the opportunity if the cost keeps going up. We can't increase the opportunity if the schedules keep stretching out.
Starting point is 01:10:59 And so the promise of leveraging commercial with NASA core capabilities, bespoke instruments, advanced technology, test and analysis with commercial approaches for lower cost but shorter schedule missions is that promise is just too great. And if we can just break through this leadership challenge, if we can recognize the opportunity, we saw it with a shift in human exploration. They already showed it can be done. And they showed it can be done, quite frankly,
Starting point is 01:11:27 on a harder problem. It just takes leadership. And for MSR, we're asking for that leadership now. Letting a commercial competitive procurement for a pair, and I'm saying like pick one, pick a couple commercial partners, let them get going with phase A in fiscal 25 so that we can get these samples back affordably and as quickly as possible.
Starting point is 01:11:51 Would you characterize some of the reluctance as the sense of what NASA does versus, you know, it's always for the biggest things that should be NASA in-house doing this. To give it away in a a sense, to a commercial company is to admit that NASA can't or to say that the agency itself has been diminished. Is this a sense of identity that's being challenged even though it has the potential for all these new opportunities and capabilities? It says, no, we do these types of things here and that is important to us. Maybe there's a sense that they would lose support or lose public awareness or some consequence.
Starting point is 01:12:29 Is there something bigger at play here? It seems like a contradiction, because in some ways NASA's just barreling forward with commercial part of it. All of everything new that feels like that NASA has done since 2017 has, I think, almost taken like a commercial first or procurement first attitude, except for the sciences. And it's already been really valuable speaking with you about
Starting point is 01:12:50 this. You've heard my, not skepticism, but questions that I feel like I still need to be answered. And this idea of this, I think what you're saying here is there's almost an institutional advantage of the certain types of commercial procurement and the selective and strategic application of them for certain goals. And I think maybe the key something that I maybe just want to touch on real quick here is this idea of increasing mission cadence, particularly
Starting point is 01:13:16 at the lower end of the cost spectrum. I was going to say, I mean, Discovery Program, which was supposed to be the rapid cadence, low cost mission, grown, you know, each discovery mission is over a billion dollars now which in launches once every 10 years, which is the inverse of the intent of that. Every AGU we hear how much more push out there is and it feels like the last couple of years it's been more than one each year. And so the rate of push out is increasing. Right. And you can't,
Starting point is 01:13:46 right. So I mean, I think I resonate very strongly with this idea, particularly for if one of your goals with this is to develop leadership and management expertise in scientific missions, engineering aspects, like getting new scientists, new engineers, new individuals up through that experience chain, you need things for them to cut their teeth on it to try and implement. Ideally, you want them doing good science and important science, not just quote-unquote, we'll just go do a science, which I think is sometimes thrown about cavalierly. But things that are decadal connected or priority, which it seems like there could be some aspect. And it might just be, again, this idea of knowing how to apply the resources in a strategic way in order to get to that.
Starting point is 01:14:30 And maybe you don't get everything, but maybe you get something important along that line. Yeah. You throw a lot more. Is that how you think about it? Or where's this proper fusion, I guess? I did for many years when I was at JPL. I put forward this idea of capability-driven science. And so instead of just having, you know, if you operate from the premise that you only get to do a
Starting point is 01:14:47 flagship every, you know, 20 years and then you're going to put all your requirements on it and then, you know, all of this, you know, momentum builds from it. So can you go the other way and say, well, what's the capability to do affordable science and start allocating decadal class objectives to it? And so it was about then that I was thinking, well, I should just go into private industry and start building missions and take it from that approach. But commercial absolutely will be an enabling factor for reducing the dollar per science and generally increasing the cadence of science if you can manage that way. We can't compromise on the objectives as they stand. The science needs to be decadal class. But we can have an important role in
Starting point is 01:15:25 achieving more science faster and within constrained budgets. But I think it's just important to note that NASA will always be the leading force for space science in the US. And NASA is the biggest funder of science missions. And that plays a crucial role in American leadership that needs to remain true. And we want to see it expand. So the key is, you know, how can NASA be a good and increasingly good steward of that responsibility and ensure timely results and commercial can help. For maybe people who don't follow as closely, NASA still in a sense has the key role of setting the agenda and as the funding source and you know I think that's important too. commercial companies aren't, you can feel free to grab me.
Starting point is 01:16:08 Actually, you could point out to your Venus mission, but for the most part, commercial companies don't do science themselves for the public good, just because it's not within a business-wise, it generally doesn't make much sense. That's right. You have a public sector to do the science, so you're still being paid.
Starting point is 01:16:24 You're still, NASA still has to pay someone to do science. It's just how, as you point out, how they're applying it. So again, so tell me how the Venus mission breaks that paradigm, or is this kind of a special case that is then, just illustrates the need for broader investment into this type of activities? Yeah, there's a lot of ideas there also. So I, yes, you're right. Science is for the public good, but sometimes science is also good business. And whether it's a company that does climate science for creating products, information products that serve unique weather forecasting niches, or whether it's a company like Rocket Lab that just wants to demonstrate that there's potential
Starting point is 01:17:08 to do decadal class science with small spacecraft and small launch vehicles. And so we can just demonstrate it once and help shift the narrative. It helps that we're pretty passionate about planetary and that Pete specifically has always been passionate about Venus and we kind of thought Venus needed some love. And so there were a lot of interesting, you
Starting point is 01:17:29 know, no pun intended, you know, planetary plans that lined up for that to make sense. But yeah, generally speaking, I think you're, and I should also mention philanthropic, like we are seeing a growing opportunity for philanthropic missions, but as I said, NASA is going to continue to be the center and they will lead it. And so they'll set the agenda and they'll create the models by which most of the science will get done. I did want to just emphasize how important it is to acknowledge the roles of universities and other research institutions, like our PI for Escapade, Rob Willis at Berkeley SSL. They're just a hugely important source of PIs
Starting point is 01:18:10 and some of the instrument and science capabilities that we consider bespoke. Like you can't do science without them. Our principal investigator for Venus, Sarah Sayer at MIT and our instrument lead, Darrell Baumgartner at Tropical Measurement. They're so specialized. And none of these institutions would exist without NASA support. Yeah, it's so important. I could not agree more. Richard French, thank you so much for your time today and answering
Starting point is 01:18:35 our questions and talking with us and our audience today. I thought it was fascinating. It was a pleasure. Thank you. We've reached the end of this month's episode of the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio, but we will be back next month with more discussions on the politics and philosophies and ideas that power space science and exploration. Help others in the meantime learn more about space policy and the planetary society by leaving a review and rating this show on platforms
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Starting point is 01:19:32 Or if you're a Planetary Society member, and I hope you are, leave me a comment in the planetary radio space in our online member community. Mark Hilverda and Ray Paoletta are our associate producers of the show. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Me, Casey Dreyer, and Merck Boyan, my colleague, composed and performed our Space Policy Edition theme. The Space Policy Edition is a production of the Planetary Society. Until next month, add Astra.

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