[00:00:00] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Welcome to the Aerospace Advantage
podcast brought to you by PenFed. I’m your host, Heather Luckey Penney. Here
on the Aerospace Advantage, we speak with leaders in the DOD, industry, and
other subject matter experts to explore the intersection of strategy, operational
concepts, technology, and policy when it comes to air and space power.
So today we’re talking about space launch. Here at the Aerospace Advantage,
we talk a lot about space superiority. But let’s face it, you can’t have space
superiority if you can’t get to space so assured access is critical. Can’t believe it,
but the United States is on track by the end of 2024 to have over 120 launches.
That’s a really impressive number, but don’t get too excited. The overwhelming
majority of those are SpaceX launches to support the Starlink constellation.
SpaceX is launching on average every 2.9 days, and they must, because when it
comes to medium and heavy lift for almost all of 2024, they were the only game
in town.
Further, most of those launches occurred outta the Eastern range. So while
SpaceX launch rates and reduction along costs have been game changing, the
reliance on SpaceX as a single provider, the reliance on any single provider, is
never a good idea. So what can the United States do to increase the pool of
launch providers and launch locations?
Well, that’s what we’re here to discuss today and to help us walk through this
important topic we’re happy to be joined by Brad Apple, the chief technology
officer at URSA major, the leading independent rocket propulsion provider,
Brad. Welcome. Thanks so much for joining us.
[00:01:36] Brad Appel: Thank you, Heather.
It’s great to be here.
[00:01:38] Heather “Lucky” Penney: And also joining us is one of Mitchell
Institute’s resident space experts, Charles Galbraith. And he just recently
released a new policy paper looking at launch. Charles, welcome back and
congratulations on the report.
[00:01:50] Charles Galbreath: Thanks Heather. Great to be back. And thanks
for the congratulations on the paper. Glad to be done with the editing phase and
move on to the publication and discussing this important topic.
[00:02:00] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. Every report is an emotional
journey for us as well as an intellectual journey. I totally understand. So let’s get
started with you, Charles. You know, I provided a high level overview of launch
where SpaceX really has cornered the market. Can you expand on where we are
as launch today?
[00:02:16] Charles Galbreath: Yeah, absolutely. So in the United States, and
when I say the United States, I’m focusing on the Space Force from a military
perspective, because that’s what we do here at the Mitchell Institute is focus on
the military perspective. So within the Space Force, there’s really two main
avenues for launch capabilities.
There’s the National Security Space Launch, or NSSL and there’s the OSP4,
Orbital Services Program launch contract. So NNSL is primarily the medium
and heavy lift, boosters that deliver satellites to low Earth orbit or to higher
orbits.
[00:02:50] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Okay.
[00:02:51] Charles Galbreath: The OSP4 is for emerging capabilities, smaller
launch vehicles that can do sort of a one off, small payload delivery to low earth
orbit.
[00:03:03] Heather “Lucky” Penney: It’s kind of a more targeted capability.
[00:03:05] Charles Galbreath: It is a more targeted capability. If you think
about it, Like travel right in the city here in DC, we have the Metro, we have
buses, we have Ubers and taxis. If you think about these larger lift, these
mediums and heavies as the Metro train getting you from point A to point B,
there’s only a set number of locations where they’ll drop you off and pick you up
from.
[00:03:27] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. Right. Right.
[00:03:28] Charles Galbreath: But if you want to get to a specific location, a
specific orbit in this case, then you’re going to be looking at A smaller launch
provider or utilizing the entire medium or heavy booster, right? If you’re that big
of a payload, but as we’re saying, a lot of the payloads that are getting launched
today are small, right?
And in fact, the proliferation of small satellites is can largely thank the
availability of launch through SpaceX and the reduction in launch costs that
we’ve seen so within those two constructs of NNSL and OSP4, there’s a families
of capabilities. So obviously there’s SpaceX for NSSL, but there’s also a new
entrant on the market, which is United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket.
They just completed their second certification launch in early October.
Unfortunately, the certification process is taking a little longer than expected.
General Garrant, the commander for Space Systems Command, recently
announced that the certification process is slipping a bit further and that two of
the missions that were originally manifested for the end of 2024 have now
slipped into 2025. So we hope that the process works, uh, through quickly and
that Vulcan can become certified for NNSL launches in early 2025.
There’s also a third entrant, and that’s Blue Origin. Blue Origin has not yet done,
uh, a launch demonstration of their capability with, the vehicle called New
Glenn. So those are the three that we’re looking at for NSSL.
[00:05:00] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Now that’s heavy launch, right?
[00:05:02] Charles Galbreath: That’s medium to heavy. Medium and heavy
launch. That’s right.
[00:05:04] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Okay. And so also just for our listeners
and to get me up to speed as well, heavy launch or medium launch is really
about, the size of the rocket because you need to have a certain amount of fuel
necessary to get a certain weight and payload to a specific orbit.
[00:05:19] Charles Galbreath: That’s right. And so when I talk about medium
or heavy launch, just to give you some ballpark figures, a Falcon 9 can get
22,800 kilograms to low earth orbit.
[00:05:31] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Oh, come on. Talk to me in pounds,
man.
[00:05:32] Charles Galbreath: Wait. Oh, my gosh. You know, that’s one of the
traditional challenges of space flight is kilograms and pounds. And there was a
NASA mission that anyway, That’s just a benchmark, right? The ULA Vulcan is
going to be, delivering about 10,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit. when I talk
about small launch, things like Rocket Lab’s Electron or Firefly’s Alpha rocket,
these are on the order of 1000 to 1,100 kilograms.
Okay. So an order of magnitude less.
[00:06:03] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Significantly less weight. Which gives
you more. I would think agility and nimbleness in terms of where you could
launch as well as the size of the rocket
[00:06:15] Charles Galbreath: Because it can’t launch as much or as many,
you’re probably going to have a bespoke launch trajectory, so it’s going to go
where you want it to, as opposed to if you’re a ride share on a Falcon 9, one of
50 or 60 or a hundred different satellites, you’re going to go where it wants to
tell you it’s going to drop you off, where the metro train is going to drop you
off, that’s where it’s going to put you. But if you want to go to a specific orbit at
a specific inclination, a smaller launch vehicle, if it has the throw weight to get
you there is maybe a better option.
And then just for comparison, since we’re talking about orders of magnitude
Starship, which is getting a lot of press these days, it’s a super heavy. We’re
talking about 100, 000 kilograms to low Earth orbit. So another order of
magnitude or five times at least, leap in terms of what you’re putting in orbit.
That can truly be a game changer. So when we talk about national security
launch, we’re looking at NSSL, OSP4, we’re talking about medium and heavy
and small, and we’re also now talking about super heavy.
[00:07:19] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Wow. Okay. So, Brad, Charles just
provided at this overview of, launch providers, traditional, uh, a new entrance
and the different trajectories. Where does Ursa Major fit into this ecosystem?
[00:07:32] Brad Appel: So Ursa Major is a propulsion company and we’re,
we’re. fielding and developing propulsion products across a range of aerospace
and defense arenas today. This includes solid rocket motors for small and
medium missiles. It includes hypersonic engines, especially for test beds and
targets and applications like that.
Launch is some of the roots of where our expertise really comes from, dating
back to when the company was founded in 2015. So, for example, I joined Ursa
Major a little over six years ago, and I came from SpaceX, where I led the
development of the last several block upgrades, major block upgrades of the
Merlin engine, which powers Falcon 9.
And I was lucky to be there at a particular arc of time, where we went from a
very scrappy early Uh, high risk missions all the way through figuring out
landing and reuse, from an engine perspective in my case. Yeah. Uh, and onto
EELV, the precursor to NSSL, uh, certification and some NASA certification.
So, since I joined Ursa Major, we’ve had a lot of, other experts join the company
from all around the launch industry, you know, spanning Starship and all, all
kinds of these other vehicles we’re talking about. And, and we’re applying that
expertise to, launch rocket engines, but also many other propulsion systems.
It’s been a very, very wild ride. we just had our first launch of one of our
engines earlier this year with Stratolaunch.
[00:08:58] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Congratulations.
[00:08:59] Brad Appel: Thank you. It was fully successful on the very 1st
attempt, which is sort of a rare, rare feat, rare, stat to have in the sort of new
space arena.
[00:09:09] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:09:10] Charles Galbreath: Definitely. Yes.
[00:09:11] Brad Appel: Yeah, the air launch liquid application is very
interesting. It’s interesting for me to contrast with the vertical 2 stage launch
experience I had with Falcon. yeah,
[00:09:20] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Right. If I can interrupt you, would you
please describe for our listeners Stratolaunch? Because I’m familiar, but they
might not be.
[00:09:25] Brad Appel: Sure, and they’re in the hypersonics arena. They’re
flying test bed where, you know, for those that may be familiar with the
challenges of developing hypersonic systems. You can’t exactly just get a
conventional wind tunnel and make it work. There’s extreme enthalpy, extreme
temperatures involved when you’re going at those speeds at a particular altitude
in the atmosphere.
And so. there’s also, you know, extremes of chemical kinetics involved. And so
at the end of the day, just flying those speeds in the actual atmosphere is one of
the best ways to develop systems there. And straddle launches is providing a
very rare capability to do so.
[00:10:02] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, I mean, Stratolaunche is really,
it’s interesting. So it’s an, air launched vehicle test bed, but it’s 2 747s that are
knitted together. and they’ve got six engines. So this thing is really massive that
you then, you know, load up the payload and it’s a horizontal launch that you
then either can do hypersonic testing or can, tip up and go vertical and go into
space.
[00:10:25] Brad Appel: That’s correct the current mission focus there is
hypersonics from our propulsion perspective, the liquid rocket engine, which
powers it extraordinarily similar to an orbital class rocket engine. And so the
conops and the technology involved are very similar.
[00:10:41] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. Super cool. So, um, getting back
into the space launch piece, there’s a critical distinction between the small
launch and the medium and heavy and super heavy and Charles, you and I
talked about a little bit, but could you both provide a little bit more insight
regarding the key differences, whether or not that’s, from launch location,
technical challenges or other elements that we should be thinking about when
we consider these different types of launches.
[00:11:04] Brad Appel: There are all kinds of interesting capability differences
between small, medium, heavy launch. And while the exact definition of
payloads, varies between them, a good way to think about it is, small launches,
sort of the minimum viable product of launch. Right? So, defined at the upper
bound as 1000 kilograms to lower orbit.
You know, there aren’t too many useful payloads that are under maybe a few
100 kilograms. And so small launches logical 1st entry point for a startup
company that wants to break into the launch industry. It may only take a few
100 million dollars of capital investment to get a viable small launch vehicle.
When you graduate to medium and heavy launch, you’re talking billions. so it’s,
it’s a logical minimum viable product, it has those advantages that Charles
alluded to with, you know, very dedicated personalized, so to speak, orbital
delivery.
But the flip side of that is, you know, the addressable market can be limited,
right? You’re not going to launch large satellites. You’re not going to launch
large quantities of ride share missions some of the, costs per kilogram metrics
are going to be a little bit more challenging at that scale. You’re on the other
side of the economies of scale. So, when you think about, you know, a launch
vehicle, as with most systems, you have, uh, you know, fixed costs and variable
costs.
And so, just to operate a launch vehicle, I’ve got a lot of people in a launch site
and avionics and telemetry and I have all these things that are cost regardless of
the size of the vehicle. And so, tends to bias towards higher dollars per kilogram
for a small launch vehicle. And then you also, what’s interesting, another
interesting trend to fall in the industry is really is reusability.
And, you’re seeing, know, Falcon 9, you know, on the upper side of medium or
low side of heavy launch, obviously setting the example for reusability in small
launch. It’s it tends to be more difficult. We’re not seeing as many players.
They’re really. being successful with reusability there you have less
performance margin fundamentally when you’re reusing a vehicle, which, of
course, is 1 of the best ways to drive down cost.
You need to save some energy, some capability to return the 1st stage and when
you have a small launch vehicle, there’s a little bit less margin to go around. So
anyway, serves an important role in the industry, but I think medium launches it
could be categorized as really the workhorse class.
So that is Falcon 9, we have a lot of, upcoming, vehicles entering here and sort
of that 10-20,000 kilogram bucket. You know, Rocket Lab Neutron, uh, in
development, Firefly and Northrop teaming up on a medium launch vehicle as
well. And that’ll be exciting to see develop. So that’s also a class where
reusability really starts to become viable. You can have margin to do so. And
that gets into the technology side of the piece, right? It’s not easy. You do have
to be architect intentionally to make those systems reusable.
But then, yeah, heavy as Charles mentioned, Vulcan, Centaur when it’s got all
of the boosters on board, New Glenn, Starship, of course, there’s only going to
be a few organizations in the world with the capital to develop those systems.
And and you really have to be intentional with a heavy launch vehicle about
what payload market you’re going after. It’s going to make sense for. Deploying
a lot of constellations satellites, just a lot of mass has to get up. It also can be
capable of some high energy missions. Maybe there’s some national security
missions that have to go to pretty interesting orbits. The Centuar stage really
powerful for that type of application. So those are some of the of interesting
technical and economic differences between the classes.
[00:14:33] Charles Galbreath: Yeah, Brad, thanks for bringing up cost
because you’re right there and there’s a couple different ways to look at cost.
There’s the total dollar value of the launch vehicle, that’s typically not what
people in the launch industry use, you know, in my paper, I talk about low costs
and I did it as an absolute and, small launch, like firefly, you’re looking about 15
million dollars to 17 million dollars for the booster.
Compare that to roughly 67 to 70 million for a Falcon 9, about 110 for a
Vulcan, and who knows what Starship will cost when they’re actually offering
rides on that. But again, orders of magnitude difference in terms of costs. But
you’re right. It’s typically, it’s the kilograms per dollar, that we, talk about to get
to orbit.
And so certainly something that’s larger, it can carry more, the, like you said,
Brad, the per launch costs, are then shared among that mass. The ride share kind
of approach gets you a little economy of scale if you will.
There’s another key aspect and that’s the, the launch locations.
Primarily, and SSL missions launch, out of Patrick space force base on the
Eastern range or out of Vandenberg space force base. On the western range the
benefit of launching to the east is you get some of that rotational velocity of the
Earth you get a little more mass to orbit. And it certainly helps you when you’re
trying to get to the lower inclination.
[00:16:04] Heather “Lucky” Penney: I’d never thought about that leveraging
the rotation of the earth to help me get further into space
[00:16:09] Charles Galbreath: Just a little bit, just a little bit. Right versus
launching out of Vandenberg where because of the geography of the coastline
you typically launch either due west or south into a polar orbit of course that’s
very useful.
So the medium and heavies will launch from those two launch sites. The smalls
can also launch from there but they have a couple other opportunities. There’s
Kodiak up in Alaska where we’ve done some launches. And there’s Wallops
Island, uh, out of Virginia where we, where we’ve done launches for, decades.
And so the small launch vehicles, because they don’t have as much noise, they
don’t have, as much of a safety zone to watch out for, you have an increased.
Uh, range of ranges,
[00:16:57] Heather “Lucky” Penney: You’ve got a greater portfolio of
locations that you can launch out of.
[00:17:01] Charles Galbreath: That’s right.
[00:17:01] Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, you know, it’s funny that you
mentioned that because, uh, flying little airplanes on the FAA charts, right? The,
the aviation charts, the maps that I use, there are airports that are also designated
as spaceports.
[00:17:14] Charles Galbreath: Yes are, and so I only talked about the four that
are currently operational. There’s Spaceport New Mexico, for example, that is
definitely trying to get into not just the suborbital launch market, but also the,
the orbital market. And so there are other suborbital launch locations across the
country that people can be.
[00:17:34] Heather “Lucky” Penney: But suborbital that’s essentially like, you
know, the Mercury missions, right? You’re just kind of doing a ballistic
trajectory
[00:17:40] Charles Galbreath: To be clear of the very first Mercury mission.
So, uh, that was a suborbital, the things that’s, uh. Jeff Bezos is currently doing,
with the New Shepard, right? So named after Alan Shepard, the, first Mercury
astronaut, those are suborbital. they go up, they, they breach the, the boundary
of space, the, you know, the Karman line, and then they reenter. They don’t
actually complete a full orbit. But the orbital launches out of, Patrick or out of
Vandenberg or out of Kodiak or out of Wallops, those are actually achieving
orbit.
[00:18:12] Heather “Lucky” Penney: So the suborbital launches, does their
payload is, does that remain suborbital or can it reach orbit?
It does
[00:18:18] Charles Galbreath: because the, the key factor is achieving enough
velocity to achieve orbit. It is not just about the height. It’s the velocity.
[00:18:25] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. Yeah. So we’ve had a great
discussion here on sort of the science of launch. And I’d like to dive deeper into
the technologies associated with launch and how they’ve actually shaped the
launch market. And, you know, Brad, you had brought up. This was really
interesting. And I hadn’t thought as much about it was the elements of margin in
rocket design, whether or not that’s structural to allow for reentry, the fact you
have to hold back fuel to be able to control your reentry and do that kind of
recovery. So I’d like to some of those technologies more because it’s literally
rocket science, but we had to keep it at a higher level. Um, Brad, let’s start with
you.
[00:19:02] Brad Appel: Yeah, know, a launch vehicle is one of the most
interdisciplinary systems that you can imagine. If you just think about who’s on
mission console, giving a go for particular launch, you know, uh, flight
termination, telemetry, avionics, obviously, whether, you know, propulsion. It’s
a massive engineering undertaking that makes it work.
That said, you know, there are some subsystems and technologies that are more
sensitive drivers to things like schedule, risk, cost, and certainly reusability.
Um, and so. Reusability is where I think one of the most fascinating trends is
for the industry. It’s a very logical way to drive down cost and to increase
cadence because I’ve, I can maybe work with reduced production rate because I
can reuse so much hardware. There’s an interesting intersection between
usability and the cost build up because of that, penalty you pay take the stage
back.
And, you know, as a typical example for 2 stage vehicle, The 1st stage, which is
the more achievable reusable element, uh, might be something like 75 percent
of the cost of the whole system. Now, this can vary a lot vehicle to vehicle, but
it’s going to be more than half. In order to recover it. I have to save a certain
amount of propellant and fuel, you know, fuel to make the trip back. And, I
have to, cancel out the velocity I’ve imparted, to help the, the upper stage get
where it’s going. And then I, I might have to, um, propulsively break to, to
cushion the heat loads during reentry.
And I also might need to, you know, end up at a particular destination, like a,
like a barge or a landing pad somewhere. So. When you that up, the energy
penalty to payload, it tends to be maybe in that 30 to 50 percent kind of ballpark
of I’ve relative to an expendable mission where I gave it every last drop of fuel
for a cent.
If I’m recovering the 1st stage, maybe I’m cutting 30 to 50 percent of payload
capability out, but then so you can compare those 2 numbers. I might be saving
if I, if I can reuse the 1st stage countless times and amortize it’s cost very low
numbers. I’m saving two thirds to 75 percent maybe of the cost.
I’m delivering 30 to 50 percent less value, but then you kind of divide those
ratios. I’m roughly still reducing the dollar per kilogram by about a factor of 2.
So that’s that kind of magnitude. Now, that said, not every technology can get
there. In order to have the margin, to come back and still still deliver useful
payloads to orbit.
There are two technology elements that are the most sensitive to be able to do
this. and one is the structural efficiency of the vehicle. And so this gets to, tank
material and construction method, uh, the pressurization method, the propellant
choice, kerosene, methane, hydrogen, you know, those, those tend to drive
different volumetric efficiencies of the whole system.
And then, uh, equally as important as the engine capability, so how efficient
have fuel efficient? We call that specific impulse. Is it how how weight efficient
is the engine itself? all of these things directly affect your ability to reuse the 1st
stage.
And then when you’re talking about 2nd stage reuse, which hasn’t been
perfected yet, right? So, so SpaceX with Starship is trying. There are other firms
out there going after it. It is a much more difficult technical task to reuse the
2nd stage. You’re coming back from orbit. There’s way more intense velocities
and heat loads to deal with, but you’re also compounding that economic trade
off right?
I’m going to decrement my capability that a little bit more than if I was just
using the 1st stage for reentry, uh, but I’m also saving some costs and so that
you have to compact compound that trade. So, whereas Falcon 9 has shown us
that. Yep. 1st stage usability seems to add up economically. 2nd stage reuse is
going to be a fascinating trend to watch in the coming years.
[00:22:49] Charles Galbreath: Well, and so 2nd stage reusability is something
we’ve, seen before as well as space shuttle. pretty, uh, impressive, uh, second
stage there and, and its return capability. General Chilton would of course,
admonish me if I didn’t remind folks, that that was out there, uh, yeah.
A while back and you know, we can also look at, the X-37 as, a bit of an upper
stage that it’s, uh, reusable as well. But you’re right, there’s, there’s a lot more
technology that needs to be developed, and, demonstrated. In order to fully
realize again, a reusable second stage, you know.
I wanted to just dive in on another little technology piece. And that is the
manufacturing process for for our rocket component parts, and so there’s been
advancements over the past 20, 30 years in terms of additive manufacturing, 3D
printing, if you will, as well as, uh, new ways to construct, metallic materials in
order to have higher heat tolerances or to produce them in a way that’s a more
viable for reusability and also the testing and making sure that they’re, they’re
good to go for that next launch.
And so I think there’s some technology areas there that we’re continuing to push
the envelope on and make good progress to improve the reliability of our
launch, reduce the costs and and really. Give us that assured access to space that
we need.
[00:24:06] Heather “Lucky” Penney: It is going to to be really interesting to
see where this technology and these innovations are going to drive us into the
future, but our existing launch capability right now really shapes what we can
have on orbit in the orbits that we can support. So, Charles, in your paper, you
discuss the four C’s confidence, capacity, cadence and cost. So how do these
launch factors shape the space architecture that we have today?
[00:24:28] Charles Galbreath: Yeah, absolutely. So the architecture that we
have had, call it the legacy system, where we have highly exquisite satellites
that last, you know, 10, 15 years on orbit, that’s largely because, uh, the
technology that we had to launch them was also expensive.
And so if you’re going to spend a decade to develop a satellite, you want to
make sure. That that launch vehicle is going to get it where you need so you
can’t afford for it to blow up right right so you have to have high levels of of
assuredness in your launch provider as well and so there’s this little bit of a
cycle that continues to increase cost and wait and delay delivery of vehicles and
that’s why we had these exquisite systems. These what some called fat juicy
targets. And now we’re beginning shift that architecture to a proliferated
approach. Well, one of the things that enabled that proliferation is the
availability of affordable launch. And certainly the reusability that that Brad has
talked about in SpaceX has continue to demonstrate is a key factor in lowering
that that launch cost so that has a huge impact on.
[00:25:33] Heather “Lucky” Penney: It is a major paradigm shift.
[00:25:35] Charles Galbreath: It is. It is. And so the way I’ve framed it in this
paper is you’re you’re decreasing the cost per launch so that’s one of the c’s,
you’re also increasing the cadence the rate at which you can launch. You’ve also
increased the confidence because you’ve demonstrated it time and time again,
and you have a certain, uh, trust that you’re going to get it to where you need to,
but there’s also the assessment of if I lose a dozen, 20, 40 of these smaller
satellites, that’s much less of a penalty than if I lost one of my massive billion,
billion dollar satellites, right?
And so there is some level of, uh,
[00:26:16] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Risk acceptance or attrition tolerance
that is built into this new paradigm.
[00:26:20] Charles Galbreath: So it’s a balance in the confidence. And then
the capacity is the last issue that I talk about in the paper. And that is how much
mass you can get up with, uh, with that rocket. And we, we’ve talked about the
smalls versus the mediums.
The fairing size on top of the rocket that has a lot to do with the capacity of the
size of the satellites or saddle satellite or satellites that you can put an orbit. So
those are the four C’s that I like to look at.
[00:26:45] Heather “Lucky” Penney: You know, it’s really interesting to think
about how, um, how that cost really imposed a certain, uh, architecture that,
and, and frankly, this broader paradigm of, of having the, the super exquisite
gazillion dollar satellites, but now by bringing down the cost, increasing
cadence, um, you know, increasing confidence and being able to dial the
necessary rocket capacity. But if you think about the total launch capacity and
aggregate across all of the launches, it’s really, we are in a new space world.
[00:27:15] Charles Galbreath: Absolutely it is a very exciting time to be in
space.
[00:27:18] Heather “Lucky” Penney: That’s like hugely dynamic very
exciting. So Brad has is a company like Ursa Major looking at all these factors
when you develop your rocket engines? Is there is there one of these of of the
confidence, capacity, cadence ,and cost on that that is preeminent from your
perspective?
[00:27:35] Brad Appel: Yeah, I really like the 4 C’s framework. It’s helpful to
think about priorities and how they might be important to phase over time. So,
so, to me, the, the cadence aspect has a fascinating relationship with the other
C’s and if I were to prioritize one over the otmher, it would be that one. What’s
interesting is, is if you think about the cost and schedule to get to day 1, the 1st
flight of a particular launch vehicle, if you prioritize, um
confidence, right? You know, very extensive degrees of mission assurance and
reliability analysis and testing and all that. That’s that’s very good. But but
you’re, you’re very likely to add schedule and cost to do. So, if you really focus
on cadence, getting to launch 1st, learning, having a healthy feedback loop for
block upgrades.
What you’re going to find is. Confidence will come over time. So, in other
words, cadence begets confidence, and that’s that’s certainly the story of Falcon
9. it started off with some high risk missions and then and then upgraded along
the way to get where it is today. Is this as this this workhorse.
And so when we think about cadence, it’s also, you know, maybe helpful to
think for a moment of what cadence do we need in the launch market? And this
is where commercial drives potentially a little bit more than the government
side, you know, Falcon 9, very impressive, on track for 120 or so launches this
year, driven in large part by the Starlink constellation.
If you look worldwide, somebody did an analysis recently that there are
approximately 300 constellations planned across the world. And if everybody
got to launch every satellite, they wanted to within those, you’d be talking about
a million satellites in low Earth orbit.
[00:29:25] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Block out the sun.
[00:29:28] Brad Appel: Exactly. And while I don’t think any of us really think
that that’s going to happen, it’s instructive to maybe benchmark it and say, okay,
well, Maybe let’s just pretend 10 percent of those are realistic and can be
launched and even and make another assumption that that that’s spread out over
10 years that it’s going to be a little bit slower to deploying than some of them
are hoping for.
If you make certain assumptions about the mass of each of these LEO satellites,
you end up with approaching 5000 tons of mass needing to be launched every
year. And that’s like, the equivalent of like, 300 Falcon 9s and so that’s, you
know, that’s roughly tripling the capacity there today. And so obviously, these
are these are very rough estimates and projeting out, uh, launch demand is, is
notoriously a tough endeavor. The FAA back in 2014 did a 10 year projection
of, of launch, uh, uh, uh, cadence and, and projected 28 commercial launches in
2023. And I don’t wanna pick on them because, because they tragically had to
make that estimate a year or two before Starlink plans were fully formed.
But obviously, you know, there were 220 launches last year and you know, the
majority of those are commercial. So. Um, it’s a, it’s a tough thing to predict, but
I think it’s safe to say that many multiples I’ll throw out tripling, but who knows
what the real number will be of demand for launch are going to are going to be
there.
And that’s so that’s another reason why I take it back to cadence. Um, and then
that has specific specific technology implications. Another reason I’ll bring up
reasonability. Is when you’re engineering these, these launch systems, and you
see the, just the magnificent technical components that come together, then you
see an expandable launch and it all gets crashed into the ocean.
It’s really just, it just doesn’t make sense when you look at all the, durable
engineering that’s going into these systems. And then if you’re a PNL manager
really makes even less sense to be throwing away what you could reuse. So
that’s why we’re focused on high performance for usable rocket engines.
the high performance helps you recover the vehicle in the 1st place and then the
reusability aspect means we’ll pay extra attention to sensitive life components
like the turbines, the thrust chambers. There are certain fatigue limited
components that need special attention in the architecture phase.
[00:31:47] Charles Galbreath: Yeah, Brad, I’m really glad you brought up
customer demand for launch, because if there’s excess launch capacity and not
enough launch demand some of those launch companies will probably go out of
business and if there is over demand by satellite providers for launch and they
can’t meet that demand and some of those satellite companies are probably
gonna go out of business and all of that then limits what sort of architecture
capabilities United States can leverage for its advantage. And so matching up
dynamic pull and push of customer demand launch provider availability is
really an interesting and complicated problem set. It’s a dynamic problem.
[00:32:34] Heather “Lucky” Penney: But that balance is really important and
not just from a, launch provider and satellite provider sort of commercial
relationship, the commercial balance, but frankly, that cadence spread that you
mentioned is really important from a military perspective and operational
perspective regarding mission responsiveness.
We’ve got to be able to have the right cadence with the right sized rocket to be
able to do the mission when necessary in real time. So this really kind of means
a variety of launch approaches and we’ve been talking about this today from full
expendable reasonable boosters reasonable upper stages sea launch air launch so
what have we learned about these ventures and these these types of approaches.
And how do they continue to shape the future of launch?
[00:33:14] Charles Galbreath: I think the ways that we’ve looked at getting
things to orbit, in the past is going to continue to shape the ways we continue to
look at opportunities in the future, right? Sea launch was a, was a great prospect
and, and the, the benefit there is you could launch into any azimuth.
Sort of a free range in the Pacific, but there were some logistics concerns
associated with getting the payloads and everything out there and ultimately.
[00:33:36] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Could see how that’d be pretty hard.
[00:33:37] Charles Galbreath: Yeah it’s pretty hard. Air launches is another
option to go into multiple azimuths and, uh, But that leads to smaller and we
talked about Stratolaunch launching two 747s, basically stitch together. It’s still
not a massive rocket like Starship
[00:33:53] Heather “Lucky” Penney: And you bring up a really important
point that that where you launch out of in the kind of rocket you have limits that
orbital location and trajectory you can get that payload to.
[00:34:04] Charles Galbreath: Absolutely.
[00:34:04] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Brad, was there anything you wanted to
add there?
[00:34:07] Brad Appel: I think that, one of the evolutions we’re hoping to see
in the launch industry is, is really having multiple high cadence launchers and
launch sites, uh, come to bear. Um, yeah. And I think that, you know, there’s a
certain certain technology set that that’s important, that’s helpful there and
reusability, but there’s, also an important site aspect there. of the, um, launches
in the world today and, and, and up, up to, to date, I think we’re at like 221
today. United States is, accounts for about 57% of the launches to date, in the
world. And China’s, China’s at 25%. But if you look under the hood at that 57%,
uh, I, I, I believe it’s about 92%.
are SpaceX and that’s nearly all Falcon 9,
[00:34:54] Heather “Lucky” Penney: And it’s, that’s a very niche capability
where it’s when you take a look under the hood at what China’s launching, uh,
what, what kind of capabilities are they launching?
[00:35:02] Charles Galbreath: Yeah, but, and, you know, I know we’re here to
talk about the launch paper that just came out, but last year I did a counter space
paper and compared the, the capabilities of, of China and the United States. And
when you take out the, uh, launch rate associated with Starlink, China is
outpacing us pretty significantly in launch capability and what China is
launching is intelligience surveillance reconnaissance satellites, not just
communication satellites.
And so, um, when it comes to Chinese launch capabilities, they really have four
primary, uh, terrestrial locations and they have a sea launch capability.
They’ve got a dozen or so variations of the Long March rocket. And so they’re
actually a fairly robust, uh, launch provider. And as Brad pointed out, roughly
quarter of the global launches. What I think is really interesting is China’s
philosophy about launch, uh, in the United States, we do not launch over
populated areas, right?
So that we launched to the East out of the East coast. We launched to the West
and South out of the West coast. China launches over land. they’ve launched
over cities and when they’ve had anomalies, they have actually had debris fall
on to cities and villages. Uh, and it’s interesting because. There was a launch
recently that debris fell, um, onto a village, but it got the payload to orbit and
China declared it a complete successful, right?
That’s a successful launch. This past summer, China launched part of its
proliferated low earth orbit constellation, and in the deployment of their
satellites, they produced something like 700 pieces of debris. That was a
complete success in their mind because they got the payload to orbit.
So they’re so focused on gaining an advantage over the United States and
becoming the preeminent, uh, space power on the planet that they are putting a
lot of those risk factors aside. And I’m not saying that the United States should
do that. Absolutely not. Um, but I think it speaks volumes about the extent to
which China will go to to achieve the advantage that they think is so crucial to
them as a nation.
[00:37:13] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah we need to be careful to not
mirror image there you know what we would do on to what we expect their
behavior to be they’ll try to achieve that advantage kind of no matter what. Brad
what is our key distinction from an industrial perspective that strikes you when
you compare us and Chinese launch?
[00:37:30] Brad Appel: Yeah, I, I think that the theme when, when you look at
Chinese launch, uh, in contrast to us is there’s a lot of diversity. So, so Charles
talked to the launch sites and, um, of, of the, of the four, uh, uh, uh, land-based
sites, uh, you know, only one is actually on an, on the, on that southern island of
Fanon. Um. And at each site, there’s multiple pads, maybe about 15 or more
operational. They’ve got the Yellow Sea, uh, sea launch operations going. And
so there’s just geographically a lot of diversity.
But on the vehicle side itself, you know, there is no such concentration of any
vehicle launching 90 percent of the capacity. So, or the you know, the US this
year had, you know, 2 different vehicles that launch from US soil 4 times or
more and that’s that’s Falcon 9 and actually actually Starship.
Um, there’s a little bit time left. Maybe maybe some others clear that clear that
mark, but just just by contrast, you know, China’s had. I believe. 5 or 6 different
families with at least 4 different launches this year, you know, and so those had
to be basically the Long March series that Charles alluded to. And within that
series, you have all different types of technology, hypergolic propellants,
kerosene, solid rocket boosters, there’s hydrogen upper stages. So it’s, it’s really
split across 6 different vehicle families or more. 5 different launch sites. And
that’s just actually kind of like the, the government side of operations.
There’s the, you know, the quote unquote commercial side of Chinese launch,
which is doesn’t always get get covered, but it’s, it’s actually burgeoning that
there’s a lot of inspiration one way or another from what SpaceX is doing and
there’s a lot of Chinese companies working on reusable launch systems.
Several of them have launched this year. They were actually the 1st to launch an
orbital methane vehicle last year in 23. And so, I mean, you add it all up and on
a sheer cadence basis, the US has superiority, but on diversity of technologies
and launch sites and and organizations launching, uh, you know, China’s really,
um, got some capability there.
[00:39:43] Charles Galbreath: Yeah. And, you know, we talked earlier about
the interplay between the four C’s and, and you’re right, Brad, the, the cadence,
uh, and the diversification also offers some confidence. And so let me dive into
that a little bit more. The two of the three NNSL providers or would be
providers both use the same BE4 engine on their first stage.
If there’s ever a problem with that, we’re going to be grounding two thirds of our
potential NNSL fleet.
[00:40:15] Heather “Lucky” Penney: I’m glad you brought that up because I
was going to say, like, diversification is a really important piece of having
resilience and survivability and a capability.
[00:40:22] Charles Galbreath: Absolutely. And so that’s resilience and
diversification from the booster itself and also the launch location. Um, You
know, we did a workshop at the end of October here at the Mitchell Institute,
and one of the crises that we threw at the participants was what we call the triple
threat. And it was how to maintain awareness over a potential, rise in and
aggression over in the Western Pacific while there was a hurricane that came
through central Florida and knocked out our launch capability while there was
an on orbit debris event. And, you know, I was. Feeling particularly sadistic I
think when, uh, when I came up with that scenario, but the participants
unanimously looked at how do we regain our launch capability.
[00:41:08] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, I was there and it was, a really
incredible workshop and a lot of the teams came up with diversifying launch
locations.
[00:41:14] Charles Galbreath: Absolutely. They came up with diversifying
launch location, not just within the CONUS and the United States.
[00:41:19] Heather “Lucky” Penney: But also allies and partners.
[00:41:21] Charles Galbreath: Exactly. And which is such a key part of the
Space Force architecture right now and strategy is the integration of allies and
partners. And so there are other launch providers out there, European Space
Agency, Scotland, New Zealand. There are a lot of other countries out there that
are pursuing launch and there are allies. And so maybe that’s an area that we
need to be investing some more policy.
[00:41:44] Heather “Lucky” Penney: I was just going to say, I think policy
was a key element that needs to be addressed to power and enable not just us
government launches, but commercial launches as well, where here we’ve got
the missile technology control regime, preventing us from sharing a lot of the
engine technologies and launch capabilities across partners, even if they’re also
members of the regime.
So it’s time for us to be able to, change and re envision what are the right
policies that we need to have as a us government to empower and strengthen our
launch capabilities, the diversification and locations across all of our allies and
partners. So we know launch is important. And China, as you gentlemen have
been discussing, is, you know, we say that they’re trying to catch up and surpass
us, but I think you’ve just made the case that in many ways they already have, in
terms of diversification, engine types, and locations.
What should the Space Force do to ensure that we stay ahead?
[00:42:38] Brad Appel: I think, as a first, clear priority, the Space Force budget
does need to be increased. The area of responsibility is vast. We have
companies deploying capital to get launchers online, but there are areas where
we can incentivize technologies and capability for high cadence.
And I think it’s important. There are other low hanging fruit items and priority
areas. The Space Force could think more about that includes international
collaboration. There’s some low hanging fruit there where we can ease export
control classifications and really improve the natural immunity and resilience of
the launch supply chain by opening up collaboration with partners and includes
vehicles and launch sites. And then also risk tolerance, that is, uh, an available
knob, uh, to help, uh, get to first flight, get that learning loop going for new
launchers.
[00:43:25] Charles Galbreath: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. and while
throwing money at the problem isn’t always the right answer, I do think we need
to continue to invest in, in research and development.
Uh, when it comes to rocket technology so that we continue to develop what’s
next. Um, so I think that’s a critical area. Launch diversification, uh, both with
within the United States as well as with international partners is going to be a
key factor. And I think monitoring the supply chain when there’s a component
that affects multiple launch vehicles.
I know what’s up to the prime, right? Or the rocket provider to monitor their
own supply chain. But if somebody in the, in the government isn’t also aware of
the criticality of some component or some raw material, they may make
decisions that are ill informed. And so I just encourage those that have that type
of sway to understand where our choke points are in terms of supply chain.
[00:44:24] Heather “Lucky” Penney: That’s really important because you
could have suppliers that are provide our vendors to multiple primes. But, if the
primes don’t have insight into that demand across the entire industry, that
creates a risk. So let’s just wrap this up while describing risk, because I think the
four C’s are intended to be able to address that through a variety of different
approaches.
But right now we’re, we have to be conscientious of the risk of launch failure,
risk of losing our space advantage, and we have to be able to minimize the
consequences when those risks actually happen. And the space community has
historically known for being very risk averse, and we talked about this a little
bit regarding, uh, confidence and cadence and cost and so forth.
How do you see the risk tolerance of the Space Force and the nation evolving to
be able to achieve the type of launch environment and ecosystem that we need?
[00:45:15] Brad Appel: So I think, the risk story of space launch has evolved
over time. it’s important to acknowledge that, the formation of an SSL lane one
is a, is a good start, um, to try to, optimize which payloads really need which
level of risk. But, you know, I think basically it just needs to be, cemented in,
really as many acquisition, platforms as possible.
I think back to, to earlier Falcon 9 development, there’s a something of a
comfort level today with national security launch in large part due to the high
cadence that Falcon 9 is able to deliver. Um, but of course that that started out,
with being an extraordinarily risky set of of missions of demo missions a decade
or more ago to get to where it is today.
Um, and, uh, I will say, even riskier than some of the, um requirements that are
posed in lane 1, right? So, it’s, it’s still not quite as risk tolerant as the conditions
that existed to get Falcon 9 where it is today. And so I just think that that I
talked about the 2 knobs that Space Force might be able to address near term
before, budget increases are available. And I think it’s international
collaboration and the risk knob. Those are more direct items that are able to be
controlled.
[00:46:32] Charles Galbreath: Yeah, so we talked earlier about legacy
architecture and how it was very risk averse and how the move to proliferation
and lower cost satellites helps increase our risk tolerance.
And if, if one launch fails and we lose, you know, 40 small satellites, that’s,
that’s a much more palatable, loss than a billion dollar, single system. We don’t
ever want to have a launch failure, but we have to plan for an architecture that
can both, uh, withstand that and recover from it. And then have some built in
resilience in the event that there is a single launch vehicle that gets grounded we
don’t want to ground the entire fleet. And so when we look at risk, we have to
look at the risk of a specific mission. We have launch mission. That is, we also
have to look at the risk of the overall mission. It’s being deployed and we have
to look at the risk of the entire space architecture and the ramifications for our
nation in the great power competition with China.
[00:47:29] Heather “Lucky” Penney: Definitely a conversation we’ll we’ll
continue more gentlemen thank you so much for joining us uh for our listeners
we will include links to both of charles’s reports in the show notes and if i can
we’ll also post a picture of his socks he’s really he’s really on uh he’s really
understood the assignment today with his space socks so again i can’t thank you
both enough for joining us today and helping us understand launch
[00:47:53] Charles Galbreath: Thanks Heather
[00:47:53] Brad Appel: Thank you
[00:47:54] Heather “Lucky” Penney: With that, I’d like to extend a big thank
you to our guests for joining in today’s discussion.
I’d also like to extend a big thank you to you, our listeners, for your continued
support and for tuning into today’s show. If you like what you heard today, don’t
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