0:00

Hello everyone, it's October 31, 2023, so EBL

0:02

Space Systems is preparing for a second launch

0:04

attempt after a failure back in January. We're going to talk

0:06

about what caused it and how they fixed it. Then we talk to Daniel

0:08

Faber and Adam Harris of Orbitfab, a company

0:11

that refuels satellites while the show's all fueled

0:13

up. So let's do it and lift off!

0:14

And with a third guitar, welcome to episode 432

0:17

of Global Dement Kins' podcast. I'm

0:19

David.

0:19

I'm

0:22

Ben. And I'm Dennis. And Blue Origin

0:25

has what I call an Instagram-ready

0:27

mock-up of Blue Origin. Or

0:29

of Blue Moon. And

0:32

it's supposed to look like it's got the like, Kapton-back

0:35

Mylar or like, whatever that the gold

0:37

Mylar is. But it's like a very trendy,

0:40

light gold. Just,

0:44

you know, it's another mock-up photoshoot. Is

0:46

it a slightly different shade of gold than most other spacecraft?

0:48

Yeah, it's like

0:49

actual gold color. It's like one

0:52

meeting, one

0:54

public relations team meeting away from

0:56

being rose gold. Yeah,

0:59

actually, you're right. I can see it. It's very trendy. Before

1:01

the show, we were kind of talking about how

1:04

an easy way to get your name into the news is to

1:06

put, you know, presumably

1:09

like a thousand bucks or whatever into a mock-up,

1:12

take some photos in front of it. This one, they actually

1:14

had Bill Nelson standing

1:17

in front of it with Jeff Bezos. And,

1:20

you know, you publish a new mock-up, you change the dimensions

1:22

of your vehicle a little bit.

1:24

You come up with new ideas about

1:26

the crazy things you're going to do in the future. You know, like,

1:29

once we build this vehicle, we're going to, you know,

1:31

solve faster than light travel. Or, you know, something

1:33

a little ridiculous. And it's like, oh,

1:35

yeah, there's our industry's new cycle.

1:40

Very cynical conversation happened. But

1:42

I mean, it is really pretty, you know, bright white and gold. Even

1:44

changed the

1:46

the feather logo and the

1:48

words bloom into gold as well. Yeah. I

1:50

mean, it's good aesthetics, right? Delta V in the chat,

1:53

I think would like a space gray version

1:55

of this. Yeah. It gives me a wedding cake

1:57

vibes kind of.

1:59

actually that's really good yeah

2:02

like actually this shape would be pretty

2:04

easy to do as a cake now

2:07

i just need to get somebody uh in

2:10

the next season of bake off to do it right

2:20

abl that's itself off okay

2:23

so back in january this year right they had

2:25

their flight one which didn't uh

2:27

make it too far it did uh something

2:30

had gone wrong which i guess at the time they didn't specify

2:32

um shortly after liftoff is something

2:34

like just after 18 19 seconds so somewhere

2:37

right around there um and we didn't know much

2:39

more than that i mean we knew we knew there was fire

2:42

coming out of places fire should not be coming out of

2:44

so what have we found out at this point yeah

2:47

so this week um the ceo harry

2:49

ohanley posted an explanation on a sub

2:51

stack um and it was

2:54

it was a lot of conversation

2:57

around to the issue but he also like walked

3:00

through the steps they took and and what they've

3:02

concluded um it's kind of cool because like

3:04

he started the description out by saying like

3:07

here's what we knew right away and then like

3:09

if you just you know put the torn

3:11

edges of the paper back together you get this you

3:14

know puzzle and it's pretty obvious the way that this plays out

3:16

but uh finding the root cause they

3:18

had initial suspects and

3:21

what took most of the time it sounds

3:23

like was um deciding that their

3:25

initial suspect was the actual cause so

3:28

the the root cause was actually

3:30

a design flaw um

3:33

their launch mount which they call uh

3:35

gs zero right the rocket

3:37

is rs one the launch

3:40

platform is gs zero grand support zero i think it's

3:42

kind of nice that there's zero indexed um

3:45

i think uh space x also calls

3:48

um their launch platform stage zero

3:50

or something like that or some part of the ground

3:52

support so anyway the launch mount was designed

3:54

to fit in a single ship and container

3:57

fully assembled so they arrive on

3:59

site they open the container and wheel

4:01

the thing out and you're good to go. The

4:05

problem with this is that it creates a very,

4:07

very compact piece of equipment. When

4:10

they lean it up vertical, the rocket's

4:12

very close to the ground. The bottom

4:14

edge of the rocket and its distance from

4:16

the ground is basically the length of one

4:19

shipping container minus the length

4:21

of the rocket. That's the clearance you have off the ground.

4:24

Maybe if you ship it with the

4:27

pneumatic tires empty and then you

4:29

pump them up when you get there, maybe you can buy yourself

4:31

an extra couple inches. I'm

4:34

joking, it doesn't have pneumatic tires like that. It's

4:38

very close to the ground because

4:40

of this design. What

4:43

happened is when they went to launch, their

4:46

exhaust flow out from under the rocket

4:48

was restricted. Instead

4:51

of all the exhaust getting blown

4:54

out through this ramp, a lot of it

4:56

wound up recirculating or at least enough of it

4:58

wound up recirculating underneath the rocket. It's

5:02

hot gas. They actually exceeded the

5:04

temperatures and pressures that they designed the heat

5:06

shield to sustain. That's

5:08

bad enough. They also

5:11

burned through the heat shield on the rocket.

5:14

That fire that we saw in the engine compartment was

5:17

exactly what it seemed like. It

5:20

was burned through from

5:22

reflected heat. I don't think

5:24

that we came to that conclusion on this show. I don't want

5:26

to claim that. We've

5:28

talked about reflections for these small rockets

5:31

before on the pad, but I don't think it was for this

5:34

particular launch anomaly. That

5:37

fire burned through some wire harnessing and

5:40

the ensuing power

5:42

loss caused the

5:44

whole rocket to shut down. Their

5:47

propellant valves failed shut, which

5:49

is the right way to do it. When

5:52

there's no power, there's no fuel. The

5:54

engine starved and the thing fell back down to the ground. O'Hamley's

5:57

post also mentioned what they're

5:59

doing to fix it. that they've actually gone

6:01

and doubled the ramp inside,

6:04

like doubled its height, and it

6:07

looks like they've actually scaled it out to be a little wider

6:09

as well. The result is

6:11

that the launch mount no longer ships in a single

6:14

shipping container, which is like a really cool like

6:16

badge of honor, but ultimately

6:18

not that important when it really

6:20

comes down to it. So it ships

6:22

in three different pieces. I'm assuming that's

6:26

two containers, one

6:28

with two pieces on this one. But when

6:30

they get to their location, they

6:33

bolt together, and O'Hanley

6:35

says that they can do it in a couple of shifts. So pretty

6:37

quickly, not the same as pulling

6:40

this thing straight out in prison. I don't know,

6:42

maybe a single shift. I don't

6:44

think they've said, but like, you know, it's

6:46

gonna take some work, but

6:49

yeah, you can just pull it out and bolt it together, you're good to

6:51

go. Last week we almost

6:54

talked about a thing

6:56

that is now confirmed to be a fitment

6:59

rehearsal. They bolted

7:01

their new rocket into their new launch

7:04

platform at their facility

7:07

in Santa Clara, in

7:09

Southern California at any rate. And

7:11

we had seen some photos on

7:13

satellite imagery, and I don't

7:16

think we actually talked about it on the show last week, right?

7:18

No, we didn't. We almost did, and we didn't. I think it made the

7:20

cutting room floor. Yeah, okay, there you go. So

7:22

it was pretty cool, because like the community thought and

7:25

pointed it out, and there just wasn't enough

7:28

really to talk about, because we're like, it looks like a fitment

7:30

test. Okay, great, what are we gonna say about it on the show? And

7:33

so that's what that was. They confirmed

7:35

that their new design works, and

7:38

now they are ramping up for

7:40

their return to flight. What's really cool

7:42

is that they had planned to do

7:44

at least one more launch of RS-1

7:47

in the Block 1 configuration, and now

7:49

they're jumping straight to their Block 2

7:51

configuration. Block 2 is

7:54

a significant improvement on Block 1. It

7:56

has 20% higher thrust, 20% more propellant. But

8:00

the Stage 1 aft module is

8:03

actually detachable and

8:05

then they're updating their engines and

8:07

switching to a lightweight tank.

8:12

And the blog post has got a lot of really

8:15

good photos and some good

8:17

descriptions to dig through.

8:20

But the detachable aft module,

8:23

it gives you a really interesting view of

8:25

the engine compartment because now you can see it from

8:28

the top where normally it's

8:30

blocked by a giant

8:32

fuel tank. And then I'm sure that has

8:34

maintenance benefits as well. But

8:38

yeah, they're packing

8:40

it up now. I think they're doing one more

8:43

assembly test before it

8:45

actually ships all the way to Alaska. But

8:48

it'll be there soonish. They

8:52

aren't being super specific about when they plan to launch

8:54

again, which is smart. But

8:57

O'Hanley's post says

8:59

we'll get to block to six

9:01

years into our program. And

9:04

doing the math, that seems to mean that

9:06

they're going to launch by the end of the year or early next

9:09

year. It is good to see

9:11

companies go through these issues. I

9:13

mean, it sucks, right? But it's

9:15

fun from an engineering standpoint to see the

9:19

solutions to problems. And

9:21

it's also really cool to see them getting close

9:23

to launching again. It

9:25

seems like they are very close

9:27

to having pulled through and gotten

9:30

past this issue. And

9:33

yeah, so we'll see. Chris in the chat says

9:36

it's Schadenfreude. And

9:40

I don't think that's part of my enjoyment, but I don't

9:42

know. Maybe it is. I

9:44

have the positive version of

9:47

Schadenfreude when I

9:49

hear about people fixing mistakes. That's

9:51

why I love watching BPS

9:54

Space because it's all

9:56

fixes. I love all those

9:58

manufacturers.

9:59

hobbyist manufacturing design

10:02

kind of stuff like just fun fun Alright

10:09

so just two short and sweet and this week again

10:11

and Dennis what is he first? NASA struggles

10:13

to open asteroid sample container after

10:16

grabbing a sample of the asteroid Bennu the

10:18

OSIRIS-REx mission returned its sample capsule

10:20

to Earth last month bringing the largest asteroid

10:22

sample ever to this planet. analyses have already

10:25

begun on the 73 grams of Rogalith

10:27

that lies outside the sample collection which

10:30

alone is greater than the 60 grams hoped for

10:32

by mission planners. NASA has however

10:35

run into a snag opening tag stamp to access

10:37

the bulk of the sample. Two of the 35 fasteners

10:40

unable to

10:40

be removed with current tools in the OSIRIS-REx

10:42

glovebox between this currently developing

10:45

new tools and procedures to enable access

10:47

while preserving the pristine nature of the sample. And

10:49

the next up rocket lab to return. Rocket

10:51

lab has received authorization from the FAA

10:53

to resume flights of the electron before the end

10:55

of the year. Because of the recent mission failure

10:58

in September is still under review though rocket

11:00

lab is confident that it will be completed in the coming

11:02

weeks. No details regarding the mishap have

11:04

been disclosed though rocket lab did suggest

11:06

that a chain of complex events led to the failure

11:09

of its upper stage. We

11:10

have

11:12

a couple things to talk about

11:19

then what's the first

11:19

thing? Yeah

11:23

actually the first two things are things that I

11:25

found online this week. It's

11:28

so rare that I like actually see

11:30

space news during the week that I care about. Like

11:34

it's usually like in preparing for the

11:36

show I actually like actively go and reach out

11:38

and look at all my sources and

11:40

this week I came across two things that are

11:44

quite fun. So the first one is

11:46

called Canapé. It is

11:48

a ship that is specially

11:52

like or specifically designed and manufactured

11:55

to cart Ariane 6 components

11:59

around the ship. the world. During

12:02

its like nominal mission it will

12:05

pick up a couple of different parts from

12:08

different ports in Europe. So

12:11

the fairings are

12:13

manufactured in a different place than the

12:16

engines in the core stage and

12:18

it will pick them up and transport

12:21

them to French Guiana. And

12:23

what's really cool, I mean first off the ship

12:26

looks pretty. It's you know basically

12:28

a cargo ship but

12:30

it kind of has the sleek lines of

12:33

a cruise ship in some way. It

12:35

kind of looks like a cruise ship. Well what's really neat

12:37

is that this is the first

12:41

hybrid and like cargo ship

12:44

that's actually gonna be used

12:47

in its actual application.

12:49

Not just like a demo. This is like an actual cargo

12:51

ship and hybrid means

12:54

that it runs on diesel but

12:57

it also runs on the power

12:59

of the wind. So it's actually

13:01

a sailboat and what's

13:03

really cool is that it has these

13:06

four vertical wings.

13:08

They're actually called wing sails and they

13:10

look like a chunky

13:13

very straight like not tapered

13:15

at all version of

13:17

an airplane wing. They even have a flap.

13:21

I don't know if this this counts as

13:23

an aileron but it's got

13:26

you know it's like two sections. One is fixed,

13:29

one can flap relative to it and then the whole thing

13:31

can rotate. And there are four of these

13:33

giant pillars sticking up out

13:36

of the sides of the

13:38

ship like the you know the sides of a truck

13:40

pickup bed is what it looks like. And they

13:44

aren't generating electricity. They

13:47

are being set so

13:49

the wind flows over them and pushes the vehicle

13:52

along like it is a true

13:54

sailboat. So in the Matadon post it says

13:56

that these are significantly more powerful

13:58

than conventional sails.

13:59

So does that mean that like let's

14:02

say you didn't have a diesel engine and you just wanted to build a sailboat

14:04

It would be better to build one

14:06

with these on it, which is to say is this the future

14:08

of sailing technology? Well, I mean, yeah, it depends on

14:10

what you mean by better, right? It depends

14:12

on your application These are significantly

14:15

heavier than traditional sails. So

14:17

for a small boat Yeah, maybe there's a

14:19

version of this that works But really traditional

14:22

sails are are really

14:24

really good at what they do Delta V in the chat says

14:26

you can't take them down Or reef them. I believe

14:28

that's incorrect. I believe you can reef

14:30

them I think that's what the

14:33

flap is for to spoil them But

14:36

either way you can point them directly into the wind

14:39

and it they don't really have an effect Because

14:42

because they're actuate like they're on rotating

14:46

So you can point them exactly in the direction you want and

14:48

you can control that by a computer and

14:51

they don't flap and like You have

14:53

a lot more control over them than you what a traditional

14:55

sail Okay, so the next thing

14:57

is Like public

14:59

outreach, but it's really fun send

15:01

your name to Europa There are a lot

15:04

of space missions that have put

15:07

names and or small messages on You

15:10

know a flash memory card and

15:12

sent them to Mars or whatever Europa

15:15

clipper is actually doing an engraved

15:18

plate with names and

15:20

I signed

15:22

up as soon as I thought that the That

15:24

the registration was open. I don't

15:27

know when the deadline is But

15:30

I'm assuming we've got a decent amount of time But

15:33

if you go to Europa NASA gov

15:35

slash message in a bottle with hyphens

15:38

in between will have a link in the show notes You

15:40

can get your name engraved on this plate

15:43

and send it off to Jupiter as well. I Really

15:47

like this. It's like one of the dumbest

15:50

Non consequential things you can do in space But like

15:52

it's hard to argue with the fact that buttons you pressed

15:55

on your computer are changing The

15:57

shape of one very small part of a spacecraft

16:00

And then the the third thing this

16:02

popped up in our discord. I didn't find

16:04

it organically, but it's very good Mike

16:07

Stewart who is in the chat almost

16:09

every week and we've he's

16:12

been on the show like if you don't recognize

16:14

his name I'm sorry because

16:16

he's one of the people who work

16:19

on archiving

16:21

Apollo software and in

16:23

this case fabricating Apollo

16:26

adjacent hardware He's

16:28

been posting photos of this project

16:31

in our discord for a while and it's

16:33

been finished for a while And now it has a

16:35

full-on video on the curious

16:38

mark channel On YouTube

16:40

which is like a really good demonstration

16:43

of what Mike took so

16:46

long to Carefully

16:48

design and build it is a core

16:50

rope memory reader. So the

16:53

Apollo AGC had Volatile

16:55

memory and it had permanent memory

16:58

for like its its program like the

17:00

binary compiled program that it ran

17:02

and they were

17:05

able to Go pull

17:07

some software off of I think

17:10

the one in the Smithsonian Like they

17:12

were able to extract the program that was on

17:14

there all these years later like it's

17:17

still good And

17:19

so the video talks about Mike's hardware

17:21

and the techniques that are needed to read a

17:24

core-rope memory and There's

17:27

some very good shots of a very

17:29

low Populated

17:32

board like he just had so much room

17:34

to work with so he just dropped all those components in

17:36

there there's an FPGA that

17:39

actually like does the voltage

17:41

curves to actually activate each of these cores

17:43

and Yeah,

17:45

it's a really good video About

17:48

hardware that like I've been lucky enough to

17:50

get to see everybody in the discord's been lucky enough

17:52

to get to see Little pieces as it's been

17:54

going along And it has officially

17:56

done this job. Very very cool. And then

17:59

finally We have a correction

18:01

burn from Aaron

18:03

Soddy on our Discord. In

18:06

the last episode, I'm gonna read

18:08

this because I got it wrong. I mistakenly

18:11

said that the Super

18:13

Dracos on Crew Dragon are

18:15

used for the big burns on orbit. That's not

18:18

true. They're used for abort

18:20

and they have been, they've been suggested to

18:23

use, to do reboots on station.

18:26

But as far as I know, they haven't actually done that. And

18:30

that's like one little slip that I made, but then Aaron

18:32

made the correction because I said like,

18:35

there are a lot of engines for

18:37

the abort on Gaganyan.

18:41

And I was like, yeah, it seems like a lot of engines when

18:43

you compare it to the four

18:46

Super Draco thrusters. It's actually eight, but we're

18:48

gonna say it's four because they, they

18:51

broadled the same, they're the same engine. But

18:53

Aaron goes on to point out that there are 18 of

18:56

the not Super Dracos

18:59

that actually are used for like the RCS

19:02

and all the orbit changes are done with those.

19:04

So when I said only four, I meant

19:07

like only four for abort,

19:09

but like there was enough mistake

19:12

after that, that it all came out as

19:15

a very poor explanation of

19:18

how Crew Dragon works. So, mea

19:20

culpa, thank you, Aaron, for pointing that out.

19:22

And reverse

19:25

the interview segment.

19:27

Today

19:30

we have with us Daniel Faver, CEO and

19:32

Adam Harris, CCO of OrbitFab.

19:35

Good morning, guys, how you doing? Morning, great to be

19:37

here. Good to be here. So, right, so you

19:39

guys, first off, thank

19:42

you for taking the time to talk to us. OrbitFab

19:44

is a really cool company and it's one

19:47

of the companies that is exciting, but

19:49

I'm not 100% sure that everybody listening

19:52

is gonna know what OrbitFab

19:54

does. And sorry to

19:56

call you guys out, but I think you kind of shot

19:58

yourself in the foot because when I... first heard of Orbitfab

20:01

a couple years ago, I thought that you guys were doing

20:03

like 3D printing on Orbit.

20:05

Is that like how did you get to

20:07

the name Orbitfab and

20:10

were you guys ever looking at doing fabrication in

20:12

space and then retargeted? Like what's

20:14

the history there? Yeah, that's exactly

20:16

what happened. We were looking

20:18

at a few business models when we

20:20

started off and

20:22

one of them was manufacturing semiconductors

20:25

in space, that's the fab. But

20:27

we found that was a really hard

20:30

business to get into. It was a smaller

20:32

market. It was just very, very complicated.

20:34

At the same time, we're talking to friends

20:37

in the space industry and learned

20:40

how much they valued extra fuel

20:42

in orbit. An extra kilogram of fuel could

20:44

get them sometimes more than a million

20:46

dollars of extra revenue. That

20:49

blew my mind. We heard that over and over again.

20:51

So, now, Orbitfab, we're the gas

20:53

stations in space company. We're refueling

20:55

satellites. I

20:57

feel like there are a lot of people out there who

21:00

say that they want to do on orbit servicing

21:02

and refueling and all this stuff. I

21:04

feel like there are so many companies, I'm just like, yeah,

21:06

yeah,

21:07

show us. It's one thing

21:09

to say it, but you're

21:12

just talking about it. But Orbitfab

21:14

actually, I think you guys have done more

21:17

work towards actual

21:20

on orbit refueling than

21:23

I think anybody else. Can we start

21:25

by talking about FERFI? Is that how

21:27

it's pronounced? Yeah, that's right. When we

21:29

started the company five years ago now, we

21:32

were thinking, what is the most important

21:34

thing to work on first? We thought we

21:37

need to go out and talk to more of the customers and really

21:39

understand what do they want? What is the product? How

21:41

do they want it delivered? What systems

21:43

are still needed? What do they have? All

21:45

those kinds of questions. But we also

21:48

ran into an opportunity with the International

21:50

Space Station National Lab. ISS-NL

21:54

is funded in parallel to NASA by Congress,

21:57

but it has a lot of the launch mass

21:59

allocation. a lot of the astronaut time to

22:01

do science and commercialization

22:03

on the space station. And they

22:05

offered to help us with a launch

22:09

as we were working on clearly

22:11

a commercialization of the space economy. And

22:14

so we were able to fly two

22:17

fuel tanker test beds to the International

22:19

Space Station. We called the mission FERFI,

22:22

which is an Australian

22:24

name for a water tank actually. But

22:27

yeah, great little mission testing interfaces,

22:30

testing pumps. We actually were able

22:32

to pump water back and forth in zero

22:34

gravity and then pump it into the International

22:36

Space Station. So we became the first private company

22:39

to resupply the space station with water. That

22:41

was such a great tagline, right?

22:44

But it was like at the tail

22:46

end of the mission,

22:49

was that an optional

22:51

thing when you went up? Did you know if you were going to be able to

22:53

transfer water into the... And

22:55

it was the potable water cistern too, I believe.

22:58

That's right, yeah. We went

23:00

up with that plan. I think it was

23:02

pretty straightforward. We're going to be sending

23:04

up a few gallons of water to

23:06

the space station. It seems like a waste

23:09

to bring it back down, especially when our

23:11

whole mission is to make things

23:14

more efficient from a logistics perspective. And

23:16

so we talked with the ISS

23:20

National Lab, we talked with NASA and said,

23:22

you know, our stretch goal is to

23:24

deliver water for you. And

23:27

that wasn't part of the standard operating procedure.

23:29

They have their own path

23:31

to get water into the space station. So you can

23:34

imagine, a few people looked at

23:36

us and said, can you really do that? Well, physics

23:38

doesn't say we can't. So did your

23:40

bureaucracy let us do that? And they

23:43

had to agree that it did and make it happen.

23:45

And to their credit, it was

23:47

not straightforward in some ways. They weren't actually

23:50

sure what the valve was on the space

23:52

station and had to go get an astronaut to go and have a

23:54

look because it's been up there for 20 years

23:56

now. It was designed 30 or 40 years ago. Yeah,

24:00

they checked what the valves were, they

24:02

sent us a valve that we could put onto our plumbing so

24:05

it would plug into the space station. They

24:08

made sure we did all the safety

24:10

checks. It had to be very, very reliable. We

24:13

don't want to over-pressurize their water system and make

24:15

it spring a leak. But we jumped through all those

24:17

hoops, did that in four

24:19

and a half months to get that payload qualified

24:21

for the space station. NASA originally

24:24

told us to expect it to take 24 months. We

24:27

had a launch coming up and we had to

24:29

move quickly and we convinced them that what we had was

24:32

very safe and met all of the requirements.

24:34

So it was crew rated for a NASA

24:36

launch in four months. And just

24:39

the fact that you were shipping water up

24:40

is like right there.

24:43

That's a bunch of qualifications you have to

24:45

go through because they don't want a water tank

24:49

over-pressurizing and exploding. And that's before

24:51

you're even trying to interface with their systems. It

24:55

sounds like you guys had more hoops

24:57

to jump through than you really expected. But

25:00

it sounds like the motivation was there

25:02

because it's just such a cool thing to

25:04

be able to go and do. Cool

25:07

for space nerds like us, but cool for,

25:09

in the business words, for whatever cool

25:11

is.

25:12

To show, hey look, we actually have

25:14

this capability. We can get this

25:16

turned around. Is all that reasonable

25:18

to say? Yeah. And

25:21

actually even more than just

25:23

over-pressurizing the water bus, if you have water

25:25

in space, because there's no gravity, it

25:27

doesn't drain away. And so you

25:30

can risk drowning an astronaut if you

25:32

have a gallon of water. And

25:34

yeah, NASA is very sensitive about this. They have a very

25:36

thick book of sort of rules

25:38

and design guidelines and things you have to comply

25:41

with. And so yeah, it

25:43

absolutely had to meet all of those requirements.

25:46

This is not something to mess around with. But

25:49

our motivation was to go as quickly as

25:51

possible. As a startup company,

25:53

we need to figure

25:55

out our market, figure out how

25:58

things are going to work, our technology. and also

26:00

impressed investors so that we could get more

26:02

money and get to the next step. And so

26:04

moving fast was very important for us.

26:07

And yeah, thankfully with NASA

26:09

and ISS National Lab, we were able to do that.

26:11

No, that's awesome. When I think of NASA,

26:14

I don't really think of moving fast.

26:16

And so I'm very happy to hear that they were being kind

26:19

of flexible and adaptive to

26:21

the fact that if y'all could prove that you

26:24

could get the capability and

26:26

get that water there safely within, you

26:28

know, to be able to go through all the

26:30

regulations and whatnot in just four months, that's

26:32

pretty heartening here. Yeah, the trick to

26:35

doing it was to take

26:37

some of the risk on the company. So

26:39

for example, when we

26:41

were certain that we had a design that would work, we

26:44

knew that we had to pass it by NASA and get their

26:46

approval. We went ahead and built it as

26:48

quickly as we could, taking on the risk

26:51

that if NASA said they didn't like them that way,

26:53

we'd done it, we would have to start again. But

26:55

we felt confident that we'd understood what NASA

26:57

had said, we'd built, you know, good working

26:59

relationships, really good working relationships with

27:02

them. And they were happy that

27:04

if they were convinced it was good to fly, we

27:06

didn't have to go any sequential order,

27:08

we just had to end up in the right state.

27:11

So we took on the risk that we would have been

27:13

delayed by having to restart if we got something wrong.

27:16

And NASA was prepared to say, if you

27:18

get it right, we can fly it,

27:20

but you've got to get it right. So this mission was

27:23

two separate pieces of equipment, a

27:25

tanker and like a receiver,

27:28

right? And every time we said flexible

27:31

in terms of business

27:33

operations or manufacturing practices,

27:36

I've just been on the edge of my tongue,

27:38

I've been like flex tank, there's a there's

27:40

a pun there, flex tank. And so your

27:43

receiver was actually a flexible,

27:46

expandable container. What was the

27:49

other half of the experiment called? I haven't been able

27:50

to find it. Yeah, we just called the whole experiment

27:53

FERFI. And I guess the there

27:55

was a rigid tank and a flexible tank. So

27:58

the rigid tank had had three gallons of fuel. of water

28:00

in it. The flexible tank

28:02

was an inflatable type tank.

28:04

So our vision of the future

28:07

industry is one in which satellites

28:09

are refuelled in orbit, but there's also the possibility

28:12

that they could launch with no fuel

28:14

in their tank. That would make it a lot lighter

28:17

to launch the expensive payload while we try to

28:19

run very efficient logistics to

28:21

get the fuel to orbit so that it's

28:23

cheaper to do it that way. But you don't want to

28:25

launch with a big empty tank because

28:27

not only is mass launching

28:29

to orbit expensive, but volume is

28:32

often the constraint. And so if you can launch

28:34

a stowed tank and then effectively inflate

28:37

that tank when you fill it with fuel, that

28:39

would be advantageous. So we had this

28:41

opportunity, decided, well, why

28:43

would we launch an empty tank? Let's launch a stowed

28:46

tank. So that's what we did. So that was an inflatable

28:48

tank technology. And is that a silicon

28:51

material? It's something very

28:53

similar to what you might think of as

28:55

silicon, but very careful

28:57

materials choices to be compatible

28:59

with both the International Space Station

29:02

water bus, the water that was in it, but

29:04

also we were testing some of the materials that we want

29:06

to use for holding more aggressive propellants

29:09

in the future. So there's a lot of materials

29:11

tech and decisions that went into that

29:14

choice. And how do you feel

29:15

about the temperature requirements?

29:18

I have plenty

29:20

of, obviously, lower

29:23

material science

29:26

complexity, but I've got a ton of silicon

29:29

cookware items that tear

29:32

and they're really good when

29:34

they first start out, but they wind up getting little nicks and

29:36

dings. How do you see

29:39

a flexible fuel tank

29:41

operating over the long term? Yeah,

29:43

these materials are pretty good with that,

29:46

and of course, we keep that in mind. It's a multi-layered

29:48

system. So there's a, we call it an abrasion

29:50

layer on the outside to make sure that it doesn't

29:52

get scuffed and punctured, the

29:55

liquid layer

29:55

that's on the insides. So

29:58

careful design, careful material. choice.

30:01

One of the things that we're more interested and

30:03

more worried about is if you have an inflatable

30:06

tank, a flexible tank, and you

30:08

try to control the pointing of a spacecraft,

30:11

then you could end up oscillating and wobbling

30:13

back and forth. So a lot of the tests we did

30:15

on the space station, we had the astronaut

30:18

spin it or turn it in a certain direction, and

30:21

then rapidly turn it in the other

30:23

direction so that we could look at those

30:25

dynamics of recording all

30:28

of that movement with accelerometers and cameras to

30:30

be able to match our model of what the dynamics

30:32

of a flexible tank would look like so that

30:34

we can put it into a control system and know

30:37

that we're going to be able to point correctly. Yeah, are you

30:39

able to integrate like slosh plates or

30:41

something that like a flexible version of that? Yeah,

30:43

we didn't in this design, but we

30:45

actually patented a number of novel internal

30:48

slosh control devices for flexible

30:51

tanks. So we have had those ideas

30:53

and started working on some of them, but on this experiment,

30:55

this first one, we weren't able to test

30:58

everything all at once, that's for sure. So if

31:00

it's a flex tank that's supposed to produce

31:02

space that's taken up, does this mean that it has

31:04

to expand like, kind of like outward

31:07

into or like away from the vehicle, it kind

31:09

of sticks out because otherwise it wouldn't necessarily save

31:11

space if it was internal, right? Yeah, that's exactly

31:13

right. So this configuration was designed

31:15

to fit into a two unit

31:18

CubeSat volume. A unit

31:20

in CubeSats is about

31:23

10 centimeters by 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters.

31:25

So it's designed to fit into two of those,

31:28

10 by 10 by 20 centimeters and

31:30

then expand out to have a capacity

31:32

of 10 liters. So from effectively

31:35

two liters to 10 liters ratio,

31:38

as you get to bigger tanks, the ratios get much

31:40

better, but this is a good enough size

31:43

to try. One of the other applications

31:45

for these tanks is going to be when

31:48

we have asteroid or moon mining and people

31:50

are pulling a lot of liquids, water

31:53

and things like that out of the moon or asteroids,

31:55

we'll need somewhere to put that water. We

31:58

need some big tanks and these kind of things. flexible

32:00

or inflatable tanks are a great way to

32:02

do that too. So we hope that they'll find an application

32:05

in that area and it might be another 10

32:07

years or more but that one's quite

32:10

interesting too. So that's the flex

32:12

tank like that's the novel water

32:14

balloon in space but the rigid

32:16

tank wasn't boring either right? You

32:18

had a

32:19

rigid tank that you were pumping water

32:22

out of in zero-g which is kind

32:24

of a feat like we've talked about a lot of

32:27

on the show we've talked about a lot of different methods

32:29

for doing this and

32:32

it's always difficult

32:34

and weird and involves odd

32:37

material choices. So

32:39

can you tell us a bit more about your the rigid

32:42

tank and how your transfer

32:44

operations went and you know

32:47

especially the that

32:49

final transfer operation? Yes the

32:51

the rigid tank had in fact

32:54

both the rigid and the flexible tank had pumps

32:56

to move fuel back and forth

32:59

and that gave it some redundancy so they

33:01

could both

33:02

suck fuel out of the other tank or push

33:05

fuel into the other tank and we

33:07

ended up using that that capability that redundancy.

33:09

We were also testing on the

33:12

rigid tank some electropurmanent

33:15

magnet type interfaces. We

33:18

needed to know what the best gas cap design

33:20

would be. There was no gas cap for satellites

33:22

when we started that refueling interface to

33:25

be able to transfer high-pressure propellants reliably

33:28

that that wasn't something that satellites had before

33:31

and so we wanted to test various connection

33:33

technologies. We tested a bayonet and we tested

33:35

this magnetic connection and

33:38

that was important to test as well. In the end we decided

33:40

neither of those was sufficiently robust

33:42

or you know the right way to go

33:44

and we developed a sort

33:47

of four fingered robotic

33:49

claw if you like that we call GRIP and

33:52

that interface was

33:55

very much informed by the work that we did on the International

33:57

Space Station. Yeah so like one of the things that

33:59

we love talking about on the show is failures

34:02

just because they teach us things. And

34:04

so if you don't want to talk about this, you absolutely

34:06

don't have to. But I was wondering if you'd be interested

34:08

in talking about your

34:11

pump faults. And then I think you also had some

34:13

electrical design issues that came up. Yeah, but

34:15

both of those were effectively the same things. So

34:18

we were moving quickly, we put all

34:20

of this together and got it all thoroughly tested.

34:24

But we'd also built in redundancy at a lot of levels.

34:26

And I mentioned we had two pumps, one on each

34:28

of the systems. We actually

34:30

had an electrical

34:33

short that happened on orbit. So

34:35

the electronics on one of the units was resetting.

34:37

And we didn't know why. We weren't sure

34:40

if the pump was getting turned on and overloading the

34:42

electronics or what was happening. But we

34:44

were on the call with the astronauts

34:47

on the space station as they're trying to work through

34:49

all of these systems. We were able to debug it in

34:51

real time, get a lot of data,

34:54

then think about what was happening, come back the next day. We

34:57

had a few more hours and realized,

34:59

yeah, one of the two systems had

35:02

an electrical line where

35:04

the insulation on one

35:06

of the connections must have worn out during

35:08

the launch. And so it was shorted against the

35:11

bus. And these are little very low voltage. They

35:13

run off batteries, offer

35:15

a few AA batteries. So

35:17

it wasn't high power. It was

35:20

never dangerous. But it did mean that

35:22

the system was resetting. And we were able to achieve

35:24

the mission by not using

35:26

that pump, but use the other one to

35:28

do both the pushing fuel

35:30

and pulling fuel. And so we accomplished

35:32

everything that we needed thanks to the help of the astronauts

35:35

and a bit of quick thinking, but

35:37

also the redundancy that the engineers had built

35:39

into that design. Yeah, I mean, that's

35:41

a great lesson learned. And that's a really

35:43

handy lesson to learn, because

35:46

if your pump had failed,

35:49

I was a little worried that pump

35:51

failure is really would set you

35:53

back. But like, yeah, insulation wearing

35:55

off like, yeah, that's

35:56

something that happens. That's not a big deal. Yeah, we

35:58

were happy with that pump. It's

36:00

now the same pump that we're flying on

36:03

our fuel delivery systems. Is this a pump

36:05

that you've designed in-house or is it

36:07

a COTS product? No, it's a COTS product.

36:10

The one that we had was the water variant

36:12

and it's operating inside the space station so it didn't

36:14

need to be vacuum compatible. But the manufacturer

36:16

makes a vacuum compatible

36:19

version which is great. Like vacuum for the

36:21

outside, not the fluids on the inside. Right. There's

36:24

differences you want for that. So they

36:26

have a slight version of that pump too. What

36:28

are the requirements that you guys

36:29

need in a pump? I'm

36:32

assuming you need to have fairly precise

36:35

flow control. Do

36:37

you also need flow measurement or is

36:39

that another part of the system? That can

36:41

be another part of the system or it can be the same part of the

36:43

system. In this case, we get a coarse

36:46

flow measurement out of the pump

36:48

which is a nice backup to have to any

36:50

other flow measurement systems. But now the

36:53

main requirements of the pump are that

36:55

it can go in both directions for

36:57

that redundancy. We want to be able to push and

36:59

pull fuel. And that it has

37:01

to be a path. In

37:04

the case where we went to the space station, we really wanted

37:06

to have a path to a space

37:09

compatible, a vacuum compatible pump, not

37:11

just something that we would say, this is a great tech,

37:13

now we have to make that pump flight

37:16

worthy of flight qualification.

37:18

So that path to flight

37:20

was the other really important thing for us. Okay, so

37:23

now we're all like on our end,

37:25

we're really excited to move on to talk

37:27

about Rafti, which is the rapidly attachable

37:30

fluid transfer interface. It's an

37:33

open standard for transferring fuel

37:35

on orbit. And I'm sure that

37:37

Rafti is your absolute pride

37:39

and joy, right? Oh yeah, that's right.

37:42

So what makes Rafti interesting? Why

37:45

is this something that we care about talking about? So

37:47

as I mentioned, when we started,

37:48

there was no gas cap for satellites.

37:51

There's no fueling port that satellites

37:53

were taking up regularly.

37:55

We looked at what NASA was building and

37:58

NASA have a project. to

38:00

make a fueling port, it makes

38:03

assumptions that are very valid for NASA that

38:05

everyone will have a very high precise robot

38:08

arm and various things like

38:10

that. We took a very different approach.

38:12

We wanted a low cost

38:14

refueling architecture

38:17

and part of low cost was to take the

38:19

robot arms off the servicing vehicle

38:21

entirely and just effectively drive

38:23

the satellite in until it

38:26

can make contact and grab

38:29

on to the fueling port. Maybe

38:32

it's a slightly more difficult problem to solve on our

38:34

side, but much easier on the customer side

38:37

and once solved, produces a lower cost refueling

38:39

architecture. We set about talking

38:41

with dozens of companies and stakeholders

38:45

about and government organizations about

38:47

what they might need from a fueling port. We

38:50

did the tests on the space station with

38:52

the different technologies. I mentioned magnetic

38:55

and bayonet fittings and things and

38:58

came away with some ideas. We did

39:00

a big study on that and developed the

39:02

rapidly attachable fluid transfer interface.

39:05

We developed Rafti as

39:07

the passive side of that. It really is

39:10

the gas cap for satellites. We

39:12

set out to build that and

39:15

then to fly it as quickly as we could. We wanted

39:17

to test it in orbit, but just

39:19

as importantly, perhaps more importantly, we wanted

39:21

to test it with a launch site because when

39:24

there are people around and you're

39:26

passing fuels and some of the fuels are high pressure,

39:28

some of them are toxic, and when you're

39:30

passing those fuels, you don't want

39:32

to expose the people. It has to be safe.

39:36

The range safety is

39:38

usually the driving requirements

39:40

on the fueling port, definitely from a safety

39:42

perspective. We wanted to put it

39:44

through those paces as well. Once

39:47

we were funded, we immediately turned

39:50

around and flew that port to space and

39:53

then offered it to NASA

39:56

and various government agencies and

39:58

companies. Here you go. flight

40:00

heritage, it worked, it got rave reviews

40:02

and the ground fueling. This

40:05

is ready to go, why don't you put this on

40:07

every satellite? Their response

40:09

was pretty interesting. They basically laughed at us

40:11

and said, look, here's a long list of things you didn't

40:13

think about that our missions care about.

40:16

And they completely shredded us. It

40:18

was fantastic. It was our best day

40:21

because that list of requirements is really

40:24

hard to get. Until we'd flown

40:26

in, they didn't think we were important enough to waste time

40:28

on. How do you get their attention?

40:30

How do you get them to spend hours, maybe

40:32

days thinking about all the

40:34

things that might go wrong in a fueling interface in orbit?

40:37

And they came back with this list and we were able to turn

40:39

around within a couple of months and say, right, we've redesigned

40:42

this and it now meets everything on your list. And

40:44

they were quite shocked because nothing else on the market

40:46

did that. And so that

40:49

then we turned skeptics into champions and

40:51

we've seen a lot of interest and now uptake

40:55

of this rafty fuel import now. So can

40:57

you give us like an idea of what some of those requirements

40:59

are that you didn't think about? Yeah, a lot

41:01

of it was around how the

41:04

seals worked, the number of seals. The

41:06

very first design had O-rings exposed

41:09

on the surface, exposed to sort of radiation

41:11

and vacuum of space. And they were

41:13

worried about that exposed to micrometeorite. Tiny

41:17

particles traveling at high velocity can leave little

41:19

pits in the surface. Those kind

41:22

of things they were worried about. So we went away

41:24

from face seals and

41:26

we looked at various different sealing

41:29

systems from various types

41:31

of O-rings to energized seals,

41:33

which are sort of a Teflon ring

41:36

with a spring inside

41:38

the O-ring, if you like, that

41:40

pushes it out. Yeah, a bunch of different things that

41:43

we incorporated in that. The various alignment

41:45

features and how to make sure that alignment

41:47

was guaranteed and that we have the

41:49

widest capture, widest possible capture

41:52

envelope so that it's easier for

41:54

the Rondaboo docking it to occur. There

41:57

were a lot of other things about almost

41:59

every aspect. of that design. And

42:01

when we got that review back, and we'd already, through

42:04

that experience, through our experience of flying it,

42:06

identified more than half of the things on that list.

42:09

So we were prepared to do a redesign

42:11

already and had things ready to

42:13

go. But getting the full list from the government and

42:16

the companies that looked at that was

42:19

so valuable. Yeah. I

42:22

love standard documents.

42:24

For some reason, standards just make me happy.

42:26

And so you

42:28

guys have a user guide

42:29

up and it talks about how you implement

42:32

your interface. And honestly, it

42:34

is one of the most beautiful

42:37

user guides I've ever seen. Whoever

42:39

is on your art team deserves

42:42

a pay raise because it looks so

42:44

good. But that

42:47

end of

42:49

the Rafti service device

42:52

is really boring because really what it comes down

42:54

to is screw this onto the side

42:57

of your spacecraft, make sure there's nothing around it.

42:59

Remember to plug in the two ends and you're good

43:01

to go. And that's a fantastic

43:04

type of boring. So I was hoping

43:07

we could talk a little bit more about some of the solutions

43:09

that you guys came up with. So

43:12

when you're talking about alignment, you're talking about once

43:14

these two vehicles are touching. We're

43:17

not even talking about the rendezvous

43:19

and proximity operation stuff, which is also

43:22

part of the Rafti standard.

43:24

So like, yeah, how do you do that alignment? What

43:27

kind of problems did

43:29

you encounter

43:29

that your first two solutions

43:32

didn't work and it took a new way of thinking

43:34

about things? The interesting thing is that the

43:36

first solution did work. Oh,

43:39

well, for alignment, but I'm sure not every

43:41

single solution worked, right? I mean,

43:44

maybe it did. I don't want to put dirt on your name or

43:46

anything. You're right. We

43:48

did a lot of prototyping. But

43:52

by the time that we flew that, it worked

43:54

quite well. But the

43:56

thing was our customers were looking at different missions, right?

43:58

They had different scenarios. in mind and

44:02

that's what was important to capture and things

44:04

that we probably would have taken a while

44:06

to get around to thinking about. We would have had to

44:08

fly missions and say, hmm, this is now

44:10

a problem. Having all of that

44:13

customer input at the beginning was

44:15

really what was so important. One

44:17

of the other things the fuel import can be used

44:19

for, and you mentioned, it's designed

44:21

to be easy to integrate. We tried to take all

44:24

of the impact on the client satellite

44:27

off of that and solve that on

44:29

our side. One

44:32

thing you can use the fuel import

44:34

for is to fill up the satellite on the ground before

44:36

it launches. Everyone has to have

44:38

a little valve now to fill

44:41

the tank and to drain the tank to test

44:44

it and that kind of thing. They're called fill and drain

44:46

valves. The RAVT

44:49

contains two valves, one for propellant

44:51

and one for a blow down gas. Often

44:53

they use a gas to push it out or they have a

44:55

purge gas or something. It's got two ports

44:58

on there. It's about the same size,

45:00

weight, and cost as to fill and

45:02

drain valves. That's very much on purpose. A

45:05

satellite can replace its fill and drain

45:07

valves with the RAVT port and

45:09

then they get the

45:11

extra benefit of being refuelable in orbit. We

45:14

also looked at and currently have

45:16

a project to develop automated fueling

45:19

on the ground. If you're

45:21

launching a constellation of satellites, you might have

45:23

dozens or eventually maybe hundreds

45:25

of satellites on a rocket. Going

45:28

to every single one of them, plugging

45:30

in your system, verifying that it's

45:33

leak proof, putting fuel

45:35

into that satellite, checking that

45:37

it's safe to un-meet. It's a very

45:39

manual process right now to fuel each satellite.

45:42

If you can automate that using our

45:45

robotic active side of the

45:47

fueling interface, which we need in space

45:49

anyway, if you can automate

45:52

that on the ground, that can be a cost saver.

45:54

That could be an advantage. Then

45:56

you get the option of refueling in orbit. As

45:58

a fill and drain, valve, this

46:01

becomes a no-brainer to start integrating

46:03

into every satellite out there.

46:05

And that's one way to smooth

46:07

adoption and get the uptake of this happening

46:09

faster. Yeah, a lot of really good synergies there.

46:13

So like what do the valves look like

46:15

on this thing? Like

46:16

what actually makes this

46:18

product? Like could you even describe the shape of it? Yeah,

46:23

there are two parts to it. One is the grapple

46:25

fixture. So the

46:28

part that enables the mechanical docking because

46:31

as I mentioned, you don't need a robot arm to

46:33

do this. You directly dock a

46:36

refueling spacecraft, like a refueling shuttle

46:38

onto the fueling port. So it's

46:40

an octagon shape, but only four

46:43

of those sides, effectively a square with the corners

46:45

cut off if you like. But

46:47

the four-finger gripper grabs

46:49

onto that octagon and

46:52

it shuffles down to provide a pretty

46:54

good alignment of the

46:57

fueling valves, the

46:59

male and female side of those fueling ports. And

47:02

then there's fine alignment features that

47:05

further align like on the face of each of those

47:07

ports to further align it. And there's a little bit

47:10

of give in those. There's a flexure

47:13

type attachment so that we

47:15

can get perfect alignment when that's attached.

47:17

So passively, it self-aligns.

47:20

And that's important if you're coming in and bumping

47:23

up to a satellite with another satellite. You want a wide

47:25

capture box and then you want it to self-align

47:28

to provide that transfer. So the

47:30

mechanical features of

47:32

the grapple housing allow

47:34

for that. And then the fluid cores are interchangeable.

47:38

Because there are different materials compatibility issues

47:41

with different propellants, we have to

47:43

be able to change out if we're running

47:45

hydrazine or hydrogen peroxide

47:48

or water. And water is, of course, fairly tolerant

47:50

of lots of things. But if you're running

47:52

a high-pressure gas and things

47:55

like that. And so we can change

47:57

all those out. One thing we haven't done rafty

47:59

is not designed for

48:02

use with cryogenic propellants. So

48:04

we focus very much on storable propellants

48:06

that satellites use because they spend years

48:09

in space. Cryogenic propellants kept

48:11

at very, very low temperatures. They tend

48:13

to boil off and that's

48:15

a very different challenge. So the Raph D. Porter

48:17

is designed for a huge range of storable

48:20

propellants.

48:22

So I sat up in my chair

48:24

when you said flexure. We love

48:26

flexures on this show. Could you describe

48:28

a little more where those

48:30

flexures are and what gold are accomplishing? Yeah.

48:33

The goal is to align the

48:36

fueling ports

48:37

precisely enough that a reliable

48:40

seal is going to be made every

48:42

time that it mates. And it should mate dozens,

48:45

hundreds of times. It'll have

48:47

the capacity to. And so that's

48:49

what we have to do. You want to make sure that

48:52

the valve cores are aligned

48:55

both in sort of X and Y, but also

48:57

in the rotations around those axes

49:00

and rotation around Z. So

49:03

it has to be floating

49:05

in some ways. And

49:07

I love what the engineers did on

49:10

that. It looks amazing. It works

49:12

really well. It's incredibly simple. It's

49:14

incredibly reliable. So you've got the four

49:17

claws on grip that

49:19

grab the four recesses,

49:21

those cut off corners. And

49:25

then I'm assuming those retract to bring the

49:28

faces of the valves closer together. And then

49:31

I guess what you're saying is that on the active

49:33

side, you've got a little bit of float. So

49:35

there's some sort of indexing that happens

49:38

and allows some extra movement to get

49:41

the active side of the valves

49:43

or the active valves

49:45

to finish that alignment and kind

49:48

of slot into place. Is that right? Yeah,

49:50

that's exactly what's happening. And then did you need any –

49:52

I

49:53

think you said that you had a further alignment

49:57

level under that, right? Like if the rendezvous

50:00

operation is like the first alignment where we're

50:02

just looking at the other spacecraft and making sure

50:04

we're roughly aligned. And

50:07

then the claws are the second level. Okay,

50:09

now we're not only mechanically connected,

50:11

but we kind of slot in there and we get a

50:15

little more precision. And then those flexures

50:17

are providing a level below that.

50:20

Was there one more that you mentioned? No, that's it.

50:22

I think you've got it. So the claws

50:25

in those recesses shuffle it down and

50:27

then it's clamped tight.

50:29

But the face of the two

50:33

fluid cores also, it's

50:35

like another little cup and cone alignment.

50:39

And so that shuffles down even more precise

50:42

to make sure the alignment's well within what we need

50:44

to make a good seal. That's very cool. And

50:48

what did you end up doing to make that

50:50

seal? I don't know if that's something

50:53

you can talk about or not, but like you

50:55

mentioned all the different things that you had tried

50:57

and discarded, like what ended up working?

51:00

Yes, it's a very unique geometry.

51:03

We haven't patented it yet, so I can't describe it

51:05

in sufficient detail. But yeah,

51:08

we combined a number of tricks that

51:10

we sort of developed in prototyping

51:12

and testing on this. We'll have that

51:14

out soon. That might be a good time to ask a question I had

51:17

and it could be that I don't

51:18

fully understand how in-orbit

51:21

propellant loading would work. As I do

51:23

understand it, there's more than

51:25

the solution that you make your

51:27

connection, you dock, you seal, and that's

51:30

obviously challenging on its own. But

51:32

then is there also

51:34

issues that you face with while

51:37

the transfer is happening to kind of

51:39

maintain the, I guess, client

51:42

spacecraft's attitude to make sure it doesn't go into a

51:44

tumble or anything like that? And if that

51:46

is a part of the challenge

51:49

of in-orbit propellant loading, how do you

51:51

kind of universalize that side

51:53

of it? Adam, do you want to take this one for a

51:55

minute? No, that's exactly right. When you bring two

51:57

objects together, you have the docking.

52:00

between them and the

52:02

high level answer is you

52:04

do this just very slow and very

52:06

carefully. You approach the other vehicle

52:08

in a very controlled way.

52:11

So you have on a fuel

52:14

shuttle, we have the

52:16

grabbing side facing

52:19

a rafting. So we're doing that

52:21

initial alignment and in space,

52:23

we're setting up so that

52:26

the rotation is exactly the same

52:28

that we're coming in directly

52:30

at the other spacecraft. But

52:32

this is all done over, not over

52:34

seconds, but over time

52:36

here of a slow maneuver. And

52:39

then we have stopping points. We get close.

52:43

We haven't fully baked

52:45

in all these stopping points, but think of them as stopping

52:48

at 10 meters and then one meter

52:51

and then getting to the point where you're

52:53

grabbing onto the client spacecraft.

52:56

You do that grapple and you hold on

52:58

and that interface is

53:01

not

53:01

really pushing the two

53:04

vehicles into something you

53:07

ask, how do you stop a spin? So the

53:11

answer is those two vehicles are under control

53:13

and then they

53:15

dock and they're pretty quiet

53:18

at that point. At that point, you're making

53:20

sure the valve is aligned

53:23

and the seals are made. And

53:26

so then you transfer fuel

53:28

and you're doing that mostly

53:30

through the center of gravity of a spacecraft. If

53:33

you're inducing any

53:35

change, any turns, the

53:38

attitude control system can

53:40

handle that and keep the

53:43

two spacecraft aligned. Okay, cool. That

53:45

makes sense. I like that the answer is

53:47

carefully. It's a good answer. I'm not dinging

53:50

you. I'm just like, you do it carefully. That's

53:52

right. Yeah, I

53:55

think even terrestrial here on Earth,

53:57

if you had fuel transfer,

53:59

everybody would. would

54:00

align towards safety and being careful about

54:03

it. So it's an important part of

54:05

the business. So maybe it's a good time to

54:07

talk about implementation, kind of springing

54:09

off of Dennis's question. And Adam,

54:11

this is where I think we start getting more into

54:13

your realm of expertise.

54:16

When is your first

54:19

hardware flying? Who are your first clients?

54:21

I mean, spoiler alert, you have people

54:23

who have bought fuel from you on orbit, which is

54:25

fantastic. What does the

54:28

future look like? And how do we actually,

54:30

like what are we actually going to see for

54:33

customers actually consuming your

54:35

on orbit product? Daniel described already

54:38

kind of the missions we've done on International

54:40

Space Station and getting Rafty on orbit.

54:43

Those were super important to us as

54:46

a company doing those things. In

54:49

the recent year, we have also won US

54:54

government contracts, one

54:57

with the Air Force Research Lab

54:59

and the Space Rapid Capabilities

55:02

Office, and the other with the

55:04

Defense Innovation Unit. And

55:06

those contracts are with

55:09

Space Force and looking

55:12

to do refuelings with their programs.

55:14

And so the Space Force has

55:16

included Rafty on a

55:19

couple Space Force, there's

55:21

three satellites in the program called

55:24

TETRA. And then there's

55:27

other spacecraft that they're looking to include

55:29

Rafty on. But the TETRA program

55:31

in particular, we have on

55:34

the active side, the refueling

55:38

delivery vehicle going to space

55:40

and that's currently scheduled for 2025. So

55:44

we're looking to do a refueling with

55:46

those spacecraft have a mission, they're going

55:49

to do inspection

55:51

and maneuvers on orbit and

55:54

they're using fuel to do that. And so they'll

55:56

come to our depot,

55:58

our refueling depot. and they have

56:01

a rafty on them, so our

56:03

grip will grab that rafty, do

56:05

the refueling operation in space. And so

56:08

one of the benefits of working with Space Force,

56:11

they have many experts that look

56:14

at all aspects of everything

56:16

from the valve to the operations

56:18

to how we do

56:21

the on-orbit concept of operations, the

56:23

different parts of bringing

56:25

two vehicles together and offer

56:28

their expertise. So it's really nice

56:30

to work with them and get the advantage

56:33

of their questions and their

56:35

backgrounds and thinking

56:37

about the problem and solving

56:40

it in the best way we can. So I

56:43

guess that's a long answer to say. We're

56:45

looking forward to a refueling

56:48

in 2025 between what will be

56:50

our grip active mechanism

56:53

and the rafty refueling port

56:55

on a client spacecraft. One

56:58

of the questions I had actually was, who

57:00

did you first ship a rafty to?

57:02

Was it Space Systems Command or

57:05

was it Astroscale, who I think also have

57:07

a contract with you? That's right.

57:10

So Astroscale is looking

57:12

to launch their vehicle

57:15

a little later than the Tetra

57:17

vehicle we understand currently. So

57:20

we're delivering to Space Force first in

57:22

that instance, but we also

57:24

have other companies that we're working

57:26

with that. And

57:29

rafty ships usually

57:32

to a spacecraft manufacturer because

57:35

integrated into the spacecraft and the tank. And

57:38

we have other instances where we're working with

57:40

propulsion companies where a propulsion

57:43

company makes a tank and a thruster

57:46

pack and we directly

57:48

integrate rafty with their system. And

57:50

so there's a number of different ways where

57:52

either the operator of a mission

57:55

can buy rafty and we can get it to

57:57

their satellite manufacturer or we can work

57:59

directly with them. satellite manufacturer or

58:01

propulsion company to get rafties

58:04

on board. So what is the

58:06

vehicle that will actually be doing the tanking,

58:09

specifically for Tetra? Yeah, so Tetra,

58:12

we have, so it's an OrbitFab docking

58:15

depot that is

58:18

in geosynchronous orbit. So

58:20

that's where the Tetra vehicle is. So

58:22

it's an OrbitFab vehicle that

58:26

will do the refueling. So that will be

58:28

the active side. So we have

58:30

the fluid transfer, the

58:33

grip, the grappling and docking.

58:36

So if you have creative names for

58:38

when we go on orbit into space mission, we're

58:42

looking for that. But

58:44

we have internal names for it, but at

58:47

the end of the day, it's a docking depot that we've

58:49

contracted with US Space Force.

58:52

So for SSCs,

58:55

Tetra, you're putting

58:57

up a depot and Tetra's coming to you.

58:59

And then for AstraScale, you're

59:02

kind of doing the same thing. AstraScale's

59:05

Lexi vehicle is sort

59:08

of like Northrop Grumman's MEV2,

59:11

which we were very excited to see. They dock

59:13

and they do pointing and

59:15

things. But then you

59:18

guys are also planning on building some

59:20

shuttles to go and move fuel

59:23

from depots to clients.

59:26

Can you tell us more about your shuttle? Yeah, absolutely. So

59:29

first stage

59:29

for us is getting RAPTI vehicles, that vehicle

59:32

that allows them to be, satellites that gets,

59:35

allows them to be refueled. And

59:38

then our 2025 mission is a docking

59:40

depot. As you described, the

59:43

Tetra vehicles come to us and

59:45

we deliver fuel to them. So

59:49

there are different classes of satellites,

59:51

of course, in orbit. Some of them have

59:53

maneuver capability. Some can maneuver

59:56

to a fuel

59:58

depot. like

1:00:01

a communication satellite or other

1:00:03

satellite want a fuel shuttle to

1:00:05

deliver the fuel to them. So like

1:00:07

you said, so the Lexi

1:00:10

spacecraft in particular with Astroscale

1:00:12

has, wants fuel

1:00:14

delivered to it, but it will be in a similar orbit,

1:00:16

it'll be in the geosynchronous orbit, it's

1:00:19

doing life extension, but these

1:00:21

clients that, so the satellite servicing

1:00:23

industry is really an exciting

1:00:25

area that we are supportive

1:00:28

of a lot of different ideas. So

1:00:30

there's life extension, there's

1:00:32

debris removal, there's

1:00:35

companies that are thinking of doing assembly

1:00:37

and manufacturing on orbit, we

1:00:40

sort of focus on they all need fuel

1:00:42

and a lot of those missions, if your debris

1:00:45

removal or life extension, you want to put

1:00:48

your satellite in orbit and do that extension

1:00:51

or debris removal, and then

1:00:53

we can refill their fuel tanks. If we

1:00:55

refill it, then they have the opportunity

1:00:58

to do a second or third or fourth mission.

1:01:01

And we change the space economy

1:01:03

to be to being throwing away satellites

1:01:05

to

1:01:06

satellites that can be reused. And

1:01:09

there's a lot of value that is still on orbit,

1:01:12

even after a spacecraft runs out of fuel.

1:01:14

And we're working together with those

1:01:16

companies that are doing a lot of those things.

1:01:18

Yeah, that's very cool. It's I like

1:01:21

seeing where the edge of

1:01:23

these plans are, right? Like you have

1:01:26

a rafty ready to go, you have your

1:01:30

depot that you're working on. And then like

1:01:32

the shuttle, it's in mind. And

1:01:35

it's gonna, you know, it's gonna happen. But you're

1:01:36

not exactly sure what it's gonna look like. And it's

1:01:38

kind of just a little more nebulous out in

1:01:40

the future. And something about that

1:01:43

edge makes me really excited, like the edge

1:01:45

where plans change is fun. Yeah,

1:01:47

so, you know, we're at a really

1:01:49

exciting time in the space industry. NASA

1:01:52

is talking about Artemis and going back

1:01:54

to the moon. And while that's

1:01:56

some years off, that's really exciting

1:01:59

about where this technology type things can go.

1:02:02

There are low Earth orbit space stations.

1:02:05

And so while we've delivered water

1:02:07

to the ISS, we also wanna

1:02:09

deliver fuel and propellant. But

1:02:13

that could also be commodities as

1:02:15

more and more humans go to orbit. Those

1:02:18

are some exciting kind of things

1:02:20

that we think are coming in the future. And

1:02:23

I would say the nice thing about

1:02:25

the last five years as OrbitFeb has existed,

1:02:29

there were probably seven or eight companies

1:02:32

that were working on the

1:02:35

tow trucks or the debris

1:02:37

removal or tugs and life extension.

1:02:41

Now we see more than 200 companies

1:02:43

out there working on these things. And

1:02:46

each one has their differences.

1:02:49

And that's actually really exciting to

1:02:51

us because that's

1:02:53

a different space economy than we have

1:02:55

seen. And those differences

1:02:58

will

1:02:59

make us all learn what are

1:03:01

the better ways to do the business in space. So

1:03:03

is this servicing for spacecraft primarily

1:03:06

geostationary orbit or are there other orbits

1:03:08

that you might be looking at? Because then you get into problems

1:03:10

with inclination and how do you service the satellite

1:03:12

that's not in the same inclination? So our first orbital

1:03:15

mechanics question on the orbital mechanics sub-hut.

1:03:17

That's right. Yeah,

1:03:20

so we look at where

1:03:22

satellites are typically at. In the geosynchronous

1:03:25

belt is obviously a

1:03:27

lot of communication satellite, other

1:03:29

things. And so that

1:03:31

is where our first customer

1:03:33

with Space Force is. But

1:03:36

we also look at low Earth orbit.

1:03:39

And generally there are

1:03:41

clumps of satellites. There are places

1:03:43

where satellites tend to exist

1:03:46

just to do their mission. And so the Earth observation

1:03:48

satellites, whether they're weather or looking

1:03:51

at our telescopes or other things that are looking

1:03:53

at Earth are in sun

1:03:55

synchronous orbit and low Earth orbit.

1:03:57

And so we will have fuel.

1:04:00

shuttles, fuel delivery in low-Earth

1:04:02

orbit Sun sync and in the

1:04:05

geosynchronous belt, those are the start

1:04:08

and we will go where the customers go honestly.

1:04:10

Other orbits that are

1:04:13

getting more and more attention

1:04:16

are where the space stations are

1:04:18

but but there are also

1:04:21

some thoughts around going

1:04:24

cislunar, going to the moon and the

1:04:26

further out you go it tends

1:04:29

to use up fuel in the beginning

1:04:31

and so refueling is really interesting to

1:04:34

some of those capabilities but I would say geosynchronous

1:04:37

and Sun synchronous orbits are where

1:04:40

we start. So we were talking a little

1:04:42

bit about or you were talking

1:04:44

a little bit about competition with

1:04:47

with other companies and

1:04:50

on the the Raphdi user guide it mentions

1:04:52

that it's an open standard. How

1:04:56

open are you planning on making Raphdi?

1:04:58

Yeah so we you know

1:05:01

our goal is that we

1:05:03

want refueling to become a thing

1:05:06

that is obvious to the industry. So

1:05:09

getting Raphdi out and

1:05:11

putting it on every spacecraft

1:05:13

we're not trying to close Raphdi so

1:05:15

that somebody has to just

1:05:17

come in by from orbit fab. So

1:05:20

that's the goal. The goal is to get Raphdi

1:05:23

on every spacecraft and

1:05:25

do that in the best way because

1:05:27

to grow orbit fab to

1:05:29

grow our business we want to have refueling

1:05:32

happening in orbit. So

1:05:34

we've talked to manufacturers that

1:05:38

build component space components and

1:05:40

so we've talked to them about manufacturing

1:05:43

Raphdi. We've talked to companies about

1:05:46

including Raphdi if if they're

1:05:48

building many satellites multiple

1:05:50

satellites including it as part

1:05:53

of their assembly

1:05:55

line those things. So when

1:05:58

we say open we really mean, we

1:06:00

want to do whatever we can to make

1:06:03

sure Rafty is on, you

1:06:05

know, the 100% goal would

1:06:07

be every spacecraft that flies has a Rafty

1:06:10

on it so that it could be refueled and

1:06:12

whatever we can do to make that happen is

1:06:14

our

1:06:15

goal. Have you considered

1:06:18

like open source certification? I

1:06:20

mean, it's kind of extraneous for a lot of things,

1:06:22

but it seems like something that might draw some attention.

1:06:25

Yeah, we certainly have. And part

1:06:27

of that is putting together industry

1:06:30

groups and others to come

1:06:33

together. We've sort of done that in the build

1:06:35

of Rafty. There are

1:06:37

groups in the industry like CONFERS. I

1:06:40

don't know if you've talked to CONFERS, but CONFERS

1:06:44

is a group that

1:06:45

was originally started by

1:06:47

DARPA to talk about

1:06:49

satellite servicing standards. And

1:06:53

so ORBIF has a part of CONFERS, very

1:06:56

supportive of what they're doing. They

1:06:58

just put out a standard and I can't

1:07:00

remember whether it's ISO. I think

1:07:03

it might have been an ISO standard, but it was

1:07:05

one of the standard bodies on

1:07:08

fiducials. And fiducials are the, think

1:07:10

of them as the QR code that

1:07:13

cameras look at on a spacecraft and you

1:07:15

can see orientation and things. So they put

1:07:18

that out as a standard and we've been talking to

1:07:20

them about how to follow the that

1:07:23

methodology to use sort of CONFERS

1:07:25

to create standards in this business.

1:07:27

Because there are likely to be

1:07:29

standards around refueling,

1:07:32

but also power and data and other

1:07:35

parts of the industry. And so

1:07:37

we're talking to a lot of companies about how

1:07:40

to do that best. It kind of reminds me a little bit

1:07:42

of like Ericsson and Bluetooth

1:07:45

standard, which Ericsson invented and

1:07:47

then they made it wide open. And

1:07:49

wouldn't you know what? I'm using Bluetooth headphones right now.

1:07:52

You bet. I don't have, yeah,

1:07:54

like I don't have any Ericsson products in my house,

1:07:58

but they made that impact.

1:07:59

Do you have like a guide star that you're following

1:08:02

to try to, are you trying to do the Ericsson

1:08:04

thing or is there another company that you've got in mind? You

1:08:06

know, I think so the main difference

1:08:09

here industry wise is the space industry

1:08:12

is not the consumer electronics industry.

1:08:15

So it's a

1:08:17

little different in the sense that

1:08:20

Rafti is usually

1:08:22

going to be purchased by an aerospace engineer

1:08:24

or a fluids engineer and things

1:08:26

like that. And so there are some differences

1:08:29

when you get into this industry, but

1:08:32

those models are all applicable.

1:08:35

How to open

1:08:38

this standard and make it so that anybody

1:08:40

can use it is really what we want

1:08:42

to go for. So can you clarify a distinction that maybe

1:08:45

I'm not making? So you're talking about open standard, but

1:08:47

that's not to say that the

1:08:49

hardware itself is

1:08:50

open source. Is it because as I understand it, you

1:08:52

are perhaps like patenting something, right?

1:08:54

Yeah. So there

1:08:57

will be patents around techniques and things

1:08:59

like that. And so we

1:09:01

want to ensure there's a couple

1:09:04

aspects where

1:09:06

licenses will come into play

1:09:09

mainly around quality control. But

1:09:12

there's also in our industry,

1:09:14

the ITAR regulations. And so

1:09:17

when you get into space components, you have to work

1:09:20

through the State Department when you're

1:09:23

going international. And so there

1:09:26

are some aspects of in-space

1:09:30

docking and refueling that will

1:09:33

have to be controlled through those different regimes.

1:09:35

But we're working all those aspects

1:09:38

because, you know, a good for

1:09:40

instance on the ITAR list is

1:09:43

satellite grappling and docking, except for

1:09:45

the international space station. In

1:09:48

our case, we're doing grappling

1:09:50

and docking between two parties who

1:09:52

are cooperative, who

1:09:55

know this operation or being transparent about

1:09:57

this operation. And so

1:10:00

that's not really the purpose of

1:10:03

why that IHAR regulation was

1:10:05

written, that was for technologies

1:10:08

for grappling and docking

1:10:10

that might be for military

1:10:13

uses. And so we have

1:10:15

to work through all that. We have to work through

1:10:17

the regulatory side as well as being

1:10:20

safe and reliable on refueling.

1:10:23

And so there's different levels of

1:10:26

putting out the standard and having

1:10:28

industry comment on it

1:10:29

and having it adopted is,

1:10:32

having it on every spacecraft is really what

1:10:35

changes this industry. Did you consider

1:10:37

adopting another standard rather

1:10:39

than writing your own? I guess the direct

1:10:42

answer is no, because nothing really

1:10:44

exists like Rafti

1:10:46

that we're aware of. There were,

1:10:49

there are obviously fill and drain valves for

1:10:51

spacecraft and there are other

1:10:54

efforts that were purpose

1:10:56

built for their refuelings. And

1:10:58

so Rafti, Rafti's

1:11:01

the first project we know that's

1:11:03

really built so that anybody

1:11:06

can be refueled, that a

1:11:08

fuel shuttle can come and dock and deliver

1:11:11

fuel. So it's a

1:11:13

little unique in that aspect. Yeah, the only

1:11:16

other thing that comes to mind is, Lockheed

1:11:18

Martin

1:11:19

has MAP. And

1:11:21

it has, I've actually modeled

1:11:25

the MAP interface because it's really pretty

1:11:27

and I want to 3D print it. But

1:11:31

MAP has got a rectangle cut out that says

1:11:33

like, here's where you put electrical

1:11:36

and fluid stuff. And like, that's

1:11:38

all. And so

1:11:40

yeah, yeah, I

1:11:42

hear you. Yeah, there's

1:11:44

a number of developments around

1:11:47

docking, right? So a number

1:11:50

of companies have docking plates

1:11:52

or docking mechanisms.

1:11:55

We work with those companies to say, how

1:11:59

could you incorporate Rafti? into those mechanisms.

1:12:03

So another part of being open

1:12:05

with Rafty is you

1:12:08

don't just have to include Rafty, you can include

1:12:10

it within a broader system

1:12:13

architecture like the Lockheed

1:12:15

Martin interface or others. I described before

1:12:17

how Rafty is designed to be

1:12:19

the primary docking interface as well, but that

1:12:21

doesn't mean that it can't be used as a secondary

1:12:24

docking interface. So if you're already docked,

1:12:27

you could have something at the end of a robot arm that

1:12:29

also attaches

1:12:29

a Rafty and a GRIP interface

1:12:32

together. I can't wait to see how this plays

1:12:34

out. Like what

1:12:37

is the industry gonna decide? Because

1:12:39

history shows us we're probably gonna have

1:12:41

a bunch of different standards and

1:12:44

some are probably gonna be good at some things and some are gonna

1:12:46

be good at other things. But like we're

1:12:49

getting into the point where things

1:12:51

are really exciting,

1:12:54

but we're on the tipping point of

1:12:56

them becoming boring because it's

1:12:59

normal and we just do it. And

1:13:02

that's very cool to me. Like once

1:13:04

it becomes pedestrian to dock to spacecrafts,

1:13:09

it's gonna be really interesting to see how that

1:13:11

plays out. Okay, so we're getting

1:13:13

towards the end of the interview. So

1:13:15

we have two final questions that we ask

1:13:18

every guest. The penultimate one

1:13:20

is, where would you like to be found on the internet? You can

1:13:22

find us on our website, orbitfap.com.

1:13:25

LinkedIn for Adam and I will

1:13:28

also be in the notes on this recording, I believe.

1:13:31

And of course, we are trying

1:13:33

to find great people. So if you want

1:13:35

to work for OrbitFab, if you want to build the

1:13:37

future

1:13:38

of satellite refueling and the infrastructure

1:13:40

for everything that's gonna be built in orbit, look us up.

1:13:43

Yeah, easy to find us on

1:13:45

our website. Also,

1:13:48

you'll have Adam and my LinkedIn and the

1:13:50

company LinkedIn. I

1:13:52

understand you'll put those down in

1:13:54

the comments and description on the podcast. And

1:13:57

if anyone's interested in hiring,

1:13:59

please. do look us up there. And the final

1:14:02

question, what is the smallest question

1:14:04

within commercial space like Twitch you have not been able

1:14:06

to find the answer? To me the smallest

1:14:09

question would be what space

1:14:11

company is going to have the highest return on investment

1:14:13

over the next two years? Great. I

1:14:16

think that's an excellent question. I was going to phrase that differently Adam.

1:14:18

I was going to say what's going to be the first

1:14:20

space company to make a billion dollars using

1:14:22

fuel and orbit? Yeah. All right. Well,

1:14:25

thank you guys so much for the time that you took out of your

1:14:27

busy weeks to talk to us. It

1:14:29

was fun. Best of luck delivering

1:14:32

fuel. It's an exciting future. Thank

1:14:35

you. Appreciate it. All right.

1:14:37

Thank you.

1:14:41

So moving on to the space like

1:14:43

history, we have a

1:14:45

sad compound sound effect. So we have

1:14:47

no winners. That's

1:14:51

one less than what I had, right? More

1:14:53

than what Dennis said or equal

1:14:56

to what Dennis had. Yeah. Well, you

1:14:58

know what? I'm going to say that the Greek won

1:15:00

this because like odds are

1:15:03

the Greek would have guessed correctly anyway.

1:15:05

Like,

1:15:07

you know, their name comes up all the time. But

1:15:11

this event actually was

1:15:13

suggested by the Greek way

1:15:15

back in episode 332. So

1:15:19

exactly a hundred episodes ago and

1:15:22

we're bringing it back this week. So

1:15:25

credit to the Greek for finding this week

1:15:27

in space like history event. And what is

1:15:29

that event? Right. This week in space like

1:15:31

history is the 4th of November 2011. It

1:15:34

was the end of the Mars 500 experiment. And

1:15:39

so back a hundred episodes ago, I can't

1:15:41

believe that it worked out so well. Back a

1:15:43

hundred episodes ago, there was a clue

1:15:46

for the actual event, which was Fobos grunt

1:15:48

and the Greek guessed this instead. And

1:15:51

I was like, well, it's too good of an event to just

1:15:53

like say, no, you got it wrong and move on. So

1:15:57

Mars 500 was a psychosocial. isolation

1:16:01

experiment that took place at the Russian Institute

1:16:04

for Biomedical Problems in Moscow. Mars 500

1:16:07

operated with three

1:16:09

different crews, three different experiments

1:16:11

from 2007 to 2011. This mission that we're talking

1:16:13

about was

1:16:17

the final mission. It was a 520-day

1:16:21

quote-unquote crewed mission to Mars. Quote-unquote

1:16:24

on board. I just I think

1:16:26

it's so funny like the idea that

1:16:29

nobody's actually going anywhere but like we can use all

1:16:31

this language like crew and on board. On

1:16:34

board were six people. There were three Russians

1:16:36

and then one person each from France, Italy and

1:16:39

China. Their facility was

1:16:41

hermetically sealed and it simulated

1:16:44

a small Earth Mars

1:16:46

transfer vehicle. No, it simulated

1:16:48

a very large Earth Mars transfer vehicle.

1:16:52

Then it had a small ascent-descent

1:16:54

craft which is like one little room. The

1:16:58

transfer vehicle was

1:17:00

I don't know like three or four modules.

1:17:03

It depends on how you cut it up but

1:17:06

those are like you can think of them as being on one

1:17:08

side and then in the middle is

1:17:10

the ascent-descent craft which is kind of small

1:17:13

and then off to the side it's actually

1:17:16

like all these are kind of parallel to each

1:17:18

other but then on on the other

1:17:20

side schematically speaking

1:17:23

is actually a model of the

1:17:25

surface of Mars. Not the whole surface it's

1:17:28

I don't know maybe 50 by 300

1:17:30

feet something like that but

1:17:33

it's like you know a dome. It's actually

1:17:36

like the largest section

1:17:38

of the whole thing. Oh and I

1:17:40

put in the notes also presumably

1:17:42

this facility

1:17:44

featured considerably

1:17:46

better toilets than you would find on a spacecraft. I

1:17:49

can only I can only assume that that's true

1:17:52

because toilets and space suck. They

1:17:54

had a couple of different facilities they had a greenhouse

1:17:58

I don't I think they

1:17:59

Supplied food through more

1:18:02

means in the greenhouse but at a greenhouse

1:18:04

they had a

1:18:06

gym and they had

1:18:08

a medical and psychological

1:18:11

lab for doing

1:18:13

presumably low, you know responding

1:18:16

to low-grade medical issues and They

1:18:18

also did a bunch of testing like this whole

1:18:21

time These whole

1:18:23

five hundred and twenty days. They're like doing

1:18:26

tests over and over and over I can't imagine how

1:18:28

boring it was. So this final experiment

1:18:31

simulated 250 days

1:18:34

of going from Earth to Mars Then

1:18:36

they landed and then they spent 30 days

1:18:38

on the surface and they spent 240 days coming back

1:18:42

What are the actual numbers for a round

1:18:44

trip to Mars because like it's not 30

1:18:46

days on the surface Is it like to actually

1:18:49

make the return window? It's either like a

1:18:51

week or a year Yeah, I mean

1:18:53

I think it depends on there's some what

1:18:55

would you call them? There's some concepts out there that

1:18:57

can get there, you know faster than

1:18:59

others and so yeah, and if you've got sustained

1:19:02

thrust sure So they as

1:19:04

they're going to Mars doing their mission coming back,

1:19:06

they're moving back and forth between these modules

1:19:10

To simulate the different stages. So

1:19:12

like for the 30 days that they are

1:19:14

on Mars, they're in a much smaller compartment

1:19:18

But they also get to don spacesuits

1:19:21

and go walk around in the The

1:19:24

Mars habitat area so the

1:19:26

the data that came out of this I didn't dig into

1:19:28

any studies. Maybe I could have Found

1:19:31

some but just going off of the summaries

1:19:34

that I found four out of the

1:19:36

six participants astronauts

1:19:39

had quote considerable problem

1:19:41

sleeping and Along

1:19:43

with that increased sleep and restorations

1:19:47

all six of them experienced disrupted

1:19:49

circadian rhythm and one crew member Suffered

1:19:52

chronic sleep deprivation and

1:19:54

that one crew member accounted for the majority

1:19:56

of the mistakes on one particular computer

1:19:58

test that they have Uh that measures

1:20:01

concentration and alertness and like

1:20:04

that that sounds miserable Like 500

1:20:08

days of getting almost

1:20:10

no sleep is just I

1:20:12

mean it sounds like torture Despite

1:20:15

all this they still managed to take a

1:20:17

very credible microgravity

1:20:19

photo Uh for april 1st

1:20:22

april fools And we'll put

1:20:24

in the show notes. It looks really really

1:20:26

good The positions

1:20:28

are all pretty darn natural

1:20:31

and like if you zoom in there's some

1:20:33

blurriness But like blurriness

1:20:35

is hard to photoshop and they've done a very

1:20:38

very good job. There's no like

1:20:40

motion blur anything Like this

1:20:43

is a very very good photoshop, and I don't

1:20:45

know how they I mean they had computers. I

1:20:47

guess somebody brought

1:20:49

a copy of Photoshop

1:20:51

along so the whole time that they were quote-unquote

1:20:54

up there I kind of stopped doing this the

1:20:56

whole time that they're doing this experiment They were

1:20:59

able to communicate with the

1:21:01

ground controllers and to post photos

1:21:04

on Social media.

1:21:06

I think the photos on social media went through their

1:21:08

media teams

1:21:10

but

1:21:12

They had a delayed

1:21:14

communication setup where

1:21:16

it took the appropriate amount of time To

1:21:19

reach earth and then go back to

1:21:22

the spacecraft And

1:21:25

you know the isolation has got to be tough Living

1:21:29

with five other people who were

1:21:31

recruited and aren't necessarily

1:21:33

your best friends that sounds really horrible But

1:21:36

I gotta say I think that

1:21:38

time delay Might be one

1:21:40

of the hardest parts about this mission when I

1:21:42

think about it Or at least it's

1:21:44

something I can't discount because like that

1:21:46

means no phone calls No

1:21:49

video chats. I mean it was 2011 no video

1:21:51

chats anyway, but uh yeah

1:21:53

just this must have been so

1:21:56

tough So the clue this week

1:21:58

was warned removing

1:22:00

the sticker will void your experiment.

1:22:03

And I picked this

1:22:06

clue because there's this lovely little

1:22:08

detail. During

1:22:10

the exit ceremony way back in November

1:22:12

of 2011, before

1:22:14

they turned the giant

1:22:17

handle to open this big

1:22:19

sealed door, they pulled

1:22:21

open a literal wax seal that

1:22:24

they had strung across the door. So there's a lump of wax

1:22:27

on the door, a lump of wax on the

1:22:30

door sill. I mean, it's around

1:22:32

like pressure seal kind of door, but

1:22:35

there's like a string embedded

1:22:37

in the wax and they yank it off.

1:22:40

And I kind of suspect that

1:22:43

that seal was added two days before

1:22:45

the press showed up. But I don't

1:22:47

know, maybe it was on there the whole time and it just

1:22:50

was to prove... I don't know what you're proving.

1:22:53

But yeah, I thought that was a fun little detail.

1:22:57

I should be able to put a gif of

1:22:59

this seal being

1:23:01

torn open in the show notes for you. All right.

1:23:03

So that is This Week in Spaceflight

1:23:05

History. All right. That's an interesting This

1:23:08

Week in Spaceflight History. I can kind of see why nobody guessed

1:23:10

because it didn't even take place in space. Yeah.

1:23:13

And it also wasn't a great clue when I knew

1:23:15

it. Well, let's

1:23:15

hope Dennis can do better. So yeah,

1:23:18

the date range for the next

1:23:21

event is the 7th through the 13th of

1:23:23

November. And Dennis, do you have a clue for us? I do.

1:23:25

Next week in 1995. Mission extension of 4.7

1:23:31

meters. There's a very specific number in there that

1:23:33

should help. Yeah, I think that

1:23:35

was the subject of a spam email

1:23:37

I received last week. Of 4.7

1:23:39

meters, really? That's a bold claim. Hey,

1:23:42

man, it's spam. We've

1:23:44

got to catch your attention somehow.

1:23:45

So if you have a guess as to what this clue is referencing,

1:23:48

just give us an email at info at theorbitalmechanics.com

1:23:51

or shoot us a toot on Mastodon and use the

1:23:53

hashtag ThisWeekSF. And right now we

1:23:55

only check federated toots on bots in dot

1:23:57

space and spacey dot space, but you can always mention.

1:23:59

at orbital at bots and dot space or

1:24:02

visit the orbital mechanics comm slash discord

1:24:04

for an invite to our discord server and type

1:24:06

slash TW SF and handry guest directly

1:24:09

to our combat and good luck good luck

1:24:11

everybody okay so let's move on to upcoming spaceflight events

1:24:13

and thank you to launch library too which is where we start

1:24:15

our research each week and Dennis

1:24:17

what is the first spaceflight

1:24:19

event first up we have a spacewalk

1:24:22

we've mentioned a few times now but

1:24:24

now it might really be happening on November 1st

1:24:27

and so this is US spacewalk 89 with

1:24:29

Jasmine Mowbelly and Laurel

1:24:32

O'Hara and so specifically what this one

1:24:34

will be doing is to remove radio

1:24:36

frequency group hardware and replace a trundle

1:24:38

bearing assembly on the port truss and

1:24:41

NASA TV will begin coverage

1:24:43

of it again on Wednesday November 1st at 6 30 a.m. Eastern

1:24:45

with the spacewalk

1:24:48

expected to begin at approximately 8

1:24:51

o 5 a.m. Eastern and last approximately

1:24:53

six and a half hours so after

1:24:55

that is a spaceship to launch

1:24:59

the

1:24:59

official like PR

1:25:02

blog post says that

1:25:04

the window opens November 2nd of

1:25:06

course that is going to be like North

1:25:09

American November 2nd and

1:25:11

I'm not sure if they're going to be launching right

1:25:14

on November 2nd or a little bit later it's worth

1:25:16

mentioning though this is

1:25:19

their fifth commercial mission

1:25:22

like holy crap they're actually they're

1:25:24

actually doing what they said they were going to do I'm totally

1:25:27

shocked but it's called galactic 05

1:25:29

and I don't know if they have more

1:25:32

specific fun names but keep

1:25:35

an eye out for that one starting on the

1:25:37

second then after that we have a

1:25:39

Falcon 9 launch and this is another

1:25:42

Starlink launch 626 I think

1:25:44

it's the only one we have for this week surprisingly yeah

1:25:47

right and the liftoff time for that will

1:25:49

be 2248 UTC through 03

1:25:52

19 UTC and it's launching from slick 40 at

1:25:54

the Cape so yep check out that one

1:25:56

I guess your only Starlink launch

1:25:58

this week and then finally we have

1:27:38

Mmm...

1:28:03

Mmm... Mmm... Mmm...