TECH TRANSFER ON STEROIDS

NASA’s Effort to Boost Commercial Spaceflight

BY JAN TEGLER

“Tech transfer on steroids” is how Kathryn Lueders, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, describes the agency’s support for the private companies who are building spacecraft that will take American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

Speaking on a recent edition of Johnson Space Center’s official podcast, Lueders said the Commercial Crew Program is the result of decades of desire for a commercial capability to take things and people into space. NASA’s support has been instrumental in turning that desire into reality, she explains, making orbital flight more accessible.

“I always tell people space is not just for NASA anymore,” Lueders remarked. “It is for all of us, every American.”

In 2019, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsules are scheduled to begin ferrying crews to the ISS, restoring a capability that the United States has lacked since 2011 when the Space Shuttle Program ended. Since then, NASA has relied on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to transport crews to the ISS.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Kounotori 5 H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-5) is seen departing from the International Space Station. The cargo vehicle was berthed to the orbiting laboratory for five weeks until it was released on Sept. 28, 2015. HTV-5 delivered almost 5 tons of hardware and supplies.

NASA PHOTO

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Kounotori 5 H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-5) is seen departing from the International Space Station. The cargo vehicle was berthed to the orbiting laboratory for five weeks until it was released on Sept. 28, 2015. HTV-5 delivered almost 5 tons of hardware and supplies.

Cargo is already being flown to the ISS commercially. Since 2012 and 2013 respectively, SpaceX’s Dragon and Orbital ATK’s (now Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems) Cygnus spacecraft have been delivering supplies and equipment to the station under NASA contracts. In the next several years, Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser will begin cargo resupply runs to the ISS. The unmanned freighters are the first products of a 30-year quest to get commercial spaceflight off the ground. But NASA’s support for the effort wasn’t always a given.

THE THIRD WAVE

Ven Feng, manager of NASA’s International Space Station Transportation Integration Office, says the current push for commercialization of orbital flight is the latest wave of the idea that private industry could enter a domain that had previously always belonged to governments.

“There was a wave in the 1980s and one in the 1990s,” Feng said. “I think this one really kicked off when administrator Mike Griffin [NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, 2005- 2009] and Bill Gerstenmaier invested $500 million in 2006 in commercial transportation, transportation being one of the most expensive aspects of access to low-Earth orbit. I think when they looked at the Space Shuttle retiring and as a complement to Constellation, they decided it was the right time to invest.”

In 2004, President George W. Bush announced his Vision for Space Exploration. The administration’s space policy, which came to be known as the “Constellation Program,” called for completion of the ISS, retirement of the Space Shuttle, and returning man to the Moon by 2020. With the Space Shuttle anticipated to make its last flight in 2010, Griffin’s five-year, $500 million investment began the effort to build a new generation of launch vehicles, a program called Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS).

The SpaceX Dragon cargo craft approaches the International Space Station as both spacecraft were orbiting over the Greek island of Crete.

NASA PHOTO

“This was at a time when many people thought it was unlikely that private industry, especially on a firm, fixed-price basis, would be able to go out and design and build new rockets and spacecraft, and actually service low-Earth orbit,” Feng noted.

Indeed, there had been strong opposition within NASA and some quarters of the U.S. government to the notion of commercial spaceflight for decades. In August 2000, NASA awarded four small businesses 90-day contracts totaling $902,000 to study how to provide contingency cargo launch services for the ISS and what technology development or business planning would be needed.

The funding was tied to the access to space studies begun by the agency in the mid-1990s, which proposed both cargo and crew resupply vehicles for the ISS. But this and subsequent programs with similar aims, including the Space Launch Initiative and the Orbital Space Plane, never got off the ground. Some of the firms involved complained publicly about what they perceived as NASA’s bias against commercial spaceflight.

Nevertheless, Lueders says that the idea of reliable commercial launch vehicles “planted a seed in several administrations about making space not just for NASA.”

COTS AND CRS

With support finally in place to move ahead with commercial transportation to the ISS, a two-step acquisition strategy was put in place to gain momentum quickly. Under the COTS program, NASA’s commercial partners via Space Act Agreements (NASA’s vehicle for partnering with external organizations) could demonstrate their capabilities.

The Cygnus resupply ship from Orbital ATK (now Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems) is in its capture position as the Canadarm2 robotic arm slowly reaches out to grapple it in October 2016 during Expedition 49.

NASA PHOTO

“There were the traditional big aerospace companies,” Feng said. “And then there were several that had expressed interest over the years who kept saying, ‘Hey, NASA, we can do this for you. Give us the requirements and then let us implement it the way we want to.’”

After evaluation, NASA awarded Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contracts in 2008 to two companies: SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler. Later, Rocketplane Kistler was replaced by Orbital Sciences Corporation, now a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems. The contracts covered delivery of cutting-edge science, critical ISS spares, and crew consumables, but the companies suggested that their vehicles could do more.

“The COTS program had made their original requests for proposals in the 2006 time frame for cargo resupply [services],” Lueders recalled. “When they made those initial requests, companies did come in with concepts with how they were also developing their crew transportation capability, it wasn’t just cargo.

“At that time, station really needed cargo capability with the shuttle retirement,” she continued. “I was working for station and we built our initial concepts for being able to use the capability that [NASA COTS Program Manager] Alan Lindenmoyer and his team were investing in under the Space Act Agreements.”

COMMERCIAL CARGO

Feng and Lueders agree that NASA’s decision to transform its role – from being an end-to-end manager of space vehicle development to outlining a small number of well-defined requirements for industry and leaving it to them to design and build cargo and crew vehicles – was a “catalyst” for the commercial cargo and crew programs.

“We were not very prescriptive in dictating the implementation,” Feng explained. “We just said, ‘Do these things. You have to have a certain failure tolerance. You have to build a proper interface with all of our systems – structural, life support, etc.’ Then we stepped back and said, ‘Whatever launch vehicle you choose, whatever configuration with a capsule or space plane, that’s up to you. Bring us 20 metric tons of upmass over this period of time.’”

“We called that the CRS-1 contract,” he added.

The agency has supported its commercial partners in many ways from the outset, Lueders said, offering them a wealth of knowledge they cannot access anywhere else.

The knowledge the partners (SpaceX, Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Boeing) have availed themselves of stretches back to NASA’s early spaceflight programs.

“Apollo has been a wealth of experience,” Lueders said, citing the vehicle parachute testing NASA conducted decades ago during the historic program as an example of how SpaceX and Boeing have leveraged the agency’s data.

An artist’s conception of Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser spacecraft on orbit. Dream Chaser is slated to begin ISS cargo resupply operations in 2020.

SIERRA NEVADA CORPORATION IMAGE

“For these companies, it would have been cost-prohibitive for them to go and replicate all of the data and what we learned from doing those early human spaceflight missions with their capsule designs,” she explained. “They really learned from that.”

NASA partners have turned to the agency not only because the data in its archives and the knowledge in the minds of its people help them more efficiently design spacecraft, it also allows them to be more efficient in a commercial sense.

“The companies’ No. 1 goal was not to expand the knowledge base,” Lueders said. “They’re trying to, with the data they have, say, ‘How do I get to a spacecraft as quickly as possible?’”

The economics of commercial spaceflight dictate that costs be kept under control. As Feng observes, commercial spaceflight providers were further incentivized to keep costs low by NASA’s firm, fixed-price CRS contracts and its COTS program requirement that commercial partners share in the cost of the COTS system development and demonstration.

“These companies put up their own money as well, in-kind contributions, so they had skin in the game. They had a strategic direction they wanted to take as companies and were investing their own funds alongside NASA’s funds. They’re taking much of the risk because it’s firm, fixed-price contracting. That said, ‘Hey, we’re really serious about wanting to do this.’”

NASA’s support for its partners in the development of their vehicles has been extensive, said Feng. In addition to the store of data the companies have accessed, they’ve made use of NASA’s facilities and even its tooling in some cases.

“They’ve also hired folks from the ranks of NASA with specific skills,” Feng noted. “They’ve made very good use of our patents, looking at our lessons learned and our testing results from White Sands [Test Facility]. The protective tile on SpaceX’s Dragon, for instance, is a derivative of what was on the Space Shuttle tailored for Dragon’s environment as a capsule.”

Another example is flammability. NASA has an expansive database on the flammability of a variety of materials. Consequently, cargo and crew vehicle providers haven’t had to waste time and money testing materials that have already been tested.

“That has been extremely helpful to the companies not only for their initial design but also for anomalies,” Feng said. “If they can’t figure out what’s going on, they ask us if we can provide expertise. Across NASA’s centers and the NASA Engineering & Safety Center, we’ve offered a lot.”

The contract framework NASA put in place, along with the deep well of spaceflight experience the agency made available to its partners, enabled them to progress rapidly. SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon made its first scheduled cargo flight to the ISS in October 2012. Orbital ATK’s Cygnus cargo resupply vehicle made its first delivery to the station in January 2014.

Fire lights up a crystal-clear blue sky on Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida as a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lofts NASA’s Juno planetary probe into space.

NASA PHOTO

To date, Cargo Dragon and Cygnus have made more than 20 resupply flights to the ISS.

“In just six years, those two vendors have flown a total of 22 successful flights,” Feng said. “They’ve shown they’re very flexible and fast moving.”

In 2020, SpaceX and Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems will be joined in cargo resupply by Sierra Nevada Corporation and its Dream Chaser “lifting-body” spacecraft. Dream Chaser differs in configuration from the capsule-style spacecraft NASA’s other partners have designed, capable of landing on a runway on its return from low-Earth orbit.

COMMERCIAL CREW

The momentum of the commercial cargo program spilled over into NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP), said Lueders. Lueders had previously worked on the cargo program and took lessons learned with her to CCP.

“We learned things from cargo that we said, ‘For crew, this will have to be different.’”

Launching a program to help develop unmanned commercial spacecraft into vehicles capable of delivering living, breathing people to the ISS, rather than cargo, presents a different challenge, Lueders stressed.

“With crew transportation, it has to be safe, reliable, and the risk level and risk tolerance go down. It was really important for us to start laying the foundation of how do we look at current gaps in industry that we need to beef up and invest in over the next few years.”

NASA began that process in 2010 with the first phase of Commercial Crew Development. Once more, the agency took a big step back from its traditional role with clear, concise requirements for crew resupply vehicles.

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket begins its demonstration flight with liftoff at 3:45 p.m. EST from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Atlas V and Falcon Heavy are being certified to carry human beings into orbit.

NASA PHOTO

“We told them we need a spacecraft that can safely fly four people to the space station and back,” Lueders said. “It has to be reliable and we want it to be cost-effective.”

Another key difference between commercial cargo and commercial crew missions is the need for certification. NASA specifies that commercial crew delivery spacecraft and the launch vehicles they will use must satisfy its human-rating standards. The standards require higher levels of redundancy and fault tolerance than those that apply to commercial cargo spacecraft and launch vehicles.

NASA astronauts Victor Glover (left) and Mike Hopkins in front of a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. The two are among the first four NASA astronauts who will fly into orbit aboard a Crew Dragon (or Dragon 2) spacecraft, which will return human spaceflight capability to the United States for the first time since the Space Shuttle Program was retired in 2011.

SPACEX PHOTO

Because NASA has been the only American organization to fly people into space as yet, it is the only entity that employs such standards.

“One of our goals is to help industry develop their human-rating standard,” Lueders said. “Right now we’re the only people that certify human-rated rockets. But that could change in the future.”

NASA has been working with a range of organizations on packaging its standards and the knowledge that underpins them in a format that could be adopted by the commercial spaceflight industry. Lueders calls it another form of tech transfer taken from NASA’s “book of hard knocks.”

“Fracture control” is an example of the agency’s human-rating requirements, Lueders said, specifying that launch vehicles taking crew to the ISS are constructed with “materials that don’t fatigue and if they fail, don’t fail in a catastrophic way.”

When the launch vehicles Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon will use – the United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Atlas V rocket and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket – show compliance with the NASA human-rating standards, they are “certified” to lift their human payloads.

A mock-up of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner and the astronauts assigned to the first two flights, from left to right: Sunita Williams, Josh Cassada, Eric Boe, Nicole Mann, and Christopher Ferguson.

NASA PHOTO ROBERT MARKOWITZ

“We wanted to make sure the systems they had in place controlled the hazards that the vehicles expose the crew to,” Lueders explained.

THE COMMERCIAL LAUNCH INDUSTRY

Feng maintains that NASA’s efforts to enable commercial spaceflight have also boosted America’s commercial launch industry.

“If you look back 10 years, the fleet of U.S. launch vehicles was the shuttle, Delta, and Atlas [the latter two produced by ULA] in the U.S.,” Feng noted.

Looking forward, he says NASA’s SLS – the heavy-lift rocket that will support NASA’s Orion human deep-space exploration vehicle – will be flying within several years. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are flying now, as are the Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems Antares 230 and ULA’s Atlas and Delta rocket fleet. ULA is also well into development for its Vulcan rocket. Blue Origin, another commercial spaceflight firm, is also entering the launch vehicle market with its New Shepherd and New Glenn reusable rockets.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket returns to Earth for the second time. The mission marked the first reflight of a Falcon 9, which had previously flown during the fourth Commercial Resupply Services (CRS- 4) mission back in September 2014.

SPACEX PHOTO

“I think a lot of that is due to the spark that was supported by CRS and CCP,” Feng said. “Folks are trying to get to more capable, more reliable, less expensive, quicker turnaround rockets. SpaceX, by way of their overall pricing and cadence, has gone from zero to about 60 flights in eight years. The launch vehicle market will look different than it does today in four to five years.”

ORBITAL SPACEFLIGHT AT THE SPEED OF COMMERCE

Lueders says that Boeing and SpaceX are scheduled to fly uncrewed demonstration missions with Starliner and Crew Dragon by the end of 2018. Demonstration missions to the ISS with crew aboard will begin early in 2019.

The speed at which the commercial spaceflight industry is developing is eye-opening. Between 2006 and 2019 – just 13 years – a commercial capability to fly cargo and crew to the ISS has been put on a rapid path to success. NASA has and will continue to play a major role in enabling private industry to make space accessible.

Along the way, the agency has gained as much as it has contributed, Lueders said, noting that its work with commercial spaceflight companies is a collaboration.

“We come to the table and say, ‘This is kind of what we did for Space Shuttle and this is what we’ve been working with on the Orion side.’ But then they [SpaceX] come in and say, ‘This is what I learned on Cargo Dragon’ and the Boeing guys will say, ‘This is what we’ve learned and this is how we’re optimizing it.’ We all learn together and that’s the funnest part.”

As Feng stresses, one of NASA’s original intents was to “foster the economy of low- Earth orbit.”

Ultimately, it’s NASA’s goal that the spaceflight industry will be able to make a commercial success of providing services for and access to low-Earth orbit. Engaging commercial partners to provide resupply services for the ISS is a means of pioneering that success – the end game for NASA’s “tech transfer on steroids.”

“We’ll see what other kinds of missions our partners might do,” Lueders said. “We’re in the process right now of understanding how we use the space station commercially. We’re already working with both providers [SpaceX and Boeing] on other passengers or other missions they might propose. That could provide a platform for other commercial and research uses in low-Earth orbit.”