Draft and Final RFP for Gateway logistics/cargo services

[ncb1397]

It’s worth noting that based on SpaceX’s figures for trans Mars insertion, the Falcon Heavy performance is on the order of 18-20t TLI. That’s *not* just 20% higher than Atlas V 551. It’s such a performance advantage that they probably can recover at least the side boosters.

If this is a reference to my figures, my statement was Falcon Heavy (reusable) was 20% higher payload than a 541. You are talking about Falcon Heavy expendable, and the same source with the same methodology for the Atlas V configurations estimates a lot lower for TLI than that (more like 15-16 t rather than 18-20 t...if they are "sandbagging" figures they are probably doing it across the board). And that is with an instantaneous launch window BTW. Your payload will be less if you allow for a launch window.

I'm not sure why you assume "sandbagging" is across the board. SpaceX is constantly making optimizations, ULA locks in a design before the first one is ever built. The first falcon heavy launch, the one that put a 1.3 ton car into Trans Mars Injection in what was intended to be a fully reusable configuration, used boosters that are obsolete now; it's entirely possible that the "sandbagged" numbers simply haven't kept up with the times.

Sort of. At first they said BFR/ITS was going to be 300 t to LEO. Then it was 150. Then it was >100. In terms of re-usability figures, it seems they may have over-estimated what they could do to the core stage and still recover it. Gwynne Shotwell has made comments that the core stage recovery has proven to be rather difficult (even though they do the water landings with f9 stages quite frequently). It then begs the question what their contracts are assuming. Are they assuming they can recover all the stages they are planning to, and if they don't that affects the profitability of the launch? Are they assuming they may not recover 1/2/3 stages and pricing in full/partial expendable and anything better than that is just gravy? Hard to say.

I don't think it's likely they can do 3x recovery and still get a vehicle carrying 5000 kg of cargo plus fuel for NHRO insertion to TLI.

I thought it was minimum 4400 kg to TLI required (3400 kg pressurized, 1000 kg unpressurized). It was indicated that they exceeded the requirement (and NASA would likely hold them to what they said they could do), but no numbers about by how much.

The performance of this side ASDS / center expended FH configuration is far in excess of any Atlas (+100% or more) and also significantly better than DIVH or Vulcan Heavy (+20% to +50%).

It actually isn't really clear how much that configuration can do. It won't be a single percentage penalty. That would depend on the orbit. For instance, at a certain point the performance of the double ASDS + center core expended will hit zero and the fully expended booster scenario is some number higher than zero. In that case, the penalty is 100%.

So they are probably assuming 2x ASDS (now that they have 2 East Coast barges) for the side boosters and expending the center core, and the issues recovering the core stages don't really factor in at all.

It actually does matter. If the side boosters in the 10% penalty scenario are in a similar situation to what they thought the center core booster was going to be in in a falcon heavy center core recovery scenario, and they can't recover the booster in actuality in that scenario, then it absolutely affects the payload figures across the board.

[Robotbeat]

Side boosters will be much lower entry speed than even a Falcon 9 first stage because the core plus upper stage weigh a lot more than the Falcon 9 upper stage does, even relative to the larger thrust. So the recovery would be much easier for the side boosters than, say, a Starlink mission.

[ncb1397]

Side boosters will be much lower entry speed than even a Falcon 9 first stage because the core plus upper stage weigh a lot more than the Falcon 9 upper stage does, even relative to the larger thrust. So the recovery would be much easier for the side boosters than, say, a Starlink mission.

I don't think that is the case. The falcon heavy center core is carrying most of its own weight. All 3 boosters are effectively carrying the payload + upper stage (but it is split between the 3 cores, unlike f9). Keeping the upper stage and payload mass constant, the side boosters are going to be going faster than in the typical f9 scenario (especially if you want 90% of the payload of expendable boosters).

[envy887]

Side boosters will be much lower entry speed than even a Falcon 9 first stage because the core plus upper stage weigh a lot more than the Falcon 9 upper stage does, even relative to the larger thrust. So the recovery would be much easier for the side boosters than, say, a Starlink mission.

I don't think that is the case. The falcon heavy center core is carrying most of its own weight. All 3 boosters are effectively carrying the payload + upper stage (but it is split between the 3 cores, unlike f9). Keeping the upper stage and payload mass constant, the side boosters are going to be going faster than in the typical f9 scenario (especially if you want 90% of the payload of expendable boosters).

Optimum payload is reached by throttling the center core as much as possible to conserve its propellant while the side cores are burning. The result of this is that while the stack at full throttle has a much higher TWR than F9, it never flies at effective full throttle except for ~10 seconds shortly after liftoff. The side boosters burn out at about the same time and speed as an ASDS-landing F9, but the core continues burning for almost another minute, giving the upper stage the speed needed to reach high energy orbits with a large payload.

Check out the BECO velocities and net acceleration curve from the FH demo here, they tell the same story.

https://i.redd.it/xaisqxao5ef01.png

[ncb1397]

Side boosters will be much lower entry speed than even a Falcon 9 first stage because the core plus upper stage weigh a lot more than the Falcon 9 upper stage does, even relative to the larger thrust. So the recovery would be much easier for the side boosters than, say, a Starlink mission.

I don't think that is the case. The falcon heavy center core is carrying most of its own weight. All 3 boosters are effectively carrying the payload + upper stage (but it is split between the 3 cores, unlike f9). Keeping the upper stage and payload mass constant, the side boosters are going to be going faster than in the typical f9 scenario (especially if you want 90% of the payload of expendable boosters).

Optimum payload is reached by throttling the center core as much as possible to conserve its propellant while the side cores are burning. The result of this is that while the stack at full throttle has a much higher TWR than F9, it never flies at effective full throttle except for ~10 seconds shortly after liftoff. The side boosters burn out at about the same time and speed as an ASDS-landing F9, but the core continues burning for almost another minute, giving the upper stage the speed needed to reach high energy orbits with a large payload.

Check out the BECO velocities and net acceleration curve from the FH demo here, they tell the same story.

https://i.redd.it/xaisqxao5ef01.png

Regardless, entry conditions would be a function of propellant reserves after staging, not just staging velocity. If they over-estimated what entry conditions the falcon heavy core can survive, they could have just as easily over-estimated when coming up with the 10% number in another re-entry scenario (that they have never tried either).

edit: If we look at the only center core recovery completed (Arabsat 6A), staging was at ~10725 km/h velocity and 101 km altitude, but the re-entry burn was at least 23 seconds (video feed cuts to booster landings). That appears to be unusually long, so you can trade propellant reserves for engine cut off and staging velocity. Where that trade is and the margins involved on their 10% penalty scenario (presumably just to LEO) is not clear. It sounds extremely sporty, possibly more so than getting 8 t to GTO with 3 core landings (RTLS + ASDS)...or even more sporty than the attempt at center core recovery on the FH Demo or STP-2.

[Robotbeat]

Yeah, you just seem to be interpreting everything as pessimistically as possible for Falcon Heavy (while not applying that to other vehicles). This is not reasonable.

[ncb1397]

Yeah, you just seem to be interpreting everything as pessimistically as possible for Falcon Heavy (while not applying that to other vehicles). This is not reasonable.

Well, it simply hasn't demonstrated what it can do in a reusable scenario. They sent a 1.3 t object to something like a trans mars injection while attempting to recover all 3 cores, something that the falcon 9 could do easily with an expendable core, and failed to recover the center core. They then sent a 6.5 t satellite to GTO and recovered 3 cores, about 30% better than what a recoverable falcon 9 could do. They then did a crazy multi-orbit mission, just with a small payload of just 3700 kg, but also failed to recover the center core. It seems to be really capable in an expendable situation, but possibly not much more capable than the F9 when you have to do core recovery (in terms of GTO, they say the payload is boosted 60% over the F9R...compared to a more than 200% increase in terms of expendable performance).

So, yeah, considering the performance so far, I will believe it will put 57,420 kg into LEO with just expending the center core when they actually stick the 2 landings. That sticking the landing part doesn't always happen when they think it will.

[mlindner]

Oh? Then can you please point us to the detailed accounting of the Boeing Starliner program?

In terms of profit/loss?

For example, in 2019, we recorded reach-forward losses of $489 million on the Commercial Crew contract primarily reflecting higher estimated costs associated with spacecraft completion, certification and testing, and additional reach-forward losses of $148 million on the KC-46A Tanker contract reflecting higher manufacturing costs. New programs could also have risk for reach-forward loss upon contract award and during the period of contract performance. For example, in 2018, in connection with winning the T-7A Red

https://s2.q4cdn.com/661678649/files/doc_financials/2019/q4/d1a66b81-489a-478c-8a8a-4e3e3d403761.pdf

And the 2018 loss was $57 million. So, we can safely say that Boeing has lost (or invested) hundreds of millions of dollars into Commercial Crew. Maybe SpaceX did as well, it is hard to say with any uncertainty, but there are certain things that have come out that could support that assertion (it is hard to say much of anything about SpaceX's finances, at best we can stumble around in the dark).

Why use such weasel words? We have a clear statement from the CEO that they didn't invest/lose hundreds of millions. There's no "uncertainty" or "maybe" unless you're claiming the CEO is simply lying. You're certainly free to make such a claim, however please don't state it as some kind of fact that there were hundreds of millions lost. There isn't any evidence that has stated that as far as I am aware. If you have any, feel free to provide it.

No, his statement indicates that NASA was on budget with commercial crew - in regards to SpaceX specifically. Which isn't surprising given that it is a fixed price contract and the contractor eats any cost over-runs. Who knows where SpaceX is. SpaceX indicates they blew through their budget estimates. Whether they put enough padding in their contract to cover that, I suppose we don't really know.

The comment was not about NASA being on budget (which as you say is an utterly obvious statement), it was about SpaceX... That's why he said "we"...

[ncb1397]

The comment was not about NASA being on budget (which as you say is an utterly obvious statement), it was about SpaceX... That's why he said "we"...

The transcript:

Question:Just a quick follow up cause you had mentioned that you had spent near within 1% of of the commercial crew budget alloted and so I'm curious of that 2.6 billion originally allotted, did you receive all of it and have there been any points where you have had to spend spacex resources, you know, on your own to farther the crew dragon program?

Musk: Umm, yeah, the, I mean the 1% is the actual recorded, this is like the, NASA has to report these numbers to Congress and you know its public information so it is not like top secret, umm, the and this is the last especially informed by the NASA program manager, yeah, you are within 1%. Ok, great, that's cool.Umm, we've spent actually [unintelligable] quite a lot more than expected. Probably on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars more.

The 1% number is something that NASA reported to SpaceX. NASA isn't tracking SpaceX costs. This isn't a cost plus contract where certified accounting data is obtained by the government to determine reimbursement. All this means is that buried into some report somewhere, there is a list of programs associated with NASA and from NASA's perspective, the commercial crew program didn't cost the government more than what they baselined from the beginning (the baseline was probably set after the 2014 CCtCap contracts were signed). This isn't really that surprising, many NASA programs are at or below the budget baseline(if not the majority of them). You may consider this information trivial and obvious, but it is an off the cuff remark. Trivial and obvious comments are made in that context all the time. I looked around to see where this 1% figure is publicly available, but can't find anything as of now. Often, in the presedential congressional justifications, you will have information on how closely programs are sticking to their budgets, but commercial crew isn't one of them in the recent documents. I looked at the IG report on the commercial crew program from November of 2019 and didn't see anything there either. It is probably on some server somewhere, but where exactly is hard to tell.

[joek]

The 1% number is something that NASA reported to SpaceX. NASA isn't tracking SpaceX costs ...

Yup.  But likely more like something SpaceX reported to NASA,  For official purposes--and given that this is an FFP contract--does not matter how much contractor spent, only what they charged the government.  Which is likely within budget, again give that this is an FPP contract.   Unlikely to get any more details without an FOIA or asking NASA or SpaceX directly (which would certainly be rejected).

In short, government FFP contract was for $X to satisfy the obligations; supplier charged government $X to fulfill the obligations.  Whether supplier spent $X+Y to satisfy their obligation is none of the public's business or need-to-know, and technically none of the government's business.

[woods170]

Yeah, you just seem to be interpreting everything as pessimistically as possible for Falcon Heavy (while not applying that to other vehicles). This is not reasonable.

Well, it simply hasn't demonstrated what it can do in a reusable scenario. They sent a 1.3 t object to something like a trans mars injection while attempting to recover all 3 cores, something that the falcon 9 could do easily with an expendable core, and failed to recover the center core.

There you go again. The failure to recover the center core had nothing to do with the trajectory the payload was put in. It had everything to do with not having enough ignition fluid for the engines on the center core. You seem to be forgetting that the center core made it all the way back to the droneship (well, roughly 50 feet shy of it). This small problem was simply corrected and resulted in a successful center core landing on the next FH mission.

What I've noticed is that you continue to try to throw shades on FH performance by using landing failures to "justify" this. Silly IMO.

They then sent a 6.5 t satellite to GTO and recovered 3 cores, about 30% better than what a recoverable falcon 9 could do.

I see you have learned from Ed Kyle. He also has the annoying tendency to not believe the performance figures of launchers until said launchers have actually launched the max. payload weight.

The mistake you make here is assuming that the 6.5 t weight of the satellite was ALL it could throw to GTO. But in fact FH recoverable can do over 8 t to normal GTO. What you cleverly left out of your post is that Arabsat 6A was not put into a standard GTO but in a supersynchronous elliptical geostationary transfer orbit. This requires quite a bit more energy than a standard GTO. The advantage however is for the payload: it requires much less propellant to circularize to GEO. The result is a much increased lifespan of the payload due to higher propellant reserves available upon reaching GEO.

They then did a crazy multi-orbit mission, just with a small payload of just 3700 kg, but also failed to recover the center core.

OK, so you now accuse USAF of being crazy? Because they are the ones that ordered that "crazy" multi-orbit mission.
And again: the center core made it all the way back to the drone ship. But the TVC system on the center engine (the landing engine) was damaged due to the extremely high reentry forces and associated heating, and the booster did what it was programmed to do in such a circumstance: divert-and-ditch close to the drone ship.
Again, you are trying to throw a shade over FH performance by pointing to a completely unrelated landing failure.

It seems to be really capable in an expendable situation, but possibly not much more capable than the F9 when you have to do core recovery (in terms of GTO, they say the payload is boosted 60% over the F9R...compared to a more than 200% increase in terms of expendable performance).

You are kicking in a wide open door here. SpaceX itself, in the FH user manual, states clearly that reusability reduces the payload performance of FH.

So, yeah, considering the performance so far, I will believe it will put 57,420 kg into LEO with just expending the center core when they actually stick the 2 landings. That sticking the landing part doesn't always happen when they think it will.

Again: kicking in a wide open door. When expanding the envelope unknown unknowns are expected to manifest themselves, as evidenced by Elon himself. He cautioned on Twitter, before the STP-2 mission, that the center core landing would be extremely challenging and full success was thus not expected.

[JEF_300]

Has there been any explanation from NASA for why, even as they look at contracting for 2 dissimilar landing systems for redundancy, they have contracted for only one Gateway Logistics Vehicle? I understand that the SpaceX bid was miles cheaper than any other because of Falcon Heavy, but that doesn't explain why they didn't also pick a backup.

Is it possible that the Gateway Logistics redundancy will be provided by an international partner? I know JAXA/Mitsubishi had a roadmap for sending HTV-Xs to the Gateway orbit.

[punder]

Has there been any explanation from NASA for why, even as they look at contracting for 2 dissimilar landing systems for redundancy, they have contracted for only one Gateway Logistics Vehicle? I understand that the SpaceX bid was miles cheaper than any other because of Falcon Heavy, but that doesn't explain why they didn't also pick a backup.

Is it possible that the Gateway Logistics redundancy will be provided by an international partner? I know JAXA/Mitsubishi had a roadmap for sending HTV-Xs to the Gateway orbit.

It may be two factors combining: Expectations of marginal budgets, and increasing NASA confidence in SpaceX.

A contributing factor might be the expectation that, in the event of failure, SpaceX will analyze the problem, solve it, and return to flight very quickly. Bridenstine has already stated publicly his surprise at SpaceX speed.

So why double (or more likely, triple, given recent history) your costs by choosing a redundant provider?

[RonM]

Has there been any explanation from NASA for why, even as they look at contracting for 2 dissimilar landing systems for redundancy, they have contracted for only one Gateway Logistics Vehicle? I understand that the SpaceX bid was miles cheaper than any other because of Falcon Heavy, but that doesn't explain why they didn't also pick a backup.

Is it possible that the Gateway Logistics redundancy will be provided by an international partner? I know JAXA/Mitsubishi had a roadmap for sending HTV-Xs to the Gateway orbit.

It may be two factors combining: Expectations of marginal budgets, and increasing NASA confidence in SpaceX.

A contributing factor might be the expectation that, in the event of failure, SpaceX will analyze the problem, solve it, and return to flight very quickly. Bridenstine has already stated publicly his surprise at SpaceX speed.

So why double (or more likely, triple, given recent history) your costs by choosing a redundant provider?

NASA needs at least two landers in development to try to meet the 2024 deadline and currently are paying for three concepts. Gateway is no longer on the critical path for the 2024 landing. It will not be permanently manned like ISS, so delays in resupply missions are not critical. Gateway program delays won't be that big of an issue compared to Artemis.

[JEF_300]

It may be two factors combining: Expectations of marginal budgets, and increasing NASA confidence in SpaceX.

A contributing factor might be the expectation that, in the event of failure, SpaceX will analyze the problem, solve it, and return to flight very quickly. Bridenstine has already stated publicly his surprise at SpaceX speed.

So why double (or more likely, triple, given recent history) your costs by choosing a redundant provider?

The answer to your question is: For redundancy. Quite a significant cost* increase can be justified by additional confidence that the mission will be accomplished.

What happens if a Lunar Cargo Dragon carrying equipment and supplies to the Gateway for the 2026 landing has a problem halfway to the Moon and is unrecoverable? Do they just not land that year?

The ISS has been permanently manned since the year 2000, and part of the reason that was possible is because NASA had the foresight to select two commercial cargo providers. Similar goals should be had for the operational phase of the Artemis program, and the margins are much thinner out at the Moon.

NASA needs at least two landers in development to try to meet the 2024 deadline and currently are paying for three concepts. Gateway is no longer on the critical path for the 2024 landing. It will not be permanently manned like ISS, so delays in resupply missions are not critical. Gateway program delays won't be that big of an issue compared to Artemis.

I agree that that Gateway resupply isn't on the critical path for the 2024 Landing, but it IS potentially on the critical path for future landings, when the Artemis program moves to an operational phase, as I alluded to above.



*For the record, I suspect they could've gotten away with less than double the costs if they had selected another vehicle specifically as a backup.

They could have picked the lowest development cost proposal aside from SpaceX, which I'm going to guess was Cygnus, and designated SpaceX the 'Primary Provider' and NGIS the 'Secondary Provider'. They'd still have to fly the lunar Cygnus once to verify it, but with any luck, that would be the only time.

They would have to put up a little money to develop lunar Cygnus, but Cygnus is launcher agnostic, so it could even use Falcon Heavy itself if that was needed, or Vulcan or New Glenn assuming they were ready when it was launching.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

twitter.com/wehavemeco/status/1275093794938118146

Episode T+161: Mark Wiese, Manager of NASA’s Gateway Deep Space Logistics
https://mainenginecutoff.com/podcast/161

https://twitter.com/wehavemeco/status/1275094226989129729

Really excited about this one! A long conversation with @MW_go4launch about Gateway Logistics, @SpaceX’s Dragon XL, and more.

He also allows me to get really nerdy and thoroughly responds to some of my complaints and questions from past episodes!

[tbellman]

Really excited about this one! A long conversation with @MW_go4launch about Gateway Logistics, @SpaceX’s Dragon XL, and more.

He also allows me to get really nerdy and thoroughly responds to some of my complaints and questions from past episodes!

One tidbit from the podcast is about the maximum mass for the GLS vehicles (14 tonnes).  Mark Wiese said "going forward, that requirement will be gone".  The reasoning for ditching the requirement is that they now know more about actual requirements, and what the Gateway station will need and/or can provide.

Interrestingly, part of the original reason for that 14 tonne limit, was to avoid getting proposals that no commercial launcher could deliver to the Gateway...  They seem to now better understand that that kind of "micro-managing" of the proposals is not needed.

(That discussion starts at 12:39.)

[yg1968]

See below:

One of the interesting thing that was mentionned at 13-14 minutes of the podcast is that NASA intends to (soon) do away with the 14mt maximum requirement that was in the final RFP. Mark Wiese (Manager of NASA’s Gateway Deep Space Logistics) said that this requirement was there because they wanted to make sure that the PPE had enough power to control the stack. But he said that the fact that the Gateway logistic module only has to to stay one year at Gateway (as opposed to the 3 years which was the initial requirement in the draft RFP) and some additionnal studies by NASA related to power usage makes this requirement no longer necessary.

The maximum of 14mt requirement is what prevented SpaceX from bidding Starship for Gateway logistic services.

[gongora]

https://beta.sam.gov/awards/92343311%2BAWARD

GATEWAY LOGISTICS SERVICES (GLS) - SPACE EXPLORATION TECHNOLOGIES (SPACEX) - MODIFICATION ORDERS TASK ORDER SX-304-20 REQUIREMENT CHANGE EVALUATION FOR GATEWAY LOGISTICS SERVICES RISK MITIGATION DUE TO DELAYED AUTHORITY TO PROCEED.

$681,557.00

https://beta.sam.gov/awards/92342896%2BAWARD

GATEWAY LOGISTICS SERVICES (GLS) - SPACE EXPLORATION TECHNOLOGIES (SPACEX). MODIFICATION ORDERS TASK ORDER SX-303-20 PRE-ATP ADVANCE PLANNING TASKS AND ADDS FAR 52.204-25.

$346,406.00

total funding up to a whopping $1.3M

[woods170]

https://beta.sam.gov/awards/92343311%2BAWARD

GATEWAY LOGISTICS SERVICES (GLS) - SPACE EXPLORATION TECHNOLOGIES (SPACEX) - MODIFICATION ORDERS TASK ORDER SX-304-20 REQUIREMENT CHANGE EVALUATION FOR GATEWAY LOGISTICS SERVICES RISK MITIGATION DUE TO DELAYED AUTHORITY TO PROCEED.

$681,557.00

https://beta.sam.gov/awards/92342896%2BAWARD

GATEWAY LOGISTICS SERVICES (GLS) - SPACE EXPLORATION TECHNOLOGIES (SPACEX). MODIFICATION ORDERS TASK ORDER SX-303-20 PRE-ATP ADVANCE PLANNING TASKS AND ADDS FAR 52.204-25.

$346,406.00

total funding up to a whopping $1.3M

Basically this is SpaceX being financially compensated by NASA for the fact that NASA doesn't have the budget available (yet) to fulfill its contractual payment requirements to SpaceX.

In such a case NASA can do two things:
1. Issue a stop-work order until NASA does get the budget available.
2. Have the contractor continue work under a stop-gap measure.

The second option is what those mods to task orders represent. It prevents work on DragonXL coming to a full stand still. Work will continue, but at a lower rate.