Intuitive Machines Terrestrial Return Vehicle (TRV)

[mfck]

Has there even ever been a pressing requirement for unmanned low-g wide-crossrange reentry? This looks like another one of those solutions to an inexisting problem that are so common in the "new space" sector

It seems to me that anything that was robust enough to be brought up on a rocket should be capable of coming down in a Dragon. There might be a handful of exceptions that could benefit from low-g reentry, but wouldn't it be cheaper to design a special packaging for those experiments rather than a whole new reentry vehicle?

Time Sensitive. Think biological samples.

[Nibb31]

Time Sensitive. Think biological samples.

Surely you could schedule such a time-sensitive experiment so that the samples are ready just before closing the hatch on a Dragon, or you could plan them to go up and down on a crew rotation. In any case, it sounds like a tiny niche that doesn't justify a whole new reentry vehicle to be developed.

Has such a need actually been formulated by a science team? Or is it a fantasy requirement made up to fit the idea.

[TrevorMonty]

In regards to the propellant, it might be using one the new green nontoxic ones that NASA has been developing. The first test flight is in 2016 here is a link to it.

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2014/10/20/ball-aerospace-green-propellant-infusion-mission-host-3-dod-experiments/#more-53703

Although it hasn't been flight proven I expect it would be low risk for this reentry vehicle.

[jongoff]

This seems bizarre to me - but what do I know.
 - What tiny/small payload is so time critical that this becomes economical?
 - It will take up significant pressurized payload space (& mass) going up
 - Handling this thing *inside* ISS seems dangerous.

But again, I could be way off base.

Reentry opportunities are only quarterly at best. For commercial research they often need as fast of iteration cycles as they can get, and right now the current transportation can mean only 1-2 cycles per year. Even though microgravity is amazing, if you force research to stretch out over too much time, it can be better to use a lower quality research environment that you can access frequently.

It is true though that it will take up significant payload mass and space to make this happen.

~Jon

[jongoff]

Time Sensitive. Think biological samples.

Surely you could schedule such a time-sensitive experiment so that the samples are ready just before closing the hatch on a Dragon, or you could plan them to go up and down on a crew rotation. In any case, it sounds like a tiny niche that doesn't justify a whole new reentry vehicle to be developed.

Has such a need actually been formulated by a science team? Or is it a fantasy requirement made up to fit the idea.

It's not so much time sensitive in the way you're thinking, but in the shortening iteration cycles sense of the term. If you talk with CASIS, NanoRacks, or any of the companies trying to do commercially viable research on the station, this has been something they've been very interested in for many years. I was hearing about the need for something like this all the way back in 2007.

My big reason we didn't put more of a focus on this at Atlius was a misunderstanding of the details and costs of getting cargo to the station. Basically, if it fits under CASIS's mandate, and they feel like it's something they should manifest, then they aren't legally allowed (by Congress) to charge for access to the station. When I was doing the preliminary business analysis on the concept, I was assuming we'd actually have to pay for a significant fraction of the station upmass, and that didn't close unless the reentry kit was very light relative to the mass you were trying to bring back... But if CASIS has ISS customers that need this, the µRV developer basically gets a free ride.

It's a somewhat unintuitive environment, but that's how Congress and NASA set it up.

~Jon

[mfck]

Thanks for the insight, Jon, it is much appreciated.

[Lars-J]

This seems bizarre to me - but what do I know.
 - What tiny/small payload is so time critical that this becomes economical?
 - It will take up significant pressurized payload space (& mass) going up
 - Handling this thing *inside* ISS seems dangerous.

But again, I could be way off base.

Reentry opportunities are only quarterly at best. For commercial research they often need as fast of iteration cycles as they can get, and right now the current transportation can mean only 1-2 cycles per year. Even though microgravity is amazing, if you force research to stretch out over too much time, it can be better to use a lower quality research environment that you can access frequently.

It is true though that it will take up significant payload mass and space to make this happen.

~Jon

But it doesn't provide more re-entry opportunities, really, it provides *one* additional one for a very small cargo.

It would be one thing if they could be launched on a small & cheap sat launcher to rendezvous with ISS on its own, then you can send up as many as you want. But stocking up multiple of these inside ISS just isn't practical. Nor can we reasonably expect multiple of these to be sent up on each CRS mission to realize those frequent downmass opportunities.

[Robotbeat]

Why not? They don't look that heavy and Cygnus Advanced has a lot of volume. Having a few of these available may make some stuff a lot more practical.

Ideally, you'd pair these micro reentry vehicles with a way to get really small payloads up to Station as well. Cue: "Go, go, Altius Sticky Boom!"

[mfck]

For example, Wikipedia tells us that

Industry-wide research and investment reached a record $65.3 billion in 2009. While the cost of research in the U.S. was about $34.2 billion between 1995 and 2010, revenues rose faster (revenues rose by $200.4 billion in that time)

from http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry

With this kind of money in the loop and shorter development iteration cycles enabled by microRVs (which might render the microgravity research to make actual commercial sense) we can start to envision a CRS-2 Cygnus flight fully bought out by that industry to deliver a stack of microRVs to ISS. Not one or two, but tens of them. It might be possible to store them outside the ISS in that same expendable vehicle which delivered them, not necessarily berthed, but somewhere on the truss, loaded into the station as needed.

Cheap[er] mass-to-orbit might shift some paradigms...

[Robotbeat]

That won't happen at ISS. Also, pharma R&D is a much smaller market than the total space industry which is hundreds of billions.

[mfck]

That won't happen at ISS. Also, pharma R&D is a much smaller market than the total space industry which is hundreds of billions.

Why total space vs total pharma matters?

[mfck]

If I may

[Nindalf]

That won't happen at ISS. Also, pharma R&D is a much smaller market than the total space industry which is hundreds of billions.

The pharmaceutical industry and the space industry are roughly equal around $300 billion/year, and I think pharma spends a larger proportion of that on R&D.  The total health care industry is an order of magnitude bigger than pharma, and has other reasons to do zero-G biology experiments than drug development alone.

[ChrisWilson68]

It doesn't matter how big the pharmaceutical industry is if zero-g won't help them with what they're trying to do.  CASIS has been trying to get industry to use the ISS for anything it can, but so far it's found close to zero interest.

Maybe there's a lack of understanding in the industry or maybe CASIS has done a poor job.  But there's also the possibility that zero-g just isn't useful for developing drugs.

[jongoff]

This seems bizarre to me - but what do I know.
 - What tiny/small payload is so time critical that this becomes economical?
 - It will take up significant pressurized payload space (& mass) going up
 - Handling this thing *inside* ISS seems dangerous.

But again, I could be way off base.

Reentry opportunities are only quarterly at best. For commercial research they often need as fast of iteration cycles as they can get, and right now the current transportation can mean only 1-2 cycles per year. Even though microgravity is amazing, if you force research to stretch out over too much time, it can be better to use a lower quality research environment that you can access frequently.

It is true though that it will take up significant payload mass and space to make this happen.

~Jon

But it doesn't provide more re-entry opportunities, really, it provides *one* additional one for a very small cargo.

It would be one thing if they could be launched on a small & cheap sat launcher to rendezvous with ISS on its own, then you can send up as many as you want. But stocking up multiple of these inside ISS just isn't practical. Nor can we reasonably expect multiple of these to be sent up on each CRS mission to realize those frequent downmass opportunities.

It depends a lot on how big and heavy they are. The absolute maximum volume you could fit through the JEM airlock is under 0.5m^3, which is about 4.5% of a Dragon's pressurized volume, and 1.8% of Cygnus's. If you flew one on each CRS mission, that would boost the number of return opportunities to nearly one per month instead of the current one per quarter.

And the amount of cargo you could bring back is non-trivial as well, probably on the order of 25kg or more depending on density.

I'm just telling you what I've heard from CASIS, NanoRacks, and NASA--they and their customers are all interested in a capability like this.

~Jon

[QuantumG]

Last I heard, the protein crystalization people couldn't get enough cargo space.. no matter how much they offered to pay. Plus there's the astronaut hours issue. Not much has changed from the 80s, it's still a manual process that involves astronauts eyeballing samples.

[jongoff]

It doesn't matter how big the pharmaceutical industry is if zero-g won't help them with what they're trying to do.  CASIS has been trying to get industry to use the ISS for anything it can, but so far it's found close to zero interest.

Maybe there's a lack of understanding in the industry or maybe CASIS has done a poor job.  But there's also the possibility that zero-g just isn't useful for developing drugs.

The bigger problem is that the Congressional legislation that created the National Lab required them to retain IP and data rights for all research run through the national lab. They got some relief on the IP part, but not yet on the data rights. Because of that pharma researchers have largely kept their research to-date focused on unpatentable basic research. CASIS is trying to get relief on this (I think one or both of the NASA Authorization bills working their way through Congress address this), especially since NASA had previously waved this requirement for other organizations like NanoRacks.

~Jon

[A_M_Swallow]

It doesn't matter how big the pharmaceutical industry is if zero-g won't help them with what they're trying to do.  CASIS has been trying to get industry to use the ISS for anything it can, but so far it's found close to zero interest.

Maybe there's a lack of understanding in the industry or maybe CASIS has done a poor job.  But there's also the possibility that zero-g just isn't useful for developing drugs.

The bigger problem is that the Congressional legislation that created the National Lab required them to retain IP and data rights for all research run through the national lab. They got some relief on the IP part, but not yet on the data rights. Because of that pharma researchers have largely kept their research to-date focused on unpatentable basic research. CASIS is trying to get relief on this (I think one or both of the NASA Authorization bills working their way through Congress address this), especially since NASA had previously waved this requirement for other organizations like NanoRacks.

~Jon

Bill Gates and his Foundation are paying for the development of drugs for third world countries.  Some of this may be off patent and could therefore be done at the ISS.

[sghill]

How is the Intuitive Machines ISS RV defined by ITARS? Is it consider munitions to be regulated by ITARS?

Isn't everything, these days? You'd have a really hard time selling just cubesat parts in the US without running in to eyeTAR, let alone a guided reentry vehicle.

Launch vehicle technology and launches themselves have specific breakout language in ITAR.

(6) A launch vehicle or payload shall
not, by reason of the launching of such
vehicle, be considered an export for
purposes of this subchapter. However,
for certain limited purposes (see §126.1
of this subchapter), the controls of this
subchapter may apply to any sale,
transfer or proposal to sell or transfer
defense articles or defense services.

ITAR Matters when you try to export, share, or relinquish control over an item or even an idea to an entity or someone who is not a U.S. Citizen or an entity on the exempt list.  So these guys can sell their ships in the U.S. without bumping into ITAR so long as the above requirement is met. They can't, however build or originate the machine in the US without bumping into ITAR if they try to show it off, sell it, or transfer control to a foreign entity.  They can launch it and recover it (even on foreign soil) so long as it remains in the custody of U.S. personnel, but- as Jim has pointed out before- the chain of custody would have to be approved, and that's tricky.

Here's the list: https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/regulations_laws/documents/official_itar/2014/ITAR_Part_121.pdf

[Zed_Noir]

...
Launch vehicle technology and launches themselves have specific breakout language in ITAR.

(6) A launch vehicle or payload shall
not, by reason of the launching of such
vehicle, be considered an export for
purposes of this subchapter. However,
for certain limited purposes (see §126.1
of this subchapter), the controls of this
subchapter may apply to any sale,
transfer or proposal to sell or transfer
defense articles or defense services.

ITAR Matters when you try to export, share, or relinquish control over an item or even an idea to an entity or someone who is not a U.S. Citizen or an entity on the exempt list.  So these guys can sell their ships in the U.S. without bumping into ITAR so long as the above requirement is met. They can't, however build or originate the machine in the US without bumping into ITAR if they try to show it off, sell it, or transfer control to a foreign entity.  They can launch it and recover it (even on foreign soil) so long as it remains in the custody of U.S. personnel, but- as Jim has pointed out before- the chain of custody would have to be approved, and that's tricky.

Here's the list: https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/regulations_laws/documents/official_itar/2014/ITAR_Part_121.pdf

So is there more ITAR regulations about reentry vehicles from orbit? Specifically on man-portable sized ones (e.g. mid size duffle bag).