The Future of Offshore Space Support with Space Perspective

As the commercial spaceflight industry continues to grow, so does the need to support offshore operations such as launch and recovery. Enter a new type of offshore support vessel (OSV) that can play a vital role in this skyrocketing sector.

On this episode of Setting Course, Captain Bryan Dietz, Master of Space Perspective’s MS Voyager, and Tyson Breedlove, ABS Manager of Business Development for Global Offshore, join host John Snyder, Managing Editor of Riviera Maritime Media, to discuss these new space support vessels.

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Key Points

• The space industry is experiencing significant growth, with increasing interest in commercial spaceflight and space exploration.
• Offshore support vessels (OSVs) are being adapted and certified for space support operations, including launch and recovery operations.
• ABS, as a class society, plays a crucial role in the conversion and certification of OSVs for space support.
• Modifications to Space Perspective’s vessel include lengthening, propulsion system changes, additional crew accommodations, rewiring and safety enhancements.

Guests
Captain Bryan Dietz is the Master of the world’s first marine spaceport, the MS Voyager, for Space Perspective. He is a native of Long Island, N.Y., and was born into a saltwater fishing and boating family. He graduated from SUNY Maritime College and has more than a decade of experience in the offshore sector, including ultra deepwater subsea construction.

Tyson Breedlove is a Business Development Manager in Global Offshore for ABS and leads the team’s offshore space strategy. Breedlove has worked in the maritime industry for 16 years, the first 12 of which were in the field as a surveyor in South Korea and Singapore.

Transcript

John Snyder  0:08 
You're listening to Setting Course, an ABS Podcast. Join us as we navigate the latest trends, developments and challenges facing the rapidly evolving maritime and offshore industries. Catch every episode at www.eagle.org and podcast platforms everywhere.

Today we're going to discuss the first of a new kind of OSV designed for space support. Joining us for the discussion are Tyson Breedlove — Tyson is the manager of business development Global Offshore at ABS — and Bryan Dietz. Bryan is Master of the MS Voyager for Space Perspective. Gentlemen, welcome to the show. Tyson, why don't you kick us off? And tell us a little bit about yourself before we jump into our podcast today? 

Tyson Breedlove (0:59)  
Thanks, John. Happy to be here. I’ve been in the industry for about 16 years. I spent the first nine years of my career doing new construction, surveys for compliance in South Korea. From there I moved to Singapore, where I surveyed marine and offshore assets for compliance — units that were in service. I was there for three years. Probably the most interesting is working in some of the biggest, most sophisticated shipyards in the world. You see the most state-of-the-art technology being applied at a scale that you just don’t see anywhere else. The way that they build these ships and they do it so quickly is so organized. They know where every piece of the puzzle is and it just all comes together. It’s really professionally rewarding to see that product go out on the sea, be part of the sea trials, be a part of the team, helping the owner, and helping the shipyard get the unit to a place where it’s fully compliant. And now I work in Global Offshore as a business development manager and I’m the lead for space strategy, among other things.

John Snyder (2:12)
Well, quite a bit of experience, certainly in shipbuilding and ship repair Tyson. So, thanks for sharing that. Bryan, tell us a little bit about yourself as well. What's your background? 

Bryan Dietz (2:24)  
Well, yeah, thank you for having me. So yeah, honored to be here and talk to you gentlemen this afternoon. Basically, I'm a mariner, plain and simple. I was born and raised on Long Island and grew up basically commercial fishing, surfing. Really, the water, to be honest, is all I've ever known. And I'm a graduate of SUNY Maritime College. And after I graduated there, I worked in New York Harbor on some ATBs, pushing petroleum products around, got a master of towing from there, and then moved to the bigger side of things with the deepwater subsea construction aspect of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and Guyana. So, to keep it simple, that’s basically me. I've been fortunate enough to be a mariner all my life and made a living from it. Really can't imagine doing anything else.

John Snyder (3:15) 
Great. Well, thank you for sharing that. And it's certainly an interesting background and nice to know a fellow New Yorker. 

Bryan Dietz (3:25)  
Yes, sir. 

John Snyder (3:27)  
Tyson, why don't you get us started and tell us a little bit about what you're seeing as far as — do you see a growing business case for OSVs supporting both government and commercial spaceflight?

Tyson Breedlove (3:42)  
Yeah, we're seeing a lot of activity. And with this new type of offshore support vessel, OSV. The past decade, there's been dramatic innovations with commercial spaceflight. We're on the dawn of a new space age. And NASA has plans to return to the moon, as many of you know, and there's multiple commercial companies that are planning manned missions to Mars. There's a big business case for commercial spaceflight. And it's transitioning more from previously, it was a very governmental-run business. You had the likes of NASA, and basically, governments of large countries. In the past decade, costs have gone down dramatically. So the space shuttle as everybody knows, you know, it was one of the first reusable rockets. But even with the space shuttle in the 1990s, to put payload into space, it cost around $30,000 per pound. And so now it's about $1,200 per pound. So, costs have fallen dramatically. And as those costs fall, interest in space exploration have gone up for the likes of communication, satellites, research, deep space exploration and even space tourism. And so, this is really being made possible because a lot of these parts are being recovered offshore. So offshore plays a major role in this new space age. And we wouldn't see the cost dropping as dramatically as they are without these OSVs that are specifically designed to go out there and, instead of, you know, designed as traditional OSVs, for oil and gas support operations, these are designed to support a new type of operation, which is basically space operations, space operations offshore, whether its launch operations, recovery operations, or launch and recovery operations.

John Snyder (6:05)  
Bryan, I was just going to say now, Space Perspective, of course, is quite a bit different from say, your ATB experience in New York Harbor. Tell us a little bit about Space Perspective, and Tyson's kind of given you a nice lead in here. 

Bryan Dietz (6:22)  
He has, thank you for that Tyson. So basically, Space Perspective is the world's first carbon-neutral space flight experience company. And in that, that offers a safe journey to the stratosphere via a giant space balloon and our luxury spacecraft, spaceship Neptune. So, you know, it does open up the doors to a lot of people that would never really necessarily have the chance to go to the moon on a rocket via NASA or so have you a couple of different companies. It just opens the doors in general to a lot more people seeing this amazing planet. 

Tyson Breedlove (7:00)  
Yeah, that's a good point, Bryan. And previous, when we were talking, I believe you said what was it — like 750, only 750, or less than 800 people have even been to space. 

Bryan Dietz (7:12)  
It's been less than 800 people total, since the start of this. And that's going to go up significantly. The tremendous interest that we've had so far, it's just extremely overwhelming. And it's not just in the United States, but worldwide. I mean, they want this technology immediately, you know.

John Snyder (7:30) 
Now Tyson, how is ABS supporting Space Perspective?

Tyson Breedlove (7:36)  
Right, well, Space Perspective, their OSV is specifically designed to launch this capsule. And so they're basically using the offshore space to take their clients out and give them a perspective from space of Earth. And so what ABS does is we assist in the conversion of the — they took an OSV that was originally designed and constructed for doing traditional OSV-type operations that support oil and gas. They converted this to do this very specific operation, which I mean, the risk profile is different, it doesn't make sense to have a lot of equipment that they had on there. And then they had to add some additional equipment and change some of the safety profile of the unit. And so in order to do this, and to do this safely, ABS as a class society reviewed their plans. So it's basically two steps or two stages, or, as we would call a design review. So we would perform design review of the changes that they made to convert a traditional OSV to what we call what we're calling now is a space support vessel. So we do the design review and the design review is done by our engineering department basically to check the drawings of the unit and to see that those drawings are in compliance with the rules and the regulations that are applicable to the unit. And then we also have our surveyors that act as inspectors and they're the boots on the ground. So they make sure that the modifications to the space support vessel are being done in compliance with those drawings and all the modifications are done in compliance with rules and regulations. You know, drawings are drawings — not everything is necessarily on the drawings. They will issue basically the final certificates to the vessel and certifying that the vessel is classed by ABS and then we also perform some activities on behalf of the flag as a recognized organization. 

Tyson Breedlove (9:53)
The USA is the global leader for commercial spaceflight. And so the US Coast Guard is a big player in safety and compliance, we team up with the Coast Guard to make sure that they're complying with some of the Coast Guard regulations. And so that's, you know, the 30,000-foot view, so to speak, of what we were doing. I could go into more detail, but basically, we make sure that the vessel is ready for this new and really adventurous type of operation that they're about to undertake. We really stick to just the vessel. So actually the space capsule itself, we don't certify, so it's our scope is limited to the vessel and vessel propulsion system, and the firefighting systems, safety systems and navigation systems, so on, things of that nature. 

John Snyder (10:51)  
Now, Bryan, I was wondering if you can get a little bit more granular on the modifications to the vessel itself. Tell us a little bit about, you know, the conversion process at the shipyard. What, what are you doing to the vessel to make it a space support vessel?

Bryan Dietz (11:12)  
It's almost, what we're not doing to the vessel would be easier really, but yeah to dig into it, and this is the fun stuff to me. Obviously, the first thing we've done is lengthen the vessel an extra 22 feet. And this is to facilitate our 600-foot balloon, and then the associated 150 to 200 foot of rigging for the parachutes and the capsule. Digging a little bit deeper to the internals is we've ripped out all of the propulsion units, including both port and starboard Z drives. The bow thruster the drop down thruster. This also includes overhauling and rebuilding the associated engines that run those individual thrusters. We've completely rebuilt the three ship service generators, and the vessels emergency diesel generator. So as you can see, we're not taking it lightly on the propulsion side of things. We took out, you know, it being an OSV, we took out the entire liquid mud system that was used to support the oilfield and that industry itself. We did convert some old liquid mud tanks into additional ballast tanks, just to settle the vessel in the water a little bit, give us a deeper draft, we've added additional 12 man accommodations below deck as well. We'll get into a little bit of the wiring, we've basically fully rewired the entire vessel, including the propulsion system and all of the emergency systems associated with those systems. This includes a vessel monitoring system, which aids in the vessel automation for balancing the fuel. And really protected the vessel with a brand-new state of the art fire detection and control system, which ABS has a full capacity over. We've added additional watertight doors for compartmentalization. And just making the vessel overall safer for the crew that we have, the additional crew members that we will have, and then the additional passengers in the future. Safety is in utmost of importance for me specifically. And I told everybody that from you know, from day one coming in, I'm a safety nut. You know, it's, there's a lot riding on my shoulders, and, you know, being the captain of this first vessel for this company, it's a tremendous amount of responsibility, and I'm not going to take it lightly and I'm glad I have the support. And we're not cutting any corners, hence why we're fully operational with ABS. That's pretty much it as far as the modifications. We can go into severe detail, but we've upgraded everything that we can and still for some additional modifications to come in the future.

John Snyder (13:50)  
Now, Bryan is she also going to be a DP two or three?

Bryan Dietz (13:56)  
Yes, we are keeping the DP two class. So she will be fully utilized and operationalize a DP two.

Tyson Breedlove (14:02)  
You know, on the topic of safety, you know, we talk about safety a lot. It's a buzz word and I fear sometimes the word gets maybe a little bit worn out. And it's great to work with partners that safety is just it's not just a word. At ABS, safety — it's our guiding north star. When you have companies doing something this innovative, safety and innovation, sometimes those things can be a little bit intention because, you know, nobody's done it before. And so it's very important to have your best people on it and get the best advice that you can beforehand and to do the risk assessments, to do the design review, and to cooperate with the class society and to really pursue safety with all due diligence and with all that you have. Because, like I said, OSV supporting oil and gas operations has been done for a long time. And so now this is OSV supporting space operations. And so that's where Space Perspective and ABS have come together to really evaluate what's new here, and what's different here, and can all of these risks be addressed to promote safety on board that vessel and for that crew and for the people on board that vessel because that's really what matters is that they make it home, and that they make it home to their families. And so that's something that's important to me personally, that's the reason I work at ABS.

John Snyder (15:46)  
Well, thanks for that Tyson. I was going to say, could you elaborate a little bit on, you know, perhaps some of the requirements you've developed for the design and construction and inspection of these space support vessels?

Tyson Breedlove (15:59)  
The way that we deal with novel designs is, so there are no specific requirements for space support vessels right now. There's just not enough of them. But it is like round peg square hole kind of thing. Like, if a requirement doesn't make sense, then it doesn't make sense. If there's no value there, if it's not adding what I call safety value to the unit, then we need to rethink it. And we need to work with all the stakeholders to examine the requirements and see that all of the potential hazards that exist are being addressed. And it's all about what is the hazard, how severe is it, and what's the likelihood of that event occurring? And we want all events, everything to get down to what's known as in the industry as ALARP, as low as reasonably practicable. And so this is basically in line with industry standards with industry norms, you know. It's basically — there's nothing that's 100% safe. You get in your car, and every day, people don't realize that there's risk, there's risk and everything that we do, but is it acceptable risk? That's the question, is it acceptable risk? And has the risk been mitigated to appropriate levels? So that's what we do as a class society, with our partners and with our clients, that that was our mission with all major modifications. And that was our mission with this project as well.

John Snyder (17:31)  
Now, Bryan, earlier you had mentioned, of course, the spaceship Neptune, and the capsule and the hydrogen balloon and of course, meaning you're going to have to carry hydrogen on board the vessel. You know, talk a little bit about I guess, that process, you know, is there any concerns about risks from the hydrogen?

Bryan Dietz (17:56)  
I mean, just in general, addressing that question is yes. We are going to be fully regulated by the DOT. So, as far as the carriage and storage of hydrogen — the balloon is powered by hydrogen — we are going to be fully regulated, it's going to be in a fully controlled area on the vessel. It'll be segregated as best we can from people in general. And then just the filling process when we get to that for the balloon is going to be completely followed step by step procedural wise. Just that the carriage of hydrogen on the vessel itself will be extremely stringent as far as our rules that we put in as a company and then along with ABS, the Coast Guard, FAA and the Department of Transportation in general.

John Snyder (18:45)  
And then, as far as how does the launching process work and why do you have to be offshore to do it?

Bryan Dietz (18:53)  
Well, I’ll touch on that question first. Offshore just opens our weather pattern, that we call it, up. Obviously, the Earth is covered a bit more than 70% of water. So it gives us the ability to move around freely. This is a fair weather operation. So, we can literally move the vessel to different areas, you know, within a day or two, or maybe a couple of days depending on how far we go or where we go. But it just opens up the possibility to get these test flights first, off the ground, prove proof of concept, and just opens it up. We got to kind of get out of their commercial airspace as well, which is obviously very stringent over land. But yeah, basically, to answer that question, in its simplest form is just, it allows us a lot more flexibility to station this vessel in calmer areas. May that be the Bahamas or just in the middle of the Atlantic somewhere. Yeah, I mean, the vessel itself is going to carry out the launch and retrieval operations, we have a state of the art launching system, which I really can't go into, so forgive me, but that will aid in retrieval of the spacecraft and the balloon from the sea, we have a couple of fast boats that will aid in that as well. And then a large A-frame and retrieval hardware on the vessel itself that will aid in recovery of the capsule in the balloon. And she's basically our marine spaceport where this function is going to take place from. So, we will launch off the deck of the vessel, send the capsule and balloon into the stratosphere. And a couple hours later, when she returns to the water we’ll aid in the retrieval of the capsule in the balloon.

John Snyder (20:30)  
Sounds pretty exciting. When will we see the first of these flights?

Bryan Dietz (20:35)  
So, it's all dependent on us getting out of the shipyard, first of all, which we are nearing the end of it. We have a giant certification process to go through with our COI. Realistically, we're going to commence test flights in 2024. That will probably carry us through the majority of the year. We have several test flights again, like I stated, and passenger flights are now set for 2025. So we're ramping up we got a long road ahead of us. We're really looking forward to getting out of this yard as you can imagine, and moving along really starting the fun stuff. You know, shipyards are fun and all but I'm ready to go home. I've got to give my guys a little bit of a break.

John Snyder (21:20)  
Well, good. Well, good. I was going to say, now, with only a few minutes left in our podcast, Tyson, I was wondering if you had any final thoughts you could share with our listeners regarding possibly the outlook for OSV supporting projects like Bryan's and Space Perspective.

Tyson Breedlove (21:39)  
Right, well, the outlook for commercial spaceflight is very favorable. You know, since 2018, I'm just going to my notes here, FAA launch licenses for commercial spaceflight have increased 300% since 2018. And offshore recovery of reusable rockets. That has grown since 2016, there was just a few. And in 2022, there was over 60. Offshore plays a key role in this new space age, I'll tell you why I already got into recovering those parts, rapid reusability of these vehicles and vehicle parts such as fairings and that how that is driving down prices. But what I haven't spoke to yet is demands for spaceports. And spaceports, there's only so many spaceports in the US and globally. And so that's causing bottleneck issues, there's some regulatory constraints to launch onshore that do not exist if you launch offshore. And so as congestion grows at existing sites, it makes operating a spaceport at sea more attractive. So what you're going to see is, as spaceflight as it grows and grows and grows, units to support that, OSVs to support that is going to grow proportionally. And we expect that to continue into the future.

John Snyder (23:12)  
Well, thanks for that Tyson. I was going to say, how about you Bryan? Did you have any final parting thoughts for our listeners?

Bryan Dietz (23:20)  
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just as a whole, I'm extremely excited to see this endeavor take off. As Tyson mentioned, just the amount of vessels that's going to allow to operate you know, in this industry specifically speaking on us. I mean, this is our first vessel, the Voyager, which I'll touch on the name, I think that's pretty important to touch on real quick. But before that, I mean, our first single vessel turns into two, two becomes four, and four becomes eight, and so on and so on, relatively quick. You know, within the next couple of years, we're going to be spreading worldwide. There's a lot of interest globally, as I touched on before, specifically Australia and Hawaii, I mean, they want this now, so we're trying the best to give it to them obviously. Just in general, seeing this take off and seeing our blood, sweat and tears really come to life, you know, and not just the vessel side but the entire company, the capsule, manufacturer of the balloon, our APC company. Just to see everybody's efforts. And again, the blood, sweat and tears really come to life, it's going to be really something special. Touching on the Voyager, I just wanted to pay a little bit of homage —the vessel was named Voyager specifically for Voyager 1 space probe mission. At astronomer Carl Sagan’s request, they took a photo from Earth or of Earth from across the solar system. And they labeled that the pale blue dot. So, that's kind of where the Voyager’s name came from. And the pale blue dot is basically iconically known, you know, from Carl Sagan’s request to take that picture and across the solar system, to actually understand how small we are and it's we got to kind of take care of this thing that we know as Earth in general. So it's pretty significant. It's a meaningful vessel, you know, to me specifically, and just even more that I get to be a part of it to be the first captain of this vessel. It's a special vessel, special company, and we're doing a special thing. 

John Snyder (25:13)  
Great, thank you for sharing that, Bryan. And I look forward to seeing the first of these special vessels out in the water real soon.

Bryan Dietz (25:23)  
You're welcome aboard any time.

John Snyder (25:25) 
Well, Bryan and Tyson, I certainly want to thank you both for joining me today on Setting Course, an ABS Podcast, and detailing this groundbreaking project with a very unique space support vessel.

Bryan Dietz (25:40)  
Well, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure and an honor. 

Tyson Breedlove (25:44)
Thanks, John.

John Snyder (25:50)  
Thank you for joining us today on Setting Course, an ABS podcast. If you're interested in learning more about today's topic or listening to more episodes, visit www.eagle.org.