Standards Impact

Lift Off: Commerical Spaceflight Standards

• ASTM International • Season 3 • Episode 6

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Two professional astronauts — Chris Ferguson and Michael López-Alegría — discuss the current state of commercial spaceflight and where the field is headed. From medical requirements to spaceport design, learn how standards support this burgeoning industry.


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David Walsh (00:12):

Well, it's not every day that a podcast host gets the pleasure of interviewing an actual astronaut, let alone two, but on this episode of Standards Impact, that's exactly what's happening. I'm Dave Walsh, Editor-in-Chief of Standardization News, and I'm joined today by Michael Lopez, Allegria, chief astronaut with Axiom Space and Christopher Ferguson, principal at the Pensky Group to talk about standards for space with two key members of ASTMs commercial Space Flight Committee F 47. From standards for the space ports where rockets will be launched to the medical standards that will ensure the health and safety of future space passengers. We discuss a wide range of topics today, and I even ask them the question, why haven't humans been back to the moon? The answer may surprise you. So when many people think of commercial space flight, they think of hopping on a spacecraft like they do an airplane today and flying around the world in an hour or two. Science fiction has put this in people's minds, movies, podcasts like this one. So really my first question for both of you is, is this something that will ever be realistic and how should people think of commercial space flight? How do you think it will impact the average person's life in the future? Realistically, for real? And Chris, we could start with you.

Chris Ferguson (01:18):

You know, the idea of hopping on a spacecraft and going around the world in an hour or two, Mike and I were speaking a little bit earlier about all the subtleties of what it takes to get into space. You know, whether it's quarantine or training or minor glitches that might occur with the spacecraft. You know, I, I've heard to some refer to it as the hardest second in the world to get past and that's that moment of liftoff. Um, but with increased commercial providers out there, you know, human space flight providers, you know, with good safety records, doing something repetitive over and over like we board and fly in a commercial airplane, I could see that it will get better. Will it ever be easy? Probably not, but it will be better than it is today.

Michael López-Alegría (02:00):

I agree with what Chris has said, but my historical reference is you go back a hundred years and it was that hard to get on a commercial airplane and now as you point out, it's as routine as anything. So it's hard for us to imagine how the processes and the vehicles and the whole machine will improve, but I think improve it will and give it enough time. I think it'll absolutely be routine and I think the way that we'll see it is probably less flying to space stations or the moon, but from point A to point B in a, in a much, much faster way. There are definitely some efforts that are going on the development world to do just that. So I believe that will probably happen before, you know, going to other bodies, whether they be human made or natural happens anytime soon. I think the first thing that will happen is this so-called point-to-point suborbital commercial space flight.

David Walsh (02:55):

Well, there was enough light in these answers that I'm gonna hold out hope of seeing an airport with a bunch of Dragon nine rockets in it at some point in in my life. Maybe not my life, maybe my kids' life. So that kind of does lead into the next question, which you were sort of anticipating, which is that we've recently seen a lot of celebrities go into space. Katy Perry went into space, William Shatner has gone into space. So I think most people look forward to the maturation of commercial space flight with excitement and anticipation, but you're both renowned astronauts with years of experience. So what would you say to people who worry about the safety risks involved with making space flight commonplace? I mean, I know people who don't even like to fly from Washington to Philadelphia, so what do you see in that regard?

Chris Ferguson (03:35):

First, I just wanna make a distinction between suborbital and Orbital flight. Most folks when they think about space, they think about that magical 100 kilometer, you know, 60 mile von car line. You know, once you go past it, you're in space. There is a very physical difference between suborbital space flight and orbital space flight. And if you look at it just in terms of speed, you know, suborbital vehicles probably peak out at, you know, somewhere between Mach three and four orbital vehicles get all the way up to Mach 25. That's really what it takes to stay in an orbit, you know, in zero G microgravity around the earth for extended duration. And if you look at it in terms of energy, that's 65, I think times more energy to get into orbit than it is to do a sober orbital flight. So there's almost two classes there and I think we're actually doing a, a real nice job of introducing the concept of space flight to, you know, the William Shatner's, the KA Perry's, et cetera.

(04:30):

You know, the ones that probably wouldn't think about, you know, taking the bigger step. But I just want to make sure that we're talking about sort of small step and big step and I think the small step will come easy. Virgin Galactic is not too far behind, you know, for the big steps. And we're talking, you know, point to point, as Mike had mentioned earlier, you know, going to two points on the earth surface that are, you know, separated by an entire hemisphere. I think you're probably looking at a little while for that. You already see us in orbital flight and very soon we're gonna be replacing the International Space station and serving commercial space stations with these commercial spacecraft. But that will likely be more focused towards manufacturing, you know, perhaps country driven space programs. There will be tourism there, there's no question about it, but I think that's gonna be a bit of a more exclusive club for say the next 10 to 20 years

Michael López-Alegría (05:21):

On that question. What I would pull on is whether or not it's right for people to worry about safety. And I would point out that I think the advent of computer-aided design and computer aided manufacturing have greatly improved safety in commercial human space flight. And when you start looking at the track record of SpaceX or some of these modern vehicles because they're less artisanal and with less sort of super hard to come by exotic materials or processes and more kind of cranked out, if you will, in a mass way, you can see that the differences between one vehicle and the next become smaller and smaller, therefore the repeatability becomes greater. And that's what ultimately safety is in, in large part anchored to. So should they worry? Absolutely. Are we getting better and better? Yes we are. And taking this opportunity to plug what we're doing, you know, A STM is involved very heavily in that safety conversation. So what we are about is to get not this company or that, but all the companies to start looking at the concept of these consensus standards as a means toward improving that safety so that one day, whenever that day comes, the so-called flying public will be assured that the vehicle that they get on is as safe as possible.

David Walsh (06:42):

Well, what you just said leads into my next question, but Chris made a great point and I should have made it earlier in the recording, which is that Mach 25 is a very different experience for the human body than Mach three or four as you mentioned. So yeah, that's a very important distinction to keep in mind.

Michael López-Alegría (06:56):

And I would add it's a much different experience for the vehicle more so than for the body. I mean the G-Force that you do in an an orbital and suborbital flight are not terribly different, but what the vehicle has to go through is vastly different. All that energy that he talked about putting into the system and then having to take that energy out of the system, those are definitely the most dangerous parts of the mission and that's where the biggest difference between a suborbital and orbital is.

David Walsh (07:20):

So you did touch on standards and the work of your committee, the committee on commercial space flight F 47, and a lot of those standards do revolve obviously around safety, but some revolve around medical and physical requirements as we're talking about, you know, not just anybody can jump on a ship and head into sub orbit or orbit, but even spaceport capabilities have been worked on. So Michael, we can stay with you. What are some of the most important standards that you think still need to be developed by your committee and what standards are most needed to help the industry fully mature and move forward?

Michael López-Alegría (07:50):

So what I would say to answer that is not so much what we need to do, but what we don't need to do. And what we don't need to do is tell companies how to do things. We need to be doing these with a mind toward performance and not specificity. And when I say that, what I mean is we want the vehicles to be able to achieve certain performance requirements. And I think it's obvious, but that would largely be regarding safety, but not tell the companies how to achieve those requirements. And that's the, the hardest thing that we're struggling with is getting all the players at the table. Because being a commercial competitive landscape, the companies, each of them have their own secret sauce and they're rightly concerned about proprietary information, but there has to be a conversation where we can get around those hurdles and get people talking about the right things.

David Walsh (08:43):

Yeah. And Chris, what would you say?

Chris Ferguson (08:45):

Well, if I had to look at the standards we've published and have been working on, they definitely have more of a safety focus. Right now we're working on how to introduce the concept of safety management systems, which prior to this has been relegated mostly to the commercial airline business, but there's an attempt to begin to introduce that to the space flight community in the terms of a voluntary standard. We have worked on standards for, I would call it emergency survival in spacecraft, which is really, again, very safety focused, but we do wanna back out of that loop of being overly prescriptive. NASA has, over the course of their 60 plus years of human space flight, built quite a library of ways to do things. You know, the truth is there's many ways to do things in terms of you what is the most efficient and the most economical. So the information is out there.

David Walsh (09:39):

Yeah, well you both just touched on what was going to go into my next question, which is challenges. As you look ahead and being overly prescriptive is something you wanna avoid, but what would be some of the biggest challenges that you see that need to be faced and overcome in the field of commercial space flight? And what obstacles do you see on the horizon? One thing that always struck me was physical conditioning. You know, I know there are standards for medical and physical requirements, but you're both in great physical shape as astronauts. I wonder when you really think about the average person, is that one of the biggest challenges that it's going to be difficult for say my 80-year-old father to just hop on a vehicle at some point? Is that one of the challenges? Maybe you see others, however?

Chris Ferguson (10:14):

Well, I would think if you look at what the typical customer would be today, they're probably somebody certainly above the age of 40 and beyond, primarily because the revenue that it takes to buy a ticket, if you want to speak, sort of lends itself to someone who's a little more senior. So we have to really take into consideration not just that the typical customer may not be in excellent physical condition, but that they might be maybe a little heavier, right? They may have some pre-existing conditions. And the question I think for the industry is how do we accommodate them to the extent possible without taking any unnecessary risks? And a lot of the medical standards that A STM is working has an eye towards that, you know, what is adequate, albeit not perfect, but what are the adequate standards for someone to safely go to and return from space?

Michael López-Alegría (11:07):

I would also add that, you know, when Chris and I went through NASA selection and others have done so for their agencies, often it is not just how fit or capable somebody is of doing something in a given moment, but how long they're going to be able to maintain that career. They put a lot of money into our training, so they don't just want us to fly to space once. They want us to have a full career so they can profit on the investment that they've made in us. For some of these other potential customers, that isn't the case. They really just want to go once and you'd be surprised, I think it, I would say, of the challenging numbers statistically of how many people make it sort of to the final selection gate and then are disqualified, most of those are not for immediate health problems, but rather for potential for long-term issues.

(11:53):

My point there is that I think more people than you think would qualify to fly on a space flight once. And as Chris points out, it is in the interest of the commercial providers to expand that envelope greater and greater. You know, we've seen, in fact on the mission that is, uh, currently flying accent four, we're looking at some work that has to do with how we can monitor sugar levels in people so that one day we could potentially fly type two diabetics, which today is a disqualifying consideration. So the idea to continue to open the aperture, I think is one that we, you'll see these companies pursuing.

David Walsh (12:28):

Well, and I kind of pushed the conversation toward medical requirements because I always found that interesting, and I know the standards work is interesting, but what else would you see as some obstacles? Michael, you mentioned the vehicles themselves enduring the trips to space repeatedly, maybe the durability of the vehicles. I don't know, what might you say?

Michael López-Alegría (12:45):

You know, in the various realms of challenges? I, I think ironically the technical field is not the greatest. We seem to be pretty good at solving these technical problems. There are others out there like the regulatory environment, which need to be addressed. We have what I would say is a pretty functional regulatory regime in the US today about launches in Reentries, but not about what happens when a vehicle gets to and stays in space for a while. Ironically, companies you would think would not want regulation, but they would prefer some regulation to have some certainty about what the future holds and what the landscape is like rather than sort of the wild, wild west. So the regulatory regime is a question, and I think the other one is money. I mean, unfortunately it's still extraordinarily expensive to take a pound or a kilo of payload, whether they be human or not into orbit. And until those prices come down dramatically, I think it's still gonna remain the purview of only very, very wealthy people or of course nations who can send their government astronauts there.

David Walsh (13:47):

That's interesting. Of course I knew it cost a lot, but I wouldn't have put that at the top of my list. Chris, what would you say to to that?

Chris Ferguson (13:53):

Well, I'd begin by saying that, you know, commercial human space flight has only, you know, been around, I think the first flight was back in 2019 or 2020. I mean, that's not a long history, right? You know, odds are that we're gonna be confronted with a challenge someday, you know, whether it is a, a vehicle malfunction or an abort or you know, something even worse. And my concern is, you know, you look at the fairly significant accidents we've had in space flight and what happened, I'll just use the space shuttle for example. In both instances, those programs took at least two and a half years to return to flight again. Now, something like that would be very challenging for a commercial provider. So I would be concerned that once we are confronted with a challenge similar to that, that there might be, I would call it an over rotation on regulation, which we tend to find, you know, you need look no further than what happened to the nuclear power industry in this country. That was dramatically changed the three Mile Island accident in 1979, which really set the stage for that industry.

David Walsh (14:57):

So we've been kind of flirting with this idea the whole time, but when we look to the future of the field specifically, I would wonder where do you each see the field in the next 10, 20, 30 years? We usually ask this of our podcast guest, but in this case it's, it's going to be a little more interesting than most I think, because you've got the idea in people's heads of colonizing Mars and going to the ends of the cosmos. But will the progress be slower and steadier than that? Where do you see things going in the next few decades?

Chris Ferguson (15:23):

Mars is interesting, you know, but as long as I've been in this business, Mars has always been 20 years. In the future, that may not be the case today. You look at companies like SpaceX that have very specific objectives to get there. Now it sort of depends on what getting there means. You know, do we want to go into Martian orbit? Do we want to land on a martian moon? Do we want to go down to the surface that could be a longer timeline? We've got some challenges that we have to wrestle to the ground along with going to Mars, like that transit through, I would call it interstellar space and the challenges of intergalactic cosmic radiation, you know, there's some problems out there we haven't quite solved yet. You know, personally, I'm looking forward to what is it going to take to use in-situ resources on the surface of the moon to build ourselves a little home there?

(16:07):

Are we going to mine water and create homes or at least pressure structures on the surface of the moon using something exotic like 3D structure printing? I mean, that is, I think the next step, if you will, that will really enable us to survive beyond the comfort of our own orbital sphere where the moon is only three days away. You know, just to sort of sum it up, I see Mars as potentially a place to go and hang out for a while in, in maybe 20 years as a species. I see the moon as a much shorter horizon, and I do see commercial entities entirely serving low earth orbit, which is really the stepping off point for those two destinations, both for human transportation to lower earth orbit and then cargo transportation to low earth orbit and beyond. And that's in the next 10 years.

Michael López-Alegría (16:55):

I'll tell you, I have nothing to add, but maybe a little color. I completely agree with Fergie's opinion here. I, I may be even a little bit more pessimistic about Mars and it isn't just the radiation and some of the other challenges that he mentioned, but when you think about with today's propulsion, and I think that is the biggest lever that we have, is if we can come up with some other way other than, as I've heard been called the tyranny of the rocket equation to get to Mars, which today would take somewhere from six to nine months to get there, the same, to get back. And then are you just gonna do a touch and go, or are you gonna try to stay there for a long time? Those present enormous logistical challenges and reliability challenges when you think about the food, the water, the propellant, every consumable you can imagine for a mission that long, you either have to build an enormous spacecraft, which seems impractical at least by today's standards, or have a train of logistics that will precede such a mission.

(17:51):

So I'm, I'm a little bit, um, not too bullish on Mars. I do think that the moon is a sort of intermediate future where we can not just go there and do the so-called flags and footprints, but establish almost like an ISS International Space station type of laboratory there. I also think that it will be largely commercial, particularly if there ends up being a way to make money on the moon. What history has shown us in the last 10 years is that if there's a way to make something profitable, companies can far outpace, uh, government entities and development innovation, et cetera. So I would say that that's quite likely if we can find out that there is water ice that we can mine or some way to use the reiff as Fergie has suggested. And then finally, uh, yeah, low earth orbit for sure will be dominated by commercial entities. I would see hopefully more than one commercial space station being serviced by commercial transportation companies and people doing commercially sponsored space walks, for example, as a profit center. But other things that are not in the purview of the government sponsored space station today, like making movies or brand placement or hopefully manufacturing things that either can be used in space or at a cost that makes it profitable to bring them back to earth for use here. So I think the future is bright, but it's gonna take a while.

David Walsh (19:14):

Well, I come at these podcasts as a lay person, and so I'd be remiss if I had a podcast with two astronauts and didn't add a question that you just reminded me of, Michael, which is why haven't human beings been back to the moon in now 50 years? I suppose we did it already. And that's something that I know people will talk about at a cocktail party every weekend, you know, <laugh>, that's that kind of a question. So is there an obvious answer that the two of, you know, instantly in the rest of the world kind of doesn't get it?

Michael López-Alegría (19:40):

Yeah, it's all about the money. I mean, you know, it cost a huge portion of our federal budget to do the Apollo missions, uh, back in the sixties and early seventies. And the incentive to spend that money pretty much went away when we, I would argue won the space race. And since then there just hasn't been the appetite to go back until recently. I think we're going with a more noble motive now, which is to try to do, again, not just plant flags and footprints, but to do some useful work on the moon. But it also is being fueled to some degree by a sort of space race 2.0 I've heard it referred to because the Chinese have made it clear that it is their destination of choice in the near future as well. But the bottom line is, you know, whereas we were spending close to four and a half percent of our discretionary budget back in the sixties for the Apollo program today, NASA gets less than half of 1%. So the difference is pretty obvious.

David Walsh (20:33):

Is that the answer, Chris? Is that exactly how you would've answered it too?

Chris Ferguson (20:37):

And I have a little bit of a different approach to this. I've used the analogy of when did we get the first settlement in America, and I think it was Jamestown, 1619 rings a bell, although I don't quote me on that. But we never really settled, right? All we did was we sort of did a touch and go at that point, but we never began to colonize America until, you know, several, I think a hundred years later when we really began to come in earnest. So I think if you wanna look at it from a historical perspective, what we're doing on the moon is really no different than what we did. You know, back when crossing an ocean on a sailing boat was equivalent, you know, risk to traveling between here and the moon and a spaceship, you know, it's a marathon, not a sprint. And I think we proved to ourselves back in the sixties, we can certainly do it. I think we realized at the time to make a home of it and to stay for more than just a couple days is a much taller endeavor. And that's where we're on the threshold of right now.

David Walsh (21:32):

Well, as I say, at some point in every podcast this is called standards impact. And so I did wanna talk about a STM as an organization and their consensus process in creating the standards that will be needed to move forward. We've discussed some that exist and some of the more challenging aspects, but how important do you think ASTMs process has been in this whole industry in terms of creating commercial space flight standards? Do you think it has streamlined things? Has it moved them forward faster than maybe it would've been otherwise?

Chris Ferguson (22:01):

Yeah, so let me start with just a, a shred of optimism here in that we have a, an organization, it's a Canadian organization that's actually stepped forward and said, we are using an A-S-T-M-F 47 standard for this specific purpose. And that's good, you know, where we have some work to go is that we haven't had the industry I think really coalesce around what are the industry driven common standards that we're all going to lean towards. And I think right now the industry is mostly picked upon its internal expertise and some existing standards that NASA has written throughout the years. So we still have some learning to do. I think that said, we are all sort of coalescing on what the general direction will be. There are several standards in work right now at A STM. I think you had mentioned spaceports earlier, I mentioned safety management systems. Uh, we have a lot of medical work going on. We're actually doing some work on, I would call it public entry risk assessment. In other words, what danger does an errantly reentering space vehicle pose to the general population? So these are all, I think, very relevant fields and we're all coalescing in the area of what's the right level. We clearly don't wanna prescribe how to build a spacecraft, but we certainly wanna lend a bigger picture and a direction for which industry can follow.

Michael López-Alegría (23:17):

What I would say to that question is I look, I think, and I I mentioned the regulatory environment before, we are not where commercial aviation is, right? So we can't have an FA alike organization come in and let's say certify that commercial human space flight is safe. And so short of that, we have a balancing act between what I described before as a wild wild west where we have no regulation and then some that is going to stifle innovation, slow things down. And so to help center that regulatory pressure, it is incumbent upon the industry to demonstrate that it can self-regulate and the means to self-regulation can be, and it should be in part, these commercially derived consensus standards where the providers, basically, the industry that's involved in that, including the general public as participants, can come up with solutions that will serve basically the safety needs and provide the direction of where the industry should go with participation of individuals that form a consensus as a group that can sort of drive the direction where we're going.

(24:28):

So we have to demonstrate to the ability to do that self-regulation. And I think I would encourage young people who are young professionals who are involved in the industry to today, that that is a very important way that they can leverage what they're doing and the knowledge that they bring to help this process, which as Chris said, has taken a long time to get started, but I think the ball is starting to roll in the right direction, and we just need to keep encouraging participation because it's all voluntary, as you know, and without that volunteerism, it's not gonna go anywhere.

David Walsh (25:02):

So my next question is, and we can start with Chris, what would you say to a young professional starting out in either of your chosen professions, either astronaut or engineer, they're one and the same a lot of times in terms of engaging A STM in the world of standards. You know, has it helped your own career? What would your words be to someone starting out?

Chris Ferguson (25:19):

Let me start by saying that I think that the horizon for an engineer in space flight business, whether it's it's crude or un crude, has probably never been better, at least in the terms of, you know, my serving since the, the mid nineties or so. You know, I look at all of these companies, you know, the blue origins, the SpaceXs, I, I look at the infrastructure that's been developed in and around the Kennedy Space Center, you know, Denver, Colorado, Seattle, you know, those areas that for, you know, formerly were not sort of known as centers of space excellence. In other words, there's plenty of opportunity out there for young engineers. Now the challenge for someone like A STM is to pull very busy engineers to collaborate and cooperate on the industry consensus building because they're very busy building their own rockets right now. You know, sometimes we're very challenged to get an industry based together with the skillset necessary to develop and then agree upon a standard. So to extend that to what opportunities exist out there for engineers at A STM, if you've got some space flight, human space, flight experience or engineering experience, we eagerly need you. So I would say that the playing field is wide open right now.

Michael López-Alegría (26:32):

To dovetail a little bit with what Fergie said, I I think the engineers at the young, um, you know, energetic new start, new hire level are quite eager participate in the standards development process. My plea would be to their middle managers to allow them to give them the time, the bandwidth to allow them to participate in that. Because you know, obviously everybody's trying to be as efficient as possible and it seems like taking time to create an industry consensus standard is a sort of a, a deviation from what you might be thinking is the most direct path. But in the long term, strategically, I think we need the middle management and even upper management in some of these companies to agree that the standards development process is important and is an investment in the future. And to give some time to their younger engineers to jump in with both feet because after all, they end up being the subject matter experts.

David Walsh (27:28):

Well, I think we're actually coming to the end of our time about now, and I had to hold back from asking a bunch of follow-up questions that would've wasted your whole morning about Interstellar Travel and all the layperson, uh, science fiction fan questions. So you can thank me for that later. But we do appreciate you giving us some of your time this morning and, and we really thank you for being with us.

Michael López-Alegría (27:47):

It's a pleasure to be here. And, uh, look, the work that we're doing here at F 47, but I think probably across all of a STM is very important. It's good opportunity for us to be able to share a little bit of our insight into how that affects commercial space flight.

Chris Ferguson (28:01):

And like Mike said, it's great to get young engineers and it's nice to be considered perhaps one of the gray beards that contributes to this organization now, which is a great job for someone who is through most of their flying career. We take 'em young and old at A STM and we value every opinion.

Michael López-Alegría (28:18):

And despite being called graveyards, I'll point out that both Fergie and I are clean shaven <laugh>.

David Walsh (28:23):

I can vouch for that. I'm looking at the screen right now. Thank you both. Again. If you wanna learn more about any of the standards discussed in this episode, visit astm.org for all the latest. And if you enjoyed the show, remember to like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. I'm Dave Walsh, and this has been Standards Impact presented by A STM International.