Steve Altemus is optimistic. And as CEO of Intuitive Machines, which made historical past with the first ever profitable moon touchdown carried out by a non-public firm, he has good purpose. However that was simply the opening act of his firm’s plans to construct “a full stack: all the pieces you need to create missions to the moon, on the moon, and around the moon.”
Altemus defined in an interview with TechCrunch that Intuitive Machines is uniquely positioned to assist lunar missions and finally a lunar economic system, not simply as a contractor for NASA or the Pentagon however as a full-fledged business area companies firm.
Intuitive Machines was lately made the only awardee for the multi-billion-dollar cislunar communications companies contract, that means it’ll be the one to supply high-bandwidth comms for Artemis and every other mission going out that means.
“This is massive,” Altemus mentioned. “Now we have the third leg of the stool to hold up the company.”
“We had the CLPS [commercial lunar payload services] contract, which was the delivery service; then we have the LTV [lunar terrain vehicle] contract, which is infrastructure as a service. The middle piece is really data transfer and analytics, with this commercial lunar data for Artemis — if you think about it, we now have the platform for a lunar economy,” he continued. “And we’re able to do it as a commercial supplier for those services.”
The choice has traditionally been “exquisite” programs, tremendously costly one-off missions just like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Technically astonishing — however with nine-figure value tags. More and more, authorities shoppers, civilians, and navy have opted for extra economical technique of conducting the identical factor; maybe the most effective instance is using SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Dragon capsules to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS — this was as soon as far harder and costly a process.
Curiously, Altemus credited a miscommunication with the current extent of its tech stack.
“When NASA first gave us the CLPS award, we had a misunderstanding. We thought they said, fly to the moon and give us data back, and you’re not permitted to use the Deep Space Network,” he mentioned. Seems they had been allowed to make use of the DSN, however they labored beneath that constraint anyway. “We had to, from 2019, put in place a network to communicate from Earth to the moon to our lander and back. So by necessity we had to figure out that competency, we had to go into the communication and navigation areas, to get over the regulatory hurdles.”
The result’s the corporate ended up with a much more strong answer than was strictly mandatory, however that put it in pole place for the lunar communications contract — which certainly it received handily as sole supplier.
Many would possibly suppose that SpaceX, with its huge Starlink satellite tv for pc constellation, could be a pure match to supply area communications companies. However regardless of having superficial similarities (sending radio indicators from area), these are very completely different issues being solved.
“When you think about lunar communications, it’s a fundamentally different physics question,” Altemus defined. “The environments need to be understood, the distances and situations need to be understood. We’ve operated in transit to the moon, in orbit around the moon, and on the surface of the moon, using a set of commercial ground stations, a dozen radio astronomy size dishes in different countries. And when you think about building a lunar lander, that’s a more complicated machine than a satellite that orbits the moon — so the talent is already inside the house.”
Although the lunar communications contract is the most recent and most important for Intuitive Machines, the Lunar Terrain Car — a brand new Moon Buggy — is unquestionably the simplest for bizarre folks to understand. The corporate is working with AVL, Boeing, Michelin, and Northrop Grumman as a crew, in competitors with groups led by Lunar Outpost and Astrolab. The contract is not only to construct a brand new lunar automobile however function and assist it for 10 years; as Altemus identified, that makes it rather more than a rover design job.
“If you think about it, this is the first piece of commercial infrastructure on the surface of the moon that has to be operated autonomously. You can be enamored with the buggy, but you still gotta deliver the service,” he mentioned. “As a company, IM is the only one in the pool that has the lander to deliver the LTV, the LTV itself as a vehicle, and the comms and navigation systems to operate it autonomously on the moon. The company is very well set up for it.”
Not that constructing a lunar rover isn’t thrilling in itself, although, he hastened so as to add.
“All three companies are building an Earth-based mockup to do fit checks and evaluation with human astronauts: How conducive is your design to getting on an off, removing and replacing equipment, how it operates and drives,” Altemus mentioned. “It’s funny — we just had astronauts doing the test, and two of them had actually walked on the moon. Hearing about the Moon Buggy, how they operated, what it was like and how the soil felt … I’ll tell you, it was fascinating.”
Intuitive Machines isn’t on its method to turning into a brand new prime; the normal procurement strategies of price plus awards are giving method to fixed-price contracts with built-in lengthy tails of companies and assist. “Can [primes] operate in that environment? The key to U.S. competitiveness is for us to move faster; it’s speed and agility that allow companies like IM to be successful, while traditional aerospace companies have found it difficult to adapt.”
With 400 folks and rising, Intuitive Machines remains to be comparatively small, however it’s hiring quick. It’s based mostly in Houston for a purpose, Altemus mentioned: “When I left NASA and walked out of the gates of Johnson Space Center, one of the key things I decided was that this was a fantastic place to build a company: right outside of the human spaceflight center. The talent pool in this area is incredible. We hire from all over the country, but it’s attractive here. They see the culture of the company and the energy — they can feel what it’s like to win.”
