Standing on a runway in southeast Houston, Tim Crain had to raise his voice to be heard over the roar of a supersonic jet taking off in the distance.
The present and future have come together at the Houston Spaceport. On an almost daily basis, current NASA astronauts take T-38s out for flights to hone their flying skills or to jet across the country for mission training. A few hundred meters away from the main runway, Intuitive Machines is testing rocket engines to support lunar landings.
Crain is the chief technology officer for Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which is building landers to take cargo to the lunar surface. Intuitive Machines has a mixture of NASA and commercial contracts and has emerged as one of a new generation of mostly small companies seeking to extend the sphere of economic activity to the lunar surface.
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To do this, Intuitive Machines has built a rocket engine for its Nova-C lunar lander in house. This VR900 engine—which has, you guessed it, 900 pounds of thrust—burns liquid oxygen and methane and could become the first methane-based engine used in space. The company is working toward an early 2022 launch date for its first lunar mission, and the engine is just one of many components that must come together to make the mission a success.
"Every day there's nice weather, we're pretty much out here testing," Crain says, walking around the company's mobile test stand.
The Moon, faster and cheaper
Intuitive Machines is part of an innovative program developed by NASA to harness the potential of US space companies to get cargo to the Moon at a lower price point. Under terms of this Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS, NASA pays a fixed price for a delivery service. After a company bids for and then wins a contract, it provides the lander and finds a rocket to launch upon. In May 2019, Intuitive Machines won its first CLPS contract, worth $77 million, to carry five NASA payloads to a location near the Sea of Tranquility.
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With this program NASA will pay far less for these services than it would have in the past, and in return it has accepted the possibility that some missions will fail. It has also relinquished control of the spacecraft design and given the companies more freedom to innovate. "It’s absolutely a different way of conducting missions to the lunar surface," said NASA's acting administrator, Steve Jurczyk.