Intuitive Machines CEO: ‘We now have a lunar economic platform’

Steve Altemus is optimistic. And as the CEO of Intuitive Machines, which made history with the first successful moon landing by an independent company, he has good reason. But that was the opening act of his company’s plans to build “a complete package: all the pieces you need to create a mission that goes to the moon, to the moon, to the moon.”

Altemus explained in an interview with TechCrunch that Intuitive Machines is uniquely positioned to support lunar missions and ultimately the lunar economy, not just as a NASA or Pentagon contractor but as a full-fledged commercial space company.

Precision Equipment was recently awarded one multi-billion dollar cislunar communications services contract, which means it will be the one to provide high-bandwidth comms for Artemis and any other mission out there.

“This is huge,” Altemus said. “Now we have the third leg of the chair to manage the company.”

“We had CLPS [commercial lunar payload services] contract, which was a delivery service; then we have LTV [lunar terrain vehicle] contract, which is infrastructure as a service. The middle piece is data transfer and analysis, with this Artemis commercial lunar data — if you think about it, now we have a lunar economy platform,” he continued. “And we’re able to do it as a commercial supplier of those services.”

Some have historically been “good” programs, on one-off expensive missions like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. It’s technically amazing – but with a price tag of nine. Increasingly, government, civilian, and military customers have chosen more cost-effective ways to accomplish the same thing; perhaps the best example is the use of the SpaceX Falcon 9 and Dragon capsules to transport astronauts to and from the ISS — this was a very difficult and expensive task.

Interestingly, Altemus has revealed that there is a miscommunication with the current level of its technology stack.

“When NASA gave us the CLPS award for the first time, we had a misunderstanding. We thought they were saying, fly to the moon and send us back the information, and you are not allowed to use the Deep Space Network,” he said. It turns out that be they are allowed to use the DSN, but work under that obligation anyway. “We had to, starting in 2019, put a communication network from the Earth to the moon to the inhabitants of the earth and back. So by necessity we had to get that ability, we had to go to the areas of communication and guidance, to overcome regulatory obstacles.”

The result is that the company ended up with a more robust solution than it needed, but that put it in a good position for the monthly telecom contract – which it won as the sole provider.

Many would think that SpaceX, with its massive Starlink satellite, would be a natural fit to provide space communications services. But despite having superficial similarities (sending radio signals from space), these are very different problems being solved.

“When you think about lunar communications, it’s a very different physics question,” Altemus explained. “Locations must be understood, distances and situations must be understood. We’ve worked on the way to the moon, in orbit around the moon, and on the moon, using a set of commercial channels, a number of radio astronomy-sized dishes in various countries. And if you think about building a lunar lander, that’s a much more complex machine than a satellite orbiting the moon – so the talent is already in-house.

Although the lunar communications contract is the latest and most important to Intuitive Machines, the Lunar Terrain Vehicle – the new Moon Buggy – is certainly the easiest for ordinary people to appreciate. The company is working with AVL, Boeing, Michelin, and Northrop Grumman as a team, in competition with teams led by Lunar Outpost and Astrolab. A contract is not just an act to build new car for a month but worked and supported it for 10 years; as Altemus points out, that makes it more than just a rover design task.

“When you think about it, this is the first commercial infrastructure on the moon that has to operate on its own. “You can be impressed by the buggy, but you still have to deliver the service,” he said. “As a company, IM is the only one in the pool that has a spaceship to deliver the LTV, the LTV itself as a vehicle, and the navigation systems to operate freely on the moon. The company is very well organized about it. “

Not that building a lunar rover isn’t exciting in itself, however, he was quick to add.

“All three companies are building an Earth-based mockup to test and test with human astronauts: How well is your design to turn off, take off and replace equipment, how it works and how it drives,” Altemus said. “It’s funny — we just had astronauts doing tests, and two of them had gone to the moon. Hearing about the Moon Buggy, how it worked, what it looked like and what the ground felt like… I’ll tell you, it was very exciting.”

Intuitive Machines are no longer on their way to becoming a new infrastructure; traditional cost and reward procurement methods are giving way to fixed price contracts with built-in long tails of services and support. “He can [primes] work in that area? The key to US competitiveness is to move quickly; it’s the agility and nimbleness that allows companies like IM to succeed, while traditional aerospace companies have found it difficult to adapt.”

With 400 people and growing, Precise Machines is still small, but hiring fast. Based in Houston for a reason, Altemus said: “When I left NASA and walked out the gates of the Johnson Space Center, one of the main things I decided was that this was a great place to build a company: just outside the center. The human space center. The talent pool in this place is amazing. . We hire all over the country, but it’s lovely here. They see the company’s culture – they can feel what it’s like to win.”