The MCU and NASA

Personal Opinions not NASA viewpoint

Part two of Book Club is coming up and in this section of the Bob Iger Master Class on Leadership and Strategy it covers the Acquisition of Marvel.

“When we acquire another company, we do spend time thinking about whether...the brand that we’re acquiring is going to be an enhancement to the image of Disney and its brand or whether it’s going to detract from it.”

Certainly the government doesn't acquire companies, but if you think about the Broad Area Announcements they are a partnership or merger in a way. When the government uses the BAA process we don't own the spacecraft from a vendor, but via that public/private merger work with the vendor to ensure it meets NASA's needs and use case. Sometimes with these partnerships there can be a clashing of brands depending on the company culture (a lesson for NASA that was highlighted in the Pixar acquisition from my Book Club Part One article) Back to book club case study, Marvel was considered too edgy by the Disney board, but when Iger looked closer he realized the core values of heroes and good storytelling was prevalent in both companies. While some of the newer commercial spaceflight companies are seen as edgier and more bleeding edge innovators than stodgy old NASA at the base level providing safe vehicles for astronauts drive all of them.

Bob's top priority when he pitched his campaign for CEO was to invest in high quality branded content and Marvel was flush with roughly 7,000 characters that even with a somewhat convoluted IP rights spread across the various studios they had a plan and chief architect in Kevin Feige who was crafting a multi- year cohesive consistent cinematic universe which excited Iger.

That Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) wrapped up last summer with the blockbuster Avengers:End Game (and epilogue Spider-Man:Far From Home) the culmination of 10 years and 23 movies weaving a tale of Heroes, Villians, Infinity Stones with a lot of moving parts including various directors, writers and actor's schedules to juggle that all lead to the faithful snap, fallout and recovery. If you think about it NASA's vision for the Moon is similar. In terms of end goal, they have clear direction from the Space Council.

Return to the Moon, not just for Flags and Footprints but to Live and Explore with stays of 6 months and year long expeditions eventually

The Vice President has laid out a clear End State for NASA's Lunar ambitions but the path to get there is more nebulous than trying to pick which superheroes to include and where to find the Infinity Stones to get to the Thanos snap. The gap right now for NASA besides consistent and adequate funding is to work back from that Lunar Base edict of being able to support crews staying for up to a year and figure out which partners (international and commercial) are responsible for what components of building up the lunar base assets and other precursor missions/milestones but we don't have a Kevin Feige. Instead of juggling writers, directors, art department concepts and actors NASA has to work with Congress, Presidents, International Partners, commercial vendors and align 10 NASA centers. For the ASU (Artemis Surface Universe) we need a stalwart strategist to take the long view of the Lunar City end goal and reverse engineer how to get there from here. It is broken down into phases much like the MCU.

Where as the MCU in Phase One introduced the core Avengers team leading up to the Battle for New York, the ASU Phase One is all about the precursor missions from Cargo Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) that will fly scouting missions for resource prospecting and tech development of navigation, and precision landing and any human spacecraft test flights leading up to the First footsteps by a female astronaut and the next male astronaut on the south pole of the Moon in 2024. Those first faithful footsteps down the ladder will be our cinematic Battle for New York moment.

Phase two of the ASU spends some time scouting suitable locations for the eventual Lunar Base from 2024-2028 before starting construction of said Lunar Village in 2028. Phase Three builds out that Lunar Village, expanding the capabilities, size and self reliance until it can support a crew for long term stays of 6 months and one year.

Those goals seem simple, straightforward but they are missing that key Kevin Feige touch. They are missing an enterprise level leader to be the integrator, arbitrator, keeper of the architecture and framework to layout a tech development roadmap to crawl, walk, run for ISRU (in situ resource utilization), for closed loop ECLSS (life support), for Expeditionary Logistics (3D printing spare parts, vertical farming, lab grown meats), for robotic caretakers or for AI/MCC in a box among other things. The current focus is so narrowly on the sprint to BOM24 given that is the pressing matter at hand that without anyone playing the long game there isn't an overarching concept for getting to the End State of long duration Lunar presence. Even as the MCU was building up to the Avengers Assemble moment on the streets of New York, the studio already had in works the Phase Two and Phase Three framework because they knew where they needed to get to with the big story.

The international space agencies say they want to be a part of our Lunar dreams, but who is coordinating and bartering seats to the Moon in exchange for say a pressurized rover from Toyota that JAXA has been funding or a habitable volume for Gateway from ESA. While ultimately it would probably be Administrator Bridenstine signing the agreements, there needs to be the ASU Leadership making the choices for what NASA develops, what the agency buts out for bid from commercial and what the international partners can help with. For the ASU all those pieces, rovers, habitats, planetary spacesuits, landers, cargo and science missions need to be sorted out and roadmaped so each Agency can provide the funding for their responsibilities and deliver them on time as part of the larger puzzle. It does no one any good if we can put a crew on the surface of the Moon but not go outside, nor does a rover help exploration if there is not a cargo delivery lander capable of getting it there. All these disparate parts need to cohesively come together at the right time for the required infrastructure, and consumables supply chain to allow the astronauts to safely and successfully stay longer and longer on the surface of the Moon to learn the things necessary to path find the technology and crew health concerns to say we are ready to talk about a Martian campaign which entails probably on the order of a 500 days surface mission.

If folks think after a few 6 day Sortie style missions of the Moon that we can turn and burn for Mars they are ignoring all the lessons we learned when going from two week shuttle missions to six month Space Station stays. Better to test all that self reliant technology in a proving ground just a few days from home instead of rushing to Mars where help will be 8+ months and 140 million miles away. The ASU is a necessary enterprise level need for the Agency and will require long term vision to weave that intricate tapestry of partnerships, precursors and technology development, over several phases of Lunar Exploration, but in the end Human Exploration will benefit from the guidance and direction that a leader in the same vein as Kevin Feige will provide though one has yet to be named. The Moon may light the way to Mars but only if we have a coherent plan to build the lighthouse, power it and someone to keep the beacon light.