0:00:01 – Announcer

You are listening to the National University Podcast.

0:00:09 – Kimberly King

Hello, I’m Kimberly King. Welcome to the National University Podcast, where we offer an holistic approach to student support, well-being and success – the whole human education. We put passion into practice by offering accessible, achievable higher education to lifelong learners. Today we are talking about space exploration and, according to a recent story on NBC National News, with the discovery of ice and water, the moon is suddenly a hot topic again. Names like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and NASA working on space missions and Project Artemis the future of space exploration is here, and today we are joined by a guest and we are learning all about the future of space exploration.

On today’s episode, we’re talking about space exploration and joining us is Emmanuel Rodriguez. He is an adjunct professor at National University’s School of Technology and Engineering. Emmanuel is also a rocket engine manufacturing engineer at Blue Origin and also spent five years as a senior manufacturing engineer at Raytheon. He’s dedicating to aeronautics and acquiring new skills and creating really cool things, and we welcome him to the podcast. Emmanuel, how are you?

0:01:27 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

Doing great. Thanks for having me on the show, Kim.

0:01:29 – Kimberly King

Absolutely how impressive. Why don’t you tell our audience a little bit on your mission and your work before we get to today’s show topic?

0:01:39 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

Sure. So the mission at Blue Origin is to have millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth. And how we make that possible is by building all the cool technology, like the propulsion systems and the aerospace vehicles, to be able to access space in as efficient manner as possible.

0:02:09 – Kimberly King

Well, interesting. I can’t wait to talk to you a little bit and dig into this. Today we are talking about space exploration. It’s obviously been in the news a lot, and all of these the progressive changes. It’s fascinating. So tell me, what makes space access and reaching orbits so difficult and time intensive?

0:02:30 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

Okay, well, in a word cost.

0:02:34 – Kimberly King

Oh easy, I guess, follow the money right.

0:02:37 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

It’s very expensive. The technology to access space has been built in the past, it’s been proven out. We saw this with the Mercury program back in the early 60s, with the Apollo program in the late 60s. So as a species, we’ve done it, right. We’ve reached space. We’ve landed on the moon. But we have not been able to make it routine because it is so cost prohibitive. It’s been traditionally exclusive to countries, to governments, but now there’s a culture shift to where now it’s becoming a private enterprise.

So we have a lot of you know entrepreneurs that are developing the technologies to make it more routine.

0:03:31 – Kimberly King

It is crazy. I never thought in my lifetime that it would become an entrepreneur’s game, and you know again, you’re true about the cost, right. So it’s really interesting. What does the future of space access look like? And you just kind of gave away a little bit with the entrepreneur piece of this.

0:03:50 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

So, future space access, at the current moment, the way we reach space, it’s maybe a bit inefficient because we are essentially launching this very sophisticated tube into space and it’s made up of multiple stages and some of those stages are reusable, namely the first stage, whereas the second stage and the sometimes third stage are not reusable, and because of that, it’s just, it becomes very expensive, and you’ll hear this analogy thrown out, thrown around a lot when it comes to talking about reusability, space access reusability. It’s almost like flying in an airplane from New York to Los Angeles and then throwing the airplane away once you land in Los Angeles. It just makes no sense, right? So.

0:04:39 – Kimberly King

Right. Yeah.

0:04:40 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

So the future, to summarize, is going to be much like airplane transport is today, where we have one vehicle, goes up into space, it lands and it’s completely reusable. That is the most efficient way to do it.

0:05:00 – Kimberly King

Wow, do you have a time frame on that? What that looks like?

0:05:01 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

Oh yeah, that’s very hard to predict. I would say, optimistically, maybe mid-30s, 2030s, until we get to that point. So it’s not super far away.

0:05:19 – Kimberly King

Yeah, wow, yeah. Sounds far away but it’s only four years from now right. That’s crazy. Six years. Yeah. Wow. What do you think the enabling technologies are that will make space access routine?

0:05:31 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

Well, the first thing is the propulsion system. The way current propulsion systems are- the architecture for current propulsion systems is we have a fuel and an oxidizer that is carried by the vehicle as it makes its way into space. So it’s burning all that fuel and it’s at the same time being oxidized with liquid oxygen and because of that, it’s very, very inefficient, because we’re carrying a lot of mass on that vehicle that is being burnt up on the way to space. So as a way to bypass that huge hurdle, we would just be burning the oxidizer that’s in the atmosphere on the way to space, and that would require a new type of propulsion system. So that is like one of the main enabling technologies to make it much more cost effective.

It’s almost like a hybrid propulsion system would really be needed. So we have, like, a jet engine that you will find on a typical airliner and a rocket engine, so two in one. So it’s almost like a hybrid electric vehicle, right? So you have hybrid vehicles that are electric and gasoline-powered, similar. We would need something like that to make this technology come to fruition.

0:07:02 – Kimberly King

Thank you for dumbing it down, because that’s super interesting too. To think about a hybrid. You know that’s crazy, but again, this technology is changing at rapid space or time. So I guess, how do you test the spaceships to be able to be more cost efficient?

0:07:20 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

How do you test them?

0:07:22 – Kimberly King

Yep.

0:07:25 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

Heh. Very incrementally. Anytime you’re building a complex vehicle like a spaceship or a very sophisticated propulsion system that’s just a fancy way of saying a very fancy rocket engine, a very fancy rocket engine. You’re going to test the smallest piece on that engine and you will incrementally add the bigger pieces and the bigger pieces and the bigger pieces, and you sort of build on what you’re learning from the previous test. That is the the safest way to do it. That’s, I’ll say, like one philosophy when it comes to testing aerospace vehicles is to test at the lowest part level and increasing incrementally. Another philosophy would be to just build a whole entire thing and then build the- I’m sorry, test the entire vehicle all at once. So that’s another philosophy, but that is by nature, it’s going to carry more risk, right? Because if the entire thing doesn’t work, then you have just sacrificed your entire vehicle, Whereas the former example, if something doesn’t work, then you’re just sacrificing one piece, part.

0:08:39 – Kimberly King

Okay, okay, Interesting, that’s interesting. And so the stages to get into space. I guess how do you get into orbit after all of this? Is that maybe? That’s a very easy question for a very difficult answer.

0:09:06 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

Yeah, so getting into orbit is really speed. It’s maybe a bit counterintuitive, because when you fly in an airplane, you think altitude, you want to get as high as possible. You’re going very fast in a horizontal direction in an airplane. Well, in a spaceship, you want to go very fast in a vertical direction, to a certain point. Then you start to tilt and you will then enter what’s known as orbit. So it’s all about speed. You have to go very, very fast. I forget the exact number, but I want to say it’s about 25,000 miles per hour to get into an orbit.

0:09:39 – Kimberly King

Oh my god! Wow

0:09:41 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

To get it to orbit. So, to summarize, you have to go very fast, Kim, very fast. [Laughter.]

0:09:48 – Kimberly King

I was going to say, I always brag to my husband I had the opportunity to go with the media years ago in an F-18. And, if you know, San Diego, North Island, in Coronado, out to El Centro, and we got there in like seven minutes, just boom, boom, and I don’t know how many miles an hour, but it felt like 25,000 miles an hour. [Laughter.]

It was insane and, um, it was an experience I’ll never forget. But wow, that’s. I hope I’m alive in 2030 or when this happens, cause that’s, it’s going to be amazing.

0:10:20 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

I’ve got one better for you if you don’t mind?

0:10:22 – Kimberly King

No, I want to hear it.

0:10:27 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

Well, we have a big milestone coming up for us here at Blue. Within the next 13 days actually, we are launching our heavy lift launch vehicle called New Glenn, and that’s our first orbital vehicle. So it’s a huge milestone for us. And we’re all super excited and we’ve been working on it for years and years, and years and, yeah, so it’s exciting, it’s going to be again, just a big milestone for us.

0:10:55 – Kimberly King

Congratulations, and so that in 13 days. Did we just break this news? New Glenn.

0:11:02 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

I wouldn’t say we just broke it. It’s been out in the news for a while now. It’s just not- I guess it’s not very. Yeah, it’s been out for a while.

0:11:12 – Kimberly King

And what exactly is it going to do? You said it’s an orbit vehicle?

0:11:15 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

Yeah, so it’s a demonstrator vehicle and what that means is we’re going to be demonstrating our ability to get a vehicle into orbit. So you heard me mention earlier the 25,000 miles per hour. That’s what this vehicle is going to do. It’s going to go that fast to reach orbit, and orbit’s really just a fancy word for describing just circling the earth. Right, we’re going to be circling the earth and demonstrating some technologies.

0:11:44 – Kimberly King

Wow, that’s so great. Your students are so lucky to have you as you’re going through all of this and teaching them and then breaking news like that. That’s really. That’s exciting. My next question, I guess why explore space in the first place? I feel silly for asking that, but yeah, what brought you into this and why are we exploring space?

0:12:08 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

Why explore space in the first place? Well, maybe you can attest to this, Kim. I think that we as humans are always at our best when we are exploring sort of the unknown and just embracing our curiosity and that kind of thing. Just embracing our curiosity and that kind of thing, you know much like those brave explorers that crossed the Atlantic hundreds of years ago in search of a new home.

0:12:30 – Kimberly King

Yep.

0:12:30 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

And because of them we are now on this lovely continent.

0:12:34 – Kimberly King

Yep, the claim jumpers, yeah.

0:12:39 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

So I like to think of it that way. We are exploring something that’s unknown. And who knows, maybe our grandchildren will be living on moon bases or Mars bases, exploring those other celestial bodies. So there you have it. I think it’s in our nature as a species to explore the unknown.

0:13:06 – Kimberly King

You know, and I think in the generation, the era that we’re in right now, it’s so fast. I mean, I still, in my old office, have an old typewriter, one of those old cameras that you had to look down into, and you know like people are like what is a typewriter? And even the phone attached to the wall. It’s just crazy how fast and maybe it always was, but nothing like it is now how quickly technology goes 25 miles.

0:13:33 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

It’s exponential, it’s exponential really right? It’s like year by year it’s accelerating. The pace at which technology matures and develops is mind-boggling.

0:13:45 – Kimberly King

That’s great, and you’re on the forefront of all of that. Tell me so- you just talked about the next milestone for Blue Origin. Who’s your current employer? And that was the Next Glenn. Is there anything else that you guys are working on that you could talk about?

0:14:00 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

There’s a ton of things that we’re working on. We are making our engines better. So I work on the engines. So the way we sort of divide our work, we have engines folks and we have vehicle folks I’m on the engine side, so we’re always trying to make our engines better. Again, very much like like vehicles right, vehicles are always working to improve their, their gas mileage, that kind of thing. So we do similar things on uh on on advanced propulsion systems. Right, we’re trying to increase the efficiency of our rocket engines. We’re trying to make things better. We’re trying to make things cheaper, um, so that is always in work. So there you go.

0:14:44 – Kimberly King

So what is the um, the next major milestone in space exploration? So after space access becomes much more accessible?

0:14:53 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

I’ll describe it this way. Really, our goal is- and not just Blue Origin’s goal, but I would say, like, the space industry’s goal as as a whole- is to explore deep space. So whether that be um nearby planets, like Mars, or like asteroids, for example uh which, by the way, asteroids are are riddled with resources. So there’s a, there’s a business incentive there to explore asteroids, because they have a lot of resources that we can use for all kinds of things. So, anyway, the goal for space industry is deep space exploration, but in order to do that, we need to have gasoline for our vehicles. So if you’re going to be traveling from Los Angeles to New York, you’re going to need some gas stations on the way there.

Similar story for deep space exploration. Once we get out into space, we have essentially exhausted all our fuel from our vehicle, so we are left fuel-less. So we need gas stations, and that’s a a major milestone for the space industry, which is to use the moon as a refueling station. And the South Pole of the moon, as an example, does not get hit with a lot of sunlight, if any at all, and because of that it’s a very cold environment, and some studies out there have shown that there is a lot of ice on the South Pole of the moon, and what ice is is water, so it’s hydrogen and oxygen. Well, you can use technology like electrolysis to split hydrogen and oxygen, and once you split those two into their own different components, those become your propellants or your rockets. So, all to say, we’re going to turn the moon into a gas station.

0:17:03 – Kimberly King

When you write your book, that should be the title, or your song or something like that. That’s great. Just cut to the chase, right?

0:17:10 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

I mean, again. This might sound like a little you know sci-fi a little out there, but you know it’s only been less than, or just a little over, 100 years where you know we didn’t think, you know, just traveling on an airplane would be a typical thing, and now it’s like we can’t live without it.

0:17:29 – Kimberly King

Right, exactly, exactly. I mean just so efficient on the timing and everything. I guess I want to know what it’s like to be in your class. Just go through maybe a day in the life of being a student in your class.

0:17:43 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

Students in my class?

0:17:46 – Kimberly King

Yeah, like, what’s your template? What are they studying right now? This is so interesting to me. I mean I could talk to you for hours and hours just to hear about what the future is. So what is I guess? What does that look like?

0:17:57 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

Yeah, so in addition to my full-time engineering work at Blue, I am also an adjunct professor at National University and I do like to bring in, so I teach classes, mostly undergraduate engineering classes, like mechanical design, design of experiments, so data analysis, that kind of thing. I always introduce some of the issues that we may be encountering, some of the problems that we may be facing out in industry, to the students just to give them some quote-unquote like real world uh exposure to how some of the material being covered in classes is going to apply to or is relevant to to industry. Um, so I teach them everything from the fundamentals around mechanical design and how we use it at Blue to design our turbo pumps, the turbo machinery that goes into our rocket engines, that kind of thing.

0:19:00 – Kimberly King

Wow, fascinating. And what would we hope to learn by launching satellites or exploration missions into deep space?

0:19:07 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

Well, a big one is weather, right. So if you’re going to be launching to Mars and this is common in aviation today, here on Earth, where pilots are very rigorous when it comes to studying weather patterns of their destination city and that kind of thing, so it would be similar to trying to land on Mars, right, you want to know what the weather is looking like for the area that you are targeting to land on. And that’s where the satellites come in. Satellites would essentially be circling around Mars, orbiting around Mars to study the weather patterns, send that information back to Earth, to the smart scientists over here, so that they could model those weather patterns on Earth for future astronauts that would be landing on Mars.

0:20:03 – Kimberly King

So, what are some words of wisdom or encouragement that you would offer to an aspiring aerospace engineer?

0:20:11 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

I would say do the small things right. Remain technically curious, and don’t be afraid to do the hard things, because that’s where the glory is. On the other side of those difficult problems that are going to make you sweat a little bit, those are the problems you got to tackle.

0:20:29 – Kimberly King

I love that. I think that’s great advice and I think, in the world that we live in now with like instant, you know, you see it right away, or you know and you want to attain things right away for this generation anyway, I think that’s great advice and sometimes, when you work through it and you take your time and sweat it out, that’s where you get the biggest gain. So so interesting, wow Again, I could talk to you forever about this. Thank you for your time. We appreciate you joining us and if you want more information, you can visit National University’s website at nu.edu. And again, thank you so very much for your time. We really appreciate it, Emmanuel.

0:21:06 – Emmanuel Rodriguez

Thank you for having me, Kim.

0:21:10 – Kimberly King

You’ve been listening to the National University Podcast. For updates on future or past guests, visit us at nu.edu. You can also follow us on social media. Thanks for listening.