Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen online at thebusinessmakers.com. It's guest time on the show, and our topic is space travel. And, man oh man, do we have a guest that's right at the center of the converging world of moving from NASA to private enterprise, 'cause with me today I have Steven Gonzales, Deputy Manager, Advanced Planning Office at NASA, and also playing a role today at the Houston Technology Center. Steven, welcome to the BusinessMakers Show.

Steven: Well, thanks, Russ. It's great to be here.

Russ: You bet. Well, let's start by you telling us about your sort of Deputy Manager, Advanced Planning Office at NASA. I know it involves a lot of strategy, but tell us what it's like today.

Steven: Excellent. Thanks, Russ. I've been doing this for about six years at the Johnson Space Center looking upward for the next 20 years. A wonderful opportunity to see how to position the Johnson Space Center in this new world of new commercial companies and being able to make sure that Houston is properly positioned to go explore beyond low Earth orbit.

Russ: Okay, cool. Now, you say you've been doing it six years, so back in the beginning of doing that, we weren't talking about moving it onto private enterprise in 2011, were we?

Steven: Well, actually, back six years ago, previous administration had already started us down that path, and so we were looking, at least from Johnson, "How do we start creating new relationships?" And so it started the center director looking and the whole community there looking, "Okay, how do we work with private industry and this new commercial market to move on forward?"

Russ: Okay. And my opinion of NASA is that they were always working with private industry, but it was different because it was like just sort of outsourcing projects to private industry. Now it's helping private industry get up into space. Did I say that accurately?

Steven: Absolutely. It's that, and also we're finding that technology outside is accelerating at such an incredible pace that there is a large amount of overlap between the needs and the technologies that we're looking at and those in other industries. I mean prime example is over in Rovina. We have a robotic astronaut up on the Space Station right now done through joint collaborations with General Motors that they benefited from the technologies and so did space.

Russ: Cool! Well, now, that other part of your job these days, on loan and as an executive to the Houston Technology Center, which I believe it was Forbes magazine rated them, one of the top ten incubators changing the world for the future. Is that right?

Steven: That's correct. And the Johnson Space Center has a nice long history with the Houston Technology Center. From the beginning, we've had loan executives, and so I'm the latest loan executive at the Houston Technology Center, but in an incredible time where the Houston Technology center has been able to accelerate companies and energy and information technology and life sciences. And they've always had as part of their charter to look in aerospace. Now with the environment that we're in, I think it's the perfect time to allow JSC and HTC to come together to look at the potential possibilities.

Russ: So, cool! So, you really are where, you know, the governmental agency, NASA, has intersecting with private enterprise at the Houston Technology Center. Jeez! It sounds like a great responsibility in my opinion.

Steven: It is an exciting time, because even though we're at the end of one era, we're at the start of an incredible new opportunity. And with so many new companies coming onboard and so many things coming up all around the country is an exciting time.

Russ: Absolutely. All right, well why don't you share with us, you know, some of the companies that you know that are totally focused on this opportunity? I mean we read about 'em in the paper and see 'em on the news all the time - the thing Jeff Bezos is doing and the guy that won the contest probably two or three years ago. Talk about those a little bit.

Steven: At Johnson, we've got strong relationships with what they're known as commercial crew development companies, and so some of them are SpaceX that's under Elon Musk. You have Orbital and Blue Origins, the Bezos' company. You have Armadillo. That's up in Dallas. Actually, that's a different sort of company. But so we've got relationships with them. Trying to take our expertise, our technology, our insights, and being able to work with them to help them in achieving their goals of being able to provide commercial access to low Earth orbit.

Russ: Okay. But so when you say these are - what did you call them? Commercial crew companies or something. So I take it, by that, that means there's a lot of companies that are seeing opportunity that might not necessarily be in the business of taking passengers to space, but might instead be in business of selling parts and developing and innovating technology for the other companies that are taking people to space. Is that right?

Steven: Oh, absolutely. And in Clear Lake, we have a company that's been around for a number of years called Ad Astra. It is looking at building new rocket engines. The next generation of ________ for vehicles in space. You've got up in Dallas, the one I mentioned earlier, Armadillo is building - looking at new propellants and new rockets to be able to get us to suborbital capability. You've got companies that are looking at building infrastructure space, like Bigelow is looking to build a hotel up in space.

Russ: That's a legitimate company?

Steven: He's actually got up right around circling the earth right now a two-third scaled version of his habitat. Now he's just looking for a taxi to be able to -

Russ: Where is this two-third scale model?

Steven: It is circling around the earth right now.

Russ: He put it in orbit?

Steven: He put it up in orbit. Absolutely.

Russ: My goodness!

Steven: So you've got him doing that up in Las Vegas, but his technology actually came from Johnson Space Center. We had a project years ago to create an inflatable habitat, and he came to Johnson and said, "Can I license your technology?" And now he's up there with a version of it circling around the earth waiting for a taxi so he can put up a full scale version to allow people to go up there.

Russ: Now, obviously working with these people is probably real interesting, but how closely is NASA working with them today? I mean does NASA - are they just like the rest of us watching them with amazement, or are they helping them along? And do you meet with them?

Steven: Well, at Houston, we've had the various project offices that have been working with those companies. So we had one organization that has been working with the SpaceX and with Orbital over their commercial cargo to space, and they've been working with agreements with the engineers at NASA to be able to take advantage of our expertise to do some testing and some understanding of their new vehicles that they're building. On the commercial crew activity, we've got another office. We've got the deputy responsibility for that program here at Johnson, and we've got people at Johnson Space Center that are creating agreements. We've got our engineer organization and our operations organization looking to be able to work with them to help them be successful so that NASA can go onto the business of exploring beyond low Earth orbit.

Russ: Okay. Now, I'm interested. A commercial crew company comes and talks. Do they actually pay NASA to help them and to advise them, or is it just part of being in the business?

Steven: Both types. We've got both types of arrangements. It depends on the type of expertise they need and the type of activities that they're wanting to pursue. Some of it is through reimbursable activities, and some of it is through the process of sharing what we already have accomplished in our own pursuits.

Russ: Okay, great. Talking with Steven Gonzales, Deputy Manager, Advanced Planning Office at NASA, and also an executive on loan at the Houston Technology Center. We'll be back with more with Steven after this. This is the BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen online at thebusinessmakers.com.

Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen online at thebusinessmakers.com. I'm continuing on talking about space travel with Steven Gonzales, Deputy Manager of the Advanced Planning Office at NASA, and also executive on loan at Houston Technology Center right in the nucleus where government is merging with private sector to take over the space exploration.

Now, clearly, America has really come forward with some cool contests. The first one, which took place two or three years ago, won by Mr. Branson from England. Talk about that one a little bit. I mean that was a suborbital contest.

Steven: That was a suborbital trying to see if someone can repeat that capability twice in a short period of time, and it showed that a private company could go off and do this and pursue it on their own. And right now he's got people lined up for tickets, and he's predicting that next year he'll be able to actually fly people to suborbital. And his partner, who has broken off away and created a company called Scaled Composites, their vision is to be able to create sort of the Boeing for suborbital planes to be the manufacturer for these capabilities and provide those to operations companies like Virgin Galactic and others that would actually fly these planes.

Russ: So that's Richard Branson. He was formally his partner, and he broke off -

Steven: Right. Over into Scaled Composites.

Russ: Wow! That is really interesting. Now, there's also this one that you read about now that Google is sponsoring and I think offering a $20 million prize to the first company that can put somebody on the moon. Do I have that right?

Steven: It's being able to provide some robotic capability there, so the idea is, "Can a private entity go up there, drop a little rover on the moon and be able to explore and send data back down to the earth and send back some high definition video?" And it's interesting how they've got bonus prizes if you traverse a certain amount of distance on the moon, if you're able to send back images of the original Apollo landing sites.

Russ: Wow! Now, wait. Does the Google one, does it also include having people go up the moon, or is it just robotic?

Steven: This prize is just robotic - with those capabilities. And what they're looking at is being able to see if there is a commercial market for this data and for this capability. And it's interesting talking to some of the teams. It's interesting. They come up with very different solutions of how you would send a robot to the moon. Some of the solutions - you know, when we send our robotic capabilities, we have a lot of experiments, a lot of technology, a lot of conditions that we're trying to address. These other companies, they throw up something the size of a cell phone to do a quick little thing, and so when you do that, it changes the whole dynamics and the rocket that you need and the capabilities, so it's fascinating.

Russ: So I sense from you that you think that it probably is possible that in the near term, a company, a private enterprise, could send something to the moon and perform these robotic missions.

Steven: It's amazing the number of companies and the people that are participating and are involved in this competition. Again, they're coming out from all over the place. There's international teams from all over. Some of them seem to be making some great progress from the last I was looking into those various companies and universities. And that's the other part that's wonderful. Is that they're engaging universities and students and getting another generation excited about space exploration.

Russ: Cool! Well, you know, you're making me feel like even though it was very sad to see the shuttle program end, maybe it's time for it to end and private enterprise to take over.

Steven: Well, for myself, I joined NASA 23 years ago looking for Star Trek to be able to go where no one has gone before, and so the shuttle is an incredible vehicle. I had the opportunity to be able to train astronauts that flew in that vehicle. It'll be years before we're ever able to recreate that, but I want, like many of my colleagues, to be able to explore, to be able to go where no one has gone before, to reach beyond the boundaries of the earth and to explore to the moon and Mars and asteroids and beyond.

Russ: So that must mean that when they get the crew process working real well, you might say, "Hey, I want to go."

Steven: I would. If they gave me the opportunity, I would love to do that. Absolutely.

Russ: Well, that's kind of interesting. So, you know, your job and your mission and everything you've done out there is interesting. Give us your background. How did you make it to NASA?

Steven: Originally born up in the northeast, and back in the 8th grade originally had the bug to go into space watching the original reruns of the original Star Trek episodes, and had decided that I would go into the world of computers, because I knew computers would be needed to go forward.

Russ: Right, right.

Steven: Did my undergraduate up in Boston University. Did my graduate work down here at A&M. Met my wife there, and being so close to the dream, the two of them kept me down here in Houston and started off in the world of technology in mission control. Brought in new technologies into mission control. Trained astronauts for a couple of years, brought the new control center online, and felt like I had to come home when one of the Houston papers called the new control center "the deck of the Starship Enterprise".

Russ: You had arrived.

Steven: I had arrived. I finally arrived. And then after doing some more incredible technology work at the center, I found myself doing strategy looking forward to the next 20 years.

Russ: Okay. So on mission control, does that mean that you were there for quite a few of the launches?

Steven: I trained - the crew that I trained was - it went up in the summer of 1994. And my side was the technology facility, the capabilities, and the technology I was looking at was, "How do you bring mission control with us when we go to Mars?" And so I wasn't the flight controller that you always see on TV. I was the one that was looking at the infrastructure and looking at "How do we provide a commander control as you go beyond the regions of the earth?"

Russ: Okay. Real interesting. So, one more thing about these private enterprises out there doing this. I mean I'm just totally fascinated when they show pictures of the rockets and the aircrafts that they've build, and the diversity of them blows me away now. You know, some of them really look like miniature versions of the shuttle with wings and stuff. And maybe those are suborbital. I'm not sure. But some of them, like Jeff Bezos', it looks like a giant capsule. Are they very different missions that those are designed to accomplish?

Steven: Just different strategies. The Bezos one, the Blue Origin, is kind of on the idea of Buck Rogers - being able to lift up vertically and land vertically - while some of them are going on traditional capsules, like SpaceX. You've got the suborbital capability, which is a plane like Branson has, or Armadillo has something that looks like a lunar lantern that goes up and down. So, different technologies, different capabilities. All of them trying to figure out what is the most cost effective way to get people up into lower orbit and suborbit.

Russ: Right. Well, Steven, I really appreciate you coming and visiting with us. I think we want to stay in touch with you as these things start happening. We might want to bring you back in so you can keep us up to date.

Steven: Excellent. I look forward to that. Thanks, Russ.

Russ: You bet, Steven. That's Steven Gonzales, Deputy Manager, Advanced Planning Office at NASA. Also, executive on loan at the Houston Technology Center. And this is the BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen online at thebusinessmakers.com.