The company MSI-DFAT, has a unique specialty. It blasts very loud sound at satellites and spacecraft that mimics the incredibly loud and harsh rocket launch noise environments for launch certification. It’s an important step in making sure these multibillion dollar pieces of equipment are going to be able to make the journey to the final frontier. I recently had a chance to speak with two of the company’s leaders, Alex Carrella CEO of the MSI-DFAT, and Bradley Hope, who is the U.S. Area Sales Manager.

Interview transcript: 

Alex Carrella
So I called Direct Field Acoustic Testing (DFAT). I call it a business driven technology. So this was something that came about late 90s, 98. I think was the first recorded test. Because the need of saving money in minimizing risks in transporting very precious equipment, like a spacecraft. So these tests have been around since the 60s. The acoustic qualification testing of a spacecraft goes back to the Apollo days. Nothing much has changed since then. But somebody at NASA had this idea of like, Oh, why don’t we make noise with loud speakers, instead of putting in these chambers. So chambers are expensive to build and to run. They need a lot of concrete. Building a chamber is a lot of concrete involved. A lot of equipment to make it run, there is a vaporizer, a gas. So there’s a lot of things that go with it. And so making a chamber would have been an affordable for a lot of companies, especially nowadays, these newspapers where they run on a tight budget.

And so making a facility. At the time there was a lot of government involved or big companies located. So there are chambers in the country that is on the west coast, that is one down in El Segundo, there’s one up in Sunnyvale, in the Bay Area. The biggest one in the world is in Ohio, at NASA Pembroke or Armstrong now. So there are chambers, the point is that you are a new satellite manufacturer, and you have to do a test. And what you do? You you build your own and you spend a lot of money, a lot of CapEx, or you take it somewhere with the risk of having to go through a lot of expenses to ship it, the people, the insurance. And again, there is always a risk that something goes wrong. So the driver has like. whatever things can happen, and the mission is jeopardized. So NASA say like, you know what, why don’t we use loudspeaker let’s try. And they contacted MSI. MSI is a company that takes back to the 60s. So 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s was one of the biggest engineering audio company in the country. And outside, so they did the concert. Pink Floyd and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. So they did a lot of the biggest, Carly Simone. So they had a lot of equipment, loaded speakers. And so when Bob Goldstein, the owner got a call, enthusiastic as these like let’s do it. And so that’s how it started in 98. And there were a lot of issues from a technical point of view. So the acoustic field we generated was nowhere near that of a chamber. And so eventually, we worked on how to make it better. And then we introduced a lot of intelligence, a lot of control. And nowadays, we can run a test that look like a chamber.

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Eric White
Yeah, and you don’t need as much space to build the chamber, we actually have spoken to the head of the Armstrong, the facility for NASA, and just was amazed at the vastness of their chamber there. So I imagine that that’s another helpful part. You’re you’re talking about testing, you’re sending sound waves into new satellites that are planned to go up into space and making sure that they can withstand the loud noises that is going to incur on the way there, and on from a launch. Is that the oversimplification of what you’re mentioning there?

Alex Carrella
Yeah. There’s a contract with an obligation or an OEM, so original manufacturer, your satellite maker, with the launcher. So depending on which launcher you use, if you’re a SpaceX or if you use styling reviews, Vega, or Iran, it doesn’t matter where you launch. Each of them will give you some load, some harshness and vibration, and some noise that you have to make sure you’re able to eat when they launch. Because after that, once you’re in space it’s very quiet. Once you launch, it’s over. For the rest of the life, it is quiet and peace. But there is only those three, four minutes at the beginning that can make or break a mission.

Eric White
All right, so Bradley, let’s get into the commercial side of things here. Are a lot of these, because many companies now are sending things up into the air, maybe a few too many. What is it about this technology that they like other than the convenience of not having to build a mile deep chamber that they have to stick their satellite into?

Bradley Hope
Yeah, absolutely. There’s historically the traditional and legacy space industry. And then, starting with SpaceX, we’ve seen a flux of all of these new space companies. And the problem, as Alex kind of mentioned is the barrier to entry. And SpaceX kind of proved that no longer exists. And every day that passes, there’s some new technology or some new way of doing things, some innovative method that gets found out, that can further lower the barrier to entry to reaching space. So as Alex mentioned, this is a business driven technology that solves a real problem for our customers. In order to launch into space, you must do acoustic testing, we care mostly about the environment that hits inside of the fairing. So there’s actually several sound and vibration environments that are really harsh environments, that spacecraft or the payload travel through, whether it’s the outside jet engine noise, launch event, separation events, reentry events. Our business only cares about what’s really going on inside of the fairing. And those are still some very high levels. And when you think about decibel levels in your daily life, your starts to get impacted around 80, 90 decibels, rock concerts can easily be 100 decibels, the launch environment can exceed 130 to 150 plus decibels, which is more than enough to cause damage and problems. So it’s a risk event. On the customer side, they must pass these tests in order to be certified for launch. So typically, they’ll go and take a product through a developmental or a prototype stage test on a mock up unit, and then later on in the lifecycle of their product as they get closer to the actual launch. They’ll take the product flight unit through the actual or the flight unit through the certification tests up. So that’s where we come in, we’re really just doing this in one day for our customers, so it’s only one day of downtime on their test article. And that alone saves them a ton of time and money.

Eric White
In talking to some space regulation experts, and they deal with a lot with new companies who don’t know exactly the landscape of the business they’ve gotten into. Is this something that not many know about when they go to build a spacecraft? Because I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know that you needed to do an acoustic testing for any new spacecraft. Is that what you find in your experience? Or am I just not an expert, so I shouldn’t apply my experience?

Bradley Hope
That’s a really interesting question. And sometimes I’ve run into asking myself that question too. There’s so many, take some of the larger, the ISS is being decommissioned in 2030. And we know there’s several companies that are targeting replacement vehicles, and it kind of becomes a chicken or the egg type of situation where these structures are so large, they can be some very large acoustic tests and not necessarily have the right sized facilities to accommodate them for reverberant chamber testing. So that’s really our bread and butter specialty. Is some of these larger size tests, and we can come in and help those kinds of customers. But I don’t think anybody kind of gets into the business knowing everything that could possibly pop up on the horizon. I think everybody is kind of doing a lot of blocking and tackling, and day in and day out, you find new things that you run into that is a new problem to be solved. So we know working behind the scenes, how we’ve helped a lot of customers solve these types of problems.

Alex Carrella
Getting that you had a very good, this is a very good point. This is not a subject you learn in school. So we do work. So one of our mission, other than just providing a service is actually to educate. The team that we have is made of people that has been in this business for three or four decades. And young engineers, they come out of school, really bright people, these guys have really cracked. But acoustics is a very specific niche thing. And so we do a lot of education, a lot of teaching, a lot of counseling, just where to put microphones and what is better to do. So they look at us also as a way of learning. And there is a lot of knowledge transfer. It’s not just about providing a service and walking away. Because we have acquired it, it’s all generation. It takes a long time to learn these things. It’s very specific field of application.

Eric White
And since it has been conducted for so long, and this has been a now an industry that, as we mentioned, not many know about. Can you just talk a little bit about some of the innovations that have happened over the last few decades or so as far as making this a more convenient process for acoustic testing of new spacecraft? Or is it still just the way it was back in the 90s, where you’re just pointing and shooting speakers?

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Alex Carrella
So there’s two parts, the acoustic test is nothing changed, so that’s back in the 60s. So space industry is, the risk associated with what they learned and the payload it is very hard to take. So you’re very careful. So you do not innovate, and you come up with a new every day. So the methods and way of doing things are very conservative. Now, when it comes to the way we do things, there is a major innovation that we brought. It’s the possibility compared to the old acoustic chamber, and is the possibility to prevent some of the of the parts of the spacecraft to vibrate too much until it breaks. So we can prevent it with our technology, the way we do it. And the way we control the field, we can control also the structures. And we can make sure that if there is a very sensitive equipment, a mirror, laser, something which is really sensitive, and you don’t want it to vibrate too much, then we can limit the part. Things that was not possible before in the chambers. Now, there is an ethical debate and philosophical debate is these. What is the point in doing it if you’re testing to break it? Sure, we will test you to break it, but you don’t want to actually break it. So that if there is a way of, if this alarm goes off, and then we stop the test, then you know that is one of at least you don’t break it. So it is a trade off that.

Bradley Hope
Alex is really smart. He’s studied this for his whole career and he has a PhD in this. But in layman’s terms, the way I like to think about it is, an opera singer singing at a wineglass it would shatter at the right volume frequency decibel level. So we might want to avoid that wineglass shattering. And we’re the only company that can very precisely do that.

Eric White
Gotcha. And so I’ll give you the last word here, Bradley. You had mentioned some of the larger projects as your guys bread and butter. What about the the smaller entities and we see more micro sets and small set devices going up in the air. Does this apply to them as well? And have you been able to find those smaller companies as a customer base as well?

Bradley Hope
Yeah, that’s an interesting question, too. A lot of the times when you get into some smaller size test articles, they may not have the surface area to really experience some of the harsh resonances. But there’s always cases where you can test components, subcomponents, small satellites in some use cases. And there’s also adjacent markets as well. 90, 95% of our business tends to be washing machine plus size test articles that get launched inside of the fairing. We’ve tested things like satellites, telescopes, rovers, landers, and hopefully even we’ve tested parts of the rocket itself, the fairing, the upper stage, even the engine itself. So nothing’s off limits, but we just tend to find more business around all of the washing machine plus size satellites, that seems to be the real sweet spot.

Eric White
And I lied, because I do actually have one more question for you, Alex. And that is, as far as your work goes, are you more focused on making sure the aircraft can withstand the noise? Or do you also aid in the possibility of reducing the amount of noise that is created from a actual launch itself? Or are you just strictly stick into a no, there’s going to be noise no matter what.

Alex Carrella
What there is, this is another part of the equation, and another piece of the puzzle. So the launcher has on top of it, a fairing. And so inside the fairing that’s where things is. Now, the fairing is a piece of technology on his own. So it’s not made by the satellite, not even by the launcher. In most cases there are a few competent make fairings. And the fairings has a lot of insulation. So if you launch on SpaceX, it is so quiet so they managed to absorb a lot of noise. I’m a kid of the 70s. In the 80s when I was on holidays with my parents there was more noise in the car, and when that is actually on a spacecraft today. So they manage to make the ride really quiet. But there is already a lot of work that goes in there. There is a lot of precaution that they take during launch. So they put water to minimize the noise, they pump a lot of water on the flames and on the on the engine so that there is a less noise coming through the atmosphere and then gets back to the fairing. So there is a lot of things that they do, but it’s not our job. Our job is just too excited the way they should be to see if anything comes loose or breaks.

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