 Hey what's up everybody, welcome to tomorrow. This time I wanted to talk about how there are several payloads that are starting to emerge for the SLS, the Space Launch System, and at least in my mind it's starting to justify the rocket. And that's what we're going to talk about for this, your space pod for September 15th, 2015. The Space Launch System is going to evolve into several different versions over a period of time. The first version, the Block 1, is going to have the five-segment solid rocket boosters, four RS-25 engines powering the core stage, and then an interim cryogenic upper stage that will be powered by one single RL-10 engine. And with this, the primary payload has been and will continue to be the Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle. So far there are only two missions that are for sure on the books for Orion. And that's Exploration Mission 1, which is going to be an uncrewed flyby around the moon. That's going to be testing out all of its systems even more and testing it out for future deep space missions. And then there's Exploration Mission 2, which is supposed to be a crewed flight around the moon, and possibly even go all the way into orbit around the moon. However, there are some at least internal talks in NASA that this could be replaced with a robotic mission, so that one might even be up in the air. All of the other really good ideas for payloads for the space launch system fall under NASA's category of DRMs, design reference missions, and there are quite a few of them. One of the first reference missions for the Orion is to be a crew backup to the International Space Station in case the commercial crew program doesn't come online in time. Kind of in tandem with that would be the Orion flying with a commercial cargo vehicle underneath it. And it not only could this service the International Space Station, but future space stations as well, so at least this configuration might actually come to fruition. One of the other solid plans that NASA has is the ARM project, the Asteroid Redirect Mission, sometimes also called the Asteroid Retrieval Mission. This would be a combination of Orion crewed flights with robotic missions that would rendezvous with a near-Earth object and bring it back into either Earth orbit or lunar orbit to not only return samples, but possibly even begin some sort of mining operation from that as well. So that is a really cool idea that NASA has, and there's a video that I put out in the past that you can watch for more information about that and which design they have planned to go with. But with this, there's a couple other components that could be added to this. Not only do they have the robotic Asteroid Retrieval Vehicles, or the ARVs, they also have something they're calling an Exploration Augmentation Module, or the EAM. And this would be a four-node kind of connector that would be able to not only have more internal volume or habitable volume for the crew, but it would also enable future modules to be docked to that. Not only more Asteroid Retrieval Vehicles, but maybe even a Bigelow Habitat, some sort of other habitats that are based on ISS modules. And there's just all sorts of future plans that come from that and different configurations that could possibly fly on the Space Launch System in order to make a larger Asteroid Retrieval Mission possible. At this point, though, once we're starting to talk about heavier payloads, or at least payloads that are going to further out destinations, this is where the next version of the Space Launch System is needed. NASA was going to develop a version called the Block 1A, which would have replaced the five-segment solid boosters with advanced boosters. There were really two main big competitors for that, one of them was Orbital ATK which replaced those boosters with ones that are made out of composite materials and would be able to have more fuel and would be able to increase their performance. The other one was from Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Dianetics, which would have a liquid booster instead of a solid, that each booster would be powered by two F1 engines, the same F1 engines that powered the first stage of the Saturn V rocket. However, of course, production would have to be restarted of these and they pretty much have to redesign them, thankfully they did recover an F1 engine thanks to Blue Origin, oddly that was a really weird thing, but anyway, with that, these liquid boosters would be extremely powerful and for me anyway, I'm kind of personally favoring that. However, NASA did cancel the whole advanced booster development in 2014, well, not canceled but really put it on hold until they developed the Block 2 of the Space Launch System. So the Block 1A is going to be no more, something that I think is really cool but kind of nerdy is that the whole Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne advanced booster with the two F1 engines, that's actually part of a Kerbal Space Program mod, the official NASA mod, which is actually part of the stock game now and I've used those boosters on their parts for the Space Launch System so many times, it's one of my favorite parts. But since NASA isn't developing the Block 1A, they're moving forward with the Block 1B, which is going to have the same core stage and the same solid rocket boosters, the only difference is going to be the new upper stage. This is what they're calling the exploration upper stage and no, this isn't using the J2X engines, this is going to be powered by four RL10 engines instead of just one on the interim cryogenic propulsion stage. There are so many more cool ideas that I want to talk about but I'm kind of running out of time so we're going to pick this up next week and talk about the others payloads for the Space Launch System that I'm really excited about and it's, I mean I'm actually excited about the Space Launch System now, it's kind of ridiculous but in any case there's still lots of problems to that and we'll talk about that next time as well but in the meantime please leave a comment and let me know out of the ones we've talked about so far which ones are your favorite payload ideas and if you can please contribute to our Patreon campaign so that we can continue to make videos like this and until the next time I see you guys keep moving onwards and I will see you in the future.