 Hello, citizens of Earth and welcome aboard Station 204. So glad to have you here this week with us. Now in our episode of tomorrow, dudes, oh my gosh, we have got a big SpaceX update. We've got Starlink and Starship co-starring together with Ryan and I'll be talking a little SpaceX after that too. I talk about them every once in a while. Yeah, what do you know about that? Also gonna be talking about Boeing and their Starliner crew shakeup and a little bit of a bonanza in some small space stories as well. Now, before we officially get started, of course, just want to remind you that if you really like what we do here tomorrow, don't forget to subscribe to us, like our videos, comment below, share us everywhere that you can and even consider becoming a member or a citizen of tomorrow as well. So let's go ahead and get started with this edition of Tomorrow News for the week of October 11th, 2020. Hey Ryan, you go first and then I'll go after you. The scrubs have ended, Starlink has launched and I am one step closer to getting my hands on some sweet, sweet bandwidth from space. Oh, and crew once delayed. The reason NASA says this is necessary is to complete hardware testing and data reviews as the company evaluates off-nominal behavior of Falcon 9 first-stage engine gas generators observed during a recent non-NASA mission launch attempt. Or in other words, NASA isn't too happy that the pressure in the gas generators got a wee bit too high two seconds before the planned launch of GPS3 Space Vehicle 4. So SpaceX needs to make sure that this doesn't happen before a crewed launch. ExoLaunch, which is a company I have spoken about before, has just signed a deal with SpaceX to secure space for a lot of small sats onto some rideshare missions later this year and going into next. For those of you who are unaware of ExoLaunch's existence, simplified, they are a German company which manufactures deployment hardware for CubeSats and other small satellites, simplifying the whole process of getting your hardware into space. You give them your satellite that you've spent your millions onto them and they'll find you a launch and also kindly deploy it into orbit for you. Some of their upcoming customers are Lothdo Orbital, swarm technologies, NanoAvionics and some German universities. NanoAvionics had been confirmed before, however the newer customers have just had their launches secured. When operating on Falcon 9, ExoLaunch will be using their ExoPort adapter to hold the satellites and then deploy them using their Carbonix separation system. I mean, at least it has a cool name, right? Going back to Starlink for a bit, Elon Musk has stated that once the satellites that launched on Starlink 12 have gotten to their desired orbit, which will take a few months, SpaceX will start rolling out their public beta program across the Northern US and Southern Canada. Following this, the Native American whole tribe in Washington has been given some early access to Starlink which both benefits them as well as benefiting SpaceX as these are the kind of communities this system is really going to help as the speeds are really fast and all you need to access it is a UFO or a stick. SpaceX had also provided Washington's emergency management division with seven free user terminals and unlimited use of the Starlink network as some regions were hit very hard by the summer wildfires. Starman in their cherry red Tesla Roadster made its first close approach to Mars the other day at under 5 million miles. Now, that may seem like a very large distance but it seems very close when you consider that Mars is over 39 million miles away from Earth. So it is progress. Another Falcon Heavy launch is coming up next year for the United States Space Force 44 mission. A full duration test of one of the side boosters was run in McGregor and from the current information it went off without a hitch. Now I don't know if you will remember but in an episode a while back I spoke about the past and future of the SpaceX drone ships and I mentioned that a shortfall of Gravitas seemed to be off the table. Well, it's good news fans of recoverability as on October 4th Elon tweeted saying that the next drone ship was indeed going to be called that. A shortfall of Gravitas. So a new drone ship is confirmed and now that just read the instructions Mark II is in the Cape does that mean we could see triple sea landing Falcon Heavy launches perhaps for Dragon XL launches? Well, we'll just have to wait and see and we haven't even gotten to Starship yet. SN8 has passed its cryogenic proof test and it has been readied up for its three raptor engines which will be used for that massive hop that is upcoming in the next few weeks. Along with this some currently unknown parts have also arrived in Boca Chica and one of the nose cones sitting around on site has sadly been scrapped. They wouldn't have done this if they didn't have a good reason however so something must have been wrong. Now there also have been some interesting developments with the folks down at the end of the 91 freeway such as SpaceX's protest of the United States Air Force's 2018 launch service agreement contracts. In late 2018 the US Air Force handed out three of those launch service agreements. They went to United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman and SpaceX filed a protest against them arguing that they gave an unfair advantage to those companies by keeping SpaceX out. The US Air Force's reasoning for the exclusion of SpaceX's super heavy Starship proposal well they deemed it too risky and expensive. What? What's that supposed to mean? Is it super heavy Starship the low cost, low complexity future of space flight? Well yes and no. The present design of super heavy Starship checks all of those boxes with its stainless steel design but proposals for the protested launch service agreements were drafted in 2017 and then delivered in 2018 and that's when the primary design was still of the carbon composite flavor which is relatively unproven on a vehicle of this scale. So suddenly the Air Force's hesitation makes sense. However the US Air Force and SpaceX are not folding their arms and turning their backs on each other. No, the US Air Force has money and SpaceX has a potential cargo vehicle. Hints in 2018 were dropped about the US Air Force using SpaceX rockets for rapid cargo transport and last year we heard from Gwen Shotwell, SpaceX's president and chief operating officer that SpaceX was in talks with the United States Army for potential point to point transport using Starship vehicles. But consider that interest officially official as the United States Transportation Command has signed a research and development agreement with SpaceX and exploration architecture corporation to detail concepts for rapid transportation via space. And as you can imagine the ability to transport up to 70 tons of cargo anywhere on the planet in less than 45 minutes that is pretty appealing. It's not just purely for military purposes either. Here in the United States we have something called the Civil Reserve Air Fleet and that's a program in which civilian airlines set aside a number of their aircraft that they can commit to call up and help the Department of Defense for airlift capability during major national emergencies which SpaceX's Starship could be incredibly beneficial in that role as well. Speaking of roles the commander of Boeing's first planned crew test flight of Starliner Chris Ferguson has removed himself from commanding that mission. Now why did he do that? Well, let's listen to what he has to say about it. Hi, Chris Ferguson here from the Boeing Starliner program. I wanna share with you a difficult and personal decision I've had to make. I have chosen to step aside as the commander of the crew flight test scheduled for next year. I'm deeply committed to human space flight. I'm dedicated to the Starliner program and I'm passionate about the team that has built her. But next year is very important for my family. I have made several commitments which I simply cannot risk missing. I'm not going anywhere. I'm just not going into space next year. The Boeing team has been very understanding. The crew is doing wonderfully and thank you for your understanding too. Outside of that Chris has said that the reason for it is quote the best kind of family issue. And ultimately if there's any more going to be said about it, it's at Chris's discretion. And hey, I gotta admire someone who chooses family over career. That's kind of a pretty admirable thing. And there's been a lot of really rude internet armchair and mission operations mudslinging going around. It's been pretty heckin' sad to see that. Ferguson isn't leaving the Starliner program so he may get to command a flight at some point. Just not one in 2021. Barry Wilmore, better known as Butch, a veteran of one space shuttle flight and an expedition to the International Space Station will be taking his place as commander. NASA astronauts Mike Fink and Nicole Mann will be aboard as well. This will be Nicole Mann's first flight and for Mike Fink, this will be his fourth flight to space and a nice little trivia tidbit for you all. When Starliner launches and Mike is aboard, he will be the first astronaut since the legendary John Young to have flown three different spacecraft, having rode two Soyuz to the International Space Station and Space Shuttle Endeavour for STS-134 in 2011, making Starliner his third ride. We had no launches this week, but hey, that also means that we had no scrubs. However, we do have a few on the horizon, so here are your upcoming launches. More scrubs. You know what time it is? I know what time it is. It's time for another Jared's Yeehaw space flight, get down on it, but then it's a really long title because we got these stories to talk about. The James Webb Space Telescope has completed testing to assure that it will handle the expected noises, shakes and vibrations of launch on an Ariane 5 next year. Individual components have been tested by themselves before, but this series of tests was with the entire fully assembled J-Dub. That was subjected to 140 decibels of noise in an acoustic test chamber and then placed on a vibration table to shake the space telescope in a manner similar to what it'll experience on the Ariane 5 launch. And initial data from Northrop Grumman and NASA is looking pretty positive. More tests lay ahead in J-Dub's future, but it looks like the telescope that ate the budget is finally in the closing stages of its meal on the ground. J-Dub will launch on one of the final Ariane 5 rockets because Ariane space is now deep into the final stages of development for their new Ariane 6 launch vehicle. The solid rocket motor that will be used as a pair or quad of boosters attached to the Ariane 6 launch vehicle has performed its final of three static fire tests. Burning for 130 seconds and generating just over a million pounds of thrust, the motor called P120C will be used not just for the Ariane 6's boosters, but also as the new first stage of the upcoming upgrade to the Vega Small Class launch vehicle, which will be called Vega C. Both the Ariane 6 and Vega C are currently scheduled to have their first launches in the second half of 2021. The United Arab Emirates is developing a small rover to send to the moon in 2024. The rover will carry several instruments to study the lunar surface. Among those, a microscope that can resolve particles of lunar regolith down to 50 microns in size, a thermal imager to study how regolith handles the thermal environment, a probe to measure the amount of electrons around the lunar surface, and an experiment to see how lunar regolith latches on to and affects different materials. High definition cameras will also be a board to be used for navigation and science. Mid-latitude regions are being targeted for landing, which will allow the solar powered rover to potentially survive a two week long lunar night. No word on a lander to deliver the rover, but since it comes in at a featherweight 10 kilograms, there should be plenty of choices by 2024. And as we wrap up this episode of Tomorrow News, I just wanna thank all of you who helped contribute to make the shows of Tomorrow possible. It's really quite humbling to me and all of us here at Tomorrow that so many of you become citizens or members directly support our efforts. We're forever grateful that we're able to make this for you, but also consider that we are able to share this with the world, which aligns with our goal in getting humanity excited about spaceflight. And if you'd like to become a citizen and contribute to the shows of Tomorrow, head on over to youtube.com slash tmro slash join and check out all of the levels of support, including discord rewards and of course, subscribing to us, liking our videos, commenting below and sharing them everywhere that you can is an incredible and easy way to help as well. And that's Seco nine for this episode of Tomorrow News. Thank you all so much for watching. And until our next one, remember, stay safe, stay healthy and keep exploring. Chron's in size, a thermal imager to study how regolith handles, what in hell?