 Hey, what's up everybody, welcome to tomorrow. So there are some really important updates regarding space policy that we need to talk about that are going to affect future American military satellite launches. And that's the topic for today's space pod for June 2, 2015. First off, the United States Air Force has certified SpaceX to compete in their Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Program, or EELV Program, which launches all of the national security payloads. After two hard years of work and cooperation between SpaceX and the United States Air Force, they have finally been certified to launch military payloads, and congratulations to everyone at SpaceX and the Air Force who has made this possible. The first opportunity for SpaceX to compete for a military payload would be for the GPS-3 program, which so far has nine satellites in need of a launch vehicle. However, that competition may be affected by a recent Senate bill. The United States Senate has recently introduced a space policy bill regarding multiple issues, including the third-generation GPS and Expendable Launch Vehicle programs. For the GPS-3 program, the Senate is calling for a delay in the purchase of the tenth GPS-3 satellite from the manufacturer Lockheed Martin, since the first one hasn't even launched yet. The first one was supposed to have launched in 2014, but won't launch until 2017 at the earliest. Not only is the program behind schedule, it's also $700 million over budget so far, and the Senate wants to start having quarterly updates as to why they're so behind schedule and over budget, including any technical issues they're having. Right now, it mostly has to do with the navigation system. The competition for the GPS-3 satellites was supposed to begin this month, but something else that the Senate bill proposes may affect the company that previously had a monopoly on launching military payloads, United Launch Alliance. The good news is that this bill would allow United Launch Alliance to compete with their Atlas V rocket on up to all nine of the GPS-3 satellites in need of a launch so far, despite the Atlas V rocket using Russian-made RD-180 engines, which were previously banned by the National Defense Authorization Act of 2015. So that's some pretty good news for them, but the bill doesn't address any future expendable launch vehicle programs, because ULA does have more RD-180 engines that they could use. However, that ban of using those RD-180 engines was only in regards to military payloads. United Launch Alliance can still use the Atlas V for commercial payloads, and even scientific ones for NASA, of course. The bad news for United Launch Alliance is that this Senate bill seeks to stop Air Force payments to United Launch Alliance that fall under launch capability costs. It roughly equals about $1 billion per year, and covers expenses that aren't associated with any specific mission. It's supposedly to cover ground infrastructure costs, but those expenses are already covered in the cost of a launch already. I'm not saying that United Launch Alliance is double-dipping, but if launch capability is that expensive for them, then United Launch Alliance might be in a lot of trouble. I should note that some exemptions were made for the Delta IV rocket, which uses a United States-built engine and is the only rocket so far that does have a heavy lift capability option, and the Senate has justified those expenses to make sure that we have assured American access to space. There's always more to this story, though, and to get to the bottom of this, we simply need more information from all parties involved to find out where all that money has been going to and what United Launch Alliance will do if they don't get that money anymore. Another part of this bill I wanted to discuss was the Senate's plan to completely stop the 20th launch of an aging defense meteorological satellite. It's a weather satellite that was built in the 1990s, and it's been sitting in storage ever since it was constructed. This bill would prohibit any money from being spent on its launch unless the Secretary of Defense certifies that the weather data it would provide could not be obtained from any alternate and less expensive sources. Considering the advances in technology since the satellite was built, I think they can probably find a cheaper source for this weather data, in my opinion anyway. Meanwhile, Russia has released a statement regarding the reasons why their last proton launch failed on May 16th. Roskosmos attributed this failure to the collapse of a turbo pump on the third stage engine due to vibrations and the stress of high temperatures. Supposedly this was because the materials chosen for the turbo pump and its components were a design flaw, and it's unknown if this design flaw has been present ever since the proton began service in the 1960s, or if this was because of some sort of recent addition or change. In any case the materials will be changed, as well as the techniques for balancing and mounting the turbo pump during its installation. Also their apparently deficient quality control is going to be reviewed and addressed over the coming months. Meanwhile, China has been very quiet lately, and their only confirmed launch so far this year was of a navigation satellite back in March. That doesn't necessarily mean that they haven't launched anything, but the silence makes me nervous and suspicious and hopeful all at the same time. So since there's nothing to report there, please leave me a comment on some of the topics that we discussed today because I would love to know what you think. And if you'd like to help us to bring you space news like this, then please visit patreon.com slash space pod to find out how you can help us to create these videos. Thank you so much to everyone who's contributed so far, and we might have some new rewards coming for our patrons very soon. Thank you very much for watching. My name is Michael Clark, and now you know more today than you did yesterday, thanks to tomorrow. Keep moving onwards and upwards, and I will see you in the future.