 Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome to tomorrow. What a great time to be alive. There is so much happening in the space industry, it's hard to keep up with it all. But today I wanted to focus on what's been happening recently in the rocket industry, including an investigation update from SpaceX regarding their most recent Falcon 9 failure, and in Russia their newest rocket is being put on the commercial market. And some possible details have emerged about Russia's relationship with China going forward in the future in the space industry. And a satellite that's in orbit right now has been doing a lot of maneuvering and rendezvousing with different space objects, and it might be evidence of an anti-satellite weapons test. And that's what we're going to be talking about today for this year's space pod for July 21st, 2015. So first off, SpaceX has released an investigation update regarding the Falcon 9 failure that was supposed to launch the 7th commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station. And with that, SpaceX has confirmed that the Dragon capsule actually did survive and did pull away from the explosion and continue to send data until it went over the horizon. So that's actually something that was really cool, that the Dragon was able to survive that. Although they didn't give any data as to whether or not its engines, if it had any Draco engines, functional ones anyway, fired or not. But anyway, to quote from their press release, they said that the preliminary analysis suggests the overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank was initiated by a flawed piece of support hardware, a strut, inside the second stage. Several hundred struts fly on every Falcon 9 vehicle with a cumulative flight history of several thousand. The strut that we believe failed was designed and material certified to handle ten thousand pounds of force, but failed at two thousand pounds, a five fold difference. Detailed closeout photos of stage construction show no visible flaws or damage of any kind. Later in the statement it says that despite the fact that these struts have been used on all previous Falcon 9 flights and are certified to withstand well beyond the expected loads during the flight, SpaceX will no longer use these particular struts for flight applications. In addition, SpaceX will implement additional hardware quality audits throughout the vehicle to further ensure all parts received perform as expected per their certification documentation. So that's a firm statement that they're not going to use any more of these struts on any future flights and what I'm wondering is, does that mean that all of the other Falcon 9s that have already been through production and are in various phases of construction are those all going to be thrown out and start from scratch with some new struts and these additional supports that they're talking about? And if so, I wonder what's going to happen to that hardware and could that be reused for anything? But if so, what's the timetable going to be? How much longer will it be before Falcon 9 might be able to return to flight? So, kind of scary, but this is still an ongoing investigation and there's going to be more information coming forward and more statements from SpaceX in the future, so we're just going to have to hang tight and look for more information as it comes out. Meanwhile, in Russia, International Launch Services, which is the commercial arm of the state-run Khrunachev, is put the Angara rocket on the commercial market, or at least the Angara 1.2 anyway. The Angara 1.2 is a small class rocket and would deliver small payloads into orbits, mostly low earth orbit, some geosynchronous earth orbits, even some sun synchronous orbits. But anyway, it's a small class rocket and it would replace Russia's current rock-caught vehicle and would compete with Ukraine's Dnieper rocket and the European Space Agency's Vega rocket, as well as several other small class rockets out there. Also, while the American Congress is arguing over what to do with the Russian RD-180 engine and how to replace it or phase it out properly, Russia, or at least the chief head of the Space Agency, Dmitry Rogozin, is possibly spreading rumors or telling truths that they're going to start selling the RD-180 engine and possibly other engines to China. Although what rockets China would need those engines for is unclear, since China has had a very extensive rocket engine development program of their own. And for their next large rocket, they have already been doing testing for those rockets and the engines for those rockets for a long time. So it's unclear what that would potentially be useful for to China. Although Rogozin also said in some of these statements he's been making that these engines would serve the purpose for the cooperation between Russia and China to go to the moon and would be for all of their moon rockets. So it's unknown what is going on there. Something that is for sure, though, is China is looking to purchase the company Sea Launch from Russia. In reality, it's really Russia who's probably pushing to sell the command ship and launch platform for Sea Launch. And China might be able to stand and benefit from this because if they were to acquire this hardware, it might enable China to do even more secret rocket launches without anybody knowing or at least recognizing that they've had a launch for several days. Since Russia hasn't really made any plans on what to do with all of this Sea Launch hardware, it probably would be best for them instead of having it draining their finances to get rid of it and sell it and at least make some sort of profit from it. And China, if they have the whole secret launch route and if they could get away with it with such a platform, they might be very interested. In any case, the two groups are talking and that is official and whether or not Rogozin's statements about selling the RD-180 engine to the Chinese is true or not doesn't necessarily matter. Finally, something that at least has the United States Air Force concerned is back in March, Russia launched two communication satellites and a military satellite on a rock hot vehicle. The military satellite designated Cosmos 2504 has been making extensive maneuvers on orbit and has rendezvoused and made close-up proximity operations to its upper stage 11 times. And during one of those rendezvous, it either pushed or had some sort of docking procedure with that upper stage and raised the upper stage to an higher orbit. The Air Force is obviously concerned because they're worried that this could be evidence that this vehicle is some sort of anti-satellite weapon or satellite interceptor or something like that. And this isn't the only one of these either. Last year, Russia launched the Cosmos 2499 vehicle, which has also made lots of maneuvers on orbit. It's unclear what the specifications for these vehicles are since they are secret military vehicles, but most likely they're using some sort of ion haul thrusters, especially since haul thrusters have been a lot more popular in Russia and for a lot longer than they have here in the United States. Personally, I would like to give Russia the benefit of the doubt and consider this, like most space technology, something that's dual use, whereas the citizen or non-military benefit of this could be satellite resurfacing or even orbital debris removal or something that isn't necessarily a weapon that would go and destroy other satellites or rendezvous with other satellites or even de-orbit some space debris in such a way that if they do it at the right time, the right place, and if it has the right mass and how they de-orbit it and everything, you could have a kinetic weapon as well and not even have to sacrifice your interceptor satellite. So there are lots of things that could possibly be to worry about with this sort of capability. However, the United States has this capability as well. I mean, that's essentially what the X-37B is. It's a satellite interceptor. In any case, let me know what you think as to whether or not you think that these satellites are military in nature or if they're citizen in nature and what you think the future of that might be and also let me know what you think about some of these other updates with all these other rockets out there as well. Thank you very much for watching this video. My name is Michael Clark and if you are able, please contribute to our Patreon campaign so we can continue to make videos like this and hopefully you know a little bit more today than you did yesterday thanks to tomorrow. Keep moving onwards and upwards everybody and I'll see you in the future.