 Coming up blue origin successfully launches and lands a suborbital rocket a series of other launches Fire suppression and I interview William Pomerance of Virgin Galactic all that more stay tuned tomorrow begins right now Welcome to tomorrow episode 8 that 35 for Saturday December 5th, 2015 My name is Benjamin Hagenbotham now before we get started with our show I'd like to give a huge shout out to all the patrons of tomorrow who have helped to make this specific segment of this episode happen These are the people who have contributed at least ten dollars to this episode We are crowdfunded show and you can find out more information on how you can help crowdfund us over at patreon.com slash TMRO all right, so I didn't cover this with anyone in advance. I totally should have but Yeah, absolutely. So Mike has our first story, but before he gets into it. I would like to roll I think we should set it up by rolling the video in its entirety. So here you go 70 feet 50 feet Awkward ending so Mike, what were we watching? Very cool. Very cool. So that was the engineers reaction to the successful launch and landing of sub excuse me blue origin suborbital rocket the new Shepard vehicle and with that that occurred on Excuse me Monday November 23rd, and they waited the next day until the 24th of November to announce it and it was Very very awesome for them to be able to do this and with this they were able to ascend up to a hundred kilometers or 60 miles to the edge of space and Release the capsule and be able to have the the landing portion which we used you saw I look like for a moment like it might have been able to tip over a little bit But they were successfully able to recover and land successfully now on Tuesday Jeff Bezos took to Twitter and said that this that a used rocket was a rare beast And if done right Controlled landing not easy, but done right can look easy Which prompted Elon Musk to respond reminding him that SpaceX has been doing the grasshopper test flights since 2013 and that they were not blue origin or SpaceX neither one was the first commercial organization to have a reusable rocket since that goes to the the whole crew for the spaceship one and Since then there wasn't really any replies from from Jeff Bezos or anything like that, but it still was a little bit Kind of hilarious to to see the kind of reaction and response from you on Musk And that being said they have a couple of things coming up that we're going to talk about a little bit later But this was a very successful launch of the new Shepard vehicle And by the way that was powered by the BE3 engine and interestingly that engine might be used for an upper-stage Engine on the United Launch Alliance is Vulcan rocket in the future, so very successful launch for blue origin and congratulations to that whole team and you know that was Very cool launch and definitely very surprising at least this time They did give us a couple of days heads up before it happened, so very cool. I absolutely love the engineers cheering on That because what they're doing regardless of who cares who did it first right what they're doing is hard It doesn't it's just straight up It's very hard to do and they successfully did it and they are working on helping to drive the cost of spaceflight down So a huge congratulations to the entire team of Blue Origin That was I love that moment that moment Did just that all of them cheering and seeing all of their years and years of hard work paying off that was that was so cool Yeah, that was so cool as an engineer That's like the moment that I live for is seeing everybody You know everything paying off and coming together and the success happening absolutely great to see it I'm really excited to see where they go with the entire vehicle So alright, let's do some launch coverage really quickly. We were off for a week So we're going back a little bit the first up we have an h2a with the Telstar 12 vantage satellite They give it a moment so this was shot a little ways away She got to give it a moment for the sound to catch up to the light and be here in a second There it is I always loved that this launch in November 24th I probably should have talked over when it was silent instead of when it was okay There's the noise. I'm gonna keep talking exactly November 24th at 650 coordinated universal time This this vehicle passed the speed of sound in less than a minute That's the h2a rocket from from Japan This was the first time the h2a fired its upper-stage engines three times But before deploying the satellite they had to modify the h2a upper stage for this flight Which involves painting the upper stage a different color so that it would specifically white so that it wouldn't overheat They had to add additional thermal insulation and add lithium-ion batteries to power the upper stage of the rocket through those three different burns the payload was a Telstar 12 vantage which is going to replace the Telstar 12 satellite which was launched in 1999 and it's going to be a communication satellite for basically out at sea kind of vessels over the Caribbean South Atlantic Mediterranean and North Sea so seafaring vehicles that need like internet and communication access That's what this is a that's what that's going out to very important very very important stuff, right? Especially especially if you're taking a cruise and you want your internet To work first world problems satellite this help But even outside of that like emergency responders for offshore oil wigs any sort of you know Ships out at sea you need to have communication in a modern civilization. Absolutely. That's what those do. How about a long March 4c? So this was a Chinese military spy satellite launched November 27th at 2124 Q&A universal time It's a polar orbit that they sent this satellite to Because it's a military satellite. They didn't really offer too much in the way of details as to what it is or what's going on So it's thought to be a radar reconnaissance satellite and it fits the same kind of Orbital pattern as the other satellites that predated it in 2006 2007 and 2010 and This was the 16th launch for China this year I was to say I appreciate that even though they're not getting me out a lot of details They're like hey, hey, hey, we launched again. Oh, by the way launch again Well, we launched again Seriously, they kind of came out of nowhere with the ability to just launch and launch and launch and launch and launch and launch and launch 16 that's more than one per month. It was a busy summer of working in the factory And finally that's actually the low number for China in the past they've had up to like I think that in I think their record is like in 2008 they had 52 launches in one year quest in multiple different vehicles, but still They're crazy. Hey, they're like big country. Okay, like what a week big country. They've got a lot of stuff to love They can like from multiple multiple places just incredible Hey, I normally I actually got sick of doing this I normally grab the debris shots because they also shoot like because they launch way inland as opposed to like out by the sea ocean So, you know the first stage just falls like that on land And crushes things in and I normally post the debris Whatever I normally grab that but it's just happened so much. I'm just like, yeah, no debris debris Picture all the things you've seen before it's just like we should just have the exact same picture every time All right, and finally Vega launched with Lisa pathfinder Boom that is a Vega launcher, which I believe is a solid first stage Which is why that that just took off right up just right off the pad. It's like goodbye. I'm going How's it like it's like goodbye, I'm gone Interesting accent that the rocket has that happened Thursday December 3rd. It's 4 or 4. It's French 404 quite a universal time like I said that was carrying the Lisa pathfinder It's an experimental spacecraft that took about 10 years to build and as the name implies It's it's going to be kind of a path-binding mission for future satellites and future technology It's jobs to test stuff that's been actually was invented refined for this mission It's gonna test things It could do experiments Yep Well it has new inertial sensors that are going to be tested for the first time in space. Thanks for that for the high precision laser Things and free-floating mirrors It's gonna test stuff. Oh, what's exactly what your notes say test stuff? Is that what I actually said no, I wish you did though Lisa it's the laser laser in Inferno my name your geometry inferno manure What is that? What's an interferometry if you could say the word that miss means you know what it is space antenna? Okay, so interferometry That's when you use multiple mirrors in order to combine as like a single mirror But in this case it's using multiple lasers to try to detect gravitational waves So instead of doing it on earth where you have to account for the earth's gravitational field and like a bus passing 20 miles away and other fun things They're putting it out in space so that it literally is in the most stable type of environment You can put a gravitational wave detector, but this isn't so while this is designed to help us detect gravitational waves This itself is not the gravitational wave detector This is proving the technologies for us to build the bigger gravitational wave detector Yes, because the bigger gravitational wave detector will actually be multiple spacecraft flying in formation But they want to make sure first that the actual systems will work in space because nobody has ever flown these systems in the space before And if I were to sum that up in two words, I'd say probably to test stuff. Yes, I would sum that particular one to test the thing So we can build the other thing. Yeah pretty much I just want to make sure I understood. All right Jared takes away With whatever your thing is very awesome story actually coming out which is that Akatsuki a jack whoa boom Person who can pronounce things I pronounce things correctly on this show Just wait till later when we when we throw out something but Akatsuki, which is a mission that Japan launched in 2010 Is going to be arrived what year 2000 or 2010? Excuse me? Yes, it'll be arriving at Venus on December 7th, so I'm coming up this Monday It was originally going to go into orbit around Venus in 2010 But unfortunately it had a problem during its orbital insertion burn with its engine where it ended up Accidentally putting too much oxidizer in there and damaged the engine and it cut out So it was only about a third of the way through its burn So it ended up flying straight past Venus. Let's take a look at it real quick here Here's a great image. Thanks, Jaxa Thanks for getting it out now very high it continued in orbit around the Sun It actually ended up going much closer to the Sun than was expected and it took on Thermal loads about 30 to 40 degrees Celsius higher than was expected. That is not a small amount No, that is not especially for a scientific probe. That's only supposed to last for two years in the environment around Venus Now they ended up figuring out that they could use the engine a little bit not to the degree that they are not to the amount that they Were able to only about 10% of the original original efficiency So they're going to attempt to try to get it back in orbit around Venus and keep that mission going But they're going to be using the reaction control system to actually burn This time to try to get it in orbit around Venus. So they're using the RCS thrusters Yes, their reaction control system as they're like their main method of propulsion Yeah, the clever the propulsion system on board can't run at the efficiency that they need to put it into orbit And they also don't want to risk even further damaging it and then you know now You're not going to be able to go into orbit and you're just gonna stay in orbit around the Sun. Yes, Mike Jared, do you know if they had vented the fuel for the main engine or if that is still on board from what I understand The fuel was vented from the tanks in order to lower The weight of Akatsuki in order to make sure that it would be as lightweight as possible So that way the RC the reaction control system thrusters would have the maximum amount of push Against it. So big sense. Yeah. Thank you. Good luck to them Really looking forward to hearing that. Yeah All right moving along Carry in so I just came up the other day just a vertical assembly. I'm sorry the vehicle assembly building came up at work It's a vertical. I mean it is Well, it was called a vertical assembly building So I felt like I was pretty safe in saying that but then it sort of it bothered me later on And so after looking into the vehicle assembly building turns out they're having some work done They're getting a little bit of a facelift Internally nose is at the nose lift not really sure anyway The fire suppression systems are getting an upgrade is really what I'm trying to say In preparation for the space launch system coming in What they needed to do is make sure that of course everyone it stays safe and the vehicle stays safe, etc Etc. The building was originally constructed around 1965 completed in 1966 So she's been around for a wee bit and to give you an idea It's always so difficult to to describe just how large this is it is quote the largest one-story building Right, it even has weather on the inside of the building, which is absolutely insane So there are four high bay high bays. Yep comprising and with an internal height of 456 feet or not quite a hundred and thirty nine meters or Another way of looking at it with a little over 45 stories tall. Oh my gosh. I didn't realize it was that big Yes, right taller than Florida Yes pretty much You made me snort It sounds like an evil plan, you know, we're gonna build a building as tall as a state right the square footage is 137,000 175 square feet or 41,810 square meters. It's large. It's very big very big one unit of huge large Yes There's room enough to assemble multiple vehicles in case you were wondering It's with commercial crew as well. So interested parties in case anyone out there is building the wants to build a 45-story raw I suppose that'd be like a 44-story rocket, right? Well, you have to have the Door may be even smaller than that too. Yeah, it is a little bit smaller. I apologize I don't have the stats on exactly how big that is. We need to know how big of a rocket We're gonna be the world's biggest door for all we know what is it the space Space program of tomorrow spot spot the space program of tomorrow So interested parties in spot need to need to make sure that they register their interest in using the vehicle assembly building by mid 2016 so everybody get on that So they're doing the upgrades to the fire suppression system new fire problems controllers fire protection piping etc. Etc. They're doing a refurbishment of a 1.4 million Gallon water storage tank, which I thought was crazy pants and I apologize I don't know how many Olympic-sized swimming pools that would actually Is it how many cricket pitches so many elephants all right anyway The company that's doing all the work is based in Merritt Island. They've been in they've been in work since 1975 they've done work on the the vehicle launch Vehicle launch vehicle assembly building review AP launch console center utility annex launch complex 39 be launch equipment test facility Operations and checkout building. They are family-owned and they also among other things help Atlantis get into her new home Oh I thought that was adorable Okay, you all suck anyway, so Mike has got some SpaceX news Mike, please save us Well speaking of upgrades SpaceX is hoping to launch their next Falcon 9 rocket in mid December The CEO of org comm is saying that the earliest possible date might be December 15th So hopefully all goes well with that and with this rocket There's a lot of different upgrades on this not just as this the return to flight of the Falcon 9 But they are increasing the amount of thrust that the Merlin 1d engines that power the first stage are able to produce They have increased them from a hundred and forty seven thousand pounds of thrust at sea level to a hundred and seventy thousand pounds of thrust so that's a huge increase and with that and They've they've made upgrades in the past where the fuel tanks for the first stage are longer So with this they're going to be able to have a lot more fuel left over Especially with this additional thrust to be able to attempt to make landings with that first stage But also they have upgraded the upper stage engine as well And it has a longer nozzle and the fuel tanks of the upper stage are longer as well That will be able to give SpaceX the capability of launching satellites heavier satellites into geostationary orbit And to possibly have Longer burns and longer periods that they would be able to operate at the upper stage as well Plus with all that extra fuel again that'll give even more extra fuel to be able to attempt a landing of the first stage and some interesting Reports have been coming out one of the a NASA spokesperson has said that SpaceX might be attempting to land the Falcon 9 first stage on land that one of the complexes that they have have refurbished at Excuse me at Cape Canaveral to be able to actually land on there's one of five sites that they are currently doing work on to have Not just the the return stages for the Falcon 9 core stage But three stages for the Falcon heavy a spot for the dragon capsule to come down on propulsive landing and Hopefully in the future the upper stage as well. So there isn't necessarily We have a picture of the Falcon 9 first stage arriving to Cape Canaveral And it doesn't look like from this picture even though it's a nighttime photo that there are any landing legs attached to this that doesn't mean they might attach landing legs in in their essentially their vehicle assembly building and There is a chance that they could do a landing But probably not with this mission if if I was in control I probably wouldn't want to do a landing and tap on this mission to add even more complexity to this return to flight since it is so vital that they get things going again. So Very interesting there the upper stage will be arriving to up Cape Canaveral within the week and Once the payloads have all the payloads have have been arriving and I think that all 11 of the org calm og2 or second-generation or calm satellites have arrived at Cape Canaveral and they'll be Doing all the work or putting all the pieces together and hopefully launching that off before this year ends. So very cool All right, Jared. Yeah, we're moving on we're gonna talk about Rosetta the extremely successful ESA or European Space Agency mission which went to comet 67p or as you would pronounce it It's actually oh my god. You're gonna actually pronounce this to Rudium of get a cement. Go nice. Boom. Bam That's how it works. All right So it's already spent over a year studying that and it dropped filet back in November of 2014 which successfully bounced and Across the surface as planned which as plan by the way, even though it did that We got all the data back that we wanted from it and extra so it did its job even though it sort of whoopsie Funding has been approved and there's enough But they got a great cartoon out of that. Yeah, they did Yeah, and actually I was just watching a video today of seeing filet the actual data of it tumbling across the surface And I'm trying not to laugh because I know someone out there spent their whole life working on it only to see it Across So it's got enough field to continue studying the comet for the next 10 months and actually it's going to do some very interesting things Because the comet is now moving away from the Sun so it's starting to become less active So it approached the comet when it was still on approach to the Sun And then it reached perihelion the closest point to the Sun on August 13th of this year And it's now going to watch it for a year coming back So a year in and a year out basically is how it's working So we're going to see a comet at two points during its orbit around the Sun and that will tell us different things about it So one interesting thing it'll do it'll fly out 2,000 kilometers and then slowly go through the tail of the comet to see what that environment is like and take some good Science from there, but the thing we're all really looking forward to is that in September 2016 They have been approved to attempt to land Rosetta on the surface of the comet Let's take a look at Rosetta here as we were It's a live shot as we got a live shot of Rosetta Space is very gray. Yeah. Well, it's around the comet Now it's going to try to land on the surface But it's high gain antennae has to be oriented at the earth to communicate and those solar panels are extremely fragile And they are big it's about 32 meters from tip to tip on those solar panels They are very very big so very very tough to try to land this on a comet They have some confidence that they can actually get it to touch down gently and maybe take data from the surface But this is a plus. This isn't part of the original mission, right? This is this is like all right now what? This is the extended mission. We've already they've already done the science They've gotten all of the data that they went there to get for their primary science mission and now everything from here on out is bonus So more bang for your buck than you were expecting The best Kickstarter project ever yeah These are stretch goals stretch goals. Yeah, these are stretch goals. All right, cool. Yeah anything else I was gonna say this is really interesting to me because this spacecraft deployed the first vehicle to land on a comet And it will now attempt to become the second vehicle to land on a comet. Yeah, it is interesting very cool stuff. All right carry in Yeah, take us into break. Yay. Okay, so I just got so excited about this one This is what we like to call a different kind of space race So European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake is going to actually run the London Marathon aboard the International Space Station awesome, right? Which means he wins because he pretty much will do it in like six seconds No, I don't think it's even a second Yeah, it's gonna be the fastest About five seconds. Yeah. All right, give or take five in a five in the fifth. Well, he's gotta breathe. Yeah, about five Seven to eight kilometers per second. I'm guessing he's gonna pace himself though. Yeah He's been prepping for years Back in 1999 in about three hours 18 minutes and 50 seconds and But he doesn't think that this one is gonna be a personal record He's aiming to do it in three hours and 30 minutes or to somewhere between that in four hours So aboard the International Space Station, of course, harness down to the treadmill But you'll get the views of what he would normally have seen on the Marathon route via a digital video So he'll be able to kind of know exactly what he's going past. Yes According to Twicked, Tim will be the first man to run a marathon in space But the second person to do so. Yes, I believe Sunita Williams was the first to run a marathon on the International Space Station And it was the Boston Marathon if I remember correctly, so which is really difficult to qualify into so that was super amazing Yes, I feel like if you go high I'm gonna be in space and I would like to and then enter blank line here anything the answer is almost always Yes, you qualify We'll have to look into that Slash I'm gonna have to start writing a lot of letters Tim Beek is going to sing the London Marathon is a worldwide event. So why don't we just take it out of this world? He's scheduled to launch on the Soyuz TMA-19M, which is scheduled for December 15th He will be the first Brit aboard the space station spending six months in orbit He's actually doing this to help out the what's called the Prince's Trust It's a charity that works with youth education and training The actual marathon itself will be April 24th 2016 Like I said, you'll get a digital video of the course. So that's kind of cool And he thinks that the worst part is not going to be running the marathon itself per se even on a treadmill But it's being harnessed in he said it gets kind of uncomfortable after about 40 minutes to an hour So considering he's trying to do this in like three and a half hours to four hours That could be really talk about chafing like anyone who runs. Yeah That's gonna be really really difficult They gave him like VR goggles and Simulated yes, you can look around like as if you were there Like this is amazing. And how cool would it be if there was a robot actually running like the course for him? We have an extra RoboKnot, don't we? So people can look and see him. Can we just keep RoboKnot with the wheels? And we haven't run the course at about the same pace that he's doing and then he can get live VRs That would be epic To Kickstarter Obviously because we can stretch cool anything now I'm sure that Tim Peek will be down. This is this sounds like a great idea Program of tomorrow is really Will is regretting being here. Oh, he's already left. You didn't know is speaking We quietly heard the door behind Speaking of well, we have got will Pomerance a virgin galactic will be joining us next and Jared you will be doing an interview with He didn't know that until just right now With mr. Pomerance, so we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back. Let's get our launcher one on And welcome back to tomorrow. Let's go ahead and take a look at our patrons that we have here Thank you guys These are the patrons who have donated five dollars or more to our show of course You can find us at patreon.com slash Tmro if you would like to end up joining these people and joining me here today We have the vice president of special projects at virgin galactic William Pomerance. Hello. Thanks for coming on the show Absolutely my pleasure always happy to be on you. I think you hold the record for the most times a guest has been on our show I really did at one point. I thought that Dave Mastin or others may have surpassed me But I'd like to think I'm still in the top five at least excellent Well, I'm just gonna go ahead and introduce you with our laundry list of things that we have here You are obviously the vice president of special projects at virgin galactic the author and manager of the Google lunar XPRIZE from 2005 to 2011 a Harvard and International Space University graduate on the board of advisors for students for the exploration and development of space You've done a TED talk. I guess my first question for you today is what haven't you done? Well the thing you missed that I would love to talk most is that I've got a baby Congratulations on the other side of this wall. So if you hear some whaling, yeah, you'll know, it's not necessarily the crew in the back It could be a baby or it could be the crew. I don't know Congratulations to you and your wife on that. Thank you very much. I hope you enjoy being a parent It's been wonderful You know my reaction in the delivery room was actually very similar to the blue origin staff reaction in the video He showed at the top of the shot. It's just beautiful pretty good. That is wonderful. Were you reacting in this? Yes, everything So obviously we want to talk about the big news that happened this week Yeah, which is launcher one and some changes that are happening. Yeah, so First and foremost launcher one is now going to be deployed by a 747 400. That is exactly right. Yeah We we had this wonderful problem We were discovering early in the year where actually the business that we were doing on both sides of our program was high enough That we were running into sort of a competition between spaceship to and launcher one for the same carrier aircraft It used to be when we first started they both plan on using the white knight to and and they were just sort of bumping End to each other in the lobby as it were and say no the aircrafts mine today. No the aircrafts mine today So once we realized that the best way to solve that was by getting a dedicated carrier aircraft We said hey look, this is a good opportunity to figure out should we just accelerate the build of the next white knight To or should we go out and find something else? Let's take a look again at our customers Let's look at the market and discover that the market had had gotten the satellites had gotten a little bigger a lot of the companies who started with very small sats had decided they wanted to add some capability because they were Making the revenue to justify doing so to making a little bit more investment into their satellites So they were all saying I want to go a little higher I want to carry a little bit bigger satellite and to do that we realized we needed a bigger carrier aircraft So went and did a big global search for every type of plane out there You can imagine and yeah at the end of the day the one the one that won that sort of internal competition was Was a 747 yeah, and it just happens that 747 is also a virgin Atlantic Aircraft and not only that it came to us with the name cosmic girl perfect, which kind of makes it seem like destiny I can promise you that wasn't the deciding factor But it certainly was a nice bonus once we had that once we sort of worked out all the math and the spreadsheets and decided That was the way for us to go. That's awesome Now launch your one was originally supposed to be 100 to 300 kilograms to orbit and you're now looking at what I believe It's somewhere 300 to 450 Exactly, and and I find it's always difficult when you're comparing launch vehicles because everyone listed in a different orbit Just to be as inconvenient as possible absolutely so for us when we're talking about that sort of 300 kilogram range We are talking about that too not to some like marketing orbit That's just a we'll give you the highest number possible although I could give you that number But but it's really 300 kilometers to the orbit that's of interest to the largest group of our customers So that's like a high inclination a polar or even a sun synchronous orbit and going up to an altitude of you know 500 kilometers or more we can get I think a pretty good amount of mass up to there And again We're sort of chasing both where the market is today and where we think it might be going over the next couple of years as we Finalize development of the program and get it into service Yeah, and one of the things I really like about the news about that from this week Is that you were able to do that and still keep the price the same as well for your customers? Yeah, exactly that was that's a nice benefit both of the carrier aircraft which you know 747 an awesome airplane I will admit I'm not a big plane guy haven't grown up as an aviation geek nearly as much as a space geek But I've been getting an education very quickly from from my colleagues who are plane guys and plane gals 747 is a great, you know great great piece of equipment. They've been flying all over the world for a long time. There's a great Worldwide base of parts and maintenance crews and hangers and runways that can handle the aircraft But also just really overpowered for what we need We could carry out an even heavier rocket than we plan to carry and because we had invested from the start in sort Of modular rocket technologies because we knew we were on a growth path You know, this is a launcher one, but someday there'll be a launcher two and a launcher three So we didn't have to make very many changes to the rocket system in order to accommodate a larger payload Effectively what we did was just stretch the tanks using the same tank technology that we were planning on developing or that we had already been developing Anyway, so that allowed us to yeah to basically double our payload to the same orbit a little bit more than double our payload Without having to increase our own costs that much which meant we didn't really have to increase the price that much Awesome now where where exactly is launcher one going to be based out of now with the 747 so the 747 itself is in Texas And it'll probably stay in Texas for about a year or so right now She's undergoing one of the routine, you know scheduled heavy maintenance checks that any airliner goes through so it's a it's called the d-check It's it's something that will happen, you know something on the order about once a decade It's a little more frequently than that if it's in routine passenger surface It'll probably be a little less frequently than that for us because although we hope to fly very often We probably won't be flying quite as often as say Virgin Atlantic was flying the aircraft before we got her So the airplane will stay stay there to do that heavy maintenance check And then to do the modifications that we have to do to make it so that we can mount launcher one under the wing We're launching under the left wing actually It's essentially in the identical position that's been used by 747s a lot over the years to carry a spare engine You know whenever an airline buys an extra engine and they just need to ferry it from wherever they bought it to wherever they store it There's already a mount if you want ever get a chance to walk under the wing of a 747 will be written right there It's a spare engine mount So we don't have to do that much work But we do have to do a little work to make sure we don't have you know the flaps and pinging on the rocket or anything else like that so those modifications will happen in Texas meanwhile all the rocket part of launcher one all that effort happens at This relatively new facility. We opened up in March of this year in Long Beach, California We've got a hundred and fifty thousand square foot manufacturing for there And that is home to somewhere on the order of a hundred and fifty of our employees We're really focused on getting that program technically ready and operationally ready So whether that is designing and building the Newton rocket engines that we've been firing for a while now or or our composite Tanks or some of the advanced manufacturing techniques that we have it that all that all lives in Long Beach Operationally the flights our initial flights will happen based out of Mojave We'll sort of take out from hobby and fly west and go out over the water a safe distance and launch from there And that's a great place from which to access polar orbits or other high inclination orbits But the nice part about being an air launch system is we can fly from an awful lot of places It's not just everywhere and obviously you have to do a little bit of coordination in advance with the FAA But there are a lot of places we can fly from so so as you can imagine we've been looking at a lot of the likely Suspects on the east coast for places where you might fly from to reach lower inclinations But have our sites on some other other sites around the world as regulatory or appropriate at least For us to be able to access anywhere our customers could ever want to go now What's the market for launcher one look like like what are you what are you guys seeing as the primary users of launcher one? It's a good market and what I really like about it the most is that it's a diverse market, you know a lot of people ask this very good question of We saw a satellite boom, you know 20 years ago in the era of iridium and teledysik And and that obviously didn't pan out very well For anybody whether on the launch side or or on the on the satellite side and so people ask and I asked and you know Our investors asked from day one. Is this going to be any different and obviously nobody knows the future I think there's a lot of reasons to be optimistic about it being different Some is just that take pace of technology has changed both terrestrially and in the skies in space But also, you know, if you look at that first boom Those constellations were all tackling, you know versions of the same market It wasn't exactly the same market but versions of the same market, which meant they were all sort of susceptible to the same problems You could have one terrestrial competitor come in or one or two So kind of headers going in and just totally acts that market and everything was depending on those one of those two companies succeeding Now I see some similar markets, you know one of our anchor customers Obviously this company called one web who's already purchased the launch for 39 satellites from us with options for a hundred more There are others kind of in that telecommunications space But we also see earth observation and remote sensing we see ship and other asset tracking we see asteroid mining we see You know all kinds of different models who's to say if any one of them individually will succeed But we sort of have spread that risk across a pretty broad portfolio And I think there's reason to believe that many of them if not all of them certainly will be successful Yeah, now we have a question from our chat room from to wicked Which is is it possible to have one rocket on each wing of that 747? Can you can you have two rockets and maybe launch one in one direction and launch the other it sure would look cool wouldn't it would? Certainly sir Richard would love it if we did and I think he I think someone sketched it out once So we got a cool drawing in our office of what that would look like we're not going to be doing that anytime soon But who knows what the future holds, you know, I could see maybe for some of that Not necessarily for the civil or commercial applications, but there may be other parts of the space sector that might be interested in things like that That's not what we're doing now I don't want to imply that we're secretly doing that in a hangar somewhere, but dang it if it wouldn't look cool Yeah, so maybe someday yeah like some action movie And you talked about the the modular ability of your rocket Especially when you're talking about the idea of going on to like a launcher two and a launcher three Yeah, what would those look like are we talking like a bigger rocket? Yeah, I'll be honest We don't know exactly. Okay, we have some ideas And certainly, you know, we've got a long-term vision that comes from our founder from from Richard Branson You know, I think it's awesome We live in a time where we've got multiple space billionaires that all have their own vision for what to do with space And I think all those visions are great You know if you've got you've got one company that's talking about putting humans on Mars and that's fantastic and others That seem to have their sights set on the moon and that's fantastic Richard is really more earth-focused So a lot of the future applications not to say he's not interested in the moon or Mars because who wouldn't be Obviously he is but but really the things he cares about most are how do we use space to best improve the lives of people here? On earth whether that's getting more data from these satellites that we can use or providing internet connectivity from these satellites Or it's things like allowing people to trend to transfer themselves around around the globe more quickly and things like point-to-point Now point-to-point is super hard doing point-to-point at least in any sort of economically viable way is incredibly difficult You know, I would say it's probably harder Even then going orbital in many ways in terms of its concept of operations and its economics So that's not spaceship 2 but it is something we would like to or not spaceship 3 even it's something We would like to get to someday and you can sort of even though we don't have the blueprints for that vehicle You can start to chart out. Okay. Here are the technology areas in which we need to improve, you know, we're not smart enough today to do that I don't think anyone's smart enough today to do that. What are the what are the books we need to study? What are the subjects we really need to brush up on in order to get there and What I get really excited about is I think if you if you just write that list of fields In which one needs to get smart to do that With spaceship 2 we were already studying a lot of those subjects, but not all of them Yes, and I think now with launcher 1 we're filling in those blanks not enough to jump straight to point-to-point But yeah, but we're getting smarter. We are crawling before we walk before we before we run So what I think you will see at some point in the future whether it's at the spaceship 3 level or spaceship 4 or Spaceship 10 is sort of a marrying of these two different technology lines for us where we take the the fully reusable the human rated the quick turnaround times that you see on spaceship 2 and you combine that with the advanced manufacturing and the low-cost and that then the sort of The more scalable propulsion technologies and even the regulatory Regimes that you've seen from launcher 1 you put the two of those together and and hopefully that allows us to accomplish even cooler things Than we're already working on now another question from our chat room from mark is that could you make a reusable single stage? To launch on a rocket like from your airplane is that is that like something that may be on the far horizon or So we certainly have given some thought to at some point in the future making the first rocket stage of the launcher 1 system Fully reusable against not what something we're working on right now We think we've already got a compelling price point for our customers with an expendable system And we also know they're in a hurry they want to launch now You know some of them have satellites already sitting on the shelf The rest of them have plans to develop a lot over the next year or 18 months And they want to be in orbit as quickly as possible And if we jump straight to full reusability on that first rocket stage that would take us a little while longer So we've thought about it I think actually air launch maybe offer some unique advantages in terms of how you might recover that stage So we're not doing it right now Because because like I said, we want to we want to walk before we crawl before we run But it's something we're thinking about already definitely And what's the response from the scientific community been with launcher one because we talk about commercial applications But also scientific applications to our very yeah, there certainly has been one We were very proud that a month or so ago We a NASA announced that they had purchased a launch from us. They're actually flying on one of our test flights So one of the earliest flights not the first but one of the earlier flights to go to orbit a launcher one And they are filling up that that ride with More than a dozen. They actually haven't told us exactly how many yet, but they said it's more than a dozen Experimental satellites some of which are engineering focused but actually most of which it looks like will probably be science focused And a lot of those are cubes or other smaller satellites that have literally been collecting dust on shelves For a long time just waiting for a ride You know, they've been at the side of the road with their thumb out trying to hitchhike a ride to orbit for a long time And those that wasn't coming and that's why NASA was was interested in both sort of fostering the capacity that we and other companies are Developing and and getting a ride those people so obviously there's a huge amount of excitement among those principal investigators and those researchers Those students who are flying those things and I think that's also been a nice sign to the rest of the science community I think people also are also pretty excited that that the price point is so much lower Than a lot of the other rockets that are available on the market right now Even though it's equal or higher even in terms of a dollars per kilogram or dollars per pound Just the absolute price is so much lower that whenever NASA want issues one of its periodic calls for Sort of smaller satellites, whether the scout missions or you know pick your acronym or your name that's used depending on which mission directorate That maybe there's a chance to come in and say I can do I can do a whole lot more with the same amount of money Than someone who's buying a traditional rocket and spending you know If you're only going to give me a total mission cost including launch of 200 million dollars and everyone else is spending 50 or 60 million dollars on the launch maybe if I come in and I'm spending 10 or 20 million dollars on the launch I can put that much more money into my satellite or I can just make twice as many satellites And I can have twice as many launches and I both spread the risk and and maybe allow Inferometry or or other kinds of cool technologies that you can't do with a single spacecraft regardless of how advanced so so it's still early days yet But I think in general you know having come from a science background myself a space science background specifically Everyone's excited about any type of new access regardless of what the logo on the side of the vehicle is or whether it's ground launch to air launch If there's something that's getting satellites up there people are excited to see it as soon as they believe that it's it's real It's not just a paper rocket, but there's actually hardware in development. Absolutely. Yeah and talking about development What's the schedule looking like for launcher one? So this past year? We've been making a huge amount of technology progress in terms of real hardware You know it's gone from from drawings on napkins to to drawings on computer screens to now real hardware that we've been taking out in the field and Bending and breaking and firing and doing whatever it is appropriate to that kind of thing So the one that that's easiest to talk about publicly both because it makes for nice photographs And because it's easy to get those photographs cleared by our expert control officers is in the propulsion stage We we made the decision on launcher one not to outsource the propulsion as we'd done originally on the spaceship two side But instead to build that in-house largely because that helps us in the future when we want to build a launcher two or a spaceship three Or you know, whatever it is experience exactly gives us that experience base So we we decided we'll start with a with a very well characterized fuel choice. We're not going straight Locks hydrogen or something that may be higher higher efficiency, but it's also less less well-known We're doing locks RP1 locks kerosene, you know, it's a kind of engine that you've seen a lot of times before Obviously, we've got our own ways to make it special But but we have now built and and fired for long durations, you know well past steady state Our larger engine, which is called the Newton three, which is about a 73,000 pound of thrust Rocket engine and we've got that up on the stand and the test data from that is actually looking really really great It's you know, it's not quite the flight version just yet It wasn't intended to be but it's it's meant to be sort of a workhorse pathfinder that we can test Frequently and and get good data from and go out to the stand and tweak it and test it and make it run a little bit better So we've seen a huge amount of results on that side already Similarly, although less sexy, but but equally important We've been doing kind of that level of testing on our our composite tanks and our other structures on our avionics All these other kind of things so really if you look at a at a blown-up diagram of the rocket and you draw arrows to every critical Subsystem, you know every single one of them. We've done a lot of testing on over the course of the past year And nicely because of this modularity we were talking about earlier We don't have to go back and start over just because we changed carrier aircrafts You know, we've known internally that change an area carrier aircraft was coming for quite some time But even before we knew that was coming all of the tests that we were doing are directly applicable because it is the same engine You know, we sort of tweaked to one level of its of its throttle range that we were already planning But it was the range we were already planning it didn't didn't really require any any massive changes in the system So I think the next year will be another year of a lot of testing in terms of timelines for first flight You know having having learned our lesson. We're trying to not to get too specific about those It will as with spaceship 2 it'll fly when when it's ready to fly when our customers think it's ready to fly when our regulators Think it's ready to fly. We're sort of forecasting that that will happen sometime in 2017 And we'll get more specific on that date as we get a little closer to to the launch date itself But it's it's not that far away. There's a like I said There's a big building and a lot of hardware already already in existence giving us faith that we're getting close Excellent. All right. Well, will thank you so much for coming on the show. Absolutely my pleasure I think we're gonna have you stick around for after dark as well so we can get more questions from our chat I look forward to it But thank you Hopefully you guys have continued success with your systems and keep that development going so it's always awesome to have access I appreciate it. Yeah, and we're gonna we're gonna head into the break now And we'll see you guys with comments after this break and welcome back to tomorrow Now before we get started with some viewer comments from our last show I didn't want to give a huge shout out to all of the patrons of tomorrow Who have helped to make this specific segment of this episode happen These are the people who've contributed at least two dollars and fifty cents to this episode Not only do they get their name in the show But they also are going to get access to after dark as soon as it's posted Which will have a will and it'll be it'll be awesome. It's gonna be an epic epic after dark I'm sure but wait, there's more we also have our patreon subscribers That's right as little as one penny one penny per episode gets your name in the show We are crowdfunded show and every single petty helps so you can head on over to patreon.com Slashtmro for more information on how you can help support us. All right Let's go ahead and get started with some viewer comments as you may remember the last show We did was why Atlantis is your favorite orbiter That's a topic that we kind of shelved for several years then kind of brought back dusted that one off and Atlantis is your favorite So let's go ahead and get started with the the first commenter Comes from Miguel Chiffon Chiffon Chiffon off of YouTube. We should ask Jared to pronounce all of these. Yeah Ready go another push for Atlantis It was actually supposed to be the first orbiter be decommissioned in 2008 to be used for spare parts for the other two But it even ended up flying sts 135 decommission the best orbiter of all time I'm just saying it needs to be it's the it's the it caps off the whole program Caps off the whole program Can't hold a good person good shuttle down also It's in a really cool configuration of the Kennedy Space Center visitor set complex So if you ever have an opportunity to go down there, it is it's it's kind of like this It's a Can you demonstrate for us? I'm demonstrating Atlantis. It's like this It is right. It's just kind of it's just hanging kind of sideways like as if it were in a space as if it were in space It's a really cool orientation really cool layout. So all right next up This one comes from Peter Lund that one I can pronounce all by myself Alpha of YouTube as well. My favorite is Baran So that is the I think she's trying to hint that your mic might be all okay all those things Sorry, he was not getting the subtle hints. No the Unfortunately, there you go That was the Russian answer to the space shuttle looked a lot like the space show didn't have the solid motors on the side It actually used liquid But it was it was in many respects way more awesome than US space shuttle It only flew once but that one flight was autonomous Yes, it went to space and came back and landed completely by computer. No humans required Unfortunately, that also means no human has ever flown on the Buran Buran. That's true Yeah, you're on your honor Buran. How did you say it just now carry in your it's Buran I thought you're on the time always started to pronounce me then I just decided to do whatever I wanted galley behind You're on All right, you're on. All right, we're on three. Hey, so are you moving on This one. Oh man, really archetype archetype Tub off of YouTube says who would bet on reaction engines or escape dynamics both I would agree. No, I so Bet on and what like it what only one can be successful Because I don't know. I don't think so. I think they will both be successful I think it's a matter of time for both of them. Now, which one will happen first. I don't know right reaction engines Which does the Skyline I'm like single-stage to orbit big huge plane looks awesome skyline plane They've been working on that for a long time and it doesn't really look like they're closer at this point But no and then escaped and I dynamics has been working on it as long but they're kind of they're they're the microwave like using microwaves to Basically fly a rocket propeller rocket and I got would you still call it a rocket a spacecraft a craft microwaves are propelled That's propulsive and I think they have different Challenges and so I can't I have no idea which one will be first But I have little doubt that both of them will at least make things. So there you go. All right next up This one comes from Nathaniel Decker. Haha. No, but Deco. No, but that go no, but that go no Tomorrow eight point three four. I can't manage to get excited about reaction engines So they've been in development hell for so long. Is that changing? Well, they have been Actually, it goes to my last point which is they've been working on this engine for a long time a it is an air-breathing engine that switches to a rocket That's kind of awesome. Yeah, right. So, um, I As far as I know, no, that's not changing. They're still in kind of the development cycle I mean also you have to think skyline's a big thing too. It's not an itty bitty little thing I mean, no, but you know if they open I don't so I don't understand exactly how all of this works together politically But if they could open not open source But if they could sell the engine to other companies, for example, I'll just throw out virgin galactic They might be able to use it on some sort of different craft Yeah, maybe takes a slightly different approach to what they're doing skyline in and of itself a single stage to orbit is neat But maybe that's overly ambitious for the beginning So if we can take that engine and draw it's the saber engine, right? So take the saber engine and drop it in a less demanding vehicle. Maybe we could see something quicker Yeah, that would be great. Also that saber engine, too I don't know if they've ran it for a long period of time. They have run it though They've run it and they've made it they've bent metal and made it work made fire Yeah, but I don't know if they've ran it for as long as it has to run for that's kind of a big deal. Yeah All right, and finally from Brandon mark off of reddit next time space mics feed disappears You could totally use something like this in his place next up South Park, huh? It's fairly accurate. It might seems to like it I'm gonna report it on some space stuff. You ready? Let's get into it So today there was a rocket that launched from China, and we're gonna go have a really great view from that ready Okay Thank you everyone so much for watching Stay tuned after dark is up next if you're a patreon plus or above subscriber That will be available to you immediately upon posting for everyone else will be available in about four weeks or so So, thank you so much for watching. We'll see you next week