 Hello everybody, welcome to tomorrow. So it's time that we talked about a company that is building a suborbital space plane in Europe. They haven't been getting a whole lot of attention here in the West, but they are quickly becoming the jewel of their country. So this week we're going to be talking about Swiss space systems. This is your space pod for May 5th, 2016. So first to give a little back history on this company, it actually started off as a project in 2005 at EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. There a man by the name of Pascal Jossi joined their suborbital space flight team. And this team based their project on the heritage of the Hermes space plane, a European space agency project from the 1980s. And to realize the project's goals, Pascal Jossi started the company Swiss Space Systems in 2012 and is joined by former European Space Agency astronaut Claude Nicolier, who was the first Swiss astronaut and also a professor at EPFL, as well as many other experts who joined Swiss Space Systems. They also have the support and partnership of several companies, universities and organizations who want to see their dream realized. So Swiss Space Systems' plan is to have a small shuttle called SOAR right on the back of a modified Airbus A300, while the aircraft ascends to 10 kilometers. Then SOAR would be released and use rocket engines to ascend to the height of 80 kilometers. In fact, the engine that they're going to be using is the NK39 engine, a prototype of the NK33 that was built for the Russian moon rocket. And it's being supplied by the company Khrusnetsov, which is now part of the United Engine Corporation. Anyway, SOAR will use that engine to reach the suborbital height of 80 kilometers. Once there, SOAR will release an upper stage which will be co-designed with their Russian partners from its cargo bay that they want to see reach an altitude of 700 kilometers in Earth orbit. And the payloads that that upper stage could deliver would be in the 250 kilogram or rather 550 pounds range, as well as a few CubeSats as additional payloads. The company hopes to have its first space flight in 2018, although they are behind schedule on some of their stated goals. For example, they hope to have scaled mock-up test flights of their SOAR space shuttle in 2014, and as of May of 2016, those test flights have yet to begin, although their most latest announcement is that they would begin those tests this summer. And they already have done several tests of the subsystems that will fly on this small suborbital shuttle. So they could begin the scaled mock-up test flights this summer. The company also hopes to open their own spaceport in 2015, but instead have several memorandums of understanding with various spaceports around the world to conduct operations from. This year, in 2016, Swiss Space Systems acquired their first Airbus airliner that they will use for zero-G flights. And this is interesting to me because I'm not sure how long it will take to have the aircraft ready for parabolic flights, but they hoped to start flying customers this year. And I'm sure that this whole zero-G endeavor is to help fund the development and manufacturing of the first full-scale SOAR shuttle, which they hope will begin test flights in 2017. On their first space mission with an upper-stage and payload, which they hope will be in 2018, the payload will be their own, an interesting project to clean up space debris called Clean Space One, which will rendezvous with a Swiss CubeSat called Swiss CubeOne, which was launched back in 2009, and with this whole Clean Space One they would rendezvous with that CubeSat and deorbit it. Originally, the design included a claw for grabbing onto the satellite. However, after collaborating with students from the University of Applied Sciences in Geneva, the engineers concluded that a net that collapses onto satellites was the most agile and reliable collection system. So if the company is successful in these endeavors, their next step would be to work with Tails Linear Space to have a pressurized module that would replace the cargo bay on their SOAR shuttle. And that would be for human transportation, but not for space tourism. What they want to have is point-to-point intercontinental transport that could be having intercontinental flights in less than an hour, which would be awesome. So I think that all of these plans that Swiss Space Systems has are very exciting and I'm very hopeful that they are able to accomplish their goals. And even if things get delayed and they aren't able to launch in 2018 into space for the first time, I'm very hopeful that they will be able to launch into space eventually, even if it's not in 2018. And with all the different collaborations that they have, I think that this could seriously happen. But what do you think about this? Do you think that they'll be able to have their first test flight in 2018? Do you think that it's a good idea to have this whole space-degree cleanup spacecrafts? Let us know in the comments what you think about this whole plan and whether or not they're going to be successful. And if you haven't already, also subscribe to our YouTube channel, which helps us out and we'll be able to grow and spread the excitement for space even more. We're also all over the internet and we would invite you to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and of course our website, Tomorrow.tv, where you can connect with us and fellow space enthusiasts. This is of course a crowdfunding show and I would like to give a huge shout out to all of our founders of Tomorrow, who are donating $50 or more every month so that we can create this show, but I also want to thank our architects, engineers, ambassadors, and dreamers of Tomorrow, whose continued support allows us to continue making these space pods. Thank you so much to all of you and if you would like to learn more about supporting this show, visit patreon.com. Thank you very much for watching this video. My name is Michael Clark and hopefully you know just a little bit more today than you did yesterday, thanks to Tomorrow. Keep moving onwards and upwards everybody and I will see you in the future.