 This past week on Tomorrow Live, we talked about the upcoming budget requests for NASA for fiscal year 2019. But for this space pod, I wanted to talk about the United States Air Force budget request for 2019, which establishes a program for small satellite launchers, which would have a dedicated funding of about $192 million over a five-year period to ensure access to space for the United States Air Force. This is your space pod for Tuesday, February 20, 2018. The Air Force says that this small satellite launch program complements their Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Program, or EELV program, which supports the launch of larger satellites. And for this program, they're going to be developing it over these several years to be able to have a short access to space. And this builds on a couple of programs that the Air Force and the DOD have been working on already. Now one of the programs that happened just last year was an experiment where they're launching an experimental satellite under the space test program that the Air Force has, and signed back in November, they had a contract to fly one of the space test programs on Virgin Orbits Launcher 1 sometime in 2019. The Launcher 1 vehicle, of course, uses a modified Boeing 747 aircraft as a mobile launch plaid for Launcher 1 to lift small rockets. Virgin Orbits Launcher 1 is designed to have a 660 pound satellite lofted to low Earth orbit, but could launch from essentially anywhere in the world. And here's an updated pick of the progress that they have made on one of the first Launcher 1 rockets, which is coming along nicely, and hopefully they'll be able to do the first test flight of that later this year. Now companies like Virgin Orbits and also Straddle Launch have set up dedicated services for the national security market. Straddle Launch is developing the world's largest aircraft platform with plans to launch orbital ETK's Pegasus vehicles into space. And the important thing to understand about this program and the potential for Virgin Orbit and Straddle Launch to use it, is that the Air Force is not going to be buying rockets individually, but is going to be acquiring an entire launch service from the private sector. And the budget forecasts around $47 million the first year in 2019, $11 million in 2020, $57 million in 2021, $12 million in 2022, and $63 million in 2023. The Air Force's small launch vehicle program would cover payloads that are going to be up to 8,000 pounds. So depending on what sort of other capabilities might come forward for this program, they might be able to fulfill the requirements to have a rapidly executable mission that would be able to launch in a short terms notice and would be able to launch from multiple locations. Thus, the idea that Virgin Orbit and Straddle Launch could potentially be lined up for this program very well. But we will see how this mission or rather what other companies come forward and whether the capabilities might be able to work hand in hand with this. And I, for one, would love to see some other type of rockets, whether they be Orbital ATK or someone else's rocket, flying with the Straddle Launch system to get this type of money for this up to the 8,000 pound capacity. But in any case, that's all that I wanted to talk about for this. Be sure to check out our last live show, Orbital 11.07, where we talked about the 2019 budget requests, at least from the White House, for NASA. And be sure to check that out and all of our live shows that happen every Saturday at 1,800 coordinated universal time. Don't be sure to like, subscribe and support us if you can on patreon.com or makersupport.com. Thank you very much for watching. My name is Space Mike. And until the next time, keep moving onward and upwards. And don't forget, add Astra to the stars.