 Hey what's up everybody, welcome to tomorrow. Coming up we're going to be discussing the United States Air Force's ongoing saga to replace the Russian-made RD-180 rocket engine, and the most recent contracts to enable Air Force rocketry to be all-American. This is your space pod for March 9th, 2016. So last month in a space pod I reported that the United States Air Force has already given out two rounds of contracts to not only replace the RD-180 rocket engine, but to also enhance the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, or EELV, program in other ways as well, and to even introduce new launch vehicles. The first round of contract winners included Northup Grumman for unknown work, Orbital ATK for various rocket parts that they contribute to the EELV program, and to Aerojet Rocket Dine, and their contract was to help define the standards for 3D printed rocket engines and parts. The second round of contracts went to SpaceX for work on their methane upper stage rocket engine called Raptor, and to Orbital ATK for three different technologies that will result in an entirely new rocket that will be in the medium to heavy class for the EELV program. And if you want to get more information about those two different rounds of funding that the Air Force has put out so far, be sure to go and check the space pod that I put out last month, either to review that information or to just get a little bit more if you haven't seen that already. Now the most recent update to this is that on February 29th, the United States Air Force put out the third round of contracts, and this third round had two different contracts, one of them for Aerojet Rocket Dine and the other for United Launch Alliance. For Aerojet Rocket Dine, this is the second contract that they have received under this program, and its initial value is around $115 million, but certain options could raise potential government investment into this to around $536 million, and of course Aerojet Rocket Dine's expected share in the developmental costs would be up to $268 million, and this whole contract is for the development of their AR-1 rocket engine. They hope to use the AR-1 engine on the first stage of the Atlas V in a twin nozzle configuration, but the company is making a single nozzle variant as well. This is important because United Launch Alliance, who produces and launches the Atlas V, has previously said that their first choice to replace the Russian-made RD-180 engine would be Blue Origin's BE-4 engine, and they're only looking at the AR-1 engine as a backup only. Undeterred though by United Launch Alliance's preference, Aerojet Rocket Dine has been in discussions with two interested parties who are launch providers to possibly use the AR-1 engine, and since they're producing the AR-1 engine in a single and twin nozzle variant, it could be used on several other rockets. Just to speculate a bit, how cool would it be if Orbital ATK were to use the AR-1 engines as a replacement to the Russian engines that they use on their Antares rockets? And also, since we don't know what Northrop Grumman is working on, how cool would it be if Aerojet Rocket Dine and Northrop Grumman are in cahoots to make an entirely new rocket as well? Anyway, that's just me speculating, but who do you think the two unnamed launch providers that they're talking to are? Or do you think the Aerojet Rocket Dine is just bluffing? In any case, company executives are saying that they're going to be testing the first developmental AR-1 engine in 2017, going to do a lot more testing in 2018, and hopefully have the first certified engines in 2019. So with all this money being spent on these engines, I do hope that they get used, either on the Atlas V or other rockets. That would be cool. Now, for United Launch Alliance's contract, they are not going to be working on the Atlas V. This contract is actually to build a prototype of their future Vulcan rocket, and this particular prototype would be using the BE-4 engine from Blue Origin, which is also a methane rocket engine. And this whole contract is worth about $46 million initially, but with additional options, the government investment could grow to $202 million, and United Launch Alliance's expected share in those costs would be as high as $134 million. This contract also calls for work to be done on their ACES upper-stage engine, or Advanced Cryogenic Evolve stage, which would eventually replace the Centaur upper stage. United Launch Alliance has said that the first flight of Vulcan could be as early as 2019, and they're hoping to fly the ACES upper-stage engine as early as 2023. But whatever version that the Vulcan will eventually fly in, whether or not it's using the Aerojet Rocketdyne's AR1 engine or Blue Origin's BE-4 engine, United Launch Alliance is expected to choose between those two engines by the end of this year so that they can move forward with it. But in any case, with this contract, the Air Force is enabling them to try out the whole BE-4 methane rocket engine, so that's probably what it's going to be. But we'll see. I'm not ruling out the Aerojet Rocketdyne yet. So in conclusion, all of this work will definitely lead to some progress. But meanwhile, in the American Congress, certain lawmakers want the United States Air Force to slow down this whole RD-180 replacement efforts, while other lawmakers want the program to accelerate even faster and want it to be finished yesterday. But despite the pace of how things move forward, we will report on this ongoing story as it unfolds. Thank you for watching this video. My name is Michael Clark and please leave us a comment and let us know what you think about these most recent contracts. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you can be notified whenever we put out new videos and so that you can help us grow. But we are also all over the internet and I would invite you to join us on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and of course our website tomorrow.tv where you can join in the conversation and connect with us and other space enthusiasts. 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