 Hello fellow citizens of earth and welcome to my garage of tomorrow. We are back in it for this episode of tomorrow news. And during this we have got Ryan who's going to be giving you a smorgasbord of starship updates. I'm going to be talking about the election that we just had here in the United States and how that's going to affect space policy potentially in the future. We've also got some space traffic with quite a few launches in the end of a streak of scrubs and we've got our one and only son with Dr. Tamethascope. If you're wondering when we're going to talk about SpaceX's crew one launch we're going to be doing that in just a couple days. So stay tuned we're going to go deep deep deep into crew one. Now before we get started of course just want to let you know that if you like what we do here tomorrow don't forget to subscribe to us, set up notifications, like our videos, comment below and share our news and our live shows when they return everywhere that you can. So let's go ahead and get started with your tomorrow news 2020 US presidential election special. Ryan take it away. Gifting into the sky at 2324 UTC on the 5th of November GPS3 Space Vehicle 4 started its journey into Earth orbit without a hitch. An equally smoothly landing was also performed by the freshly produced B1062 booster as it now awaits the call up for the launch of Space Vehicle 5. One hour 29 minutes and 25 seconds after the launch out of Cape Canaveral the payload was deployed from the Falcon 9 second stage which shortly started its deorbitant maneuvers to not clutter up Earth's orbit. As well as that exciting news the first beta invites for styling are finally going out. SpaceX have told the people who have signed up that they estimate speeds of 50 to 150 megabits per second which as a minimum is already 20 megabits per second faster than my current connection. There is an estimated latency of 20 milliseconds to 40 milliseconds and some interruptions and connectivity should be expected and it's $499 for the phased array antenna and the router and then a $99 monthly subscription to actually be able to access the service. Thanks Ryan and we'll have more on the recent Starship developments in our crew one focused episode of tomorrow news. For those of you who somehow may have missed it we just had our 2020 presidential election here in the United States. And for most voters space policy is about one of the last things on their mind. But President-elect Joe Biden will be moving into the White House in January. So what does this space policy look like? And is it going to take President Trump's directives and toss them? First of all we need to take a look at what President Donald Trump's administration did with space and space policy during his term and the answer to that is quite a bit. After a 24 year absence President Trump signed an executive order in June 2017 to re-establish the National Space Council. This is a group of civil, commercial, international policy and national defense experts and is chaired by the Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence. In December 2017 Trump approved space policy directive one. This was a modification to President Barack Obama's own 2010 presidential policy directive four. This is actually revitalizing a push for a mission to the moon as a part of NASA's work to their ultimate goal of humans on Mars. In May of 2018 President Trump issued space policy directive two. What that did is it required the United States Department of Transportation to strip and remove some of the hoops and red tape that commercial spaceflight companies have to go through before they can actually begin operations. Just a month later in June of 2018 space policy directive three was issued by President Trump guiding the National Space Council to start work to develop a national space traffic management policy to help keep the space environment safe from collisions and develop strategies for the growing problem with orbital debris. The last one space policy directive four was quite a doozy as it was the birth of the United States Space Force, a new and the sixth branch of the United States military which occurred a year and a half later in December of 2019. Of course you can't do any of this without the proper funding. No Bucks, no Buck Rogers, right? So what did funding for NASA look like under the Trump administration? Well there was an increase on paper. If you look at fiscal year 2016 and compare the budget to fiscal year 2020 the latter one has three million dollars more. But if you look at something called constant dollars which is the buying power of that money, NASA stayed relatively flat. This total percentage of the United States budget remained at that half a percent that it's been for about the past decade and a half. Divisions in NASA such as earth sciences and education were constantly zeroed in the Trump administration's proposed budgets but Congress reinstated those back to full funding every fiscal year. Of course we can't talk about the Trump administration's space policy without mentioning the Artemis program. It technically started with space policy directive one in December of 2017 with its shift of focus to the moon. It really kicked in the gear in March of 2019 with Vice President Mike Pence announcing a moving of the goalposts for the return of a crew to the surface of the moon up from 2028 to 2024. Supporting this was the development of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, the international partnerships that have been formed through the Artemis Accords, working Lunar Gateway into what it is presently. Professional vehicles like Dragon XL to resupply Lunar Gateway and the human landing system which is seeing itself woefully underfunded at the decision of Congress. Now of course like a multitude of policy decisions you can run around in circles debating as to whether something was a good or a bad idea with a NASA program but one thing that is most certainly universally agreed upon as a massive positive for NASA is the placement of Jim Bridenstine as NASA's administrator. Now if you know me you'll remember seeing me roundly disagreeing with the choice of Jim Bridenstine when his nomination for NASA administrator was made official especially with the tweets that I put out there. Very very hard stuff. His positions on climate science and being considered an outsider not a space industry professional gave pause to many folks across the political spectrum regardless of the fact that he actually did craft legislation related to space during his tenure in the House of Representatives. He was confirmed as NASA administrator by a party line vote 54 and 49 against in April of 2018. And when you look at the body of his work as NASA administrator since then I can finally say something I have been wanting to say very publicly for a very long time. I was completely and entirely wrong about Jim Bridenstine. It became apparent during his confirmation hearings that he really did hit the books and took a true passion to what he was about to preside over. He changed his opinion on anthropogenic climate change which someone in his position of power performing a paradigm shift of that level in their own stance on an issue is something rarely seen if ever. A real passion for the agency developed within him especially once Artemis came to be. He put the fear of Sio Kofsky into some folks when he floated the idea of putting Orion on a Falcon Heavy. Seriously I have never seen executives and lobbyists squirm that much in a very long time. And yes he did pop off a tweet that was a bit of a punch down at SpaceX but he worked to strengthen NASA's connections with commercial partners helping commercial crew cross the finish line this year. Fortunately though for all of the good that Jim Bridenstine has surprisingly brought to NASA that is not going to be lasting for very much longer. Jim Bridenstine publicly announced that he would not continue in his position under the administration of President-elect Joe Biden. This isn't an unprecedented loss. Dan Golden is the only NASA administrator in the history of the agency who served across multiple presidential administrations. So although I personally am bummed that Jim will leave his position in the coming months it's a completely understandable decision. And I am incredibly grateful that he proved very very wrong what my preconceived notions of his tenure as NASA administrator would end up bringing to the space flight world. So Jim here's to you for having a fantastic run as NASA administrator you will sorely be missed. So President-elect Joe Biden will have to find someone to nominate as NASA administrator a clean slate come 12 o'clock 1 p.m. January 20th 2021. At present the Biden transition team is not saying much or anything really. But there are some murmurs of a few who may be considered. Kathy leaders NASA's current associate administrator of the human exploration and operations mission director is one before her current role she was the program manager for the commercial crew program so I'd say that's a pretty darn good resume. Also included in the potential mix is another person who those of you familiar with space policy recognize very well Lori Garver a former deputy administrator of NASA with extensive experience in the commercial spaceflight field and she served as the lead space policy advisor for John Kerry's 2004 presidential run and Barack Obama's 2008 campaign. Looking an ear close to the ground for who may potentially be up for the position over the next few weeks. But what about the Biden administration's NASA plants are we going to continue to see the whiplash that every new presidential administration would throw in to NASA as an agency since the early 1990s. Currently all signs they are pointing to no there will be no destructive shift in space policy as a part of the 2020 presidential campaign the Democratic Party platform specifically noted continued support for NASA and its current programs. That means we'll likely see Artemis remain intact as it presently is which would truly be a breath of fresh air to not see a program hit with a sledgehammer by a new presidential administration with the pieces then thrown in the air and however they land is how it goes. You'll likely see an increased emphasis on missions to study the Earth's climate and the goal of Artemis to land the first woman and the next man on the moon in 2024 will likely be allowed to slip and not that many people in the spaceflight industry were confident in the mission by 2024 being safe let alone possible considering recent funding issues such as the human landing system being severely underfunded to the tune of several billion dollars lower per fiscal year than what is necessary to actually make the lander happen. So the gloom and doom that you saw people running around going oh NASA's toast it's not going to be an agency anymore it's done for it's dead no that's not going to be happening at all yes turns out some things you read on Twitter and Reddit and Facebook actually not true you see NASA is one of the few government agencies that actually has broad bipartisan support that means the two major parties here in the United States throw their weight well behind NASA and the work that it does in fact if you look at opinion polls for both parties NASA scores in the high 80s to low 90s consistently over the entirety of its existence that is absolutely amazing and that's really nice to have something that could bring us together you know it's been a little tough to do that but one thing that does bring us together that also has very strong bipartisan support rocket launches so let's go ahead and jump right into this week's space traffic this week we kick it off in China with a long March 6th departing the Tyon Space Center on November 6th at 0319 Universal Time on top was a payload of 10 small observation satellites for satellite logic a Argentine Earth imaging company and three small sats operated by the Chinese government all 13 satellites were successfully placed into a polar low Earth orbit staying in China we have got some new kids on the block with the first launch of the series one rocket from Chinese launch company Galactic Energy using the G-con launch center the 19 meter tall series one left for orbit at 0712 Universal Time on November 7th successfully delivering a single data transmission satellite payload aboard Tonki one to a polar low Earth orbit Galactic Energy is a private company and their series one rocket uses four stages the first three are solid motors and the final fourth upper stage is powered by hydrazine and it is capable of delivering 350 kilograms to low Earth orbit Galactic Energy is also working on another rocket that they're calling Palace One this will be a medium lift orbital launch vehicle with a reusable first stage so congrats to Galactic Energy on making orbit on their first try welcome to the club we now take a long walk over some very tall mountains on our way down to India where after long delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic a polar satellite launch vehicle lifted off on November 7th at 0941 Universal Time from the Satish to one Space Center carrying the EOS 01 radar imaging satellite it was successfully placed into low Earth orbit along with a Lithuanian CubeSat technology demonstrator for CubeSats for Luxembourg's Clios space to test radio transmission monitoring and for lemur two CubeSats for the United States based spire to monitor maritime traffic and weather conditions we then walk north and right over those tall mountains again to China as a Long March 3B begins on the uphill at 1559 Universal Time on November 12th from the Zhixiang Satellite Launch Center a Chinese mobile communications satellite called Tian Tong 102 was successfully placed into a geostationary transfer orbit and over the coming weeks it will use its own propulsion system to circularize itself into a proper geostationary orbit to begin providing S band mobile communication services and one final launch for your traffic report has us heading to Cape Canaveral Florida or a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5531 left Space Launch Complex 41 carrying a secret payload at 2232 Universal Time on November 13th the payload simply known as NRL-101 belongs to the United States National Reconnaissance Office and continued its ascent into an expected news blackout with confirmation of success coming a few hours later flying in the 531 configuration this particular Atlas 5 used a 5 meter payload ferry three strap-on solid rocket motors and a single engine Centaur upper stage the strap-on solid rocket motors were especially notable as this was the first flight of Northrop Grumman's new Gem 63 solids the aerojet rocket-dyne AJ 60 solid motors that they are replacing aren't quite done yet those gem 63s have not been approved by NASA for Starliner launches so those are going to hold off and those launches for Starliner are going to continue to use the AJ 60s ULA has said that the final AJ 60s will be used by the end of 2021 and then the gem 63s will be officially official and here are your upcoming launches and for this week's Space Weather here's Dr. Tana Fisco the new solar cycle continues to pick up momentum this week as we switch to our front-side Sun you can see we have two new bright regions on the earth facing disk we have region 2780 and region 2781 and it is a monster region it's the largest region we've seen thus far in this new solar cycle and the thing is is that this region is complex enough to fire off larger class flares including right now to near M class flares now this isn't a big deal for space traffic but guaranteed it's been causing signal fades and issues on the amateur radio bands on Earth's day side and we do continue to have a risk about a 15% chance for M class flares which means a radio blackout and we have even a 5% chance of an X class flare from this region it all depends upon how it continues to grow but these regions right now are still just kind of sizzling not doing all that much but we are keeping our eye on them as we switch to our far-sided Sun now this is stereo a and it's looking at the Sun pretty much from the side you can see region 2780 and region 2781 the bigger one in the south right there you can see him firing off these little mini solar storms but not all that much it's really more of a flare issue for these these regions and then we have more regions on the Sun's far side that are rotating into stereo's view we will see if these regions are also going to be numbered sunspots but easily they're going to continue to boost that solar flux for amateur radio operators and emergency responders and it just looks like solar cycle 25 continues to keep on giving for more details on this week's space weather including how these new active regions and their increased flare activity might affect you come check out my channel or see me at space weather woman dot com as we wrap up this episode of tomorrow news I want to thank all of you citizens who help make the shows of tomorrow possible here tomorrow when we say that you the citizens help make these shows possible we really do mean that you help make the shows possible we would have none of the equipment that helps us deliver the best news that we can to you we wouldn't be able to have transport to 204 when so allowed hosts such as myself Ryan and Tamatha wouldn't be able to contribute the time like we do to make these shows possible these are your shows if you currently aren't contributing and you'd like to join in with your fellow citizens head on over to youtube.com slash tmro slash join and check out the levels that you can support us at and all the epic rewards such as an exclusive discord channel with script access at the escape velocity level where you too can see our terrible dad jokes of course subscribing to tomorrow setting up notifications so that you know when news and the soon to return live shows are happening liking our videos commenting below and sharing us everywhere that you can helps us as well in our mission to get the planet excited about living among the stars and that is seco seven for this edition of tomorrow news thank you so much for watching and until the next one remember stay safe stay healthy and keep exploring we'll be keeping a ear close to the ground in order to see in order to see we're gonna listen so we can see wow it's the earth there you ready for this i'm gonna pop my neck so if you don't want to hear me pop my neck uh mute it for like the next five seconds oh that felt nice here's to you for being a fantastic nasa administrator you will be sorely missed oh that is not good just taste wrong sitting in front of a congressional panel is bad enough but drinking this on top of that