 Coming up, China launches a new rocket. China debuts a new rocket. And SpaceX is testing a new rocket. Plus, we're going to be talking about commercial spaceflight updates. Stay tuned, tomorrow begins right now! Welcome to Tomorrow Ups at 8.28 for Saturday, September 26, 2015. My name is Benjamin Higginbotham with me as always. The beautiful, lovely, wonderful and talented. Carry on, Higginbotham. She missed me. I was gone last week. We'll be your hosts for this episode. Now, before we get started, a huge shout out to all of the patrons of Tomorrow. We hope to make this specific episode of this episode happen. I did it again! I did it again! This specific segment of this episode happened. These people have contributed $10 or more to this episode. If you'd like to find out more on how you can help crowdfund the shows of tomorrow, head on over to patreon.com. T-M-R-O. That list keeps getting longer and longer. Thank you to everyone for help crowdfunding this show so we can bring this to you week after week. Alright, let's go ahead and get started with some space news right after that. First off, the debut launch of a Long March 6th from China. Check it out. We're not going to get too much more footage, so I'll just let you know that happened on Saturday, September 19th at 2301 Coordinated Universal Time. That happened on the new launch pad 16 at the Taiwan. I hope I said that correctly. Space Center in Northeastern China. This is a new generation rocket. It's using a new type of engine. It is not hypergolic, meaning they are using a more environmentally friendly system of rocket propellant, I'm sorry, of kerosene, a highly refined kerosene, and liquid oxygen as their oxidizer. The first stage is powered by what they're calling the YF-100 main engine. They've been working on that engine since about 2000 or so. The whole vehicle sits 95 feet tall. It can haul 1500 kilograms or so. It's about 3,300 pounds for those of you in the U.S. And it's hopefully possibly going to be the same engine that they use on the Long March 5 and other future rockets that they're working on as well. So this particular flight sent 20 satellites up. These were satellites that were built by Chinese college students, so that's really cool. And this is the most number of satellites that China has ever sent up on a single launch. So there you go. Did I stall enough for you? Yeah, sorry. Cool. I managed to have the complete wrong rundown up, so I looked over and I was like, that information doesn't look right at all. That's not the news for this week. Sorry. You could do last week's news. I could, as those were the notes that I had. You could just last week. So neat. Sorry about that guy. The strain of debuting rockets. Another debut of the Long March 11 actually also from China. Oh my goodness. So wait, they debuted two rockets. Yeah, within like a week or two time span. Within a week of each other. Yeah. China is just ticking, butting, taking names. They are. They are, which is really impressive. We don't really have footage, but we have this really lovely picture. Picture. Look how cool that is. The Long March 11 is a solid-fueled launch vehicle with a liquid-fueled trim stage. It's developed by China's Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology. I'd like to thank the academy for this rocket. The idea is that it can remain in storage for a long period of time and provide reliable launch on a short notice. That's why this vehicle was developed in that way. The particular mission was the Tiang Wang mission. One. It had three small satellites that can demonstrate flying formation and inner satellite communication between the three in orbit. More like a satellite constellation as opposed to three separate satellites, which I thought was really cool. The Tiang Wang 1A. Yeah. 1A, Tiang 1B, Tiang Wang. This is really difficult to say. I'm so sorry I didn't say it out loud at first. 1C. We're developed by the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The satellites are based actually on CubeSat architecture, with A and B being a CubeSat two-unit, and the 1C is being a CubeSat three-unit. So I think the big takeaway there is that it's a solid fuel vehicle. It's mostly a solid fuel vehicle. Yes. Solid with liquid fuel just to sort of help out a little bit on the sides. Oh, so the roll control and whatnot? Okay, cool. Yeah, that's really cool. I thought that was really neat. All right. Let's hand it over to Space Mike. Welcome back yet again, Space Mike. You've got some more rocket launchy-launchy news. I don't know what it is about the rocket launches this week, but none of it has more than 10, 15 seconds of footage. So you've got the same problem with yours. Yes. Thank you. Unfortunately, this is not a debut launch. This is a very old rocket. In fact, it's called Rock Hot. And with this, this was launched in northeastern Russia. And here's the quick footage of that launch. You're welcome. This launch took place from the... Yeah, short footage. Sometimes with a lot of these, that's all you get. Sometimes the sources are hard for this. But that particular launch from the police dissect Cosmodrome in northeastern Russia on September 23rd at 2200 coordinated time. You know, the universal time coordination. Excuse me. And with this launch, it was really interesting because it launched three particular satellites that are part of Russia's defense communication system. These are called the Rodnik communication system. And they had just the Cosmos designation for unclassified satellites that don't necessarily have a name like our GPS system. And so with these, it's adding to their system and possibly might have dual use in the future for commercial and public use. So that's very cool that they were able to do this. This was only the second launch of Rock Hot this year, which actually is pretty good considering the rocket's record over the past several years as far as launches goes. And everything seemed to go successfully. And something that I want to just mention real quickly about this rocket is the upper stage of this rocket, the Breeze M upper stage. Actually, excuse me, this was a KM upper stage on this one. It's a really fun rocket or at least upper stage to use in Kerbal Space Program if you can try to use the stock parts to make it. And you can send lots of different satellites to lots of different orbits with that because it's restartable and the propellant is really compact and there's just lots of really benefits with it. So excuse me for nerding now on that, but it's a very, very good system with the space applications using an old ICBM to convert it for a space launcher. So very cool for that. But as for some new rockets that are going to be going back, I'm going to pass it back to Ben, who's going to be talking about some more solid rockets. Yeah, absolutely. And actually, speaking of new rockets, I forgot to make a point of the new Chinese rocket, the Long March 6. Excuse me. I mentioned that it was using liquid kerosene and liquid oxygen. Most of the Chinese vehicles up to this point have used a hypergolic fuel and then they don't launch, unlike most of the other launch providers, they don't launch from like a coast and so pieces of these rockets fall in Chinese villages and these Chinese citizens have no idea, you know, this big rocket engine falls down. They have no idea. It has super toxic, really nasty fuel on board. Yeah, you can actually Google images of pieces of rocket parts and they're still sort of have weird colored sort of smoke. You have like a hydrazine cloud that they're walking into and you're like, don't do that. But people are right there. It's a very odd, odd scene. So this is good because this will eliminate that. It is a little hilarious because they're like, oh, this is, you know, environmentally friendly. It just gives off CO2 and you're like, well, it's more friendly. It's friendlier. Friendlier, certainly, certainly friendlier. All right, so speaking of, Mike gave me a great segue that I then opted to destroy as I do. That's my superpower is the ability to destroy my segues. United Launch Alliance has selected Alliant Texas Orbital ATK, Orbital Alliant Tech Systems, for the solid rocket boosters on the Vulcan launch vehicle. They're also going to be moving to Orbital ATK for the solid motors on the Atlas V launch vehicle, starting around 2019. So here you can see an Atlas V launch vehicle. Now, the solid motors you see on the bottom of that vehicle, so actually, if you move forward one picture, nope, there should have been one. That's an awesome picture there. There you go. So the kind of highlight at the bottom, that's the specific part of the rocket that we're talking about, the solid motors. Those are actually designed by Aerojet Rocketdyme, and they're the ones that are going to be losing this contract. They're also losing the contract for the engine, well, not necessarily losing a contract, but they will not be getting the contract for the engine for United Launch Alliance's Vulcan vehicle. So that's a little bit interesting that there was this pretty good relationship between United Launch Alliance and Aerojet Rocketdyme for so long, and now suddenly, United Launch Alliance is like, you know, we're not going to use your engine also, we're not going to use your solids on this new vehicle. Also, we're not going to use your solids on our old vehicle. Now, actually, if you could go back to that picture for me, if you look at the solids on the vehicle, you'll notice the nose cones, kind of, they're aerodynamic nose cones that kind of jettison up. ATK, Orbital ATK, Align Tech Systems, doesn't actually use that same kind of nose cone. So while this will be a dropping replacement for the Atlas V vehicle, we may see a slight modification of what the very top of those look like. So I don't know if they've decided if they're going to modify the nose cones. If Orbital ATK is going to modify the nose cones to make it as close to a drop in replacement as possible, or if they're just going to leave their traditional, they're more of a triangular nose cone. It sounds like they're going to just keep their existing nose cone and then just kind of drop on these new solid motors in replacement of that. So, yeah, the Aerojet Rocket 9 used to be the primary propulsion supplier for United Launch Alliance rockets, which was the Atlas V solid rocket boosters, the RS-68 engine for the Delta IV, and the RL-10 upper-stage engines for both Atlas and Delta. And it sounds like starting around 2019, 2020 or so, most of that will start going away. By the year 2025, most likely all of that will be gone, and all of that business will have vanished unless something radical changes, which also brings into that whole play of that $2 billion buyout that we were talking about earlier. Now, there are talks that they're trying to increase the bid, but nothing solid just yet. So there's some... Oh, oh, Zynga, whoa! So... Sorry. I'm sorry. No, you're not. I'm only a little sorry. So it's an interesting climate. I'm not sure if there's some sort of political game going on or if Aerojet Rocket 9 is just way too expensive, which is possible, or maybe a little bit of both. So it'll be fun to watch over the next year or two how this all plays out. A lot of drama. Drama! Yeah. Super drama. Speaking of super... Wow. That was a terrible segue. I liked it. I'm glad you did. All right, Mike, Mike, Mike, give us a segue. Segway, Mike, do it. What? On the spot right now. Let's go. Speaking of things that are for sure... No, I can't do it. I can't do it this time. I can't go from terrible rocket news or good rocket news to supermoon. I can't do it. I'm sorry. Yeah. No, I neither can I. So there's going to be a supermoon eclipse. Boom. What is a supermoon eclipse? Well, this is hilarious, because this is like totally the wrong kind of eclipse, but just ignore that for a moment. It's such a supermoon. It's got to be carried in by, like, Atlas V. Oh, I didn't die. The problem with that picture is that's a solar eclipse, right? Thank you. Precisely. I don't know, like, who runs the show around here? We're talking about a lunar eclipse. Do we have any pictures of a blood moon? That's what we're looking for. Okay, so the thing is that... The moon is in the picture. I don't know what your problem is. Is that even our moon? How do I know? Anyhow, no. What kind of Mickey Mouse operation is this? Exactly. Oh, my God. Jared is going to give us endless, endless trouble. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, if you want to know anything about this, please watch the space pod that our correspondent Jared did because he did a really fantastic job, way better than anything that we've done about this story already. So there's a supermoon eclipse. Couldn't I use a screenshot on this? No, I could have. I don't know. Yeah. Anyway. I mean, that image, I go back to it. That image is epic fail in so many ways, right? So many ways. It's the wrong kind of eclipse. And then the bottom still has the... Who is that? ...the necklace from the previous shot sitting underneath there. Okay, just so everybody knows? Yes. That's the picture? There you go. That's the picture. That's... Oh, awesome. What's going on here? Oh, those things is not like the other. Okay. You got your layers and Photoshop screwed up or something. What's going on? Oh, that's epic. Oh, my goodness. So epic. And I had nothing to do with it. This is so perfect. So the thing about the supermoon, the reason it's called a supermoon is because Earth is here, for instance. And the moon goes around the Earth, but it doesn't go in a perfect circle. It actually goes in more of an ellipse, like an oval. These are fantastic graphics. Yeah, no, because that's all I've got at the moment. Okay. So the closest part... When the moon is the close part to the moon. All right, great. When the moon is closest to Earth in its ellipse, that's called the pedigree. And when the moon is closest to Earth, for obvious reasons, it looks a little bit closer or bigger to us. It looks about 14% bigger and about 30% brighter, which is really cool. Now... I have to correct you. It's perigee. Perigee. What did I say? Pedigree. Oh, I'm so sorry. Perigee. Trying to find the moon globe. I was freaking out because it's in the kitchen. And I was freaking out because Ben just got up in the middle of a live show. That's what my problem was. It is called perigee. Oh, this show is already disintegrated. Oh, I know! Oh, goodness. Anyway, the lunar eclipse is when you have the sun and then the Earth and then the moon. That particular picture was a solar eclipse where you've got the moon... I'm sorry, the Earth, then the moon, then the sun. So, this is where the moon goes into Earth's shadow. That's what a lunar eclipse is about. Now, when that happens, it has a tendency to be called a blood moon because it has sort of a red glow to it. So, not only are we getting a really cool blood moon eclipse, but we're also getting it as a super moon. And that's why this is so interesting. Thank you, St. Chan. Thank you, Keddie. Not that we need it now, but that's awesome anyway. Still roll off the tables, since the 1900s, this has only happened five times. It happened in 1910, 28, 46, 64, 82. And it's going to happen right now in 2015. Not right now, but it's going to happen in 2015. And the next time it's going to happen is 2033. Yes, Mike has a comment. Why do I feel like I'm in trouble? This is the worst story we've ever done. I love this story! Why are we dragging this out? Let's do it. All right. No, go ahead, Mike. No, you're doing a good job trying to follow through this. But something else I want to mention is not only is this a blood moon, not only is this a super moon, this is the fourth blood moon in a row, which is called a tetrad. And I'm sure Nostradamus and all sorts of people predicted that terrible stuff happens. And it's interesting because all of those years and dates that you mentioned, there were lots of really crazy things that happened right around when there's four blood moons in a row called a tetrad. And so I think that that's also really interesting. So we have all these really cool things going on happening. And that's this Sunday, right? And I'm definitely going to be trying to watch that. It's going to be lasting for like an hour and a half, I believe. Yeah, an hour and 12 minutes. Mostly visible from North and South America, Europe, Africa, parts of West Asia, and the Eastern Pacific. And if you're not in those areas and or you have a cloudy view for whatever reason, NASA does have a live stream on Ustream. They do a pretty good job with their eclipse life. Yeah, they do. They can bounce from observatory to observatory to find one that doesn't suck. This is so great. I love the story that I have had no input on coming from Marshall Space Flight Center for views, not just from there, but also Griffith Observatory here in Los Angeles, Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Fernbake Observatory at Lantan, other locations across the United States. So hopefully, please, please, please go see this because it should be really interesting, really different and something that's not going to happen for way too many years. And it hasn't happened in way too many years. So there you go. Space X, Mike. Yep, that's the way that's going to go now. So half the internet loves this show and half the internet hates this episode because of how incredible the news has fallen apart. All right, take a look. Talk to us about the Falcon 9. Speaking of Space X, they are on fire getting ready for their next return to flight mission. Check out this brief footage of a static fire test. It's not launching, Mike. It's not launching. Well, this was just an engine test. This was a static test at their new static fire test stand in McGregor, Texas with a new flame trench dugout for it as well so that they can actually do static fire tests from there. In the past, they were able to do just engine tests, but not a full up full core stage test in that configuration at McGregor, Texas. They needed to do those primarily at Cape Canaveral and hopefully soon they'll be doing a lot more of that from Bannonburg Air Force Base. I haven't been, well, anyway, we'll talk about that later. But anyway, with this whole test firing, this is for the new version of their Merlin D, the upgraded version of these engines that will have more thrust and not only that, but the fuel is condensed with Rocket Science Magickery and they're going to be able to get a lot more performance out of this rocket and out of these engines. And not only that, but the upper stage engine, the Merlin D vacuum has also been upgraded as well. So there's lots of really cool things that hopefully will take place with the next launch with that. As for when that next launch will take place, SpaceX hasn't said for sure when the next launch date could be. But Elon Musk did say in a statement recently when he was at a forum in Berlin, he said that we hope to launch again in a couple of months, I guess maybe six to eight weeks or so from now if things go well. We'll be able to land the rocket, although I'll be happy if it just gets into orbit, of course. So it won't launch any earlier than November 17th, but hopefully mid-November, late-November, hopefully we won't have another launch attempt on Thanksgiving like we did in the past. But if so, hopefully everything goes well and that return to flight will happen this year and everything will be successful for that. So very cool, very cool news for SpaceX and speaking of main topics. Actually, before we go into break, A Grutter 87 in the chat room asked, is the upgrade limited to just the fuel density space mic? No, this is actually an upgrade of the engines themselves. In the past, it has to do with how they're able to throttle the engines. In the past, they were throttling the engines to only between 60 to 70 percent and with this, if they choose to, we'll be able to go up to 100 percent and throttle up and down through the various stages of flight and with that, they'll be able to get a lot more getting off the ground and hopefully won't have as much of a hard time getting through the maximum dynamic pressure where you're going through that layer of the atmosphere and we'll be able to get even more performance out of the first stage so that when the first stage does separate from the upper stage, they're in a much higher altitude and we'll be able to deliver satellites and payloads and dragging capsules to higher and more distant orbits and destinations. So it's not just the fuel density, but it's actually how they're able to throttle the engine and it has to do a lot with the plumbing of the engine. I won't go into too much depth of it because some of it is beyond me as well, so I'll admit that. But it has to do with the throttles as well as the fuel density. So hope that answers your question. Thank you. Speaking of fuel density, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, commercial space flight updates. Stay tuned, we'll be right back. Welcome back. That is one of two calendar updates that we have this week because, again, China is kicking butt and taking names. Also, we basically get one launch starting from Monday through Friday, one launch every single day. That's going to be pretty awesome and that's all powered through Launch Library and I wanted to give a shout out to all of our librarians who are keeping the Launch Library up to date. At this point, I believe it is the most up to date and accurate database of launches on the internet from what I've been able to find, at least, because I'll look around and I'll see other databases that are close but are missing some of our information. If you pull two or three of them together, you kind of get there, but ours seems to be truly up to date even with the China launches. They've been doing great. I also wanted to give a special shout out to Wicked as well for really putting a lot of time and energy into the chat room. Now I know a lot of you have been putting time and energy into it, so it's not just to Wicked, but he's gone above and beyond the call of duty for helping to make that library what it is today. So thank you, first off, everyone and to Wicked for making all that happen. Also a huge thank you to all the patrons of tomorrow who have helped make this specific segment of this episode happen. These are the people who have contributed of what is this, $5 or more to this specific episode. If you would like to figure out how you could help crowdfund the shows of tomorrow and after watching this episode, I would understand if you don't. You can head on over to patreon.com slash T-M-R-O. Well, you know, we like to have fun, right? You know, we're definitely... You totally sound like your father right there. Really? You did. You did. We like to have fun. I don't think he sounds like this. No, that's not what I meant. All right. So the main topic for this week is a commercial space flight update. Because there's so much. There is. We've got three companies that are looking to return to flight. And first up, let's talk about SpaceX. Now you talked about SpaceX in the new section, Space Mike, but give us a quick, you know, what are we looking for at return to flight? What's kind of the current status of SpaceX as a whole? Well, with this last failure, I was actually surprised at the backlash. There wasn't as much as I thought there was going to be. I thought that, you know, so many other competitors and so many people in Congress and the Senate would, you know, just decry them and just be like, oh, we can't trust them. Let's cancel the contracts right now. I thought it was going to be awful, but it wasn't. It wasn't so bad. Yes, there were some people who'd attracted against it, but the whole thing with this launch is if they're successful with this, then they will be able to return a lot of people's confidence in the company and in their services. But if this launch has any problems or isn't successful, then, you know, what I imagined the result was going to be from the first launch failure could become a reality if it fails again with this next return to flight mission. So it's very critical that things go off as planned and they deliver the payload, which just so happens to be an SES-9 communication satellite, excuse me, a TV broadcasting satellite. I guess that's kind of a communication satellite, just different kinds of communications. But with this, like I said, there is a lot, there's a lot running on this launch that whether or not NASA and Congress and the Senate will continue to have confidence in the company and continue to award contracts into them to them for the future. So that's what I think is the biggest thing with this. What shirt are you wearing? I'm wearing my cat shirt. It's got a bunch of cats all over it. I was going to wear my space cat shirt, but I couldn't find it, so I figured space mic in a cat shirt was a good replacement. I asked because Destructor1701 asked a question. Space mic, are there any cats left in the world or are they actually all on your shirt now? No, there's a couple left. All right, so pretty good. And then one thing, you mentioned the return to flight for Falcon 9, but it's not just a return to flight, it's a new vehicle as well. That's right. It is a Falcon 9 vehicle, but it's an upgraded version. It's the version 1.2, I think, is what they're calling it right now. So a big milestone for SpaceX coming up. All right, we also have the Orbital ATK. So Orbital lost their Antares vehicle late... Last October. Yeah, almost a year ago at this point. And that had the Cygnus space capsule on top. Now their plans forward are a little bit different. They're not going to be returning to flight with Antares right away. They're going to be returning to flight with Cygnus. Well, they're going to be returning Cygnus to flight atop of an Atlas V rocket from the United Launch Alliance. So that will happen at least one time, if not a couple of times, before they're actually able to re-release the Antares rocket using a new engine. So that is looking forward. Cygnus should be flying this December. I think it's mid-December. I don't have the launch date on top of my head. But pretty quickly here. So they'll be able to resupply the International Space Station. That's kind of a return to flight for the spacecraft. And then the rocket, probably sometime in 2018 or so. Well, go ahead, Mike. November. November is the Atlas V launch with the Cygnus. So I thought they were going early December. But all right, November. So yeah, so return to flight for Cygnus late this year and then sometime next year-ish, Merkley maybe return to flight for the Antares rocket as well. Which will bring them kind of back to the stack they wanted, which would be kind of cool. Although with all the partnerships between Orbital ATK and the launch lines, I wonder if they just go, okay, well, why are we flying Antares anymore? Let's fly on top of an Atlas V or a Vulcan. Well, a Vulcan won't be out in enough time, but you get the idea. Why not just kind of leverage that relationship a little bit more? We've also got the Virgin Galactic return to flight. Richard Branson said, was it last week? This week, sometime recently, that they do not expect to fly again in 2015. They will not return to flight this year. They are expecting to return to flight early 2016. And then the hope is, we're a year out. I know, we're a year out from paying customers. And Richard Branson has said he will still be the first person on the commercial flight. Now outside of the test flights, once they start commercially flying, he will be on that first flight. He and some of his family. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's showing a lot of faith. I guess. Although what's interesting is X-Core is catching up. So X-Core has just moved their offices from Mojave, here in California, to Midland, Texas. Yeah, absolutely. So it sounds like a lot of that's really coming together. And Lynx seems to be very pretty far along at this point. There is a chance, I don't know if you've heard anything, Space Mike, but I'm starting to think they'll start flying early next year. I have. I've been trying to keep up on that. I had a space pod a couple of months ago about their progress at that point. But their engine development testing is done. It's complete, except for, you know, actually doing a real test firing with the actual vehicle in flight. But as far as how the rocket is supposed to perform on the Lynx vehicle, everything looks good and it has exceeded their expectations. So everything looks good on the engine side of it. Now they're still just assembling the vehicle itself. And they have lots of different subcontractors that are building parts of the vehicle. They like a lot of different composite parts. And obviously, you know, in their small little, you know, 1940s hanger in Mojave, they don't have the capacity to manufacture composite materials. So that's okay that they're getting all these subcontractors, but they're making sure that everything fits. They're assembling it onto the first test vehicle, the Lynx Mark I, and just the experimental vehicle. There is some talk that paying customers will fly on that particular one, but then other X-Core employees are like, no, no one's going to fly on that one, except maybe X-Core employees. So it's confusing on that. But the vehicle itself is coming together. And hopefully early 2016, hopefully maybe even this year, they might start doing drop tests or something like that if they've actually completed the airframe and assembled the wings and the streaks and have everything ready to go with the ailerons, I can never say that right, and everything else for the vehicle. So they kind of did their space plane in the opposite way that Virgin Galactic did. Whereas Virgin Galactic built the airframe and did drop tests first and was still developing the engine. X-Core developed the engine first and proved it and got it up to where, as far as they know that they needed to be, and then are continuing on with actually building the vehicle. Of course they've done wind tests and everything else to prove that their specific design right now will work. So now the only thing left to do is put all the parts together and test it in real life. So hopefully that will happen in the next couple of months. A little harder than just putting it together and testing. I mean there's, their willingness. Nah! Just glue it together, just like a kid snaps on Legos. Oh yeah, like Legos, yeah. Like Legos, yeah. So that'll be exciting. So I think X-Core and Virgin Galactic will kind of end up being kind of neck and neck is to, and it doesn't really matter who flies first, right? Just the fact that we'll have multiple providers allowing humans to go to suborbital space. That's a great first step for us to actually open up the frontier as a space. So I'm really excited to actually see that start to happen. Extaining the chat room said, I kind of have a feeling that Blue Origin is going to beat them all. Oh, then you've got Blue Origin, who, yeah, absolutely, right? They've announced their Florida test, their Florida site where they'll be testing their engines and launching their suborbital vehicles from as well. That's really exciting. Does anyone know in the chat room, I can't remember, what was the altitude of their last test flight that they did that they actually released video of the Blue Origin? Because, you know, are they ready to go? Are they ready to start? Like, they could beat both of the, both Virgin Galactic and X-Core. How do we know it's Blue Origin? They don't say anything. They don't say anything. They don't say anything. They're like, hey guys, guess what? We launched. And we're like, wait, when did, how did you, we didn't, nobody freaking knows. Like, it's the most frustrating thing ever. It's not even like, oh, we think we're going to launch or we're going to try and launch or, hey, we've got some tests. They just come out and they're like, no, no, no. Really, here's a totally produced video of this vehicle that you didn't even know that we had from a test site that you were sort of sure that we had. And we totally just like did something because you know, you heard rumors about it. And here's the whole thing. What? So yeah, they, you know what? Honestly, they might have already beat everyone and we just don't know yet because they haven't given us the video. They could be selling tickets to blind people to space. We have no idea. It's so stupid. It's so frustrating. They don't even have a space station and everything. I can't support you if you don't tell me what's going on. There is a problem with space industry and people announcing things way too early. Oh, absolutely. And then not actually, you know, delivering everything or, you know, programs like Constellation announcing it way too early. Absolutely. So I understand the trepidation and the cautiousness of, you know, not announcing stuff until they're really ready to go. But ready to go and already done is like what China does. Okay, fair, fair. But, but, you know, they're getting a little bit better. They announced in advance, you know, we're gonna have a press event for our Florida launch site thing. Yes, thankfully. Thank you. Goodness. Thanks for inviting us, guys. Oh, wait, wait. You didn't. Just do that for a second. Joking aside, what they're doing is exciting and what they're doing is very cool. And so you'll actually have three launch services providers with suborbital space tickets that you could buy a ticket to. Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and X-Core. There's a good chance all three. Well, I think Blue Origin is probably still a little bit, like, we're all like, oh, how far ahead, I don't, I'm not sure they're as far ahead as we're giving them credit for. Sure, sure, sure. So I think they're probably still 2019-2020 question mark. I'll give them 2017-18. Are we talking orbital for Blue Origin or suborbital? Suborbital. Suborbital. Paying passenger suborbital. I think 2018. Okay. I'll give them 2018. I'm thinking 2019. Sure. Mike? Business in full swing. 2017, maybe. Alright, so everyone remember this episode? We're applying prices right rules. Yes. Closest without going over. Yep. That's who will win this particular one. Alright. Blue Origin, then you also have Bigelow Aerospace. They seem to be in a hibernation pattern, and I don't foresee that changing anytime soon. Ultimately, what they need is a suit. They're hiring, actually. Word? Say it again. Bigelow Aerospace is hiring, which means that something is ramping up over there. Nice. I'm not qualified for any of the positions, but they are hiring. So if any of you are a rocker, scientist or mechanical engineers, go check it out. So how many places are they hiring, though? Is it a blot, or is it just a small handful? Well, they've always only had a small handful. I think the most they've ever had is like two to 300 employees, but I think this round, and this was like a week ago that I saw this. This was like 37 to like 40 positions that were still available, so. But that's not bad. I mean, if you only have two or 300 people, that's like 10%. That's good. That's a decent increase. They went down to like less than 50, I think. So as of right now, they might be doubling their workforce. As the chat room was pointing out, we've got the Bigelow Beam module being sent up to the International Space Station. So that's a pretty good thing. So I guess hibernation is the wrong word. I'm thinking the Bigelow, I'm really only approaching this from the commercial space non-governmental kind of side to it for this update. That's a fair statement. It's unfair to do that to Bigelow when SpaceX is doing government stuff too, as is everyone else. So fair. But their commercial space stations, they're still kind of on the back burner for now. Not because they haven't figured them out. They basically have them, from my understanding, essentially done and ready to go for the most part, except that no one can lift them up. They need a super heavy lift launcher to get them up there. So that's kind of what they're waiting on right now. And then transit to and from, said thing with passengers. Maybe that'll be Blue Origin. That'd be cool. There's chance. Something else that I find interesting about Bigelow that tells me what their status is, is in the past and years past, we got news press releases saying they had finished everything with the environmental system so that they can have life support and everything like that. And they've tested out the mylar itself and the water layers and everything else so that everything is good for that. But recently, Tim Pickens, a pretty famous rocket scientist and engineer, who recently got hired with Bigelow, probably this whole hiring round that I'm talking about, there was a press release about it, he left Dianetics to go to Bigelow Aerospace to work on the propulsion modules for the BA-330 modules. So that tells me that they still need a little bit of work on the propulsion modules, even if someone had a rocket that was ready to fly them tomorrow. So that's what I think anyway. All right. Just my opinion. Any last updates in the commercial space sector that you've got, Space Mike? This kind of has to go into the sub-orbital tourism thing, but we might not want to count out Copsub and also Arca Aerospace. I don't think we've ever counted out. They might be able to do it too. I don't think they'll beat the other three companies that we talked about, but they might be launching people in the future too. I don't think they'll ever. We've never counted out Copenhagen sub-orbitals. Copenhagen. But yeah, it's not a question of if, but when with those guys, I think really totally. They are definitely doing something. It's just, when are they going to do it? And then there's Dream Chaser as well, which is kind of moving on a path forward slower, maybe being dropped from a straddle launch vehicle now, maybe being worked on over in, what is it with ESA, the European Space Agency, I think it was. Specifically the German Space Agency. Yeah. So they're kind of trying to find a home for Dream Chaser. They're kind of sort of finding homes for it. I really hope they do. I think Dream Chaser is one of the cooler vehicles that's being designed right now. And I don't want to see it go away just because it didn't make it through the next NASA funding round. So, alright. So, alright. There you go. If you've got more updates that you were thinking of in the commercial space sector, if you've got questions about commercial space, go ahead and leave them in our comments section in YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, whatever you want, Reddit, all those different areas. We're going to take a quick break and speak in the comments. When we come back, comments from our last week's show, stay tuned, we'll be right back. Two launch calendars in the show. That's how many launches are happening this week. How awesome is that? That's a great problem to have. Yeah. Before we get started with comments from our last week's show, I did want to give a huge shout out to all the patrons of tomorrow who would have to make this specific segment to this episode happen. These are the people who have contributed at least $2.50 to this episode. These are also people who are going to get a copy of After Dark, as soon as it's made available online. It's one of the perks and at different levels you get different rewards for helping us out. But you don't have to contribute $2.50. You don't have to contribute $5. You contribute whatever dollar amount you feel is fair. If you think the show is worth one penny, you can contribute that. And that's this group right here. From one penny to $2.49, these are the people who have contributed to the show and just as little as one penny. It gets your name in the episode as well. So huge, huge thank you to everyone who's helping you contribute to tomorrow and will help bring it week after week. Alright, let's go ahead and get started with some comments from last week. This is going to be a fun comment section, I think. That's been a fun show. So it better not be a sucky comment section. Alright, let's go ahead and get started with Miguel, I believe it is. Oh, goodness, yes. So this is Miguel. Oh, we start with a long one. Yeah, it comes off of you too. I'm not the one who chose him. One of the main problems of today is actually a holdover in the Apollo when up to 3% of the federal budget was used and space industry was beefed up to giant yet unsustainable levels. This is when congressman notices all the jobs in their district and try to keep them and why NASA has become at their behest super inefficient. That's when I started that's when it started and it's going to be very difficult to reverse a decade's long trend. Basically a very long way of saying in the Apollo era NASA turned into a jobs program. So, you know. Yeah, but at the time they could support all of those jobs. On accident, right? Not yet. There were a lot of jobs that needed to be done and Mike is talking. Build the manufacturing facilities in the south so that unemployed people could have jobs and that's how they sold the whole program to congress. Oh, it's a jobs program too. Everybody's going to make money. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Yes. And it was and they did. Yes. But then we were done with it. And so I don't necessarily disagree with the comment. So we harp on NASA a lot and I don't really think it's actually NASA's fault. The engineers that I know at NASA and the employees that I know at NASA they're not sitting there going, well, this is a jobs program for me and I'm just going to sit here and get a paycheck. Yeah. These are passionate people who want to get humanity to Mars. It's not that side of it. I think it's the political side of it and actually not even NASA in and of itself but the congress with NASA and sticking their fingers in it and trying to make it into something that it isn't. I think that's where they get screwed up. And if we could get them to stop NASA would probably be an organization that could get humanity on to Mars. But we'll see. I mean, they'll have space launch system soon. So there's that. All right. Moving on. Speaking of space launch system. Right. This is from Fabio Milan for also off of YouTube. Space launch system is dead. It will be scrapped in favor of the Falcon Heavy and its successor the MCT or Mars colonial transport. We all know this will happen but we cannot say anything because congress. Yeah. No. We don't know that this will happen and I don't think that that is a fair statement at all. Space launch system block one is 70 metric tons to low earth orbit. The Falcon Heavy is 53 metric tons to low earth orbit. You go. Oh. Oh. Seven zero and I'm I'm very certain that block one will fly. Now whether block two flies or not that's yet to be seen but that's 130 metric tons to low earth orbit. That is not quite three times the lift capacity of the Falcon Heavy. So that is that's a pretty significant difference between the two. Then you go. Oh. Oh. But the Mars colonial transporter but what does Mars colonial transporter lift? Yeah. What information can you give me on the Mars colonial transporter? Yeah. Mike shrug you couldn't see it but he basically went Yeah. Exactly. We don't know and assuming that this this rocket will be something that can replace space launch system is not fair because yeah. What data can you tell me about it? Exactly. It will have like one PDF from like 2005 talking about something called the Falcon XX or something like that with the Falcon Heavy. So that's all we have to go off of and that I think that guy was fired and Elon immediately was like no we're not building Falcon XX we're building something else to get all of that. Out of the gate what you've got is Falcon Heavy at 53 metric tons to Leo and then you've got space launch system block one at 70 metric tons to low earth orbit I said Leo I should have said low earth orbit bad me. So and that's that's why that's that's why I don't think we can count out the space launch system I don't think it is dead also it is acting as a jobs program and Congress does love the space launch system because it's keeping people employed in their districts so just assuming that it will go away is not a fair assumption then so then we've got the issue of okay we're reusing the space shuttle main engines we're going to then we're going to dump them in the ocean so once we're done with the space shuttle main engines then what I think that will be the critical point we're going to dump them into the ocean or do we go we're done with this and keep in mind by that time we'll have a new president so we may have a new policy for NASA right don't know speaking of new policies for NASA next this one comes from Raoul Duke also off of YouTube that was a brilliant segue that was I'm actually impressed pat myself on the background there you go do you have any idea what can happen as a new administration is coming to the White House and the system and Orion systems development can you give us some idea about that thanks yeah it can influence it a lot let's just go backwards one presidential administration shall we sure George Bush yes he had said hey we're going back to the moon we're going on to Mars here's my vision of the future it's called constellation you get the Aries 1 the Aries 5 you get the Altair lander enter Obama administration we're not going to do any of that anymore now we're going to go to an asteroid Aries 1 is canceled Aries 5 is canceled Altair is canceled we'll keep the Orion module kind of yeah and instead of doing all that we're going to build the space launch system they didn't even want to build the space launch system that was a compromise by the way so right because Congress was like no and they're like fine you can keep the big rocket completely and radically changed we just had to pivot like we almost did 180 degree turn not quite but this huge pivot turn as to what NASA was working on Aries 1 development just stopped is done now at this point there's an entire launch structure that was built that has never been used for a rocket that will never be built sitting down at Cape Canaveral right now blinky lights and all yep so what could happen when a new president of the constellation we could go back to that we could do anything we could continue down the road of space launch system we could do anything that they want they might look at space launch system and go why are we spending all of this money on this program this doesn't make sense they could look at space launch system and say we need to spend more money on this program this makes tons of sense who knows right and that's where if you're in the United States and you're interested about space policy influence that so how you choose to vote will impact that Mike something I find really interesting too about administration changes is sometimes the stuff survives just like with constellation survived into well at least Aries 5 from constellation and Orion survived into the space launch system and Orion but if you go even further back than that Clinton had X-33 we're not doing anything from that but did learn a lot about composites we had George H.W. Bush doing nothing from that but we do have the wave rider and a bunch of new hypersonic vehicles for military applications so I guess there's that then you have Reagan who had the space station freedom that got canceled but it became the international space station so sometimes it's a good thing when these really big jobs programs plans are canceled and kind of restructuring like okay we still have a program now for 12 years and have a lot of stuff on the ground to show for it but we haven't actually launched anything so we need to actually do something so even if there is an administration change and cancels everything and wants to restructure it it might be a good thing and it might make things actually happen I guess it all depends on who the next president is and whether anything can happen and this is why when you're developing a brand new plan with a brand new president if they were smart they make it a 10 year or under plan because anything longer than that is probably going to get canceled or it's going to get radically changed and that's how we made it to Apollo essentially remember we made it to Apollo in nine years there was a presidential change but we're so far along in the process they really couldn't stop the program so the same thing could potentially happen alright we actually had I think we talked about acronyms and why we don't use acronyms or poorly don't use acronyms try not to use acronyms speak in English on the show everyone should be napping everyone should be napping exactly and we asked you and then the next show there said ironic for a show called TMRO to say not to use acronyms and we pointed out that TMRO is not an acronym but if it were to become an acronym what do you think would be the first one we know what Scarra said TMRO tomorrow's mission realized off world that's a pretty good one don't go back and forth do really like that one bring it back up and then skip to the next one go ahead next one this one also for you too TMRO the Mars research outpost or two married rocket oracles I like that one I like that one two married rocket oracles I've never been called a rocket oracle you aren't nearby known as a rocket oracle the most realistic interesting but alright I mean we are fairly down to earth I guess that says tomorrow's media or research and organization in space I'm sorry tomorrow's media for research and organization in space there's one more like tomorrow is tomorrow is tomorrow's hmm alright I love the force G plus two froze yeah force G plus account clearly they did not like being forced into you but I appreciate that all of that trouble in order to make the comment the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter TMRO that's pretty clever it's good I like that one actually made me laugh out the first time I heard it this I think is my favorite one from Sarah H. off of YouTube three maniacs often rant TMRO thank you alright that is our show this week I'd like to thank everyone so much for watching stay tuned after dark is up next if you're watching live that'll be available otherwise if you're a patreon plus subscriber you'll get that immediately as soon as we post it everyone else will be available in approximately four weeks or so thank you for watching see you next week