 And welcome back to tomorrow. We needed a little bit of an inspirational, upbeat, motivational, commercial segment after that super-depress-so news segment, but before we get into our much happier main topic, I would like to give a huge shout-out to all of the patrons of tomorrow who would be giving at least $10 to this specific episode. These are our tomorrow premiere members. We've also got our tomorrow producers. These people have contributed $5 or more to this specific episode to find out how you can help contribute to the shows of tomorrow. Head on over to patreon.com slash TMRO. Super depressing. I'm sorry. Michael's like, uh, uh. I'm sorry guys, like it's just not been, you know, it's been one of those weeks. It was a bad week Christmas. Yes. It was. Not the best week ever. So, actually in some of the videos that were posted to our Facebook channel, so facebook.com slash TMRO.tv, there was, you know, some additional footage that we weren't allowed to show on this particular show we weren't able to get the rights to. And one of the comments in there actually came from Christian who said, I think this evidence for the need to move away from conventional rockets in order to get to space, companies like Reaction Engines, Skylon, and X-Corps, which have the links, have the right idea. Space planes are the way forward. And that actually sparked some interesting conversation about the space planes and kind of paths forward and safety and things like that. Yeah. And kind of start off, you know, I'll start off by saying I'm a huge fan of Dream Chaser personally. I too. Dream Chaser, for those who don't know, is from. Sierra Nevada. Sierra Nevada. I'm like, orbital. No. Haha. It's from Sierra Nevada. It's thinking of it like a miniature space shuttle. They can bring up crew or cargo, depending upon the configuration. It can go to low earth orbit. It's actually an incredible little vehicle. I'm actually very excited about it. However, it launches on a traditional rocket. And that's part of the reason why I like it, because you've got your traditional rocket stick on the bottom and the space plane that sits on top. So if you have any sort of issue with the rocket, the space plane can, you know, kind of break away and you're good to go. Yeah. So, what's up? Actually, when we, Space Mike, I think you're pretty well versed on reaction engine Skylon and the Sabre Drive. So why don't you describe for us, what is Skylon, that space plane? So with the Skylon space plane, the company that makes it Reaction Engine is planning on a new type of technology to have an air-breathing engine that would pull oxidizer from the atmosphere itself. And the whole idea behind this is to have a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle, something that would not be launching on a traditional rocket, but that would be able to take off from a runway under its own power, and then it has enough fuel on board that once it reaches a certain point in the atmosphere, and there's not enough oxidizer that it would be able to extract from the atmosphere, it's able to switch over to its own supply of oxidizer and change a little bit how the engines would be able to burn and get the rest of the way into orbit with that system. And it's a very ambitious system, and they've been working on it for many years, and they have had some progress over the past several years, and even the European Space Agency and the British government have looked at funding and supporting Reaction Engines, and if it's successful, it could be a gain changer in the spaceflight industry. All right, so we've got those two orbital space planes, the Skylon and the Dream Chaser, but then we've actually got a couple of, go ahead. Before we move on to some of the other type of space planes, we also have robotic space planes like the X-37B, which is conducting a bunch of secretive experiments in orbit, but it also has the same type of capability and benefits with space planes of being able to land sensitive equipment at a runway in a timely manner, and although with the X-37, it's meant to be up in space for quite a long time, there are other nations who are looking to have their own X-37B. China is working on their own sort of unmanned space plane system, as well as India is working on their own unmanned space plane system, which they would hope to eventually upgrade to a manned space plane, so it's very interesting the sort of capabilities that they can get from that. And the X-37B really is like a miniature space shuttle. It even looks like the old school NASA space shuttle, just mini, and it sits atop, that goes into an Atlas, or is that an Atlas or Delta? Atlas? It's an Atlas V. It's an Atlas V in the 501 configuration. Yeah, meaning a 5-meter fairing, zero solids, and one upper... One inch and centaur. Yep, exactly. So those are all the orbital space planes, but we also have a couple of suborbital space planes. Jared, talk to me about links and virgins. Yes, you've got X-Core's links suborbital space plane, which essentially a suborbital space plane goes up, and then it comes back down, so... It kind of more comes down like this, though. Yeah, it kind of does that energy. Yeah, a little bit more like that. But essentially it just goes above that common line, the 100 kilometer mark, and allows you several minutes of microgravity, and then returns your payload and passengers to the starting point in which you began. So X-Core has the links, which they were developing, although X-Core has kind of sort of eased back a little bit from that and gone more into engine development from the middle point of this year. They had flown actual some development vehicles like their prototype rocket racer, so they actually did fly a vehicle with a rocket engine sort of similarly based upon what the X-Core links would be working with. And then, of course, we also have Virgin Galactic with Spaceship 2 being developed sort of the highly successful Spaceship 1, if you will. And, of course, Spaceship 2 did suffer an accident just about two years ago, but they've been working on improving the safety of the vehicle. And they've actually built a second one known as the VSS Unity, and they're actually now doing ground system integration and testing. And that one will be carrying, paying customers who have popped out about $250,000 per flight in order to experience the thrill of riding a rocket suborbital. So there's a lot of work going on with them. And one of the nice things about a suborbital space plane is that if you don't necessarily need to launch your payload into space in order for you to perform an experiment, say you only need like really 60 seconds to 120 seconds of microgravity in order to run an experiment, this is a cheaper alternative to instead of flying your payload into space and having to figure out how to handle all of that and integrate that into, say, like a CubeSat or a NanoRack that would go on the International Space Station. So these are potential outlets, and NASA's actually looked at both of these vehicles as well as potential outlets for running experiments on. Awesome. And there's also some international companies as well doing looking at suborbital space planes. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we'll have a representative from Swiss Space Systems, which is looking at the same type of trajectory and also doing air launch, but this time on top of a Boeing 747, I believe. And so that's going to be really interesting to get some more information from them. But there's a lot of different suborbital space planes ideas out there. We actually had a question in the chat room from Green Jim too, saying, is a suborbital space plane just a plane? Yes and no. I mean, the way that Lynx is looking at it is they're actually going to have tiles on the bottom of their space planes so that if they encounter some pretty strong reentry forces that the vehicle wouldn't blow up from that. Dream Chaser, of course, has lots of tiles on it and other systems to help it survive the vacuum of space and reentry forces and all of that. So, I mean, yes, it's sort of a plane in the sense that all of these can glide in the atmosphere. Not all of them will be able to maneuver in the atmosphere with the engines or their own power. That's where the Lynx space plane is kind of unique because they can use their rockets in the atmosphere and, I mean, of course in the atmosphere in order to get up to that line of space. But they can also use the engines to help get back to their runway. Whereas in the case of Virgin Galactic Spaces II, their engine will burn out getting up to that boundary of space and then will be gliding back to a runway. So yes and no is the answer to that, I believe. I think the difference being, I think the marker between what's the difference between a plane and a space plane is, a plane uses air-breathing engines and a space plane will not be able to use an air-breathing engine, right? You're going to be out of the atmosphere. Air-breathing engines are not viable. It's a good indicator, I would say. I would also say a plane flies in the atmosphere. A space plane leaves the atmosphere. Leaves most of the atmosphere. Most of the atmosphere. Technically. We've got a lot. See, it's this thin line where you start to argue, well, what makes space space? Where does it begin? So this brought up a really interesting discussion on Facebook talking about space planes and how they would be more safe and all of these other fun things. And I thought that was a really interesting topic because I don't think that's actually true. I don't think so either. In some instances it may be, right? So if you look at something like the Dream Chaser, the top amount of design on top of a traditional rocket, yeah, it probably would be just as safe as a capsule design because it can get away from any sort of anomaly that you may have. But something like Skylon, the argument was Skylon would be it's next generation engines. It's a much safer technology. Actually, that's not true. Skylon, the Sabre engine that goes in the Skylon is in fact a jet engine. It's essentially a jet engine when it's in atmosphere. And then it converts. I'm oversimplifying this. But it then converts into a rocket engine as it starts to lose air. And it brings with it its oxidizer, liquid oxygen. And so now you've got this airplane where the imagine being on an airplane and the engines convert into rockets. Well, unlike sitting on top of a traditional rocket, you have nowhere to go if something goes wrong. If something happens to one of those engines, it's going to take out your wing. Right. That's not a survivable instance at that point. So yeah, the Skylon looks really cool. And it would be on paper can bring a lot of payload up. But I'm not sure that it's actually that safe of a design. No, it's definitely not. I would not go on a Skylon myself. But there's this desire and love of space planes. More so than capsules. We look at capsules, we go, oh, that's 1960s technology. That's 1950s. They did that in Apollo. But at the same time, when the selling point of a plane, which is something that traditionally a lot of people go on routinely, is you're sitting upright. You have a little safety belt. Maybe you have somebody who brings you food. You're sleeping recline this much? Sure. Even if it's with the Velcro slippers and the little hair caps, that's a little bit more. That's something that we're used to. It's something that we're comfortable with. I've done that before. That's a huge selling point versus, hey, we're going to shove you in this tin can. It's you and two other guys you probably don't know very well. And you're just going to have to sit in your own diaper for a while. Is that OK? Really, it's not a huge selling point. It just isn't. So I think for the average person who may or may not ever get a chance to either go in a pod type or capsule type situation, or to ride in a space plane. Sure. Right? Those are your two options. Then, yeah, of course, a space plane is definitely the way I feel more comfortable with. I've done that before. You've seen it in science fiction forever, right? Exactly. 2001, a space odyssey, the TWA space plane. That's a Pan Am. Pan Am. I'm sorry. No, it's OK. I'm sorry. TWA is in my area. You should be! It's the TWA in my area. A little different, right? That was a right. Wait, all right. So there's that. You see a lot of old sci-fi with plane-like things that brought us to space. And that was always kind of the vision of the future. And you do get that added benefit of the ability of what's called cross-range. So you can actually, with a capsule, you can move the center of gravity within the capsule. And from that, you can actually generate lift. So a lot of people don't realize you can generate lift with a capsule, and you can actually aim it. But you can't generate as much lift as, say, a vehicle with wings, which you can then have a tremendous amount of cross-range. And in fact, when you look at some of the designs of the early space shuttle, they looked a little more capsillish than they did aircraft-ish. And it was finally moved towards a winged vehicle because the Air Force wanted that cross-range ability to be able to basically lob a very large bomb at someone and then return the vehicle somewhere else in the world besides the United States. So we can either confirm nor deny it. Yes, we can either confirm nor deny it. This was going to recur. But as I wanted to point out from one of our viewers in the chat room, NeuroTakD, is that a capsule can do a ballistic re-entry and survive, but a space plane would break up on a re-entry like that. So there are very thin margins with space planes, both in terms of re-entry and also with launch as well. Because you do have to worry about aerodynamic loading on a space plane at launch. You have to worry about aerodynamic loading on all things at launch. But a little bit more with that. Well, you have those wings to worry about. Yes. Consider those wings are not useful during launch. They're not useful in space. And they're not useful for a good chunk of coming back. They're only useful once you hit the atmosphere coming back. And that's a very short amount of your flight. And once the atmosphere is thick enough. Think of all that weight that you're wasting, all that fuel that you need to use to launch those wings, just those wings into space. And those wings have to be pretty big too. Because you have to design a wing not like the wings that we have on aircraft here that fly transonic or subsonic. In our era, you have to deal with hypersonic velocity. So Mach 5 and above. So that means you have to make basically a blunt wing that doesn't really do lift at slow speeds very well. It does lift pretty good at Mach 25. But if you take it down to 500 miles an hour, as they say with the shuttle, of brick with wings. So is the problem that capsules just aren't cool enough? Well, Rhett, can we make a cool capsule? Well, scrap cat in the chat room says capsules have a huge drawback, and that is a booster diameter. How many people can you pack in? Space planes can be stretched to get more seats. Although I don't think that that's necessarily true. Look at Blue Origin. The capsule goes over the. I was going to say, you don't necessarily have to do it. I mean, I remember some of the early designs in the CST 100 actually had a really thin centaur. And it was wider than the diameter of the centaur was with the CST 100 in the early designs. So yeah, that too. Yeah, no, that's interesting. Thank you for saying that. And something else that I like about Dream Chaser is ever since they have updated with their cargo version of the Dream Chaser, originally their crude version of the Dream Chaser would just have the wings sticking out and they would have to compensate and have a special payload adapter. But there would be a weird phases of flight and weird aerodynamic loads on it. But with the new cargo version, the wings are actually going to be folding and it's going to be encapsulated in a payload fairing. So they don't have as many of the new aerodynamic challenges as they would have of flying it without a payload fairing. So that's something I like that, even though they are, yeah, during the launch itself. Yeah, I mean, that's interesting. I'm not sure. Would you put a crew in something like that where the wings aren't folded out, right? I mean, because, or you build a space plane. That's actually not a terrible idea. You build something like that, a space plane, but then you have a backup landing system like parachutes. It's going to take extra weight. The idea being if the wings don't fold, come undone, you can still use the surface, the core surface, to barrel through the atmosphere. Yeah, if I remember correctly, back in the 90s when NASA was developing the crew return vehicle, they sort of had the parasol idea with it. But they also had sort of a backup where if systems went wrong on the crew return vehicle, it would deploy like what's in some small aircraft. It's basically called a ballistic recovery parachute, which it deploys and it brings you straight down from wherever you might be having a problem at. So that'd be pretty neat. I'd like that. I don't know how viable that is, right? Because, I mean, what's going to happen when if a wing doesn't unfold, and then you slam into that atmosphere, it's a Mach 15 or whatever comes out to you. That's not good. What's the aerodynamic stress on it? The aerodynamic stress is you're going to break up. Yeah, well, I guess I think it depends on the state of the wing and how they fold them and what they can do in those failure states. Well, I would say it would probably be too asymmetrical in order for you to load. I would generally agree, I would generally agree, but I'm wondering if there's a way. Jason 519, how much heavier wings than the propulsive landing fuel? I don't know, but I would assume a lot heavier, right? The fuels got weight, but it's not that heavy. Yeah, it's not structural. Wings are structure, right? So you've got structure and you've got thermal on them as well to deal with all the thermal loading as you come back into the atmosphere. So space planes look cool. Space planes are the future promised to us in the 50s and 60s. Space planes, from a physics perspective, don't work so well. No, they're evil. They're bad, they're not safe. And while we have this vision of this safe, awesome, future space plane in our heads from sci-fi, it's just not viable today. Space planes are not your friends. But, here's the thing. But something that's not, I think I'm gonna draw a line in saying that a suborbital space plane isn't as bad because you don't have the amount of energy going into it as you do an orbital space plane. There's a difference there, right? Just like a regular plane is gonna be safer than a space plane and a suborbital space plane and a suborbital space plane will be safer than an orbital space plane, anyhow. Yeah, that's a good way to phrase it. Yeah. I think too that with some of the unique capabilities that space planes offer, especially being able to return something to hopefully a gentle landing very quickly is enough of a reason to go ahead and do it, even though there might be safety issues that a capsule might be safer than a space plane, especially during the flight itself. But, you know, just that alone, I mean just with the Dream Chaser cargo, having that ability to return cargo safely in a quickly manner is reason enough to go forward with it. Yeah, and when you're talking cargo, it's a little bit different, right? Because there's not human life at stake. Yeah. So, you know, it would suck to lose the cargo, but, you know, still it's a little bit easier to... Cargo doesn't complain. Cargo doesn't complain. Yeah. And you're not wrong, right? Sometimes there are biological experiments on the International Space Station. They wanna get them back quickly. If you're landing in the middle of the ocean with a capsule, you have to recover it, you have to put it onto a ship, then you have to get out there to pull the biological off. Whereas if you're using a space plane that's landing like an airplane, you know, you can just go up to it, open the door and grab whatever you need right off of it. You're already on land, it's very quick and easy for you to get to, generally speaking. Which brings up one final point, which is space planes work great on Earth. And they don't... You wanna go to Mars? You're going in a capsule. You wanna go to Europa? You're going in a capsule. You wanna go anywhere else? There's no runway and there's very little atmosphere anywhere else. Those wings are basically useless to you anywhere else in the solar system. So yet, well, that's true-ish, right? I mean, you could go to Venus. You could bounce off the clouds in Venus, I suppose. The worms will be disintegrating as you do that. Wouldn't recommend it. Venus, bad place. Not hot yet. So, just, you know, if you're gonna go to Venus, just walk inside of like a kiln or something, you know? It's a good place to go, so. Submarine. That is a submarine. Oh, yeah. Yeah, a submarine that's at 800 degree, or excuse me, 400 degrees Celsius. All right, so what do you think? If you had an option to go up in a space plane, say Skylon, with the other advantage of Skylon, which I didn't mention is, and one of the things I think is pretty cool is that it's single-stage to orbit. The staging process is actually a risky process for the rocket. Removing that risk is a good thing. Yes. You're also taking all that extra weight up there with you. Yeah. I mean, there are always these trade-offs. But would you go up on a Skylon? Would you go up on a capsule? How would you like to, all things being equal, how would you like to go to space, a capsule or a space plane or something else? Is there something that we didn't cover that you think makes a whole lot more sense in getting off into space? And I think part of this also comes from the idea that we need to move away from chemical propulsion to get out of our Earth's gravity well. The cold harsh reality is, that's not happening in our lifetime. We do not have the technology to do that. Earth's gravity is insane. And electric propulsion is not doing it. No. There's just no other real propulsion technology out there. Electric propulsion works in space because you need a vacuum in order to have electric propulsion work correctly. So it cannot work in any sort of an atmosphere whatsoever. So I mean, in chemical propulsion is really the only one we know at the moment that has a certain amount of energy density to it that allows us to actually be able to make it to orbit with that amount of weight that we wanna put on orbit. And I'm sorry, space elevators are not real. No, they aren't, so yeah. You know what's cool about space elevators? That they're in stories. Are they in stories? Yeah, there's a couple of stories with space elevators. On that note, now that he's ripping on his computer, we're gonna take a quick break, leave your comments on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, wherever you want, and speak in the comments when we come back, comments from our last show. Stay tuned, we'll be right back.