Guest: Open Lines with Dr. David Livingston. Topics: U.S. Space Policy, Indian space program, DOD and NASA, Spanish balloon space tourism project. This was a two hour Open Lines program divided in two segments with many listeners using the toll free line! Thank you listeners! In our fist segment, our first caller John from Atlanta led off with his views on the administrations space policy proposals. We talked about the need to have targets, goals, and a defined program. We talked about the space workforce, NASA and our civil space program as a jobs program as compared to needing our space workforce for the good of the nation. The commercial companies were also included in this discussion. See what you think about what John and I said and let us know your perspective on the administration's proposals. Kelly was our next caller who also talked about the administration space policy proposals. As you will hear, while no fan of Ares, Kelly sees many problems with what is being proposed. We also talked about the revised totals for job losses due to the shuttle retirement which are now estimated at 25,000. We took another caller, Dr. Jurist who asked about some possible combination of human spaceflight being taken over by DOD or shared with DOD and what Kelly and I thought about that. Listen to this three-way discussion. As we started the second segment, Jose Mariano Lopez-Urdiales called from Barcelona, Spain to share with us his views on the administration's space policy as well as what he was sensing to be a strong perspective throughout Europe on the new policy proposals. He also talked about the engineering work force age and aerospace engineering education in China, Europe, and the US. We then switched to the topic of his space tourism balloon project and Dr. Jurist phoned in on the other line to talk about some of the technical challenges faced by such a project. Listen to what Jose says about the project, the view when the balloon reaches about 35km, the projected cost, the issue of helium, winds, speeds, pressurization, and time aloft for the mission plus probable launch sites. He is taking ticket orders now so visit his website at www.inbloon.com to learn more about the project, the venture, and the cost. You can email Jose through the website contact page or by contacting him using spacetourism@gmail.com. Our discussion with Jose, Dr. Jurist, and myself, plus Reda asking chat questions was quite comprehensive about this new space tourism project. See what you think when you hear it and visit his website. His first tourist flights are projected to occur between 2013 and 2015. Toward the end of the program Charles Pooley from Mojave and Microlaunchers called the program. He was not positive on the balloon space tourism project nor is Charles positive on space tourism anyway. Those of you that are frequent listeners will not be surprised to learn that Charles again advocated changing NASA to more of a NACA type organization. He then suggested that for a commercial company to make money, they had to be in the space launch vehicle business, thus negating the business plan for example for a company such as Celestas that buys rides on existing rockets for its payloads. This was an intense discussion with Charles and Reda who was using chat, and other listeners so don't miss it. If you want to contact any of the listeners who participated in today's Open Lines program, please send your note to me and I will forward it to the person of interest. As always, your feedback and suggestions are most welcome at drspace@thespaceshow.com.