Guest: Alfred Zaehringer. Topics: rocket science, rocket equation, Mars, chemical rockets, space tourism, low cost space access. Al Zaehringer returned to The Space Show to discuss his two books. Al was the editor of "Rocketscience: The Journal of the Detroit Rocket Society, Inc. 1947-1952," which is available from http://www.apogeebooks.com. This is a must have reference book, one of the very best of its kind.

Guest: Robert Zimmerman returned to this Space Show program to honor Apollo 8 on its 40th anniversary and to discuss the state of the space industry as we wind down 2008 and look forward to 2009. Bob suggested that perhaps Apollo 8 and the reading from Genesis on Christmas Eve forty years ago as Borman, Anders,and Lovell orbited the Moon was perhaps the most important space mission of its time. You will want to hear Bob tell the story of Apollo 8, how Genesis was selected to be ready by the astronauts, and the role of NASA PR at the time in the selection of the reading passage.

Guest: Thalia "ad.astra" Kohls was our guest for this show to discuss alt.space and NewSpace from an outsider's perspective. Thalia shared with us her views and experiences in communicating with NewSpace participants on blogs and in other venues and you will hear why she is critical of this community. I too have shared many of her experiences and commented on them during the show. We also spoke about engineering, science, and inspiring space projects like humans to Mars. Thalia expressed the view that she was not very optimistic about seeing a return to the Moon in her lifetime.

Guest: Norman J. Gerstein was the guest for this special Space Show program. Mr. Gerstein was deeply involved in Rover/NERVA and we discussed these programs in detail. He was part of the KIWI-TNT team and involved in the cleanup by picking up the debris with a wheelbarrow and tongs. Norm described these programs in detail along with the nuclear rocket which we compared to chemical rockets. Norm made it very clear that one needs a mission to do these programs. Another way of saying it, is to make sure there is a need. Since there was no need (no mission), the programs were cancelled.

Guests: Retired General Bob Dickman, Executive Director of AIAA, Col. Richard White, USAF SMC LAAFB, and Maureen Heath of Northrop Grumman Corporation were our guests tonight regarding the upcoming AIAA Space 2008 Conference to be held in San Diego, CA from Sept. 9-11. For conference information and registration, please visit www.aiaa.org. We started our discussion with Ms. Heath and the Civil Space Day programming that she has been organizing for Wednesday, Sept. 10th.