Guests: Jacob Gullish, David Vaccaro. Topics: Space competitiveness, NewSpace, commercial space, military space. This program was Part 2 of our two part series featuring the "Futron 2009 Space Competitiveness Index: A Comparative Analysis of How Countries Invest In and Benefit from Space." You can download the Executive Summary from www.futron.com or send an email request for the pdf file to me. The full report is available for purchase from the Futron website. In the first segment, we started with military space. Regardless of whether we consider military, civil, commercial, or non-profit space, the who, what, and how has to be examined. We talked about key trends going forward. For 2009, the report examined five segments, Space Exploration, Military Space, Positioning Navigation and Timing (PNT), Remote Sensing, and Technology Readiness and Capability. We focused on GPS or PNT during this segment. Listener Henry asked about the commercial market given vendors do not have any infrastructure overhead to deal with, then extrapolating this to the idea of the government investing in and developing a fully reusable cost effective RLV thus facilitating extensive commercial enterprise. This was a great discussion, don't miss it. In our second segment, we talked about the need for strategic thinking in policy making. As for military space, there was, and still is, a need to understand how the projection of power works with relationships. We discussed military space market drivers and our guests explained some important differences in the structure of military space between the United States and Russia. They also said that their analysis showed the U.S. as being a clear leader in the military space arena. However, when they looked at subsets of military space, they found that the U.S. lead was asymmetrically offset by others with specific programs. An example cited was the Chinese ASAT program. A listener asked our guests if they were able to evaluate and compute a metric for black technology entering into the various space segments. Both our guests talked in some detail about this, it’s another must hear discussion. Another point made by both guests was that the U.S. was unique among the countries regarding space policy due to our global influence. Most of the other nations are regional in their needs and scope. Rocket Racing was mentioned as an area of future interest in a new class, Recreational Space. Inspiration was also described as a metric. Our third segment started with Earth Observation and global space technology issues. Jay and David told us that the U.S. does not have the lead in Earth Observation, Europe does, mainly because Europe has developed public-private partnerships more than the U.S. Listener Marilyn asked about barriers to entry. Our guests suggested with commercial platforms and products widely available and network sharing, barriers to entry were being reduced. They said the main barrier to entry remained high launch cost, but by partnering with other nations or proportionally participating in a system, space interested participants were finding ways to mitigate the high launch cost problem. Still, lowering launch costs is probably the one item which would facilitate more space development at all levels were their cost effective space access. NewSpace came up and our guests pointed out that there were other countries with a NewSpace focus including the U.A.E, Dubai, and Singapore although their focus was targeted and not broad based as in the United States. Listener Roger asked David and Jay if they found traces of the "giggle factor" regarding space tourism and NewSpace. Our guests said no. Another question was asked about the potential interest in NewSpace by financial markets including those in London and New York. Listen to what our guests had to say about this as well as the timing for possible interest or investment in NewSpace. An Orlando listener asked about the potential of upcoming suborbital flights that also planned to carry out commercial science experiments. Our guests talked about the importance of having multiple income streams and the plausible of this business plan on the part of the suborbital companies. At the end of the program, our guests said a big looming question for NewSpace would be resolving legal and jurisdictional issues that were sure to come up as the industry develops. The final question dealt with zero g zero tax. If you want to send a comment or question to our guests, please do so as follows: David Vaccaro is dvaccaro@futron.com and Jay Gullish is jgullish@futron.com