Guest: Brian Altmeyer. Topics: We discussed the guest's article posted on the Oct. 6, 2014 issues of The Space Review: "The Strange Contagion Of a Dream." Please direct all comments and questions regarding Space Show programs/guest(s) to the Space Show blog, http://thespaceshow.wordpress.com. Comments and questions should be relevant to the specific Space Show program. Written Transcripts of Space Show programs are a violation of our copyright and are not permitted without prior written consent, even if for your own use. We do not permit the commercial use of Space Show programs or any part thereof, nor do we permit editing, YouTube clips, or clips placed on other private channels & websites. Space Show programs can be quoted, but the quote must be cited or referenced using the proper citation format. Contact The Space Show for further information. In addition, please remember that your Amazon purchases can help support The Space Show/OGLF. See www.onegiantleapfoundation.org/amazon.htm. For those listening to archives using live365.com and rating the programs, please email me as to why you assign a specific rating to the show. This will help me bring better programming to the audience. We welcomed Brian Altmeyer to the program to discuss his Oct. 6, 2014 Space Review article, "The Strange Contagion of a Dream: How Space Visionaries Hijack Governments to Change the World (see www.thespacereview.com/article/2611/1). During the first segment of our 1 hour 27 minute discussion, Mr. Altmeyer introduced us to the background behind writing this article, how he got the idea for it, plus he explained the overall impact space visionaries have had on him and his interest in space development. Our guest took us back in time to the V2 program, Von Braun, and the politics of beating the Soviet Union to the Moon. He made the case that both the Soviet Union's and the US space program fed off each other in the form of competition to not only develop military space resources and ICBMs, plus our civil space programs as well. I then asked our guest if he thought competition with China over their lunar and long range plans would result in a similar push for civil and commercial space. His response was very interesting. Ellen in Portland sent an email suggesting we did not have inspirational or effective leaders today like we had with Von Braun and others. Brian disputed that and made reference to Elon Musk at SpaceX several times during our discussion. Gerald Driggers called to talk about the impact of the International Geophysical Year on our early program. Gerald worked in the early space program & had much to say about the main space personalities of the time along with the early rockets. Our guest was asked about vision and Mars One, again he brought up SpaceX, and then he talked about exoplanets. I asked him about the second to last paragraph in his paper regarding leadership issues and many waiting or expecting a new leader to come on the scene in a future election. Don't miss his comments on this issue. In the second segment, Brian was asked about space budgets serving as a limiting factor & if SpaceX was carrying too much of the burden for our moving forward with space development. Listeners asked him about sustainable space projects inspired & pushed by advocacy. Do the projects continue or eventually die off? Allison sent in a note asking our guest why we even needed HSF. For his response, he cited reasons often provided by Elon Musk when he gets this question or one like it. Near the end of the program, Ron emailed our guest to challenge his visionary outlook by asking if he had considered the reality of applying human medical factors, engineering realities, orbital mechanics, & the known science for rockets & human spaceflight regarding the type of visionary statements made by Brian during the show. This proved to be an interesting discussion as Brian said there were two ways to resolve such issues. One way would be through testing and incremental progress to resolve or mitigate problems and the other way would be to just do the flight and sort of learn on the job, realizing there would be lots of casualties but at least we would be flying and learning. I asked our guest if he was dismissing the known engineering &science including medical science. He said he was not but clearly he preferred the second approach to problem solving. What do you think? Please let us know by posting your comments/questions on TSS blog above. You can reach our guest through me or the email address he provided at the end of his Space Review article.