Guest: Open Lines. Topics: Space Show guest audio quality, phone line issues, listener exchanges with guests, California space economy. This was an Open Lines program. The first segment was my monolog about two main issues, guest phone line audio quality and listener behavior with guests. You will hear the comprehensive explanation of phone line audio issues faced by The Space Show with guest phone lines, possible solutions and ideas that while always suggested to me do not work. I then addressed an issue relating to some listeners who attack and character assassinate a guest via email, always behind the back of the guest, then try to engage me in supporting their ideas and theories as being correct while suggesting or even proving the guest was wrong. Yet they won't engage the guest with their own ideas. I provided some recent examples of this, explained the new policy of the show which is to pass on these emails to the guests if the listener won't do it. Note that a major purpose of The Space Show is education and this requires exchanges with guests. I also talked about being polite, considerate and to drop the attitude and rudeness when communicating with the guest. Tell me what you think about this problem which seems to be happening more and more. Why is it so hard for a listener to engage the guest using courtesy and exchange valid ideas and concepts? Why does the listener insist on bombarding me with his/her theories and ideas when in reality only the guest has the knowlege and ability to respond to these challenges. As I pointed out, all guests are willing to accept emails from listeners after the show ends. Some want me to filter the emails, others accept them directly from the listener. So please, engage the guest with your ideas and challenges and copy me on the notes or have me forward your thoughts to the guest. Just do it without attacking the guest. We also talked about suborbital space tourism, spaceports, and the California space economy. I described my experiences lobbying the California legislature with the California Space Authority (CSA) Space Day last week in Sacramento. One thing I forgot to mention on air was that lobbying the California legislature was American democracy at its best. Lots of citizen groups were there on the day I was there, all wanting to talk to the Member for their particular program or special interest. For example, I saw groups from the AARP, Green California, numerous educational groups, health related groups, etc. All get 20-30 minutes with a legislative assistant to articulate their interest and/or cause. This happens every day the legislature is in session and I understand its even more intense on the federal side with Congress. No matter what we say about our government and its leaders, we the people do have the right and we are petitioning our government through its elected representatives. This is very impressive when seeing it in action, when seeing the amount of people involved and the wide variety of issues being fought for by Californians and our citizens in general. It was a sobering and very impressive experience. As you will hear, overall it was a very positive experience for me and others and I strongly recommend all of you engage in similar activities. We also talked about the state of education in California and elsewhere, high school and higher. We learned that Forbes Magazine said Virginia was the best place to do business and listener Jack shared with us how this was a plus for the Mid-Atlantic Spaceport. By the way, the Mid-Atlantic Spaceport is my favorite for the commercial spaceports with the most probability of commercial success. Here why I said this. and let me know what you think of my analysis. We also talked about other spaceports, their ability to do orbital flights versus only up and down suborbital flights. A listener asked me why I am skeptical about the potential commercial success of Spaceport America in New Mexico. I explained that while I am optimistic and more than hopeful that this spaceport becomes a commercial success, I went through the the analysis methodology I use to look at factors that might influence the commercial outlook for the New Mexico spaceport as well as other spaceports. Tell me what you think of the methodology. The issue of North Korean missiles and weapons in space came up. I said that I did not think their missiles or those from any other nation were a space problem. Instead, they were a very serious problem that used space but do not represent weapons in space. One listener pointed out that since they were suborbital, they did not fit the definition of a space weapon. We also talked about the recent North Korean nuclear bomb test and the ongoing Iranian nuclear program. My comments were that we should all hope, pray or whatever we do in that those in charge with national security and keeping the peace and protecting us around the world actually know what they are doing and are doing a good job. Clearly dealing with N. Korean or Iranian nuclear weapons is beyond the scope of The Space Show so we have to trust in our government and systems. Many other topics came up one of which was an outline of five small funding projects The Space Show/One Giant Leap Foundation is working on funding through grants and gifts. Let me know your thoughts on the programs and if you have suggestions for funding them. You will hear lots of discussion topics on this Open Lines program as well. All topics discussed during this Open Lines show are fair game for your comments, questions, disagreements, and support. Please send your emails to me at drspace@thespaceshow.com.