CEV

Guest: Dr. Madhu Thangavelu. Key Topics: Altair, Cislunar system, CEV, NASA, teleoperations, time delay, ISRU, education, medical problems. Dr. Madhu Thangavelu returned to The Space Show to discuss the creative problem-solving evidenced by his recent December 2008 USC class, "Return to the Moon: Looking Glass 204 Team Project." Dr. Thangavelu explained the focus of the class and then went through some of the student team solutions to problems we face in returning to the Moon.

Shubber Ali was the guest on this special program and we thank Shubber for being with us live at the unheard of time of 2:30-4:30AM in Sydney, Australia! During the first part of this program, Shubber talked about space tragic and why he does not like the term "space industry." We then looked at recent developments in the space world since his last appearance on the show and asked for his analysis. This included CEV, COTS, Lockheed, Kistler, Atlas 5, Bigelow, space tourism and Ms. Ansari on the space station, the VSE and more.

Robert Zimmerman returned as guest for this Space Show program. In this program, Robert is sure to delight and offend listeners given his strong statements and passions about issues discussed. Some of these issues concern the NASA science programming, JPL, politics, and more. In addition, he provided us with insights on the Russian space program, the CEV and COTS programs and much more.

Tim Pickens returned to The Space Show to discuss updates with Orion Propulsion, space developments, commercial space business basics, and much more. In addition to understanding the success behind Tim and Orion, we talked about COTS, CEV, budgets, Congress, etc. Tim discussed in some detail his role with Space Ship 1 and its development. We talked about hybrid engines as well as methane engines and getting commercial customers, financing, investment and the overall commercial space market as it exists today in 2006.

Jim McDade returned to The Space Show to provide us with space news updates and interesting perspective on the top space news stories of the day. We began the discussion with an extensive review of the Space Shuttle and how Jim sees the future for the return to flight program. He believes that Shuttle will need to fly for several more years as he thinks it will have to remain in service until a CEV is available or at least within 18 months of being ready for flight.