COTS

Guest: Taylor Dinerman. Topics: New NASA Administrator, DOD space policy, space weaponization, ITAR, Space Pearl Harbor, Obama space policy challenges, COTS, RLV. Taylor Dinerman returned to The Space Show to discuss DOD/Military space policy for 2009 and beyond. However, we started off by announcing the Obama choice for NASA Administrator, Retired AF Major General Scott Gration. Taylor spent most of the first segment discussing General Gration and what this might mean for NASA and various NASA programs including COTS.

Guest: Rand Simberg was the guest for today's Space Show program. Our discussion started by mentioning that Richardson had withdrawn his name from consideration for Secretary of Commerce in the Obama administration. We talked about this for a few minutes as there were some possible space ramifications to his appointment and now with his withdrawal. We then moved on to the issue of comparing COTS and Shuttle as was done on the RocketsandSuch blog and copied over to the Space Cynics site per our discussion last week.

Guest: Dr. Marshall Kaplan was our guest for today's show. We started our discussion with an introduction to his teaching, training, and education company, Launchspace (Please see http//www.launchspace.com/ ). We talked about his upcoming classes, Space Principles and Space Vehicle Mechanisms, plus other courses offered. Dr. Kaplan told us about the market for these courses, who teaches them, and many of the topics taught. In addition to talking about Launchspace, we talked about U.S. space policy, its importance, the risks it faces, and more.

Guests: Diane Murphy, VP of Marketing and Communications, and Max Vozoff, Senior Mission Manager, both for SpaceX, were the guests for the first segment of this AIAA Space 2008 program in San Diego, CA. We start this first segment talking with Diane about the new developments with SpaceX and her joining the company as VP of Marketing and Communications. We then turned our focus to Max to talk with us about Falcon 1, Falcon 9, Dragon, and COTS. Max answered many technical questions and provided us with much information.

Guests: Dr. Pat Patterson, Jim Marshall, Dr. John Jurist, Dr. Billie Reed, Chris McCormick, Christian Lenz. This program consists of three sets of interviews from the August 2008 SmallSat Conference located on the campus of Utah State University in Logan, Utah. Our first discussion includes Dr. Pat Patterson of Utah State University and Jim Marshall, the Director of Business Development for the Space Dynamics Lab (SDL), plus others from the SDL who explain their projects as well as talk about being a student, intern, or PI in the program.

Guests: Brian Mosdell, followed by Bill Dowdell and Jon Cowart. Brian Mosdell is the Director of Florida Launch Operations for SpaceX. We started this discussion with a brief overview and history of SpaceX, its objectives, launch vehicles, and their launch services/market that they will likely provide. We also talked about the upcoming Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 launches scheduled for this year. In response to my question having visited Space X in California, Mr.

Guest: Rand Simberg, who blogs at Transterrestrial Musings (www.transterrestrial.com/), was the guest on the show. Rand recently wrote an article about the possible space policies from each of the three leading American presidential candidates and we wanted him to talk about his views on this subject right here on The Space Show. This was a comprehensive discussion on space policy, not just the possible policy of each of our presidential candidates, and you will find this information most valuable.

Ken Davidian returned to The Space Show as the NASA EMSD (Exploration Systems Mission Directorate) Commercial Development Policy Lead. You can follow part of Ken's discussion with the following URLs. The first is part of his presentation from the recent Space Exploration Conference and can be found at: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/214648main_1015-Davidian%20.pdf.

Alan Boyle, science editor and author of the Cosmic Log blog, returned as a guest for this Space Show program. Our discussion with Alan covered many topics including space journalism ethics and controls, COTS, the VSE and returning to the Moon, and competition for the Moon with other ideas for visiting an asteroid or Mars. We also discussed fusion energy, the X Prize Cup, air shows, Bigelow Aerospace, inflatable structures and NASA’s plans for them, the ISS and onboard ISS science experiments, Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos, and much more.

Elon Musk was the guest for this special Space Show program. Mr. Musk was with us for half an hour, the balance of this hour long program was open lines. During Elon's visit with us, he brought us up to date with Falcon 1 with an expected launch date for first quarter 2008. We also talked about the challenges of rocket building, we compared Space X to the complexity of Pay Pal and Elon talked to us about the Russian Roulette characteristic so strongly present with rocket building.