Gen Y

Guest: Thalia Kohls. Topics: space policy, space advocacy, women and space exploration, outreach. We welcomed back Thalia Kohls to the program for her perspectives on the current space policy debate, her thoughts on the different participants in the debate, the space enthusiast community, attracting new space cadets to the space bandwagon and more. Our program was in three segments but it was a long one in that it was more than two hours.

Guests: Mark Hopkins and Tim Bailey. Topics: ISDC 2009, NSS, space solar power, continuing education credits. Mark and Tim were our guests today to discuss the upcoming ISDC 2009 in Champions Gate near Orlando, Florida. ISDC 2009 is scheduled for May 28-31, 2009. We discussed much of the programming for the conference, even some unique programming with an Estes rocket competition, continuing education credit, tours of the Kennedy Space Center and much more. Mark also told about the keynote and main speakers which are a representation of Who's Who in space.

Guest: Thalia "ad.astra" Kohls was our guest for this show to discuss alt.space and NewSpace from an outsider's perspective. Thalia shared with us her views and experiences in communicating with NewSpace participants on blogs and in other venues and you will hear why she is critical of this community. I too have shared many of her experiences and commented on them during the show. We also spoke about engineering, science, and inspiring space projects like humans to Mars. Thalia expressed the view that she was not very optimistic about seeing a return to the Moon in her lifetime.

Guest: Robert (Bob) Scaringe was the guest for this Space Show program to discuss the long-term goals which are needed for the public support of our space policy. Bob has defined the type of both short-term and long-term goals needed to create more grassroots support of our space policy. Referencing several studies from the public, he shows that such grass roots support is currently not there to take the NASA budget to a 1% of the federal budget, which would allow for research and the types of programs and goals that he talks about in his AIAA paper and presentation.

Guest: Andrew Chaikin was the guest for this Space Show program. We talked about his new book, "A Passion for Mars: Intrepid Explorers of the Red Planet," discussing inspiration, the pioneers that have explored Mars, and why exploration is so important for today and our future. We mentioned some of the fabulous pictures in the book including art from Carter Emmart and Chesley Bonestell and images from NASA which were sent to the White House to make the case to go to Mars decades ago.

Guest: William Watson, Executive Director of The Space Frontier Foundation, was the guest for this special program to discuss the important upcoming NewSpace 2008 Conference, July 17-19, 2008 at the Doubletree Hotel, Crystal City, Virginia (please see their website www.space-frontier.org/Events/NewSpace2008/). Will went over the agenda with us as several speakers and events have now been finalized for this event. In addition, Michael Potter called in regarding the "Orphans of Apollo" program scheduled for Friday evening.

Guest: William Watson, Executive Director of the Space Frontier Foundation (SFF), was the guest for this show to discuss the upcoming NewSpace 2008 conference, July 17-19, 2008 in Washington, DC. Will went over the list of speakers and panels, noted that the conference is single track unlike many other conferences, and responded to listener questions about students, NASA participation, side trips to possibly Goddard or Wallops, and much more. We talked about space education and career opportunities, specifically with the International Space University in Strasbourg, France.

Guest: Open Lines. Our regularly scheduled guest for this program had a last minute emergency, so we converted the show to Open Lines. Our originally scheduled guest, Charles Chafer, will be rescheduled as soon as possible. We led off with an Open Lines listener phone call about chat windows and IM on the show. I described to the listener how to use instant messenger chat to communicate with the show and also stated that we do not provide an organized group chat window.

Guests: Karina Drees and Robert Jacobson were the guests for this program to discuss the upcoming Fourth Space Investment Summit (SIS), Wednesday, May 28, 2008 in Washington, DC, the day before ISDC 2008. To complete the separate registration for the SIS, visit www.isdc2008.org and click on "Space Investment Summit" in the menu on the left hand side. Karina and Robert discussed the program, the speakers, and the networking opportunities that will take place at this all day meeting.

Charles Pooley of Microlaunchers (www.microlaunchers.com) returned as the guest for this Space Show program. Charles started the discussion by explaining the Microlaunchers concept, which is to design a spacecraft for a 200 grams or less payload in order to take advantage of new FAA regulations as well as the continuing evolution in the components and technology of small mechanisms. He also cited the example of the Google Lunar X Prize as a potential outlet for the Microlaunchers concept.