Marshall Spaceflight Center

Guest: Leonard Johnson. Topics: Team America Rocketry, NASA, high powered rocketry, STEM education. Our guest for this Space Show program was Lt. Leonard Johnson who, as an Illinois fire-fighter and paramedic, responded to the 9/11 Ground Zero and Katrina tragedies. We started off segment 1 by asking Len for his thoughts, perceptions, and experiences in working at Ground Zero and then in helping out with the Katrina tragedy. I believe you will find the sharing of his experiences and perceptions with us to be instructive, valuable, moving, and important.

Guest: Rand Simberg: Topics: Evoloterra, Low cost space access, propellant depots, NASA, commercial space, heavy lift rockets. Rand Simberg returned to The Space Show to discuss both the 40th anniversary of Apollo and his Evoloterra ceremony as well as his article in The New Atlantis, "A Space Program for the Rest of Us" You can read his article at www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/a-space-program-for-the-rest-of-us.

Guest: Homer Hickam was the guest for this special Space Show program. Mr. Hickam, author of "Rocket Boys," which was made into the acclaimed movie "October Sky," spoke with us about many topics and all of us had lots of fun while learning from someone who is, in my opinion, a true American hero. We started the discussion by asking him about his discovering two Tyrannosaurs in Montana. This took us directly to his early rocket launching days in Montana and putting Barbie dolls into space or near space. You have to hear this discussion to believe it.

Guest: Dr. Michael Neufeld was the guest for this Easter Sunday Space Show program. Dr. Neufeld is the chair of the Space History Division of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum and author of the biography, "Von Braun: Dreamer of Space/Engineer of War." As today's program is on what would have been the 96th birthday of Von Braun, having a discussion on his life was most appropriate. We discussed Von Braun's Nazi past and Dr.Neufeld was clearing up myths and rumors, providing us with factual history regarding Von Braun.

The Marshall Spaceflight Center took Charles Schollenberge and I on a tour of some of their facilities and I recorded each part of the tour. Sometimes the audio is challenging because of background equipment noise and the soft voice or proximity of the speaker. However, you should have no real problems hearing what was being explained to us. While Charles and I experienced this in person, I hope you can see using your mind's eye what we saw, or at least have a good visual idea of what was being shown to us. We started out in the X-Ray Calibration Lab which supports Chandra.

Irene Willhite, Curator/Archivist for the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL, was the guest for this Space Show program. We started the discussion with an overview of the US Space and Rocket Center, Marshall Spaceflight Center, and army locations nearby in Huntsville. From there, we started discussing the cataloging and archiving of the papers and historical documents pertaining to Wernher Von Braun.