Broadcast 621 (Special Edition)

Paul Eckert, Robert Dickman and Carl Walz were the guests for this special program to discuss making the VSE a long-term reality as well as the coming AIAA Dec. 4-6 2nd Space Exploration Conference which will be held in Houston. We started the panel discussion with Bob Dickman explaining why the AIAA has this conference and its role in helping to establish the VSE as a long-term reality for the nation. Paul Eckert of Boeing was next and he went through the conference agenda with us, focusing on the commercial panel and commercial opportunities stemming from the VSE. Carl Walz of NASA spoke with us about public and private partnerships, the NASA Authorization ACT and having a sustained human presence on the moon. The panel fielded questions from listeners including addressing outreach to the general public, ITAR issues, the value of the VSE to a broad based America, private sector involvement including conference panel presentations by Elon Musk and George French re COTS and more. We also discussed the entrepreneurial involvement in the space program and in particular this conference and the VSE. This is a most interesting discussion and I urge those of you that can to attend the coming Houston conference put on by AIAA, sponsored by Boeing and others. You can find out more about the conference and you can register at the AIAA website, http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=230&lumeetingid=1487. If you have follow up questions or comments for the guests, please send them to me at drspace@thespaceshow.com and I will see to it that your question/comment goes to the right person.