Broadcast 641 (Special Edition)

Dr. Marilyn Dudley-Rowley and Thomas Gangale were the guests for this special Space Show program to discuss astrosociology and its importance to long term spaceflight. We discussed the need for a paradigm to get the issues we discussed into the engineering and design of spacecraft and policy making. Our two guests also talked about some of the long duration spaceflight issues that we need to be concerned with and how the issues founded in sociology different from typical human factors approaches to humans in space. We talked about the politics of making these changes, we also talked about NASA and why its so hard to get information from then on these subjects, comparing submarine research to space travel research, funding this type of research and lots more. Midway during the program, we shifted our focus to property rights and a treaty discussion with Tom focusing on both the Outer Space Treaty and the Moon Treaty. You will certainly want to hear his comments and analysis regarding the Moon Treat and commercial development as he does not share the typical commercial space viewpoint on these issues. Its important to consider what he shares with us. We also focused on the commercial space lobby, both big and small, and advocate oriented. This is an important discussion, don't miss it. NASA bashing came up and all of us agreed that its nonproductive to engage in it. You can get lots more information about the subjects discussed today by visiting their website which is www.ops-alaska.com. You will also find several papers to download and review. For further comments and questions, please email Tom at teg@ops-alaska.com and Marilyn at md-r@ops-alaska.com. The subjects we discussed today with this show are important and Marilyn and Tom will be back to discuss the subjects again later in 2007.