Guest: Dr. Erick Seedhouse. Topics: China and U.S. space programs and is there a space race? Dr. Erik Seedhouse returned to The Space Show to discuss his new book, "The New Space Race: China vs. the United States." You can purchase this book on the OGLF book page and Amazon will contribute to OGLF/The Space Show. Use this URL: www.amazon.com/dp/144190879X?tag=onegialeafou-20. In our first segment, Dr. Seedhouse summarized China's space policy and discussed space in terms of world leadership, particularly the human spaceflight program which is almost all of the Chinese program. He talked about the importance to China of the One China Policy and how this plays out in space and possibly even with the GAP that may result form the US not being able to fly astronauts to space for years. He mentioned the U.S. Space Doctrine and the concept of controlling battle space. ASAT technology came up, orbital access for the Chinese was discussed and he mentioned an incident where a Chinese satellite came with in 12 miles of the ISS. In our second segment, Jack from Virginia asked five questions regarding cooperation with China, our proposed new policy and the FY 2011 budget, Sino-American space cooperation, the space weapons treaty, and the Chinese use of Russian space technology, Dr. Seedhouse responded to each of these questions so don't miss this discussion. We also talked about the retirement of the Space Shuttle and money being proposed to terminate Constellation which he said could be used to help keep shuttle flying. Issues about the Soyuz also came up and were addressed. In the third segment, Erik had more to say about the One China Policy and its possible impact on Taiwan as well as the GAP. ITAR was brought up as were back channel discussions and negotiations that he was aware of between the U.S. and China. He introduced us to the Schriever war games and applied them to our space policy discussion. Make sure you listen to this discussion. In questions about treaties, he said they were very hard to enforce or police. He also responded to another question by listener Jack about Russian technology for China and said that China no longer had to rely on it, they were passed that point in their space research and development work. Toward the end of this segment, Dr. Seedhouse had more to say about the proposed policy, flexible path and how best to stabilize US space policy. He then talked about the need for policy to be destination driven. Toward the end of the program, he talked about the commercial launchers, Atlas, Delta, and the Falcon 9 under development. While he supports commercial space development, he also believes that we should be pursuing the government program so listen to his policy suggestions. I strongly recommend his book as it is hard hitting and factual regarding China and U.S. space policy. If you have a question or comment for Dr. Erik Seedhouse, you can email him at DrErikSeedhouse@hotmail.com
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