Broadcast 1407 (Special Edition)

Guests: Jack McCreary; Paul Lithgow; Dr. Billy Reed. Topics: Reagan Test Center, Comtech Aero Astro projects, Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), commercial space. This program consists of three back to back interviews from the SmallSat Conference in Logan, Utah for August 2010. The three interviews play with about ten seconds or so between each program. You will hear some background noise though we did our best to hide out in a far corner of the cafeteria for the interviews. Still, students and conference goers are loud, especially when using their cell phones. Our first interview was with Jack regarding the Reagan Test Center at Kwajalein. It focused on the new control center opening up in Huntsville which will control all launch activities through this new, modern, fiber optics center. Jack described the center, the technology, and what it all means during this interview. Our second segment was with Paul Lithgow of Comtech AeroAstro. Paul was with us for the first time at last year's SmallSat and he is back with new projects his company is undertaking, new products, more opportunities for students and interns, and a surprise segment about the need to teach business to aerospace engineers for balanced work and reality checks. You do not want to miss what Paul had to say about this when I brought it up near the end of the interview. Our third and final segment features the return of Dr. Billy Reed to the program. Dr. Reed runs the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) which is the commercial part of the federal launch facility at Wallops. Billy updated us on commercial activities at MARS, we went through their launch manifest, we talked about using MARS for suborbital and even human spaceflight. We also talked about getting hardware to MARS by air, boat, rail, and truck as having access to good, low cost transportation is crucial to the success of any spaceport. As you will hear, there are limited liability laws in place for MARS users, there is an Enterprise Zone and a Foreign Trade Zone. If you have questions for either of our three guests, you can email them direct as they each provided their email addresses during their segment or you can email me at drspace@thespaceshow.com and I will send it to the person of your choice.