Guest: Open Lines. Topics: Augustine Commission, human spaceflight, safety, NASA and the large aerospace industry as compared to the entrepreneurial developing industry, and human suborbital flight. This 2 hour 24 minute Open Lines program addresses three central themes: human spaceflight safety and program development, Augustine and space policy, and how best to start developing an alternative space industry by following the existing path including suborbital space tourism or doing something entirely different such as launching many hundreds of small satellite payloads to jump start the industry. The program began with my making a series of announcements including an upcoming joint program with AIAA doing an in-depth analysis of the Augustine report, a suggestion to listeners to read a public email and testimony before Congress on Augustine by Dr. Mike Griffin, and an essay on our space program by Dr. Paul Spudis. All of these items can be found at http://www.spaceref.com. I also reported on several programs at AIAA Space 2009 in Pasadena, including the opening discussion where the issue of new launch companies being able to fly NASA astronauts was discussed. Don't miss this report. Later in the program, I talked about other presentations at Space 2009 including an informed consent and limited liability presentation on the realities of large companies working with smaller companies and a financial assessment of the suborbital space tourism industry. I hope to be able to bring both of these AIAA speakers to The Space Show. We had several callers talk about the small, incremental approach to space development as articulated by Charles Pooley. Several of the callers challenged some of Charles's thinking such as Kelly, Dave, and Andrew who also sent us a photo of his home designed and made super garage tool shop. If you want to see that photo, send me an email and I will send it to you with Andrew's permission. Others participated through email and chat from Canada and across the U.S. including Montana. Caller Dave suggested we adopt the term “human suborbital” rather than suborbital tourism and this brought us to talking about existing suborbital sounding rockets, the market for such rockets, the existing and potential flight rate, and of course the existing as well as future market to drive human suborbital flights. Despite this being a longer than usual program, it has very interesting and passionate participation on the general themes mentioned above. Its an Open Lines program you do not want to miss. This is a discussion you do not want to miss. If you have questions or comments for any of the callers or participants in this program, please send your note to me on their behalf at drspace@thespaceshow.com and I will forward it to them.
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The Space Show
