Guests: David Vaccaro, Jacob Gullish. Topics: space competitiveness, commercial space, space policy, Futron. Today's Space Show was Part One of a two part series examining the 2009 Futron Space Competitive Index. You can download the 12 page Executive Summary by visiting www.futron.com or by sending me an email requesting the .pdf. In our first segment, our two guests explained the basics of the Futron Competitive Study, what it represents, how it was done and why Futron does this report. Our guests described the qualitative environment of passion and emotion which permeates space so they merged with those attributes the quantitative data analysis to come up with the Space Competitive Index. We talked about trends which you will want to note, along with issues unique to civil, government, and private space. In response to a listener question, GPS was identified as by far the leading space industry with the U.S. is the dominant position of this particular industry. You don't want to miss this discussion. We started the second segment with a discussion of the key issues represented in the Futron analysis and report regarding the high level trends reported in 2009 Space Competitive Index. Our guests discussed these key issues in detail in this segment. We also talked about the need and value of a country offering transparency in their industry data and we looked at what different nations spend on space relative to their overall budgets. The ISS and other international partnerships were mentioned and as we learned, they add extra value to the analysis equations and models for those nations engaged in international cooperative efforts for space development. The issue of guarding against misleading data or disinformation and the lack of transparency was brought up and our guests went to great length to tell us how they worked to prevent bias and guard against bogus information or error. Based on the feedback they receive from countries reported on and participants in the various space programs and industry segments, there is a high confidence level in their screening and filtering efforts. In the final segment, Segment Three, we started out asking Jay and David if India, Japan, and China had the capability of going to the Moon with humans. You will want to hear what both our guests said about this. Hint: You bet! The subjects of spaceports came up as did NewSpace and space entrepreneurism in countries examined by this report. Toward the end of the show, specific questions were asked about the space programs of Israel, Iran, and N. Korea. If you want to send a comment or question to our guests, please do so as follows: David Vaccaro is dvaccaro@futron.com. Jay Gullish is jgullish@futron.com
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The Space Show
