Guest: Todd Neff. Topics: Ball Aerospace, Deep Space 1, additional Discovery Class Missions. Please note that you are invited to comment, ask questions, and discuss the Space Show program/guest(s) on the Space Show blog, http://thespaceshow.wordpress.com. Comments, questions, and any discussion must be relevant and applicable to Space Show programming. We welcomed Todd Neff to the program to discuss his new book, "From Jars To The Stars: How Ball Came to Build a Comet-Hunting Machine." This book will be on the One Giant Leap Foundation (OGLF) Amazon partners page and if you buy it using the OGLF link, Amazon makes a contribution to OGLF/The Space Show. Please see www.onegiantleapfoundation.org/books. We began our program by remember the 25th anniversary of the Challenger accident. We then moved to topic of the day, the Deep Impact Mission which was the subject of the new book written by our guest. Mr. Neff told us why he wanted to investigate and report on this story with Ball Aerospace and as you will hear, Todd provided us with an interesting and seldom discussed history of not only Deep Impact, but solar pointing and more. For those of you who like space history, you will really appreciate this discussion. Todd starts around 1948 and takes us up to Deep Impact which was launched in 2005. During our second segment, Todd continued with the Ball Aerospace history and he focused on the Discovery Class Missions. He then explained why comets were such interesting targets and how Ball determined that doing Discovery Class Missions was the "sweet spot" for the company. Toward the end of this segment, we talked about the success of Deep Impact and how it was measured for the benefit of Ball Aerospace. In the third segment, we talked about offshoots of the various programs that Ball was involved in and Todd mentioned Digital Globe and Kepler along with other Discovery Class Missions. During the program listeners asked questions about the history we were discussing. Near the end of the program, Todd was asked for the method used to actually hit Temple 1. Also near the end of the program, we talked about mission creep, cost overruns, and the NASA culture. If you have comments or questions for Todd Neff, please post them on the blog URL above. You can also email Todd Neff at todd@toddneff.com.
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The Space Show
