Guest: Open Lines with Dr. David Livingston. Topics: Space policy, commercial space, the Moon's core, north pole movement, heavy lift and more. 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. This Open Lines program was about 135 minutes divided into two segments. I put forth several discussion topic suggestions including the Discovery Shuttle tank cracks, the Chinese stealth fighter, NASA's research suggesting that the Moon has an Earth-like core, layoffs taking place in the Huntsville area, issues regarding The Space Show Blog, and issues of civility with the space policy debate and stakeholders. Our first caller Sal wanted to talk about the movement of the North Pole and other related matters. Sal was followed by Kelly talking about Orion, commercial crew, and space markets. These discussions filled up the first segment. In the second segment, Marshall called in from Dallas to respond to the comments by Sal regarding the north pole. Marshall brought in the use of GPS for better navigation and suggested GPS was negating the three definitions commonly used for the north pole. Later, Tim in Huntsville called in to respond to my comment about the possible need for a destination with a fixed time table to have an effective civil space policy. Tim was advocating cheap access to space and I asked him how to achieve that goal. We then had a discussion about markets versus costs, the Field of Dreams scenario, and what we both might expect in the way of the space program moving toward low cost space access. Our discussion included our perspectives on emerging markets coming to the forefront as a result of the space policy and commercial space debate we saw take place last year. John from Atlanta then dialed in to talk some more about heavy lift and I kept asking him what it would be used for and we got into a discussion about possible funding cuts, the authorization bill ,and what the appropriators might do. We talked about Orion, Dragon, and what Boeing might do for a commercial crewed capsule. Toward the end of the program, we took another call from Kelly to discuss Congress and its micromanagement of NASA through the budget. Kelly thinks Congress may micromanage the funding going to NASA and I am more of the school that NASA will figure out its priorities within its budget and make the allocations. We also talked some more about the Chinese stealth fighter as well as stealth planes from other countries. Kelly thought that this international push toward stealth fighters might result in the U.S. going for a new fighter aircraft and rebuilding that segment of our industry. Our final call was from Sal to clarify what he was saying about black holes at the center of the Earth. If you have a question or comment, please post it on the blog. If you want to send a note to any of the callers, send it to me and I will forward it to the person of your choice.
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