Guest: Dr. Eligar Sadeh. Topics: Towards a National Space Policy, commercial launch, NewSpace and space industry stakeholders. 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. Visit our guest's website, Astroconsulting International at www.astroconsultinginternational.com. In our first segment, Dr. Sadeh brought up the National Space Strategy Study and said we as a nation really only have a policy for the security space community though there are other components comprising the full space industry community. Many times throughout the show our guest referred to the recently released National Security Space Strategy document. We talked about the fact that not all space industry stakeholders have had a voice in the policy creating effort. We talked about the National Space Strategy Project for example and here he mentioned that while there were commercial space stakeholders participating in the program, NewSpace was not there. Later in the segment, the subject was the Europeans taking the lead with their Draft Code of Conduct for Outer Space Behavior and the fact that some guidelines are needed and now there are no guidelines. I translated guidelines into rules of the road. Dr. Sadeh talked about the need for space governance and what that might look like if in place. We talked about many in the private sector segment and NewSpace not wanting regulation or intrusive rules of the road and that to many, this constitutes a political risk to the development of the emerging commercial space industry. In our second segment, Dr. Sadeh then brought up the subject of low cost space access. He said this was not specifically a goal of most of the commercial space industry and that the actual launch price was only a small part of the overall space access cost, including space operations, and that commercial companies sought out other factors that were more important to them than just the launch cost. Don't miss this discussion. He did mention that two stakeholders, Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) and NewSpace did have low launch costs as a primary goal and he stated that these industry segments needed to be at the policy developing table. Eligar talked about the impact of space tourism in this segment and we discussed the perspective of DOD with unfettered civilian space access. Eligar did a good job in outlining the DOD perspective followed by his own perspective. You might be surprised by what he had to say. In our third segment, a listener asked him to connect the dots to troubles in the Middle East and increasing oil prices to space policy. In his response, he talked quite a bit about national security space but he did say that he doubted an added emphasis on national security space would crowd out the commercial space interests. He then outlined the commercial space segment within DOD space. We also talked about the possibility of creating a new cabinet level organization for space development. Later, a listener asked what he would say were he a keynote speaker at a NewSpace Conference given their dislike for regulation. He said that he would point out that regulations are going to happen, he pointed to AST for being able to create constructive and industry friendly regulations and he suggested that NewSpace and other stakeholders come to the table and play a role, exerting their leadership in policy making. He talked about Newspace needing to be proactive and to be a leader, not to be passive. If you want to offer a comment or ask Dr. Sadeh a question, please post it on the blog URL above. You can also send it to Dr. Sadeh by email either through the Contact page on his website or by using esadeh@gmail.com.
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