Guest: Dr. Alan Stern; Open Lines. Topics: The upcoming Next-Generation Suborbital Research Conference starting Feb. 28, 2011 in Orlando for the first hour, then Open Lines for the last 45 minutes. 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. During the first hour of the program, Dr. Alan Stern was with us to discuss the upcoming Next-Generation Suborbital-Researchers Conference 2011 (NSRC 2011) which will be held at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Feb. 28-March 2, 2011. Advanced registration ends Friday, Feb. 18, 2011 so if you are interested in attending, make sure you do the advanced registration. Student registrations are also available. Please visit their website http://nsrc.swri.org. You can check out the conference program by visiting www.swri.org/9what/events/confer/nsrc/2011/program.htm. Not only did Dr. Stern provide us with the conference logistics including advance and student registration information, but we discussed the highlights of the program agenda. We mentioned the three special Space Show programs that we will do with people in attendance at the conference. For early details and times for these special programs, please see the coming attractions section of The Space Show website newsletter. Later in the segment, Dr. Stern fielded several questions about the emerging suborbital markets, using next-generation vehicles for research as opposed to the NASA sounding rockets, and the NASA CRuSR program was described in some detail. We asked Dr. Stern about overall NASA support for both next-generation suborbital flights and commercial space. We learned that foreign payloads were welcome on the domestic flights and that we were getting closer to payloads being ready to fly when the vehicles are ready to fly. Toward the end of the first segment, Terry asked Alan about the New Horizons mission as Alan is the PI for this important planetary mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Alan had much to say about the mission, its discoveries so far, and its current location and mission progress. You don't want to miss this New Horizons update. At the end of Alan's segment, I asked him if the NSRC was a NewSpace conference. As we learned, NewSpace is definitely a segment of this conference the suborbital subject but the conference is broader than just NewSpace. Again, if you are considering or planning to attend, do the advanced reservation as we discussed in the first few minutes of the program. As we started our short Open Lines segment, I began the discuss by restating that a requirement to post on Space Show blogs is civility. Please note these simple rules for posting on our blogs. After my civility discussion, Dave Huntsman called to talk more about the amazing achievements of Dr. Stern, especially in putting together the Suborbital Research Conference in the first place. Dave raised some important points for consideration and he was right on, Dr. Stern deserves and has earned an amazing amount of credit and applause for his work in this field. The last caller was John Hunt from Atlanta who wanted to talk about the NASA FY 12 budget and why NASA can't do things, especially rocket building, much easier, simpler and for less money. This was about a 25 minute discussion with email comments from listeners addressing what John was talking about. If you have questions or comments regarding the upcoming conference, use the contacts listed at the bottom of the NSRC 2011 homepage. Comments or questions for Dr. Stern or the two Open Lines callers should be posted on the blog and forwarded to me so I can pass them on to the designated recipient. Please use drspace@thespaceshow.com. Do post all comments on The Space Show blog.
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