Guest: Robert (Bob) Zimmerman. Topics: NASA FY 11 and newly released FY 12 budgets. 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. Also check out Bob's blog at http://behindtheblack.com. You can also download the NASA FY 12 budget overview at www.nasa.gov/budget. This was a two hour program with a break after the first hour. In addition, its the first of a series of programs The Space Show will present dealing with the NASA FY 12 budget and space policy. For 2010, The Space Show presented more than 120 hours of programming devoted to discussion of all sides and perspectives of the Administration's proposed space policy, the debate and FY 11 budget issues. For 2011, we will also be presenting all sides and perspectives regarding space policy issues and the FY 12 NASA budget. Thus, this is the first of a long and comprehensive set of Space Show programs that will undertake to evaluate and understand our emerging space policy and the budget that goes with it. In today's first segment, Bob provided us with a quick overview of the FY 12 budget which had only been released a few hours earlier in the day. We talked some about the CR for FY 11 that will be debated this week, including the restrictive Chinese language that was inserted into this bill. During this segment, we took a call from Dr. Charles Lurio who publishes the well known and respected Lurio Report (www.thelurioreport.com). Charles and Bob together discussed many of the details, problems, and issues with the segment of the new NASA budget designated for commercial space and impacting the NewSpace segment of the space industry. Don't miss this exchange of ideas and information. Later in the first segment, Jack Kennedy sent in an email that focused on budget impact for space telescopes. Here, we talked about the Kepler Space Telescope and it easily being the bright star in the astrophysics part of the NASA, but Bob also talked about the problems facing the astrophysics part of the NASA budget due to the James Webb cost overruns and the approximate $4 billion going into the revised heavy lift/Constellation program which Bob does not support as you will hear him say throughout our discussion. During our second segment, a listener asked about a recent news article suggesting $190 billion for corporate sponsorship for a Mars human mission. Bob talked about and returning humans to the Moon, especially via the private sector. Other topics discussed in this segment included more on budget issues, suborbital development and the NASA CRuSR program, popular support for space in Texas and the rest of the country, a proposed JPL/Indian lunar retrieval mission, and issues surrounding commercial markets, their existence, and how they might drive commercial space development regardless of our civil/NASA space policy. We concluded the show with an update from Bob on the situation facing certain species of bats with the fungus that is destroying many of them. Bob did his usual white nose syndrome bat update for us as he follows this situation very closely. If you have questions or comments for Bob Zimmerman, please post them on both The Space Show blog URL above and on Bob's behindtheblack.com site. You can also email Bob at zimmerman at nasw dot org.
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The Space Show
