Guest: Dr. John Lewis. Topics: Asteroid mining, Chinese space program. 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. Transcripts of Space Show programs are not permitted without prior written consent from The Space Show (even if for personal use) & are a violation of the Space Show copyright. We welcomed back Dr. John Lewis to discuss asteroid mining and the Chinese space program. You can order Mining The Sky: Untold Riches From The Asteroids, Comets, And Planets by Dr. Lewis as we talked about his book throughout our program. If you use this Amazon URL, Amazon will make a donation To The Space Show/OGLF: www.amazon.com/Mining-The-Sky-Asteroids-Planets/dp/0201328194/ref=onegi…. Our first segment focused in on asteroid mining, where are today, its future, legal issues to be settled, risks, and more. Near the end of this segment, we also talked about the Law of the Sea Treaty, the common heritage of mankind and revenue sharing ideas, all of which would be detrimental to asteroid mining and expanding space commerce. Earlier Dr. Lewis referenced the Keck study, The Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study which says we can capture a certain size NEO and put it in orbit around the Moon. Dr. Lewis carefully went through the pros and cons of doing this. In the second segment, Tim called in and continued the revenue sharing and common heritage discussion. Dr. Lewis then cited his family history dating back to 1625 coming from the Netherlands with the West Indies Company, then staying here and moving west rather than returning to the Netherlands. He drew parallels with this and potential space settlement and risk taking. Next, we talked about the Chinese space program, their space station, the upcoming taikonaut launch in June and the fact that they are actually "bending metal" in making hardware for going to the Moon, unlike the Indian program which is still largely talk. Near the end of the segment, we talked about lunar mining, the needed future vision and leadership, the need to be a multi-planet species and why. Our discussion with Dr. Lewis is full of important information so I urge you to carefully listen to this program and use the internet to follow up on many of the topics and issues he brings to our attention. For example, you might find it interesting to see the 1926 Plan of Space Exploration as developed by Tsiolkovsky (www.informatics.org/museum/tsiol.html). Please post your comments/questions on The Space Show blog.
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