Guest: David Portree. Topics: Apollo history outreach, Native American astronomy & space education, USGS mapping, and more. 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 David Portree to the program to discuss his Beyond Apollo blog and work at the Flagstaff, AZ USGS Regional Planetary Information Facility Astrogeology Science Center. For more information about our guest and his work, visit, http://beyondapollo.blogspot.com and http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/About/People/DavidPortree. Note that Mr. Portree said the Astrogeology Science Center would have a new website effective Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2011 with new videos and lots of educational materials, as well as an Excel spreadsheet of maps and data for easy access. Our guest has suggested using Google to search for the center as the URL may change. In addition, our guest has a Beyond Apollo Facebook page, www.facebook.com/pages/Beyond-Apollo-space-history-blog/147382275296462…. We started our discussion with a focus on his Beyond Apollo blog and the importance of knowing history. Among the subjects David discussed with us was his look at failure modes, specifically what might have happened if Armstrong had needed to abort the lunar landing at the last minute. He also reminded us that Apollo did not have a blank check nor did it enjoy 100% support of the population or Congress. Anthony in Pool, England asked a series of questions about time lines, fact from fiction and teaching history. This prompted my general questions to the guest about teaching history based on an agenda or ideology rather than fact. Our guest had interesting comments on this subject. As our segment ended, we moved on to astrogeology and using rovers for exploration rather than humans. A potential point of comparison was brought up regarding the Lewis and Clark Expedition and what it would have been like using rovers. In our second segment, Marshall called in about robotic exploration, the Lewis and Clark comparison, and we had email questions, all suggesting that robotic exploration enhances human exploration. Don't miss this discussion. Our next topic was that of Dark Skies and light pollution. We then moved on to space educational outreach with the Navajo and Hopi reservations. Our final two general discussion topics were the astrogeology division of the USGS and science fiction literature, especially from the UK. We talked about GPS mapping and our guest told us about the Graphic Information System technology (GIS) used by USGS in map making. Please post your comments and questions for our guest on The Space Show blog URL above. You can contact our guest through his blog/website.
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