GuestSearch: Guest: Open Lines with Dr. David Livingston. Topics: The Economist articles, space policy, shuttle retirement. 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. This was an Open Lines program. I spent the first half hour going through a list of possible and suggested discussion topics. Two topics that seemed to interest listeners the most were the series of articles in the July 2-8, 2011 Economist magazine with the cover story saying it was the end of the space age. Also, the upcoming shuttle retirement and last flight with Atlantis. After my putting out the suggested topics, the first call was from Willis Shirk regarding nuclear propulsion and his article that was recently published on the history of NERVA. Willis might post his article on the blog. Next, we heard from Farnaz who told us about the upcoming The 10th Annual Space Generation Congress in Cape Town, South Africa. For more information, visit http://spacegeneration.org/index.php/activities/sgc-2011-cape-town. Next up was our friend Charles who wanted to talk about the articles in The Economist. There are three separate space articles in this issue plus a related DOD article. Charles thought the articles and the cover story title to be applicable to what is going on in civil space today. In our short discussion, we went over the basics that The Economist reported on as well as their conclusions & I highlighted my differences with the article and Charles. After Charles called in, several others called in about The Economist articles so we discussed this subject for most of the program. Callers both supported the conclusions reached by The Economist and opposed them. If you have not yet read these three articles, I urge you to do so. Mark called in with a Huntsville update, comments on Senator Shelby & his new approach to SLS, The Economist, and more. Mark continued commenting during the program to other caller comments & I read his emails on air. As we started the second segment of this 135 minute program, Bonny Lee Michaelson called to tell us about shuttle and the Dial A Shuttle program of the past. This was fascinating. I'm sure all of you will find this discussion to be very interesting, possibly even new for you as it was for me to learn about this program and its accomplishments. Don't miss it! John called in re heavy lift and the Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle/Orion as well as NASA's track record on program cancellations. This led us both to conclude that if SLS is started, its more likely than not that Congress will eventually cancel the program. Tim from Huntsville sent us an article from an environmental site suggesting how bad it might be to mine the Moon, develop HE 3 & fusion which they said was right around the corner. The article was heavy in the Kool Aid category but it did lead to a discussion about the gap between environmental groups & space development. We talked about efforts to bridge the gap & I cited some examples of the extremes coming from environmental groups that I have addressed on other Space Show programs. Trent called in from Australia but his phone line was not that good this time. His main point was that he thought it awesome that 4 CCDEV2 providers, including Boeing & Blue Origin, are meeting their milestones & being successful along with Space X. If you have comments or questions about this program, post them on the blog URL above. If you want to email any of the callers, send it to me & I will forward it to the person you designate.
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