Guest: Open Lines with Dr. David Livingston. Topics: Wide ranging topics including the Soyuz, ISS, specific film reviews, AIAA & 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. Our two hour OL program was divided into 3 segments but the topics crossed segments so this summary will reflect discussion topics but not specific segment details. Our first caller was Daniel calling from a hospital in NYC. As a Columbia student, he was interested in the AIAA, Cessna, & Raytheon sponsored Student Design/Build/Fly competition. To learn more about this program, visit www.aiaadbf.org. Daniel next talked about the possibility of the need to vacate the ISS as a result of the Soyuz accident a short time ago. Daniel had much to say about this subject, as did most every caller on the OL program this evening. After Daniel, we continued talking about the ISS and rocket safety. As you will hear, we provided statistics for flying AF combat missions as compared to riding on a rocket. According to recent Space Show interviews, AF combat missions are 1/20,000 in terms of risk while the rocket ride is around 1/70 - 1/80 for an accident. We took calls from Kelly who was critical of my positive support for Space X. Kelly also provided stats for how long the ISS could remain relatively trouble free without a crew. John Hunt called from Atlanta to talk about the Orion and SLS. We also talked about Blue Origin and their recent launch failure, their NOTAM, and Blue Origin patents. There was a discussion per a recent article in Pajamas Media by Rand Simberg about Dragon being used in an emergency to get crew to the ISS. The callers thought that was unlikely and that should a dire emergency exist, NASA & Russia would be more likely to fly the Soyuz, hoping for the best, rather than the Dragon. Kelly also pointed out that autonomous docking was not planned for Dragon. A few callers talked about the new sci-fi movie Apollo 18 and the reviews were mixed. This brought up a discussion of other recent movies that I recommended, Cowboys & Aliens as well as Captain America. Tim called in from Huntsville re the ISS issue, possibly higher launch prices than predicted for the Falcon 9, & RLVs & doing something other than destroying the vehicle if it has a problem. He suggested launching from the ocean on a drilling platform or someplace where debris fields and other issues were not as critical as launching from a land spaceport. He also talked about the Chinese SSP program as well. Our last caller was Sean Casey to tell us about an upcoming event in Silicon Valley at the Stanford Business School on Tuesday, Sept. 20. I will be there, check it out at www.vlab.org/article.html?aid=423. The event is titled The New Space Race Is On! Companies are launching in 10, 9, 8, 7.... Post your comments & questions on the blog URL. Send emails for callers to me & I will forward them.
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