John Thompson was the guest for this Friday Space Show program. John recently retired from the U.S. Marines after his fourth Iraq duty tour. We started the program by finding out about John's early interest in space and how he maintained that interest throughout his 20 year Marine career. John took us through many of the unclassified ways that space is used in the military and its importance, especially for Iraq and Afghanistan. As listener questions came in, our discussion with John focused on his thoughts and opinions about our presence in Iraq and what we should or should not be doing given the Iraqi war. I am sure you will find what he has to say of interest because it is not what we commonly hear on our traditional news services. As a result of another listener question, John directed us to his blog, Rocketaholic which can be found at http://rocketaholic.blogspot.com. On his blog one can find links to alternative news sources about Iraq which provide different information and perspectives that you do not find in the mainstream press or coming from members of congress. When I asked him how someone would be capable of deciding which perspective or news source is more likely to be accurate, he told us the standard they used was to independently check nine different news sources, all with different perspectives. By checking at least nine different sources, one could then apply critical thinking skills to accurately understand the complete picture of the situation being researched. Of course for most of us, finding the time to research and check out nine different news sources on so many important issues is unlikely, thus in my opinion, we need to exercise extreme caution in forming our opinions about important events happening around us and with us. Listeners asked John about the recent Chinese ASAT test and what he thought about that as well as what was going on in the military at the time of the test. During the show, John referenced several websites for additional information on the topics we discussed so when you listen to this program, you might have a pencil and paper handy. Also as a result of listener questions, we compared the space interest of the people during Viet Nam against the space interest of our population during the Iraq war. Some interesting comments and perspectives were shared about space and these two wars. We also talked about the level of space interest among average military personnel. If you want to ask John Thompson additional questions or share a comment or two with him, please do so using thompsonje@gmail.com.
Guest
The Space Show
