Guest: Dr. Asif Siddiqi. Topics: Early space history through current times plus a historical perspective on commercial space & more. Please direct all comments and questions regarding Space Show programs/guest(s) to the Space Show blog, http://thespaceshow.wordpress.com. Comments and questions should be relevant to the specific Space Show program. Written Transcripts of Space Show programs are a violation of our copyright and are not permitted without prior written consent, even if for your own use. We do not permit the commercial use of Space Show programs or any part thereof, nor do we permit editing, YouTube clips, or clips placed on other private channels & websites. Space Show programs can be quoted, but the quote must be cited or referenced using the proper citation format. Contact The Space Show for further information. In addition, please remember that your Amazon purchases can help support The Space Show/OGLF. See www.onegiantleapfoundation.org/amazon.htm. For those listening to archives using live365.com and rating the programs, please email me as to why you assign a specific rating to the show. This will help me bring better programming to the audience. We welcomed Dr. Asif Siddiqi to the show. During the first segment of our 1 hour 53 minute program, Dr. Siddiqi started out with my question about what was going on with space in 1946, the year I was born. He talked about the early days of space programs from the war, the Soviet Union and the US. We soon jumped forward to 1969, NASA, Apollo, the Moon, and how many of us from that era thought we were "entitled" to move forward in space to Mars and more. Our guest had much to say about this space entitlement culture, expectations, and the realities of the time. We talked about making giant leaps forward rather than a step by step evolving process of moving forward. Listeners asked him who got the better deal after WW2 with the German rocket scientists, the Soviet Union or the US? This opened the door to an extensive discussion about Dr. Wernher von Braun. Asif talked about robotic exploration and the excellent work other space nations and agencies were doing in this field. John in Ft. Worth called in talked about the impact of the failures of the Soviet Moon Rocket, the N-1. Our guest and John also talked about the impact of not having competition in the Moon program and how that may have negatively influenced our space program going forward. Dwayne called and we talked about many topics including the recently concluded Pioneering Space National Summit held in Washington, DC this past week to Mars One, the German rocket scientists after WW2, Arthur Rudolph and Karel Bossart of Atlas rocket fame. In our second segment, John in Florida called to talk about the conspiracy theory that says the Germans purposely slowed progress on rockets. This was refuted for other reasons that caused some delays in our program and Russian launching Sputnik before we launched our first satellite. Next, we turned our attention to the Indian space program which is ambitious but Asif suggested that for now it may be exceeding its capabilities. Our guest noted they were starting a human spaceflight program and that India was concerned with China and possibly competing with them in space. The Indian military space program was mentioned as well. Marshall called and talked about Elon and SpaceX. Asif had some important things to say about SpaceX, commercial space and government programs. As we were approaching the end of our program, I asked him what he thought the space history would reflect if written in 2025 for the past decade, the time from now to 2025. Dr. Siddiqi said it was hard to look forward but he thought some form of Orion would be flying, was not sure about SLS given the proposed low flight rate and suggested ARM won't happen. He mentioned many other possibilities for this theoretical ten year time period . Dwayne called back to comment on Asif's earlier comments about corporate space programs and policies. Asif mentioned books and subjects that he liked to review for historical purposes plus he said new historical documents were in such different formats than earlier documents he was not sure how this might influence or impact the work of future historians. As the show ended, I asked him if thought the Moon would be as hard to return to as going to Mars might be for humans. He said no because the barriers for going back to the Moon were low compared to Mars and other destinations. Please post your comments/questions on TSS blog. You can reach Dr. Asif Siddiqi through me.
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