jump to navigation

James Schier, Sunday, 8-5-12 August 5, 2012

Posted by The Space Show in Uncategorized.
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
3 comments

James Schier, Sunday, 8-5-12

http://archived.thespaceshow.com/shows/1829-BWB-2012-08-05.mp3

Guest: James Schier.  Topics:  U.S. space policy, NASA and human spaceflight goals, hardware, programs, and upcoming test flights, commercial space development. 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 NASA’s James Schier to the program to discuss the future of human spaceflight.  As the NASA Chief Architect and Planning Systems Manager plus a team member of the NASA Commercial Space Team, Mr. Schier spent two hours with us discussing our human spaceflight programs & future in detail.  In our first segment, we started back at the Columbia accident when a year later, it was announced that we needed a “bold new approach” to our HSF program.  Constellation was being developed, we changed administrations and then the Augustine Commission concluded that either NASA needed more funding to accomplish the program in place or it had to be stretched out if the budget remained the same or shrunk.  A flexible path was adopted and funding was left as is.  Our guest said there were three goals of the program including private sector development & participation in our HSF program, operating a fully developed & functioning ISS to 2020 and possibly beyond, & implementing a crew flyby of a NEO around 2025 with a humans to Mars mission around 2030.  This was the flexible path with a multi-program approach.  Our guest talked about the ISS becoming fully operational as an exciting national lab and he received several listener questions asking him why so many have said or written that our space program is at best in a state of confusion & at worst in a state of deterioration as we were not hearing anything like that with our guest.  Don’t miss this important discussion.  When Jim talked with us about SLS, he got similar listener questions that differed from what we were hearing about the program, the commitment to it, and its progress. Again, don’t miss what our guest had to say about the SLS program, its mission, capabilities, & the ongoing planning with the project.
In our second hour, we took a call from John about SLS as well as the program being more a congressional program rather than the President’s program.  SLS was compared to the cancelled Aries V, then we talked about the biggest risk to the program, ongoing congressional support & funding. Jim talked some more about Orion heat shield testing and reentry speeds, plus the upcoming heat shield test flight. Other Orion & SLS test flight programs were reviewed in this segment.  Listener Terry wanted to know if Orion could be flown on the Falcon 9 Heavy if SLS got cancelled.  Dr. Rowe called in to talk about specific cardiac stress issues for the returning astronauts. Mr. Schier then summarized many of the human spaceflight medical challenges facing us as we move out toward a lunar base, NEOs, and Mars. In this discussion, our guest did say that so far they were not seeing any show stoppers for extended long duration human spaceflight.  Near the end of our discussion, we talked about future missions under study, deep space habitat elements & large in-space transportation systems plus faster space travel with nuclear & possibly solar propulsion.  Standardized docking issues were mentioned along with international cooperation, citing the importance of the Russian support after the Columbia accident, highlighting the need for diverse crew space transportation.
Please post your comments/questions on the blog.  You can email Mr. Schier through me & I will forward your note to him.

Walter Cunningham, Tuesday, 6-19-12 June 20, 2012

Posted by The Space Show in Uncategorized.
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
add a comment

Walter Cunningham, Tuesday, 6-19-12

http://archived.thespaceshow.com/shows/1799-BWB-2012-06-19.mp3

Guest:  Walter Cunningham.  Topics:  An inside view of the American space program from Apollo to today.  You are invited to comment, ask questions, & discuss the Space Show program/guest(s) on the Space Show blog, http://thespaceshow.wordpress.com. Comments, questions, & any discussion must be relevant & 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 Walt Cunningham to discuss our space program from Apollo through today’s developing commercial space industry.  For more information, visit his website, www.waltercuningham.com.  You can buy “The All-American Boys: An Insider’s Look At The U.S. Space Program” from Amazon & they will make a contribution to The Space Show/OGLF if you use this URL: www.amazon.com/All-American-Boys-Walter-Cunningham/dp/1876963247/ref=onegiantlea20.  I started the discussion by asking Walt about his perspective on Apollo 7 today, 44 years later.  Walt had some interesting things to say about perspective, especially over the past 10-20 years as compared to when he actually carried out the mission.  A few times during our discussion, questions came up about the so called “mutiny” with the crew & NASA ground control so listen to how Walt described what was mostly a non-event despite media & blog reports to the contrary.  He did talk about Wally Schirra, his head cold & the Actifed commercials, but there was far more to the mission & to the significance of Apollo 7.  Dr. Jurist asked about the ride on a Saturn 1B, professors & experiences while both were at UCLA.  We discussed risk regarding his ride on the Saturn 1B. Walt had much to say about risk during the Apollo era as compared to now.  We extrapolated from this discussion to Columbia’s foam issues. We talked about commercial space.  Walt suggested that today’s commercial space efforts were not purely commercial given government funding & missions. He also said that retiring the shuttle when we did was a big mistake.  He then took us through a cost analysis process to illustrate that space is & always will be costly.  At the end of the first segment, one way trips to Mars & reality TV show funding were mentioned.

In the second segment, Terry called with questions about Von Braun. Walt had high praise & much to say about Von Braun & his experiences with him.  Commercial space came up again & I asked him about asteroid mining.  He did not think it would be a good investment & talked about the need to pay attention to the laws of physics.  We talked about He3 on the Moon, fusion energy possibilities & more.  I read an email from a London listener asking about the Apollo rocket & mission sounds on Apollo 7.  We talked some more about the problems on board Apollo 7, this time regarding Wally & the TV broadcast delay & the wearing of the newly designed helmets during reentry.  Walt talked about climate change & global warming, urging people to do their own research & examine the data rather than believing what people had to say regardless of their position.  John in Atlanta called in about global warming & said that there was no practical mitigation strategy. Our guest shared what he perceived to be the true motivation of global warming extremists.  John also talked about having built a next gen space shuttle from the old space shuttle to avoid retiring it or having to build an entirely new & very costly program.  Walt supported that idea but history proved otherwise.  Toward the end we discussed the pros & cons of international cooperation & competition, Ares 1 as a safe rocket for HSF, & the cost of the ISS being more due to international cooperation.  Our final topic was risk versus reckless behavior & the difference between the two.

If you have comments/questions, please post them on The Space Show blog.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 47 other followers