Are We Alone for 02/22/10 - Space Race 2.0

Are We Alone - Space Race 2.0

It’s goodnight moon from President Obama, as he calls for canceling the program that would return astronauts to the moon by 2020. We’ll hear from the private sector, which might win in this deal, and consider whether we should really replace human explorers with robots.

Plus, if we can’t fly you to the moon, would you settle for a few acres and a deed? Meet the man who claims to have property on the moon – but will it hold up in court?

Wernher von Braun was one of America’s premier rocket engineers and, a new book contends, an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazi party. Find out what the U.S. space program was willing to ignore for the prize of beating the Russians to the moon.

Guests:

• Burt Rutan – Aerospace engineer, founder of Scaled Composites and designer of SpaecShipOne and SpaceShipTwo
• Steven Weinberg – Nobel Prize-winning physicist at University of Texas at Austin and author of Lake Views: This World and the Universe
• Phil Chapman – First Australian-born astronaut and Apollo 14 Mission Scientist, now a consultant on energy and astronautics
• Steven Durst – Editor of Space Age Publishing
• Frans von der Dunk – Professor of space law at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• Wayne Biddle – Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Dark Side of the Moon: Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich, and the Space Race

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://radio.seti.org/, and be sure to check out Are We A Blog?, the companion blog to the radio show.