Guest: Richard Easton; Topics: Early Naval and AF history regarding satellites, rocket launches, the Vanguard rocket, GPS, why history is important, new GPS evolutionary trends, military and civilian GPS signals, timing and banking plus more.
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We welcomed Richard Easton back to the show to discuss the Vanguard rocket which turned 65 years old, early navy and army satellites, the Explorer 1 and America's first satellite, alternative histories had the U.S. been the first to space, not the USSR and much more. In addition, Richard talked about GPS, a subject close to him since his Dad is considered the inventor of GPS. Also, early Naval Research Lab history was discussed as applied to space. Listeners that have heard the earlier Richard Easton programs were familiar with some if not all of this history. In fact, later in the show, Richard took a listener question asking why it was important to keeping going over all of this old history rather than focusing on going forward with tech and development. Don't miss how Richard responded to this question. Near the end of the program, Dr. Charles Lurio called in to also respond to this question so don't miss why Charles believes the study of history is important.
Other topics we talked about were adversarial GPS systems, especially those form Russia and China. The degradation of the GPS signal for commercial use was brought up but it was explained why the government stopped doing that. I thought the part where Richard differentiated between the Navy and the AF with early launches and satellites was interesting. I hope you will also find it of interest.
About midway through the program, I stopped to tell Richard that he was the 4,000th Space Show guest! Making this announcement tended to change the pace and tenor of our program as we all had some fun it being 4,000 Space Shows down the road. We would like your comments on the 4,000th show. We also had a few callers who wanted to be recorded as having called in on this important milestone for The Space Show.
The current banking crisis got in on this show due to the use of GPS timing for banking and credit card charges. Note that Richard told the story of several key people associated with GPS plus he had lots to say about Wernher von Braun.
Please post your comments/questions for Richard on our blog for this show. You can reach Richard through me here at The Space Show.
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