Guest: Emily Lakdawalla. Topics: The Planetary Society, space geology, robotic & science missions, science mission budget. 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 Emily Lakdawalla to the program to discuss space science missions, The Planetary Society, space & outer planet geology. During the first segment of our 90 minute program, Emily went over her background and how she came to have an interest in space and in particular space science and geology. Some of our topics included the tectonics of Venus, asteroid mining, her interest in the outer planets of the solar system, and science missions either ongoing or to be conducted in the future. I mentioned a possible Europa mission which led to a Europa discussion and Emily talking about the ESA JUICE mission (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer). We talked about being able to cut the travel time to the outer planets for science missions and our guest mentioned the possible use of SLS to do that. Don't miss this discussion. Also in this segment, we talked about upcoming comet and asteroid mission, then we switched gears to discuss robotic challenges. Here, Emily pointed out the time lag for communications to Mars and beyond makes telerobotic control difficult at best. We talked about having a Mars orbiter to control surface robots. Were we doing this, the robots could be simpler as they would not need as much autonomous capabilities as they need now based on Earth communications. Emily told us about Planetary Society projects and programs, we talked about man in the street interviews regarding space & our guest shared her experiences with us when Shuttle Endeavour came to Los Angeles. Near the end of this long segment, Kepler came up, questions came up about Earth geology being similar to the geology of the planets, the lack of fossil fuels on other planets, then Doug called with a question about coalition building & the NASA science budget. As the segment ended, we asked Emily about robotic exploration as compared to having a human geologist on the surface of the planet. BJohn from Sweden sent us emails about Curiosity on Mars and Venus. In our second segment, we talked about relevant time spans and how missions get prioritized. Emily went over the Venus challenges. She was asked if the Planetary Society would try another Phobos-Grunt mission and we talked about their project, the Mars Microphone to bring back to Earth the sounds from Mars. Toward the end of the program, Emily was asked about the importance of lowering launch costs for science missions and the promotion of space advocacy. Please post comments/questions on TSS blog above. You can reach Emily through The Planetary Society or me.