The man who killed Pluto writes a book, Mike Brown this week on planetary Radio. Radio. Welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. The Caltech professor whose discoveries include

the largest solar system body found in the last 150 years returns to our show, this time with his excellent new book. We'll talk with him

at the publishing party thrown in his California home. Emily Lachowala was

there but she'll use her segment to bring us up to date on the Japanese Venus

probe that failed to enter orbit.

Bill Nye, the planetary guy, pays tribute to that effort and a couple of other big events

last week. Speaking of big events, a lunar eclipse is just days

away. Bruce Betts will tell us where and when to see it.

We'll also give away a 20 year in space desktop calendar.

Some would say the biggest of last week's space stories was the successful flight of another

SpaceX Falcon 9 and the first ever orbit and reentry of a commercial cargo carrying capsule.

I'm inclined to agree. We'll feature this story in an upcoming episode,

but we can't let it go by without hearing from the SpaceX CEO and C. T.O.

Elon Musk. Mr. Musk was almost speechlessly thrilled at the post-flight press

conference, but he did want to make a point about his Dragon Space Vehicle.

People sometimes think that to take a cargo spacecraft and put crew in it requires this enormous amount of magical pixi dust or something.

This is not at all the case.

If there's been people sitting in the dragon capsule today, they would have had a very nice ride.

They would have experienced, you know, maybe up to four and a half geez,

about what you'd see at in a museum park.

And they would have done quite well.

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