This is the space policy edition of planetary radio back with number 16, SPE 16 for September of 2017, with much more to talk about

and the people that will be talking with my regular cohorts on this, the Director of Space Policy for the

Planetary Society, Casey Dreyer and the Space Policy Advisor living there within

the Beltway in Washington, D.C. Jason Callahan, welcome gentlemen.

Hey Matt.

Hey guys, good to hear from me again.

I hope that you're doing well and I'm dying to hear where you were for the eclipse, Casey.

I went to Western Oregon just west of Salem on a

extended family person's farm who was very generous to allow 60 people to

descend and watch the eclipse perfect skies spectacular experience and just

camping for the weekend and enjoying celestial alignment so unusual for me you

saw the Corona oh yeah absolutely it was huge and Venus and I saw

Mars all the good stuff and yeah it was great I didn't even get a sunburn

yeah staring at the sun for three hours. Well I'll get to my somewhat sadder story in a moment but

Jason where were you? My wife and I went down to Columbia South Carolina to visit

her parents who had driven up from Savannah and we stayed at a hotel there with a pool so that our daughter could spend lots of time swimming and paying less attention to the eclipse than we were.

But we brought our solar telescope, had very intermittent cloud cover early in the event but by the time we got

the totality it was absolutely perfect and beautiful and wonderful we had a

really good time okay well I'm intensely envious because as you may have heard I was in Carbondale at Southern

Illinois University Carbondale, which put on the show of a lifetime for the Great American

Eclipse, but during the five-hour show, 100

degrees 90-plus humidity weather, we had hazy but clear skies up until about

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