Les Johnson (author, speaker and NASA deputy manager) is today's featured guest.

Topic: Trends in space exploration. What's going on now, and some of the missions which are planned for the future.

Les Johnson serves as the Deputy Manager for the Advanced Concepts Office at the NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. He was the technical consultant for the movie Lost in Space. And In his spare time he writes popular science books and articles--for example. In collaboration with C Bangs (an artist) and Greg Matloff (a professor of astronomy) he wrote:Paradise Regained: The Regreening of Earth (2009); Living Off the Land in Space (2007); and with Greg Matloff and Giovanni Vulpetti he wrote Solar Sails: A Novel Approach to Interplanetary Travel (2008). And with Jack McDevitt, he has a new book coming out this month called: Going Interstellar.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the May 2, 2011 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 39 minutes] This is the first half of an interview recorded using Skype on April 27, 2012.

News item: The BBC news website published an article describing research showing ways in which pacemakers and other medical implants can be attacked by hackers. Some of these attacks have potentially lethal results. And Listener Emails: Concerns with Marshall Brain's new book Manna: Two Visions of Humanity's Future.