Bigger than us
When a Monarch is driven by duty, dedication, devotion, sacrifice, service and faith, what gets the rest of us lesser mortals out of bed in the morning?
Beyond paying the escalating bills, keeping a roof over our head and putting food on the table?
Is there room in our lives for something bigger than ourselves?
For something that makes us consider the point of living, for the consideration of mind, body, spirituality, humanity, community and the plight of the planet?
All my Brave New Girl podcast guests show us the possibilities of higher purpose in one way or another.
But this week my guest Lori Garver takes us into space to contemplate the fate of Planet Earth.
She tells us what insights can be gained through commercial space exploration.
Can it help us to find climate solutions and other planetary alternatives?
SPACE EXPLORATION
This week’s guest is Lori Garver, former Deputy Administrator for NASA & author of Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age
In her book Lori Garver describes how she drove the commercial space program with Elon Musk against the wishes of Senators on both sides of the House, whilst in a misogynistic, male-dominated NASA culture.
The last two years have been challenging for us all. Lori increased her activist nature as much as possible to help drive to a better future. One of the ways she did this, was write a memoir that uses her career at NASA to help light a path to a better future for us all.
As she outlines in the book, when she left home and went to college, she started to consider how she could best impact the world. She worked for John Glenn on his Presidential Campaign, which is what got her into space.
The Challenger and Columbia accidents were both pain-points that showed her that human spaceflight had gotten off-track. The government led system was rewarding contractors and congress more interested in their own agenda, than true progress.
Out of these literal ashes, she helped craft NASA policies and programs to reduce the cost of space transportation and make utilizing space for broad and valuable purposes more accessible.
As a woman who has reached the one of highest echelons of NASA, being a role model to others is an important aspect of her later career. She began a Fellowship for collegiate women and gender minorities, which now offers 50 paid summer internships annually - with over 200 alumni currently.
Two years ago, they expanded this to include another Fellowship to give even more opportunities Black college students. She’s also started a program called Earthrise Alliance, which is dedicated to fully utilizing satellite data to address climate change.
We went to space over 50 years ago, and the most important thing we learned is about our home planet, Earth. What we have learned about our changing climate from space, has allowed us to understand what is happening and how to adopt ways to adapt and reverse the damage from humanity's dependence on greenhouse gas emissions.
Courage can mean a lot of things, but in her life, it means standing up for what you believe in, even when it is not popular. Taking a position you know is right, instead of doing things to advance your own career was necessary to advance our efforts in space, which is ultimately critical to our survival here on earth and beyond.
Thank you so much Lori for giving us a bird’s eye view on the world and showing us how continued space exploration will give invaluable insights into how to protect our planet, and give us a future worth fighting for.
Thanks also for showing us the fragility of our beautiful blue planet and reminding us to do all we can to conserve our oasis that hangs like a miracle in the vastness of the Universe.
You can find our more about Lori’s work on https://www.lorigarver.com/ and follow her on Linkedin @lorigarver
GROW THROUGH THE HARD TIMES
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