Eric Stackpole

And I must have been like six or something.

And I remember, for whatever reason, fantasizing that what if a light switch in my house could make a light in the house very far away turn on and off?

This sort of idea of affecting things far away.

So when I think back about my life, I think a lot about what are the themes?

What are the things that, when I think of my...

happiest moments or the moments where I've been sort of most interested, what are commonalities of all of those things?

And then I look for other things that can bring me that same feeling.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, and, you know, I guess it's so obvious to me at this point because I've experienced so much that it goes almost without saying, but like failure is part of the process.

Failure may be one of the most important parts of the process.

It's about having an attitude toward failure that that's okay, that that's how you learn how to do it better.

That really brings things forward.

Well, you know, I actually started my career being very interested in space exploration.

I got my ham radio license when I was a kid.

I remember during a Boy Scout camping trip watching this dot go across the sky as we were laying on our sleeping bags beneath the night sky.

And our scoutmaster describes it, that's a satellite.

And, you know, I'd learn later that its orbit is a 90-minute orbit.

In 45 minutes, that human-made dot would be on the other side of the globe.

Yeah.

So that got me into into space exploration.