Whitney Pennington-Rogers

It feels like this is just an exciting time to talk about space and everyone seems to be doing it.

I think maybe we could just kick things off and start right there.

From your perspective, what do you think is driving this new wave of excitement and investment in space exploration?

What feels different to you about this moment?

And I mean, and you've lived through many eras of space exploration from, you know,

think about like Cold War competition to international cooperation.

And now where we are, where we're seeing this sort of surge in private enterprise.

And how do you think the purpose of going to space has evolved through these phases?

How have people thought about it differently?

Wow.

And it sounds like you think that we're probably going to see more of this or it will become even more accessible as time goes on.

You know, I think another thing a lot of folks, when they're looking at the headlines, not just related to space, but just in general, there's, you know, a lot of things happening around, you know, global tensions and geopolitical tensions and

Space is always in a lot of ways reflected the politics of the time.

And so I wonder if when you look at these headlines and see the things that are going on out there, what opportunities you might see for collaboration in orbit and potentially what risks do you think were presented in this moment when we think about the future of space exploration?

You will not be surprised to know that we're getting lots of interesting questions from the audience who are just so fascinated by your work and the things that you're saying right now.

And I think to sort of piggyback on what you're saying, do you see this, I guess, this sort of blurring line between space exploration and some of the challenges that we're facing here at home, whether that is geopolitics or climate change?

For instance, we have a question from Kat H.,

who asks how we might think about investing in space as climate activists.

How can that be part of the way we look at space travel?

I'd love to build on that a little bit.