Whitney Pennington-Rogers

You know, when you think about the technology and, you know,

what's advancing in all spaces, but in space, we have reusable rockets now and AI being used to assist spacecraft and even autonomous rovers and that sort of thing.

And you, of course, are way more versed in this than I am.

I mean, I guess when you think about all this stuff, what are the innovations that you see that you think are most reshaping our path to eventually being able to spend significant amounts of time off of Earth?

You've talked a little bit about some of the technological things that might need to happen in order to enable us to be a space-faring species.

When you think about some of the other obstacles that we might face, whether that's political or ethical things, what do you see as some of the biggest things standing in our way from seeing this as a reality?

It's an extraordinary perspective on life from

being able to see it from that vantage point.

And it seems like something that I imagine a lot of people could take and help them sort of navigate their day to day and ground them in what really matters.

Well, you know, I mean, I think that speaking to this point of like thinking about

global division which we talked about a little earlier um and how in a lot of ways space exploration has served as some what of like a human uh project that transcends you know borders uh transcends any any sort of thing that might divide us um do you think that there's an opportunity for it to still bring people together um in that same way in this moment as in the past

There's so many questions, uh, from the members about, um, just how, how you think about the world, um, and humanity after spending some, some time out there.

Um,

And Johanna Z is curious, from your perspective, when you think about life and sort of meaning and purpose, and you touched on this a few minutes ago, but what do you see as the meaning of life is the question?

I love that.

Well, I'd love to move to some of your writing and your work

as a writer takes readers to space, but this time sort of through historical fiction.

And I imagine that fiction presents this opportunity for you to spark curiosity and wonder about the universe in the similar way that you've also been able to do that through space flight.

So what inspired you to start writing stories about space exploration?

Well, there's a lot of interest in the comments around your writing.