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Waleed Abdalati
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Waleed Abdalati NASA Chief Scientist
TRANSCRIPT:
NASA is absolutely relevant, will always be relevant, for a couple of reasons. One is I believe what we do really strikes at the heart of who we are as a people, the very core of the human spirit, we are built to wonder, we are built to explore, and that doesn't always turn a profit. Yet it would be a tragedy for our human psyche to not cultivate that.
And in the process of doing so we learn things, we develop technologies that have spinoffs for everyday use, we make the world a better place, not just by what we deliver, not just by developing satellites that can look at the Earth -- and ultimately lead to weather predictions, climate predictions, and tell us what's coming -- but by looking outward.
I always challenge people: get back to that child in you, get back to that kid who was on that camping trip that saw a zillion stars in the sky, and he looked up and he said "Wow, what's up there? Could I ever go there some day? What's it like, are there people there? Is there life there, if so what're they like?" There's a magic in us that I think we absolutely must fuel, and to suggest -- I'm not saying you are, but some do -- that that may not be relevant, is to suggest that the forces that work to beat down the human spirit have won. And that cannot happen. We cannot move forward if we don't fuel that part of who we are.
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