Dr. John BigganVerified account

We can do both.

Me too! Seeing The Challenger blow up in real time as a kid was traumatic. Godspeed to these astronauts. It is such an amazing accomplishment. I was thinking about all the women of NASA who helped us get to this moment. Amazing.

Racism and spaceflight are both learned. Not baked in. And that's what makes racism so tragic. It's avoidable.

This is just an US pr spectacle. Rockets and astronauts are going to and returning from the ISS for years.

Yes, it's a lot easier to solve an engineering problem than to change all hearts.

Space travel makes money, much more than it costs to launch a spacecraft. When we end the worship of money, then we'll be able to prioritize people over money.

We haven’t prioritized the latter. I think now proves this more than ever.

We can do both but a space launch is probably easier because to do so we don’t have to change hearts and minds. Those are the hardest things to change.

Wondering whether it’s easier to combat centuries of deeply ingrained cultural and racial prejudices or create a false dichotomy like this?