 Okay, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech here at the noon block on a given Monday, and we have Art Kimura and Diana Veitch, and we're going to talk about Lacey Veitch and the UH Manoa University of Hawaii Day of Discovery having to do with Lacey Veitch. Good morning, Art. Good morning, Diana. Welcome to Think Tech. Good morning, and thank you so much for having us. So, let's see. Now, the first thing is, Art is on the faculty at Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology at UH Manoa, and Diana is a relative to Lacey Veitch who died several years ago, and they were in the same family, and if you didn't know, Lacey Veitch was an astronaut for the United States. So, we're going to talk about Lacey Veitch Day of Discovery at UH Manoa virtual. All right. Tell us about Lacey Veitch Day of Discovery at UH Manoa. So, I had the real privilege to meet Lacey twice, once at a young astronaut meeting hosted at Yolani School years ago, and then secondly, I met Lacey along with Ninua Thompson during a visit to my office in Hilo for two hours where they had me chicken skin the entire time because they could talk about exploration from their own point of view, from the ocean and also from space. Sadly, Lacey passed away of skin cancer, but following an opportunity where we asked the Veitch family for permission to honor Lacey in a way that we could celebrate his legacy 19 years ago, we started a Lacey Veitch Day of Discovery hosted at Punahou for the first 17 years and then at Kamehameha School last year. Well, this year because of COVID, it was a little challenging, but we immediately switched the program that's going to take place this October to a virtual event, and it's been pretty exciting for me because for the first time, we're able to reach out to the world. We're no longer limited to participants just from Hawaii, but our audience potentially could be around the world and also because we have now supporters, partners who are doing workshops, not only from Hawaii, but from throughout the United States and even Japan. Oh, that's great. It's been fun to work on this. Okay, Diana, talk to us a bit about yourself and your connection with the Day of Discovery and for that matter, your connection with Lacey. Well, like was mentioned earlier, I'm one of Lacey's sisters. There were four of us siblings. I'm the middle child. His brother, Michael, lives with his family in Florida and Georgia, I'm sorry, and my sister lives in San Francisco. She's the youngest one. Lacey has a wife and two children, son and daughter, and his daughter Lili in Florida has three young boys, so Lacey unfortunately missed out on growing up with his three grandsons, but they are going to be a part of this virtual each day. I am not a traveler, so I don't get to see them very often at all. And I always say, I don't know what gene in my body was related to Lacey's with his wanting to challenge and fly to the stars. I have a hard time getting on the plane, but with this virtual day that art has created, yes, the whole beach ohana can be together virtually. Okay, okay, this is beginning to shape up our art. Can you tell us what Lacey did? What made him special as an astronaut, as a scientist? What did he do that we should celebrate? I think like many astronauts, they had an early dream to become a star voyager. I know there's a poem that Lacey wrote while he was at Punahou predicting that he would fly into space one day. And so he really prepared himself. He was appointed to the Air Force Academy. He flew combat missions in Vietnam. He became a member of the U.S. Thunderbird flight demonstration team. Oh, sure. Eventually joined the Air National Guard in Texas, applied to become an astronaut. And he was very successful in flying two missions into space. I think for us in Hawaii, not only the fact that he was from Hawaii, but the fact that he created a really deep relationship with Ninoa Thompson, master navigator of the Hokulea. Sure. And because of their friendship during Lacey's second flight, they actually had a radio link between the shuttle and the Hokulea, while the Hokulea was sailing back from Rotonga. And I think the legacy, part of Lacey's legacy was around the world voyage that Hokulea took three years ago. The fact that it was Lacey's suggestion to Ninoa and his father that one day Hokulea should sail around the world. And this prediction was made 20 years ago. So he has a long-lasting legacy. But for me, to give children the opportunity to see someone who dreamed big and succeeded because of his perseverance in working for his school, I think that's what we'd like to have share with the children. So Diana, of course, your family, and I want to get to know Lacey even a little better. And maybe you can describe what kind of a person he was and how it was to grow up with him. Well, he was just enough older than me that he was an older brother out there doing different things than I was doing in childhood. But I do remember him studying a lot. Most of it was done, well, when he got into Putahoe, most of it was done at school in the libraries. You know, I always like to say people find out we grew up in Kahala. And I always like to say there was just as much of a chance of us growing up be a valley girl, Kalini Valley. And the only difference was dad was a swimmer and a runner and mostly a swimmer. So they chose to get that home down by the beach. So Lacey served. They went across down Putahoe Street out to Kahala beyond the reef for their surfing. He and brother Michael. Lacey was a cub scout and a boy scout. But he went into ROTC, ROTC later on. And mom's alma mater was Putahoe because she also she was quite four years old when my grandparents came out to the territory at the time. Granddad E. E. was a doctor and a psychiatrist. And he was asked to come out and be a superintendent at the then Waimano home in Pearl City. It was a home and a training educational school for mostly retarded, underdeveloped children. But that's how Lacey's mom ended up in Hawaii. So what about his studies? Did he do well in school? He had me reasonably well. He attended Putahoe. So what was he focused on in school? I know that he just always wanted to fly. So I know it was engineering. He was terrible in sports. Did a lot of it though, huh? His well surfing, not football and things like that that didn't work out too well. You know, the what is the saddest part, but it's actually the most wonderful part is I've gotten to know my brother sadly since he's passed. And in the recent years up until his passing, more than I did when he was a child, busy family, all going different ways. What's kind of how I kind of how I looked at him, but he certainly was a big brother. When did he die? How old was he when he died? He was just about 51 years old. He died in 1995. I remember him calling me in later 91 and telling me that they found that Gary up. They needed to remove. He was still flying at the time. They had not grounded him. And as we found out later, it was melanoma. I knowing what a strong person he was, and I also have had melanoma years before when I was 29 years old. And mine was found in time. I was okay. So I carry that feeling of he is going to be okay. Well, Art, why did you pick Lacey Beach as the centerpiece of the day of discovery? I mean, you could have picked Ellison Onizuka too, right? Well, we do celebrate Ellison through his own special day on the big island called the Astronaut Onizuka Science Day. So we do honor Ellison in that way. I always felt that Lacey needed to also be honored because he, like Ellison, was a voyager. He was a dreamer. And both of them could serve as tremendous role models for young people growing up here in Hawaii that no matter where you come from, it's possible to achieve your dreams. Am I right to say that those two, at least they're the best known, but were they the only astronauts that came from Hawaii that have come from Hawaii? Yes. There are a couple of others that claim Hawaii because they lived in Hawaii for a time, but those two are raised in Hawaii. They went to school here. So in my personal view, they are Hawaii's two astronauts. Certainly, we look forward to the day when we can say, here's another astronaut from Hawaii and we hope young people will have that dream now that especially NASA is commercializing the opportunity to go into space. What is that? Can you take a moment and tell us what that means? So NASA has their own rocket. They're developing their own capsule, but alongside that, they have contracted with private companies such as SpaceX that you may have heard of, that recently launched their Dragon spacecraft to the space station and returned the crew successfully. Their next schedule launches in September. Boeing also have a spacecraft called Starliner. So there's commercial opportunities for private citizens one day to fly into space. Why do I feel it's a job that pays well, especially if you're in the private sector? Well, I'm not sure about the pay, but I think the opportunity I think is becoming wider for young people to dream and actually succeed in that. NASA has a new program called Artemis where they're planning to return to the moon, but not to visit to have a permanent settlement on the moon. So especially young girls, Artemis is named deliberately so that young women can dream about becoming astronauts as well. So are they, are Hawaii kids aspiring to go to space? Are they responding to the notion of being an astronaut, being involved in the space programs? What kind of level of interest is there here now? For me, it's hard to judge because in the past, in the 90s, I used to visit a lot of schools and do programs about the space program. And I could sense there, there were a number of children, they would raise their hands. Yes, yes, yes. Well, today we don't have that opportunity to interact directly with the students, but I still feel that because of the notoriety the space program has that there are young people out there who have that dream. I think as a society, our responsibility as educated responsibility is to nurture that dream, not to turn it off, because you certainly don't want to say you can't do it. But one thing is if you expose kids to space, you're exposing them to science, to astronomy, to so many areas of science and discovery that even if they don't become astronauts, even if they don't go specifically for a career into the space program, they're way better off for having been exposed to the science, don't you think? Absolutely. I think also, I think space provides a context for good project-based learning, because as you mentioned, it does integrate a number of the disciplines, not just science, but you have the engineering, you have the math and so forth. So, but also I think it's important for people to realize that yes, astronauts are what many people pursue, but there are thousands and thousands of jobs that relate to that support the astronauts as they go into space. So, we have young student, young people from Hawaii that are working for NASA today that pursue dreams of becoming engineers and they're supporting the program. So, we're going to feature a couple of them during our Lacey Beach Day. We have a young man from the Big Island Waimea who works in the Mission Control Center at the Johnson Space Center with the International Space Station. Another young woman we're going to feature is Isha Matsubara. She's from the Big Island Waikea High School. She got a scholarship to attend Washington, U.S. and got a job with NASA, been working for them for over 10 years now as an engineer working on spacecraft. Wow, that's fabulous. But we have students out there that are working for NASA. Yeah, we want more of that. We want more of that. You know, it's like right now people talking about COVID, they're talking about reimagining the economy, reimagining for that matter, education, careers, moving to technology. I mean, it's a dream that we had, you know, years 20, 30, 40 years ago, which has not yet been realized. And of course, there's a certain amount of resistance to it. Take a look at TMT, you know, there's a resistance. But actually, in reimagining Hawaii, reimagining careers and the direction, you know, as and when we find out the right level of tourism, I don't think we're right-sized on that yet, then this is a tremendous possibility for kids. And we have to point in that direction. I know how you feel about that, Archie. You're correct. I mean, one of the, I work in an office called the Hawaii Space Grand Consortium, and right across our room is called the Hawaii Space Flight Lab. There are young engineers in there that are building satellites that are going to be launching these satellites into space. So we have that infrastructure, small infrastructure today that can make those types of careers possible. Yeah. So, Diana, you know, what about science? Is your family into science? Do you have other science and astronauts and, for that matter, astronomers in your immediate family? And I don't only mean your siblings. I mean, you know, their kids. Um, no, not yet. Lisa's grandchildren are still in the young exploring age. They're kind of branching out in all kinds of, with all kinds of interests. I haven't, haven't heard anything along that line from them. That's why I'm so excited that Art has done all of this for all of our children here in Hawaii. And now, what he's excited about is it's going to be worldwide since it's virtual. You know, I think when I was, or many years ago, everyone wanted to be an astronaut. But as we know now, no, there are millions and millions of ground crews that have to get the, get one astronaut up there. So lots and lots of courses to study and learn and grow in. Yeah. It's, it's going to be education. You live on the Big Island. Is there excitement about this on the Big Island? Well, we've got to make it so. We've got to make it so, yeah. How should I, Art is presenting it through his robotics programs. That's the biggest thing I think he does over here on the Big Island. Opening it up. Well, not just here. That's, he's international with his robotics program. And robotics, as we know, the arms that went out from the shuttle to explore and from the space station to explore and correct problems. That's all robotics. The cameras that are being sent up to Mars and the moon are robotics. Satellites are robotics. So it's, yeah, it's amazing. It's going to be up to the children. Yes, they have to, they have to save us. The children have to, I've said that every show. So, Art, can you unpack this for us? What is going to happen in the Discovery Day program? What are you going to do? Who is going to be involved as a, you know, a presenter? And what are they going to present them out? If you can put up that graphic with the poster, then I can kind of talk you through this. What we conceived of is basically we want to keep people engaged in the program. We don't want them to log on and log off. So throughout the program, we're going to have a scavenger hunt where we're going to pose questions. If they respond to the questions and submit it to us, they'll be invited to become part of virtual live tours that we're going to set up. And these virtual live tours, and this was Diana's suggestion, actually, which was a great suggestion. We're setting up some live tours to national museums. We have some workshops that are going to be done by people live. For example, we have a very famous retina surgeon Neal Atibara in Honolulu. I know him well. I know him well. He's a hillow boy. Right. So he's going to dissect the call eyeball to tell us about how retinas work. We have, we're trying to set up, we have one established already, but NASA Jet Propulsion Lab will host a tour as well. And then we're reaching out to Japan to some of their science museums. But the core of the day will be workshops. We have, we have currently 12 confirmed workshops ranging and they're all hands on part of the description we gave to the presenters was it had to be no longer than seven minutes because we didn't think people wanted to sit through a half an hour program. That's a good seven minute workshops. It had to use materials that's accessible to a family at home. So they don't have to go out and buy things. And so we have some really wonderful creative workshops that have already been submitted. Along with that, we have ads. I call them as basically featuring people who are in careers in science and technology mainly from Hawaii. So they can talk about what they're doing for only 40 seconds. And then they're going to ask a question and give the answer. That's part of the scavenger hunt. So we hope that for this 90 minute program that we're planning that we can engage the community in science. They'll have workshops. We will have some keynotes. We already have two astronaut videos that have been submitted. We're waiting for two or three more, including one from the the International Space Station of an astronaut floating in that window cupola. They call it which Lacey helped design. And I understand his crew patches in there. So looking forward to seeing that. And I know what Thompson has agreed to do. He knows for us to talk about his friendship with Lacey and what voyaging really means to all of us. So it should be a fun day. I think we're hoping it engages the public in a way that they will see the relevance of science. The workshops. I'm just mesmerized with the workshops that I've already seen that have been submitted to us. Oh, it's fabulous. So if I if I want to participate in this, do I have to register or can I just tune in? You can just tune in. On our Hawaii Space Grand website, we will have a link to the broadcast. We'll post it sometime in September. And there's no registration. You just log on and participate in this program. And what day is it in October? It will be on October 24th, starting at 12 noon in Hawaii. And the reason I selected that time was that we could reach out to the east coast. It'll be early evening. And we can also reach out to the far east, Japan and China and Korea, because then it'll be early in the morning for them. So it's to me a good time for us. Hope to have that. Yeah, if you're going to be global, you have to think of the time zones. And actually, Europe would be okay, too. They'd have to stay up late to maybe midnight, but they can they can watch it from Europe. So it's really fabulous that you're thinking globally this way, not only to reach people in various continents, but also to show them that Hawaii A has the talent, has the knowledge, has the educational institutions, and also that Hawaii thinks global. That's that's the new Hawaii. This is part of that reimagined thing I was talking about. I'm excited that one of our local companies, Oceanet, Local Born and Bread, and a very high tech company, they've submitted a number of videos. They're going to run a virtual tour for us. So those are the kinds of groups who want to feature, because as you say, we do have the resources here that can create a diversified economy. Yeah, just PS on that. Pat Sullivan, who's the CEO and founder of Oceanet, was on our show just a week ago. I'm talking about a COVID test that he is developing. He's awaiting FDA approval, but this will allow people to get tested easily, cheaply, and in five or ten minutes, it would change things, change the paradigm. I think we badly need you're right. Yeah, how does COVID affect you in this? I mean, obviously, you can't do it shoulder to shoulder, but and you have to do it on virtual, but how does it affect you in setting it up? How does it affect you in shaping the material and the presentations? In planning for it, it's very similar to when we were doing it live, because we did all the invitations by email. We did a lot of discussions on email. I think what's changed is the mindset now is that we can reach out globally, that it will no longer be restricted to the island of Oahu, that we can reach out not only statewide here in Hawaii, but actually around the world if we can create that market for this program. So that's, to me, the exciting part. In fact, I've told people, even without COVID, this may be the new normal for us, because it seems like a better way, a better delivery system in many ways. I think there's a lot of examples of that exact kind of transformation happening right now. It's interesting, Think Tech was using Zoom in 2019, and we were doing a lot of our shows, you know, not in the studio, but virtually. So then COVID happens, we had all the technology ready to go. And of course, the lesson is you can, it's a better way to do it. It's more efficient, you can reach people in faraway places. So are you going to be the moderator of this program? No, I won't be the MC. We're talking to a person that will moderate. We feel that she's a good role model again for young people. She's an engineer working in Hawaii. So we've asked her to be the MC for this event. It's really exciting. As I said, not only for the beach day, but we're converting all of our programs to virtual now, including our robotics programs. And people say, well, that's a downer. But then now our robotics teams can play globally, not just in Hawaii, to the virtual world. Oh, sure. Through the internet, of course. It's like games. You can have a community of people around the world involved, real time. So what about the, so you will stream this live to the world, but will you also save it and post it somewhere so that if I don't have a chance to see it on the broadcast day, that I can see it later, that I can revisit it at will on demand later? Yes, we will have a recorded version on our website, our Lacey Beach Day website. And there also we're going to post, we call them posters. These are ads for companies in Hawaii organizations that can want to talk about what they do and also their websites so people can contact them. So if I want to be involved in Lacey Beach Discovery Day of Discovery, how do I get involved? If I want to somehow participate at the presentation level or participate in helping and being a volunteer, for example, how do I get involved? How do I sign up? So the best way would be to email me, it's art at higp.hawaii.edu and I will put you either, myself will contact you or one of our workshop or other volunteers will contact you. So we look for different groups that would like to participate. We reached out to all the people who in the past supported it. Unfortunately, some don't feel as good about doing a short workshop. They would rather do it for one hour live and I understand that. But we've come up with some new partners and we're very excited about that. Yeah, you're right about making it short. It's more interesting. That's the generation of today. But let me ask you, Diana, do you have arts email because you could write to him and you could ask him to participate? In fact, you might even ask me if you can make a presentation. Have you done that yet? Are you thinking about that? Art actually asked for the Beach family to do the greeting and the ending for the program. There have been times through the years where I did little short presentations for them and I really super enjoyed it. I fly over to Honolulu once a year. I told you I don't fly. Actually, it's just because a big island is so wonderful to be on. But yes, to attend the Lacey Beach Day of Discovery. So I'm going to miss the in-person part of it for sure. Yeah, so I already did my parting and thank you to everybody that's going to be joining and the Florida Mitchell Hunter, Lacey's wife and daughter and her three children and Wiley's husband are going to do the presentation. You know, I quickly got to mention you asked about the big island. I've totally spaced through astronomy on the big island, mostly in lieu of all of the dynamics today. But yes, astrology and the stars and the lower center. Yes, I can never forget that. That's really part of Hawaii. Astronomy is definitely part of Hawaii. So we're almost out of time, Diana. I want to ask you to tell people what they should be thinking about about this program, about the Discovery Day, Lacey Beach Discovery Day, and what you would like to leave with them as a takeaway about whether and to what extent they can participate and what they can learn by it and so forth. I think it's all I say is first that Lacey would be so excited. He's not with us here today physically, but in spirit definitely. I know he would be totally energized and challenged by presenting a day virtually like this. Lacey was one that never understood the word no. He always found a way to work through something but he wanted to accomplish something and his dream was flying and being an astronaut. We didn't get enough chance to talk about the many obstacles he did face before he was chosen as an astronaut or how they actually did that link up with Hokulea. Those are the exciting stories that Ninoa might be able to share. Oh sure. His presentation he usually does. But yeah, just taking kids all over the world, we've left you a huge problem. And Lacey saw that from space. But he also saw that what he felt Hawaii was a place that had the most answers to be able to correct those problems and prevent them in the first place. So that's what all this is about. All right, we want to look in on you when you do that. And Art, what is your thought? What would you like to leave with those people who are viewing this show about what the program offers to them? What should they be trying to learn? What will come out of it for them? What's the value for the community and for these kids? I would like children to think about dreaming big, having a vision. How do you succeed in creating that vision for yourself, but also succeeding in reaching your goals and setting the bar high for yourself? That's the main thing. Because even if you fall short of the high bar, you'll still be in a better place than if you just accepted a normal situation. So all the astronauts set the bar really high for all of us. I was an applicant in 1984 for the Teacher in Space project, never thinking I would even get a chance to do it. But my dream was to just say I applied. And this is why I'm here today. If Challenger had flown successfully in 1986, I would not be sitting here talking with you right now. It changed the destiny of my life. Well, you've done it all these years and you've affected many lives. And I just want to leave you a piece of advice. It's not too late to apply again. Yeah, look at John Glenn. That's Art Kimura of HIGP at UH Manoa and Diana Veech, the sister of Lacey Veech. And it's the Lacey Veech Day of Discovery virtual. And what day again? October 16, was it? October 24th. Okay, everybody should write that down and come visit you on the web. And where do they go on the web to find you? I would just search for astronaut Lacey Veech Day of Discovery and you will see the link there. Okay. Thank you, Art. Thank you, Diana. Great to talk to you guys. We want to do more, maybe with some of your presenters. And we'd like to carry the program when it happens. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jane. Thank you.