 Hello everyone and welcome to TomorrowOrbit 12.32 and we're going to be talking today to Laura Forsick. She is the founder of Astrolitical and the author of an upcoming book called Rise of the Space Age Millennials which you can catch in just a few months in January of 2020. And we're going to be covering a very broad sort of group of subjects today because Laura, you have an incredible amount of insight into just about everything in spaceflight. And like following your Twitter feed is like an adventure because it just goes in every single direction you could possibly think of. I appreciate that. I certainly have some places where I've got holes as I recently tweeted out. I don't know much about the space force, space core, space command. Still try to work that out. Yeah, but the thing that I try. The thing that was great about that is you still were like, if anybody knows anything about it, I'm willing to like, you know, tell me something here. So I mean that's Well that's the main reason I'm on Twitter is for the news and the people who give me information. It's a fantastic resource. Yeah, and being able to talk directly with folks that's, I remember back in the day that's what I got on Twitter for and now you can still get to do that as well. So you have a book coming out called Rise of the Space Millennials. So what specifically is that about? Because we always hear about millennials, you know, sort of being looked down upon, you know, like millennials aren't saving as much money. Millennials aren't eating as much bacon. You know, basically us millennials, because I'm a millennial, we're not doing things apparently that we're supposed to do. So what specifically about that book is in there? That's exactly why I decided to write the book is because there's a lot of negative stereotypes about millennials, especially when I started writing it back in 2016. And it didn't reflect what I was seeing both in my life and my life of my millennial friends. Like it didn't coincide. There were some things that were, you know, accurate, such as large amount of student debt, not as much relative income. So that is pretty accurate and that's reported on pretty widely. I'm talking about more like those stereotypes of entitlement or selfishness or like there's just some very negative stereotypes about millennials that I wanted to probe that, but I'm not a social scientist. I wanted to look at it from the point of view of space because that's what I'm passionate about. And at first I wasn't going to write a book. I never saw myself as an author, but I realized, well, I have this great idea and who's going to write it? I might as well be the one to write it. So I decided to interview over 100 millennials who are either working or in school planning to work in the space industry to try to gauge what their perspectives are, what their goals are, what they think that millennials are going to do in the space industry. And now we're the largest working demographic in the United States millennials are. But at the same time, I wanted to probe those underlying questions. So I didn't outright ask, you know, how, how entitled are you to feeling like you need a raise? Like, I didn't ask that. What I asked were some questions trying to understand some of those underlying points of view. I asked about connectivity and inclusivity. I asked about, like, just various perspectives on what we should be doing in space and what they think that we will accomplish in space and long term versus short term goals and just try to piece together the overall perspective. Now, 100 people is a good number of people, but it's still a limited perspective and it is very American centric. I tried to make it a little bit more international, but it's still very much reflective of more of an international perspective and American perspective, American values. But I did try to get a good diversity of people who responded to my questionnaire and I was able to understand a little bit more about the wide perspectives and there's no one millennial perspective. It's a very wide range of perspectives out there. And so that's why I decided to write the book. It's just because there was so much negativity being pushed on my generation that just did not reflect what I felt and what I saw. And what were some of the big things that us millennials were talking about? Like, what were the big overarching themes that were pretty consistent amongst everyone? Optimism, huge amounts of optimism and maybe some unwarranted optimism about what we're going to accomplish, you know, whether it's landing people on Mars or setting up a Mars colony or even terraforming Mars. Like, that's the range of optimism out there. Some people thought that we'd have more interstellar, not interstellar, but intergalactic kind of understanding of space by the time that millennials are retired. So that's not very much long. That's just a few decades from now, right? We're not even talking 100 years out. And so some people were a little bit more pessimistic and they thought that, you know, we'll do one or two Mars landings by the time we retire, but a lot of people just really had stars in their eyes about what we can accomplish. And of course, it's selection bias, but everybody I talked to was very passionate about their jobs or their studies, what they were working on. There was nobody who was disillusioned by space. There was nobody who was just in it for the paycheck. Everybody was very passionate about what they were doing. Otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. And again, it's selection bias. So there are some people who want to know the wider millennial generation's perspectives on space. And that's not the topic of this book. I didn't talk to every single millennial out there. I focused specifically on ones that were passionate about space and it showed in what they said. Yeah. And I was going to say a lot of my friends who are millennials don't necessarily know much about spaceflight. So talking to millennials who are involved in spaceflight, I'm sure definitely helped out with that. And I know that there's been a handful of events recently that have sort of gotten my friends interested in it. Like the test flight of Falcon Heavy is one that I can think of that laser-focused everybody to take a look at that and kind of feel a little bit better about that. But with spaceflight, there is kind of like a culture that gets developed around it. And we know that there was sort of the culture of Apollo and then the culture of Shuttle. And now that we have millennials beginning to dominate the workforce, is there a shift, like a contrast in that culture? Are we pulling from Apollo or Shuttle? Or is it something completely new and unique? It depends on the age of the millennials, right? Because I and I'm assuming yourself are more on the older side, whereas some millennials are straight out of college or even still in college. So there's a wide range there. And so when you're talking about you and me, we probably remember Shuttle launches. And that's what I grew up with was Shuttle launches. But some of the more younger side of millennials, and this book even hopefully will appeal to Generation Z. They don't remember Shuttle very much. That may or may not have captivated them. But what was likely to have captivated them was SpaceX. Over and over and over again in these interviews, SpaceX was mentioned. And it's sort of an analogous to the Apollo generation, where Apollo was that spark for a lot of the older generations, whereas for our generation, you can say it was Space Shuttle. But in more general terms, the commercial space industry really growing. And SpaceX being that front runner where everybody loves the showmanship of not everybody loves launching car, Tesla car to orbit around the sun. But most people found that really exciting. And there was definitely some debate there. But it sparked a lot of attention. And that kind of attention along with reusable rocketry. And some people mentioned like Blue Origin and some of the other newer companies, Virgin Galactic as sparks. So that was something that was really interesting for me. In fact, I went back and I added that question. Earlier this year, I did a fundraiser campaign. And that got a lot of feedback. And so I actually took that feedback and I went back and I revised parts of my book and I added to the book where I wanted to take a look at what was that spark? What was that inspiration for the millennial generation? And it's a large part of the new commercial space industry and new space. Yeah, and I was just thinking in researching for this week's episode, one company I could really think of that's very millennial dominated and kind of has that attitude that millennials often bring to things is Relativity Space with Tim Ellis running them. And he's pretty young, I got to say, for somebody running a rocket company and bringing these new techniques like 3D printing and helping make that happen. Is that kind of something that millennials do in spaceflight? We kind of bring these radical ideas and then just kind of throw it to the wind and see what happens, see what sticks on the wall. I'd say that any generation has younger people who are coming in and innovating and bringing new perspectives. And what the millennial generation in particular can bring is this adaptivity to newer technology. So we have, for the most part, in ease of computers and ease of the internet applications, smart phones, we really adapt to these technologies very quickly. So when you're talking about 3D printing a rocket, for example, that is not something that older generations grew up with. That's a relatively new technology. So it does take someone from a younger generation to come in and say, well, instead of just 3D printing a part, why not 3D print the whole, or almost the whole rocket? And it's those kinds of new perspectives that really help us to grow. And so I think as each success of generation goes on, and Generation Z will probably find this compared to millennials, is that they're going to have a fresh perspective, depending on the technology that they grew up with, that they're familiar with. And that'll bring them new, innovative ideas to really change what it is that we're doing in the industry. And because millennials are starting to become the dominant generation in the workforce, that means that we're working with folks who are from Generation X, also baby boomers as well. How do these three generations come together? Is it oil and water, where it's sort of like there are very distinct areas that we do not mix in? Or is it a really nice amalgamation of ideas? I did ask about this, and it's a mixed bag. There are some people who really find no differences between the generations. They might find more differences in terms of stages of life. Whereas a fresh graduate has different perspectives and priorities than someone who's close to retiree age. And that's independent of the generation. That's more of an age or stage of life difference. But some people did have distinct differences of opinion and perspectives, when it came to comparing themselves to their older colleagues. And I already touched upon the adaptivity. Another thing would be a lot of people, more than I expected, brought up things like climate change and environmentalism, which are not new topics. Environmentalism is going on for decades. But I think that the millennial generation is probably more aware of some of the changes. And independent of my book, I read an article recently about how Generation Z is really now carrying that torch when it comes to understanding how our planet is evolving and what we can do about it. And so a lot more people mentioned some of those more global concerns. In fact, some people mentioned things like social media as being an avenue to connect us all that makes millennials and younger generations much more aware of what's going on globally compared to older generations. So it really depends on who you talk to. And of course, there are some people of the millennial generation that really made a point to say that they learn a ton from their older colleagues, that they really truly appreciate the decades of experience that their older colleagues bring to the table. In fact, one person said something like, he's watching his millennial peers reinvent a square wheel, which I thought was just a really funny comment to make. Like instead of reinventing a square wheel, learn from the older generations how to create a round wheel. So there's definitely a lot of learning going on where it's different perspectives can add to the conversations, both older generation to younger generation and younger generation to older generation. And we actually have like a couple of comments in our chat room that really hit on what you were talking about. Quinn on YouTube says that reusable means more environmentally friendly, which millennials enjoy. So we were just saying, you know, millennials and also generation Z after that, very conscious with that as well. And John Bensted in our YouTube chat room was also talking about how he used to watch shuttle launches and was sort of commenting about how nowadays we have a lot more access to be able to see these things like streaming. And we were even saying, you know, at the start of the show, Twitter. I mean, you can like, I can go tweet at an astronaut and ask them immediately or tweet at an engineer and ask them immediately. Are those things sort of like very potent forces for millennials? And does that also maybe, does that potency still stay even with older generations as well? Social media was a topic that I specifically asked about because I find it very important to gauge how that tool is being used. And there are some people of our millennial generation, believe it or not, who actually stay away from social media. They don't want to touch it. Either privacy concerns or, you know, ITAR concerns or work concerns. They just don't want to bother with it. But for the most part, people really use social media as a tool to help them connect. And it's not just a millennial tool. It is a tool for anybody who wants to learn something that they hadn't previously learned. So I'm talking, not just about Twitter. I'm talking about Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and all the other ways that we can connect with each other. Even some Reddit message boards or whatever it is that is a newer platform, which is just continuations of old ways of doing things, but now it's much more instant and global in nature. And it's not strictly millennial, but I find that the younger generations tend to grasp onto it more quickly. And I myself am so old now that I don't have a Snapchat. I don't have Instagram. I suppose I could go create one, but I don't see the point. So there's newer ones that are coming aboard TikTok and whatever else that I just, I can't keep up with it and I don't try. And then so that just tells me that I'm an older millennial now. So you're gonna find that some older generations and especially the ones who really want to engage younger generations are connecting via social media. And so it's a good way to mix those generations into one. Yeah. And Lisa Stojanowski in our YouTube chat room is asking, what was the most unexpected insight or opinion that got expressed during your interviews with millennials? Oh, that's a hard question. There were some things that were said that were completely opposite of my own opinion. And of course I don't have like the right opinion wrong opinion. I wasn't asking for black and white perspectives. I was asking quiz questions that were pretty open-ended to get people to discuss things. And so I think the most surprising to me was somebody who actually thought that we shouldn't be going outwards into space at all because we've screwed up our planet so much that if we go out into the moon, Mars, wherever it is we go, we're gonna mess up other worlds. And so that is an opinion that is quite contrary to my own. And so that sticks out as me as, wow, I guess there are some people who do have that perspective who are even still working in the space industry. And there were people who were saying that at least one person was saying that they had a sort of love-hate relationship actually with their field where they love it, they do. They're passionate about it, but they feel like maybe they should have chosen a career path that was more in-lined with their social justice values, which was very interesting to me that I can't imagine doing a different career. I love my career so much where there were definitely people who found they love their career that they chose to work in but could have and maybe should have chosen a different path. And so I guess those are the ones that stick out to me because they're just so different from my own opinions. And then of course there are the people who think that we're gonna terraform Mars by the time millennials are retired, which is a totally other end of the spectrum for me because I'm like, okay, do you know all the different technical problems that come into even landing on the mood and getting people, or landing on Mars, or getting people on Mars level and terraforming if we could terraform and all the ethical concerns and all the technical concerns. So those are the ones that stick out to me just because they're on two ends of the books, the book ends there. On the one end, someone who wants to stay close to home. On the other end, someone who wants to go ahead and change an entire planet. So those are two surprising areas. And one thing I decided a little bit later in the process of writing the book was that I was going to make all the interviews anonymous. Initially when I did them, I thought I was gonna feature people, but I decided that in order for everyone to feel comfortable with what they were telling me, I decided to make everyone somewhat anonymous where most of the time I use first names and locations, but some people I've made up fake names for them just so that they could tell me things that maybe they wouldn't say publicly otherwise. Yeah, it definitely helps to have that if you wanna hear the real opinions of folks. That's definitely one thing that you do have to think about. And the history of spaceflight is littered with really great ideas that either failed or never got off the ground or literally exploded on the pad. Is there some reconciliation with millennials in looking back at those ideas? Or is it mostly just kind of bringing new ideas and fresh perspectives to the table? I have to be honest, not many people looked backwards. And I didn't specifically ask them to look backwards. It was more of a forward focused interview, but really no one brought up incidents, accidents, delays. Some people were frustrated with delays that are present-day delays, but they didn't really bring up the delay in creating the International Space Station, for example. Like nobody brought that up. So that's another reason why I decided to ask or focus on what was the spark that brought them in because especially with this 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, everyone was looking backwards. Everyone's looking back to see how far we've come and all the milestones behind us and the great people who have come beforehand. And we stand on those shoulders, yes, but nobody brought them up in specific instances. They just more mentioned them in passing if they mentioned them at all and most didn't mention them at all. So really the only people who expressed any kind of backward frustration were people who were hoping that we'd be further along and frustrated by the delays that we've experienced. And those were delays with commercial crew program, delays with returning to the moon, delays with getting to Mars, off the top of my head, those were the three things that I can think of that people mentioned that they were frustrated by those delays. And those were all present-day and forward and not so much in the past. And in the space industry, is there sort of a like old guard that's currently on watch with things? And if there is, are they a help or a hindrance to millennials and their ideas and moving forward? Okay, we're gonna have to describe what you mean by old guard. What are you talking about here? Well, is there any group that sort of seems to be either like definitely forward and enabling a younger generation to come in or there are also groups that are trying to say, no, that's not really the right way to go. So let me steer the kids this way. Kind of, is there anybody who, or is there an attitude, I guess, that older generations may feel about millennials coming into spaceflight? Oh, yes. When I first started doing these interviews, I had done about half of them. I gave a presentation to the local AIAA chapter here and it was me as the millennial presenting and there was one millennial in the room in the audience and the rest were older generations, in fact, much, much older. Retirement age for the most part and some were still working and I got a ton of pushback. So if there's anyone listening to this right now who's an older, from an older generation, I guarantee you there's a ton of pushback that they might be thinking because they saw it as an attack for some reason. I was simply quoting at this point. I hadn't done the analysis that early on. So I was simply quoting what people had told me and there was just so much pushback by the honest viewpoints of millennials because I think some people felt attacked or threatened or misunderstood by the millennial generation. So I had to go back and really revise what it was I was saying and put in a lot of caveats and try to explain things so that nobody saw it as an attack. And so I wouldn't say that I haven't asked older generations this but I would not presume to think that there are many people who are an older generation who would not be uplifting younger generations because they themselves were the younger generation when they started their careers, right? They have been there. And in fact, especially when it comes to women and minorities, they have fought their way to get to where they are right now and they still see barriers in place and there are still barriers in place but it's a lot less now than it was when they started. And so for the most part, I see very supportive culture of bringing on the younger generations. And that's just my impression based on being a younger person in the workforce and having just lived in the past 15 years or so in the space industry coming on board. Now you do find barriers and in fact, I talked to some people anonymously for this book who actually found some ageism problems and that's the topic I covered a tiny bit in the book. Ageism for those who don't know is the bias against someone because of their age and that might be a younger age or it might be an older age. So older generations might experience ageism as well. And this is a topic where people really felt that they weren't taken as seriously because they were younger or they were held back because they were younger and it's probably a combination of factors. In one case, there's probably ageism and sexism going on together. And so those are the cases where an older guard let's say to use your phrase is trying to block somebody but they're probably not doing it consciously. It's probably an unconscious bias and we all have unconscious biases and we need to evaluate where our thinking is so that we make sure we as millennials because we can only change ourselves. We need to make sure that we all have the unconscious biases that are blocking anybody else that we can have a very supportive culture that brings everybody up with us. Yeah, 100% on board with you with that. It's super important to be able to examine yourself and kind of figure out how to change that. So Lisa in our YouTube chat room is asking what kinds of places did your interviewees work in? Oh wow, wide range. So like I said, I tried to get an international perspective but it was a lot of American interviewees. So NASA private space industry, a lot of them were still students so undergraduate and graduate students and postdocs. I got a few professors in there. There were a few CEOs and other people in leadership positions, a wide range. I probably say that NASA was a good, I didn't purposely, I purposely didn't tally it up but I would say that just based on my perspective, NASA or people working with NASA, say at a university or at a private company, that was probably the most representative just because NASA is sort of the central to the American space industry. But then there were people working with ESA or working with their own countries, space agencies. And in some cases there wasn't a country space agency and they were working more with an international perspective with the UN perspective. And a lot of the private space industry were the smaller companies. There were some that were some of the more larger established companies and I'm probably mixing them up with NASA but there were also a lot more of the smaller startup companies as well. And I purposely, when I first started this book, I'm a scientist, right? So I am not trained as an author of a novel. So I started out with a very scientific approach where I was gathering data and then I realized that makes a boring book in my make of really good research paper but I needed to make it more approachable. And so I really took away a lot of those data collection kind of methods where I was tallying up where people are coming from and what the ages were. And the only tallying up I did was to try to make sure I had a good representation of male-female. And so for me, I couldn't even tell you how many people worked at NASA or the public sector versus the private sector because I purposely steered myself away from those kinds of demographic questions. And Quinn in our YouTube chat room is asking a question that's sort of in line with some things that we were discussing just now which is something unclear to me right now is how millennials will deal with international cooperation and competition. Did you ask them if they're looking forward to this or if they would rather keep things in the US? I specifically asked about international partners. And some of the people, a lot of the people I interviewed were working either for NASA or for a defense-related company and could not work with international partners due to ITAR restrictions or just due to the nature of their job. But the ones who were or even the ones who couldn't they still said that they wanted to. There was a really big international push in a lot of the interviews where either people were heavily dependent on their international colleagues or they really wanted to engage more of an international perspective. And especially some of the people who were not based in the United States had a lot more of an international perspective than some of the other people who were based in the United States. Simply I think because we in the States are a bit lucky privileged we have such an amazing space industry here. Whereas in other parts of the world they're still building up their space infrastructure. And so we here in the United States don't necessarily have to we're not forced to think internationally so much but yet a lot of people in fact most people I would think just based on my recollection of the interviews had said that they either are currently working with international colleagues or they want to be working with them. And in fact that was really a main focus of some of the interviews was just how international I'll be. One interviewer, one interviewees said that they hope that our millennial generation will sort of unite the globe in what we plan to do in space. So they had a much more idealistic, I'm an idealist, but they had a much more idealistic point of view where they thought that if we could establish a moon base and go on to Mars then we would unify the globe and geopolitics would just fall away. Which of course is not realistic but that's the kind of perspectives that were out there in some of my interviewees. Yeah and actually Lisa in our YouTube chat room was asking about how do millennials feel about ITAR and it sounds like it's kind of on the fence about it there. There were definitely some people who were working under ITAR restrictions that wished that they could communicate with their national partners. And a few people mentioned China specifically which is not an ITAR issue but it is a US politics issue. But I also got the perspective I didn't specifically ask about ITAR but I got the perspective that some people really understood why there were restrictions and why they needed to maintain more of a privacy issue there with a lot of the things that they worked on which is also why some millennials decided not to be active on social media. They chose that for themselves because the work privacy issues they understood that just the nature of their work they really needed to keep that under wraps and make sure that they were very responsible with the work that they were privileged to do because they really enjoyed what they were doing. And so for some people who were working especially on the more defense side of things they had a more understanding approach when it comes to some of those more restrictive barriers that are in place right now. And where do millennials presently fit in spaceflight? I don't understand your question, what do you mean? Okay, so how do I phrase this with it? Where are millennials currently in spaceflight? Are we sort of at the stage where we're making up the bulk of the engineering? Are we just running the entrepreneurial ship of side of things at this point? Is there like a certain area that we dominate? We're taking over. Yeah, well, we are taking over. I mean, every day now I'm seeing some new company that's being run by a millennial, right? So, and that's not specific to space that's just the demographics of the workforce in general. Of course, the majority of leadership is still the older generations, that's to be expected. But especially within the United States where there's more of an entrepreneurial culture I do expect there and I do see more millennials popping up all the time as CEOs and other leadership positions. And you already mentioned relativity space and there were several CEOs that I interviewed not Tim Ellis, but several others in my book. And that was three years ago. So even more had popped up since then. Some are fresh out of college, right? So some might still even be in college is more of a non-traditional path. And so, I'm not saying that millennials are everywhere yet, but we are certainly getting there. The future is young and that's just a fact of life, right? As newer generations graduate and enter the workforce they're going to get into every sector that they possibly can, whether it's entry-level position or middle management or on their way up. And in some people, like myself I've started my own company and it's just sort of the nature of the workforce and that's not a millennial issue per se. But yeah, we are taken over we're going to end up in space saying there. I don't think a millennial has flown in space yet. Actually, I have to go look that up. But I don't believe any millennials have flown in space. Somebody corrects me if I'm wrong. That's a really good question. But we're going to be flying in space. We're going to be astronauts and space tourists and whatever else in between. Definitely. And ARRO in our YouTube chat room there is asking do you think the current generation is more aware of space flight than the older one? Oh, that's an interesting question because the older generations grew up with Apollo especially here in the United States and even those that didn't grow up in the United States were pretty aware of the space race. Whereas now we take space for granted we all use space much more than we ever have before but does the average person think about it? Do they think about what their smartphone is doing? Do they think about satellite technology and their cars with GPS? Do they really think about it even though they're using it all the time? Probably not. So I actually don't know and my guess would be no that I don't think millennial generation as a whole is more aware of space now than before simply because the Apollo era was just such a big cultural center and it was of course not 100% in favor by the population. If you go back in history and you look a large section of population did not approve of spending all that money to send astronauts to the moon. And so now you still see that you still see that there's large populations that don't want us to be spending any money on space at all but yet you also see NASA t-shirts and NASA hats and all kinds of space apparel on the average person and being sold in all kinds of retail locations that are non-NASA specific. But that doesn't necessarily mean people are thinking about space flight it might just mean that they like the branding of NASA. And so I don't know because I did not look at the general population but I guess it's still a mixed bag just as it was back then. Yeah and that always seems to be definitely the main gripe of folks who may not be entirely on board with space flight is that we're just wasting this money we should spend it here on earth. It's like people think that we're just shooting huge bricks of gold into space at any given time with that and so it can sometimes be a little difficult to get people to look at that perspective with it but we forget about how much space is involved in our lives and that definitely seems like a good way to combat that sort of way of doing that. And actually in our YouTube chat room Raj Luthor is asking what do you think is the best way to inform others of space exploration and how it benefits humanity in the earth? Every one of us has a passion right? You wouldn't be tuned into the show if you weren't strongly interested or passionate about space. And so the best way in my opinion is to take your enthusiasm for the subject and just freely share that. And so it doesn't even matter what topic or discuss and you could be talking about astrobiology you could be talking about rockets you could be talking about any topic of space whatsoever that you are interested in that interest, that passion will be obvious to other people. And so I think that the best way to share space with others is just to share that love that you have spread the space love and also it helps to tell them how it's relevant to them. And so it may not be your expertise to really know how much we use like earth observation satellites and all the navigation satellites and all the ways that space is relevant to our daily lives. But if you can really find an area that somebody else is passionate about if someone else is really passionate about agriculture you know, maybe they're a farmer and I use this all the time with politicians to get them to care why do we care about space? Well, it's really relevant to the things that you're passionate about maybe they're in the military or they really support the troops and they want to understand how space is really relevant to military purposes and reconnaissance and intelligence and safekeeping or maybe it's more like they're interested in real estate and you can tell them the cool things that we're doing the change in landscape of real estate based on earth observation satellite data. There's just so much environmentalism is an obvious one. So find whatever other people are interested in and try to tie it to them but also share what you are interested in. And I do this all the time with my family Jackson that's I think they really appreciate my passions. And I think that if I didn't have that passion they would be less interested in listening but because I am just so enthused about whatever subject I'm talking about they listen and my friends as well they come to me with questions they love it they don't know anything about space other than maybe what they might have read in a general news site but they come to me with these questions they want to know are we really sending humans to the moon or what's going on with space debris? Like they come to me with these random questions it's political planet and whatever it is that they're asking about even if you don't know completely the answer try to talk to them about it because then they are learning something that they are interested in and you're helping to spread that information to others. Yeah I'm always posting on my Facebook about space stuff and I'm sure my circle of friends is like at this point I don't want to say experts but I hope they read all the stuff that I post on there because that'll sort of help you nail it down. Although one of the things that also we could like help nail down DI Carvalho in our YouTube chat is actually asking what year characterizes a millennial? I mean when do they start? Maybe that's probably the first question we should have started with today but still yeah what like what's- Yeah that maybe shouldn't have been. Yeah what specifically- That's the first question I've asked in my book what is a millennial? And there are different definitions and different cut-offs. What I used was born between 1982 and 2000 and some people might disagree with that. There's a zennial population in there as well that's a bit of an overlap and the 2000 it was just sort of an arbitrary cut-off and for this book in particular I actually did not interview any high school students so I kept it to sort of two years into the millennial cut-off as you will an elder so I only interviewed college students and above. But the millennial the generation concept in general is arbitrary it's completely arbitrary and so depending on who you talk to and even different cultures they have different names for it in different cut-offs and that's okay because I was more focused on this group of people who's up and coming slash already here and wanted to get the feeling about the future of what it is that we're gonna do and what the perspectives are. And so to me I could have called it anything I could have called it hey 20s and 30s you know I could have called it anything I wanted and it's okay it doesn't matter just millennials is one of those words that is so in the news I figured most people would know what I'm talking about. Yeah and you know Lisa in our chat room is saying that I think the first virgin galactic non-pilot astronaut might have been a millennial she's pretty young I think that's Beth Moses. Oh is Beth? Yeah if I remember correctly. Beth Moses? Yeah I don't know though. I don't know how old she is but she does seem young I have to look her up I don't know Beth if you're watching I don't know how old you are maybe you are the first millennial in space. Let us know Beth. And with millennials if they wanna get in on the ground floor of space flight what should millennials be doing? Oh so most of you are already in your careers I assume by now we're still in school but pursuing your careers in school but I actually do a career coaching most of my work is space and analysis but I also have a section of work that specifically helps guide people in their space career pursuits and I talk to students, fresh graduates and mid-level professionals and so depending on where you are, what stage you're in I have different advice for you and depending on your goals and depending on what you've already done and so if you're listening to this in your millennial then you're probably already somewhat engaged in your career or you wanna be maybe you have a related career or a completely different career and you're just interested and you wanna switch well there's no time like the present what are you waiting for right? So go ahead and try to pursue that now and I'm here to help you give advice and in fact I'm working on a video project right now to give advice on these specific stages so that people can go on my website and watch a video on how I guide people generally speaking if you're still a student then your path is a little bit easier because you are expected to be exploring all these different options and expected to be talking to people about careers and graduate school and internships and co-ops and all these different paths that you can take it's a little bit harder if you are an established professional in a different industry but still actually really common for people to jump on over to space just because space is so interdisciplinary there's just so many different industries that are involved in space including journalism and broadcast and I just messed with my computer life talking about it. And of course if you're already established then it's just trying to figure out where it is you wanna go from here what it is that your ultimate goal is and maybe it's not your ultimate goal maybe it's just to go five years from now 10 years from now and try to work towards that. Yeah and there's some, you know Deepod Dolphin in our IRC chat is saying you know I think generational boundaries are stupid age doesn't correlate with skill if someone is 19 and better than someone that's 63 it wouldn't make sense to go at the 19 year old just because they're younger so yeah so you know it was kinda I guess looking at the perspectives of a generation but also at the same time it's like we were saying arbitrary in order to talk about, you know to group people in the buckets like that almost. It is arbitrary but at the same time it's also going to give you sort of an accurate representation of what people who are either about to begin their careers or just starting their careers maybe somewhere towards the middle of their careers what they're thinking about and that's really what I wanted to gauge there were just so many negative stories about what, you know news media calls millennials and they define it differently as well they arbitrarily assign these negative stereotypes negative story lines Yeah we're killing everything and so because they have done that that's where that idea came into my head I'm like well I'm a millennial I might as well take that you know definition of millennial that somebody else has created and try to reevaluate it based on my own perspectives and the perspectives of a hundred other people and that's where that came from and there's definitely gonna be a difference of opinion of someone who is 19 versus someone who is 63 to take your example just generally speaking and so I found it really important for the younger generation to probe the forward thinkingness and I think that's why all of the perspectives that I got were so optimistic because there was so much forward thinking if you are 63 and you know that you may not live to see humans land on Mars then are you really gonna talk about humans landing on Mars? Maybe, maybe not but someone who is currently 19 is probably gonna be talking about landing humans on Mars or you know talking even further out so that's where that difference comes from is the forward thinking nature of a younger generation and you know landing humans on Mars that's a pretty lofty but worthy goal in order to do that do you think that us millennials are gonna be able to pull it off? I think so, yeah I mean I know that people disagree with me but I am a moon first kind of gal so I'm really excited about Artemis and I'm really excited to see this big push both NASA and commercial and internationally sitting people in the moon and I'm hoping that we have a sustained lunar base where we can learn a lot about humans physiology and human psychology and ISRU and the way that we can use resources on the moon to create a sustained population of people on the moon to then take those lessons learned and take maybe some of the business lessons learned as well to create some kind of you know similar but different infrastructure and situation on Mars and I do think and hope that us millennials will be able to do it to land people on Mars and that's been a goal since the moon landings I found numerous articles right around the time of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing on the moon saying the next step is Mars so for 50 years now we've been talking about sending humans to Mars and that's how much it's ingrained within our thought processes when we think about the future of space and human space exploration in particular now some people might disagree and have a different perspective on what we should be doing and that's okay too I cover all these perspectives in the book and another thing to note is that I didn't just focus on spaceflight you've been focusing on spaceflight with your questions but I also interviewed a lot of space scientists who talk about planetary science and astrobiology and astronomy and some of the different things that maybe don't get enough press but are still really interesting like a Europa mission all these really cool things that can help us determine whether we are the only life here on earth in the universe or whether there might be life out there and a lot of people when I asked them what they hope the millennial generation will do before we retire a lot of them said that they hope we find life elsewhere in the universe so that just goes to show how much of an important question that is to people as well Now earlier we were talking about millennials founding their own companies and you have done that as well with Astrolitical can you tell us a little bit about what you do there? Sure, yeah, I'm an accidental entrepreneur I call myself because I was working for another company that went bankrupt and I was clearing out the office when I was nine months pregnant with my first kid and so I had a choice where I was gonna either just leave the field entirely for a few months just to take care of my newborn or I decided to dip my toe into starting my own company I really didn't know what I was doing just to begin with I made a lot of mistakes that first year but Astrolitical has grown it's almost four years old now and this is the best year yet for it I'm really excited to do analysis of the space industry, space policy with a focus in particular on US space politics and US space industry and especially some of the newer industries as well it's a lot of consulting for companies, universities and NASA and other government agencies so it's a lot of consulting where I can't tell you a lot of the things that we do because it's the proprietary information but it's also internal research and I'm currently working on a couple of internal projects that I hope to get out there in the next few months and as well as the one-on-one coaching like I said previously, the career coaching so it's a big mix and the beauty of owning my own company is that I can do whatever I want I can change whatever direction I can take on whatever clients I can take on whatever projects so really starting my own company was the best career decision I ever made and I'm very pleased with it now I'm not yet where I want the company to be it's continuing to grow but like I said, this is the best year yet and I'm looking forward to 2020 Yeah, definitely just as your own personal Twitter feed is fascinating so is Astroliticals it's just like so much information and I loved going through it a couple of nights this week seeing all those things you had this really great chart showing the time to launch of commercial crew for both Boeing and SpaceX and how they were both like I guess a lot of people assume that SpaceX kind of had this lead but it really like didn't it was kind of similar all the way down with Boeing so it wasn't too much play between the two Yeah, that was in response to Jim Bridenstine the NASA administrator he tweeted something the day before SpaceX Elon Musk was to give an update on Starship super heavy and so Jim Bridenstine tweeted a note saying we're all excited about spaceship but focus on commercial crew and essentially it's what he said and he's since clarified that statement several times but I wanted to get an idea of okay SpaceX is delayed that is true but Boeing is also a commercial crew partner and they're also delayed so I wonder how those delays stack up I wonder if one is delayed more than the other and at this point just based on that chart now that chart is already old because that chart I made that like a week and a half ago so already there's been updates on dates but the delays they had pretty much stacked up that one company versus the other company you can't call them out you can't say SpaceX is more delayed than Boeing or Boeing is coming or delayed than SpaceX and of course there's a lot of factors going into why they were delayed there were technical problems there were funding problems with Congress so the blog entry where that chart came from that was not meant to talk about any of those other things it was simply meant to compare those delays and I find delays interesting because in our industry we over promise and schedules always slip and budgets always slip and it's a systematic problem in our industry and so I find it interesting to see okay Boeing is this established company Boeing's been a company for over a hundred years Boeing has a long tradition in spaceflight versus SpaceX which is a more of a newer company it's not a startup anymore but it's a newer company very different operational mindsets but yet the delays have been simpler and there might be some other circumstances about how one had a head start over the other one had more funding than the other but the delays still are about the same and I just found it interesting and I had neglected a lot of the more outward information like social media and blogging on Astrolitical for a while so if you go to the Astrolitical Twitter account or Facebook account you might see not much information except for that blog and a few other things so I'm gonna be starting to ramp that up a little bit more and put out some more information for the public now you have written a book called Rise of the Space Age Millennials when is it coming out and when it's out where can we get it at? It's coming out January 17th now I deeply apologize to those of you who pre-ordered and I had delayed this so much I had initially said it was coming out in the late spring when I did a fundraising campaign in January and then I realized just how many Apollo books were coming out in the spring and summer I'm like there's no way I can compete with this avalanche of fantastic space history books so I decided to move it to the fall and then just things got in the way and I had all kinds of client deadlines and when it comes to client deadlines they come first and the book comes second and not to mention just personal things going on with my personal life so the book kept playing delayed delayed and so now I've made myself a hard deadline I have a hard deadline with my editor I've got a deadline where I'm gonna release it on my birthday which is January 17th and I hope you all enjoy it and thank you so much for your patience you can find it both on my website Astralidocal.com and also on Amazon but not yet so there's no pre-order information out there yet you could only pre-order it through the fundraising campaign that I did back earlier this year so if you are interested there is a sign up link where you can get information to be emailed to you when the book is available to be ordered so people would like to know more about you where should they go? Oh gosh I'm all over the place so Twitter, LinkedIn those are probably the two best places for social media connection with me and my website if you wanted to get more formal information Astralidocal.com I also have a blog that I don't update very frequently Lars Space on Space and that's a blog spot it's just really just a throwaway for when I feel like I wanna write something about space but it's not a formal blog post from my company I write it there so really any of these places I'm very open to people connecting with me ask me anything you wanna ask me questions send me an email or a message and I'm happy to respond to you All right, well there you go Laura Forsik you know I'm really looking forward to reading that book as a millennial so can't wait to pick it up and everyone of course should go out and pick it up as well so that way you can support Laura and the amazing work that she is doing and of course support here at tomorrow is also super important because this show is literally supported by our viewers you folks are what make it possible for us to make this show so if you get something from this show it is possible for you to give back to us you can head on over to youtube.com slash tmro slash join and you can actually give to the show there you can literally do as little as a dollar per month that's what I love about YouTube is that you could just give a little bit if you got it and if you don't you can also head over to community.tmro.tv as well we've got a really cool thread system there and you can kind of post like what this is what I can do and we can like line you up with something so if you have an idea we're more than welcome to hearing how you may want to help us out and of course, you know, subscribing to us liking the videos linking them and sharing them everywhere hitting the notification bell which is somewhere above me here don't forget especially with our Lettionosteams that we do those are completely unannounced so when you get that notification that it's live it really is live so that wraps up tomorrow orbit 12.32 so thanks so much for tuning in and until the next one keep exploring