This TED Talk features astronaut and engineer Leland Melvin, recorded live at TED Salon Radical Craft

2018.

This talk contains mature language.

In 1969, I was standing behind the Slovenia black and white television set.

Hearing about these things happening on the set in the front,

I was the guy, you know, moving the rabbit ears for my dad and my sister, my mom.

No, move over here, turn over here, move this way, we can't see the screen.

And what they were watching was one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

Neil and Buzz Aldrin were walking on the moon.

And I was five years old in Lynchburg, Virginia, a skinny black kid in a kind of somewhat racist town.

And I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life.

And my parents, you know, they were educators.

They said that, you know, you can do anything.

But after that moon landing, all the kids in the neighborhood were like,

you're going to be an astronaut?

I'm like, no.

I don't want to buzz cut, and I don't see someone

who looks like me, because representation does matter. And I knew that there was a guy

five blocks down the street on Pierce Street who was training to play tennis, and it was Arthur

Ash. And my dad talked about his character, his discipline, his intelligence, his athleticism.

I wanted to be Arthur Ash.

I don't want to be on those moon guys.

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