Scientist, Astronaut, Explorer | Kathryn Sullivan
Good Life Project
Jonathan Fields / Acast
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2020
⏱️ 82 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Dr. Kathryn Sullivan is a distinguished scientist, astronaut, leader and teacher. She was one of the first six women to join the NASA astronaut corps in 1978 and is the first American woman to walk in space. Sullivan flew on three space shuttle missions during her 15-year NASA tenure, including the 1990 mission that deployed the Hubble Space Telescope.
She has also been recognized as one of the 46 distinguished First Women by Time Magazine, the 15 Women Changing the World by the World Economic Forum, and Time’s 100 Most Influential People and is the author of the children’s book To the Stars! and Handprints on Hubble, An Astronaut’s Story of Invention. And, funny enough, she began her career studying not the reach of space, but the depths of the ocean.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Okay, so picture this. You're floating on a space shuttle far above the planet in space. |
| 0:17.5 | And wearing a suit, you leave the vessel to find yourself walking in space. That is the |
| 0:27.1 | experience of my guest today. Dr. Catherine Sullivan, she's a distinguished scientist astronaut |
| 0:33.5 | executive professor and the first American woman to walk in space. One of the first six women |
| 0:40.9 | actually joined NASA as an astronaut in 1978. She flew three space shuttle missions during her |
| 0:48.0 | 15 years in NASA, including the 1990 mission that deployed the world-changing Hubble Space Telescope. |
| 0:55.5 | That story, by the way, including the huge discovery once it was launched that it didn't work. |
| 1:02.0 | And then trying to figure out how do we fix this massive telescope that is orbiting around the |
| 1:09.4 | planet and how they eventually came to do that is the subject of a really fascinating new memoir of |
| 1:15.3 | hers called handprints on the Hubble. In the time since NASA, she has held a variety of senior |
| 1:23.1 | executive positions, including presidential appointments to the National Science Board as the |
| 1:29.1 | Undersecretary Administrator of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. |
| 1:35.7 | Various appointments and academic institutions. And she has been recognized as one of 46 distinguished |
| 1:43.8 | first women by Time Magazine. 15 women changing the world by the world economic forum. And times |
| 1:50.8 | 100 most influential people and has been awarded the Explorers Club Medal and Emmy and nine |
| 1:57.8 | honorary degrees. We talked about this entire journey, including the early years her defacination |
| 2:04.7 | and curiosity with all things science and how the world worked around her. The experience that |
| 2:10.2 | led her incredibly and very unexpectedly to becoming an astronaut and how her choices and her life |
| 2:17.4 | has unfolded in the time since then. So excited to share this conversation with you. |
| 2:23.2 | I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project. |
| 2:35.8 | You were born across the Hudson but grew up in LA from what I know, right? |
| 2:39.9 | Yeah, we went out there when I was six. Aerospace was moving westward and my father went with it. |
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