Hi, I'm Dan Premack, and welcome to Axios Recap, where we dig into one big story.

Today is Thursday, July 22nd.

U.S. home prices are up, lumber output is down because of the Western wildfires, and we're

focused on science in space.

Space travel was once something that united all Americans in a sense of

discovery and wonderment. The accomplishment was shared, even by the vast majority of us who had

nothing to do with the actual engineering or risk-taking. But things have changed, with the recent

suborbital flights, headlined by Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos. Those flights have

become something of a social media Rorschart test. Yeah, sure, there's still plenty of amazement.

After all, these are spaceships, not to mention ones that are using technologies way more advanced

than the old Apollo or shuttle missions. But there's also been a lot of blowback, including

from prominent politicians. It basically boils down to

rich guys are spending obscene amounts of money on joyrides, while the earth below them literally

burns. So today we wanted to approach this from a bit of a different lens with someone who was on one

of those flights. More specifically, a scientist who was on one of those flights, Sarisha Bandla, who was alongside

Richard Branson on the Virgin Galactic mission.

For full transparency, Bandla is not an uninterested observer.

She's an executive at Virgin Galactic.

But part of her job title there is VP of Research Operations, and her role on the mission

was both to test the vehicle's research capabilities and to conduct an actual scientific experiment.

In other words, there might be more to space tourism than just tourism.

We're joined now by Sirisha Bandla, VP of Government Affairs and Research Operations at Virgin Galactic and a newly minted astronaut.

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