[MUSIC] Hi, welcome back to the Introduction to the Orbital Perspective. Last lesson I shared with you how, I shared with you my story launching into space and how I launched into space with this belief that we actually, right now, have all the resources, all the technology necessary to solve many, if not all, the problems facing our planet. And I said that I pondered the question while I was in space, ff that's true, if that bold statement is true, why do we still face so many critical issues and problems? I also said that the seeds to the answer to that question were planted during my time in space. And so I want to spend a little bit of time today talking about that concept of why do we still face so many problems and how my time in space kind of led to some of the conclusions about that. Now I'll start out by talking about my second mission in space. My second mission in space where I spent half of 2011 living and working on board the International Space Station. Started with a launch from Kazakstan in Russian Soyuz spacecraft. And during this mission, I got into a routine where I would almost say good night to the earth. As it was time to get ready for bed, as all our work for the day was over, I would go to the cupula which is this windowed observatory on the bottom of the space station, and I would just gaze at the earth for a while. And as I would take in this beautiful sight, I would think about what the world is going to look like in the next 50 years. How far would we progress in overcoming some of the challenges that we face? How far would we progress in solving the problems that we face? And as I would look at this beautiful scene I'd routinely be hit in the gut with the sobering contradiction between the beauty of our planet on one hand and the unfortunately realities of life on our beautiful planet on the other hand. Now, those that don't have clean water to drink, enough food to eat, the poverty, and the conflict that exists on our planet. And like I said, I launched into space with this idea that we already have all the resources and technology necessary to solve the problems that we face. And I wondered, as I was gazing back at the Earth, we do they still remain? And I think the seeds to the answer to that question were planted three years earlier on my first spaceflight. On that first space flight, on the third spacewalk of that flight, I had my feet clamped to the end of the space station's robotic arm. And with me at the end of the arm it was flown through a maneuver that we called the windshield wiper, which took me across a large arc across the top of the space station and back. And at the top of this arc I was about a hundred feet above the space station. Looking down at this massive complex against a backdrop of our indescribably beautiful planet 240 miles below. And this scene took my breath away. Well what I think was more compelling than the beauty of the scene was the realization of the incredible human accomplishment that the International Space Station represented. It's arguably the most complicated complex structure ever built. It was built in space by 15 nations. Some of these nations weren't always the best of friends. Some were on opposite sides of the Cold War, opposite sides of the space race. And I thought to myself, if we can do this, if we can do this amazing thing in space, imagine what we can do by setting aside our differences, and bringing that same level of collaboration, that same level of cooperation, down to the Earth's surface. How many less problems would we have if we figured out a way to all work together towards our common goals and solve our shared problems? Now this was particularly poignant for me. You have to realize that I was born in the same year that Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly in space. 50 years later, almost to the day from the very same launch pad, that Yuri Gagarin launched from, I launched into space with a couple of Russian military officers in a space craft called Gagarin. And as I stood there at the base of this rocket that would take us to space, standing there on this launch pad that was in this previous top circuit Soviet military installation, I looked up to the top of the rocket and I saw an American Flag. That image was burned into me. It really drove home the power of cooperation. You have to realize that for the first 15 years of my adult life I trained to fight the Russians, America's most menacing enemy at the time. And to think of myself as a fully integrated member of a Russian spacecraft crew, thinking back to when I was a Cold War fighter pilot stationed in West Germany on the tip of the sword, it was really an amazing contradiction. And it was really an amazing example of what we can do when we set aside our differences and work together. And so in the next lesson we're going to get into what that means a little deeper. We're going to talk about what collaboration means, what it doesn't mean. And what is the significance of being able to work together for our society. So I'll see you next lesson.