Embracing infinite possibilities
Dr. Bernard Harris, a former NASA astronaut, spent over 400 hours in space during two missions and made history as the first African American to walk in space. Now, he's sharing the mindset that helped him break barriers.
In his new book, Embracing Infinite Possibilities: Letting Go of Fear to Find Your Highest Potential, Harris encouraged readers to move beyond fear and strive for greatness.
“On my second mission, I had the opportunity to do a spacewalk,” Harris said. “Wearing a 350-pound spacesuit, I stepped outside for about five hours. After we completed our tasks, I took a moment to just take it all in.”
Harris shared how overcoming fear was crucial to completing his mission. “What’s important is realizing that if we choose to, we can set fear aside and focus on the task at hand,” Harris said. “If you let fear take hold, it can get internalized and stop you from doing what you’re truly capable of.”
His mission involved capturing a satellite floating in orbit using a robotic arm. Harris explained that he had to slowly approach the satellite and carefully secure it. A precise process that is required to safely wrap the satellite and bring it back into the shuttle.
Harris shared how faith helped him through delays and setbacks before his first spaceflight. After being selected early for a mission, he faced two years of postponed launches, including one that was aborted just seconds before liftoff.
In that moment of doubt, he found comfort in a Bible verse, which gave him the strength to keep going.
Space bandits!
In science fiction movies and shows like Star Wars and Star Trek, one popular theme is criminals that roam the galaxy. While those characters aren’t real, some think that criminals could possibly prowl through our solar system one day.
In the book Space Piracy: Preparing for a Criminal Crisis in Orbit by Marc Feldman and Hugh Taylor, the possibility of crime is explored along with a look at the current laws that are in place to monitor crime off our home planet.
Marc Feldman is the executive director of The Center of Space, Crime, Piracy and Governance and Hugh Taylor, the director of The Center of Space, Crime, Piracy and Governance.
“While it may have been exaggerated, it is our take on the thesis of the book that there will be some extraordinarily nefarious, nasty and rather evil characters that will be inhabiting space,” Feldman said. “If not now, in the not-too-distant future as pirates and as criminals become aware of the potential of profits and plunder in space.”
Another argument from Feldman and Taylor is that the current laws in space are too weak to prevent future crime in orbit. While there are policies in place now like the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, Taylor argued that it isn’t enough to protect companies and nations from space pirates.
“In space, it's even more complicated and the treaties are helpful and not helpful in the sense that you can't really establish international sovereignty in space,” Taylor said. “There's a lot of ambiguity about which laws would apply and who would enforce them if they could be enforced.”
While Hugh and Feldman compare these potential criminals to pirates that roam the seas, the potential theft and crimes that could be carried out are different in space. While pirates on Earth may hijack ships, Taylor explained that space pirates would most likely target satellites and space equipment. Perhaps in several decades, Taylor said “you could be looking at more disruption or hijacking of space products and space industry, which is something that doesn't really exist yet.”
