Lori Garver is a leading figure in the US space program who pioneered innovations for NASA. She was the principal advisor on aerospace issues to three presidential candidates and led the NASA transition team for President Obama. In the first half, she shared her insights on NASA, and how the US space industry has been transformed to become the envy of the world and is ushering in a new space age. She also addressed the challenges she faced as a woman working in the male-dominated aerospace field. After college, she worked for Senator John Glenn, and consequently met a number of people from NASA. The space agency ended up recruiting her in 1996.
Garver believes space exploration is important for the future of humanity. Instead of just building rockets, her vision was to open space for more activities. She became known for her push to partner with the private sector (which has finally come to fruition in recent years with such companies as SpaceX and Blue Origin). NASA succeeded the best when it was aligned with the national purpose to beat the Russians to the moon, but since then, its policy was to reduce the cost of space transportation, and it became less innovative, she remarked. She's particularly excited about NASA's planned mission to Europa, a moon of Jupiter, that is thought to possibly house life underneath its icy lakes.
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In the latter half, ufologist and activist Steve Bassett addressed his latest work towards disclosure, as well as the announcement of NASA's new UFO study and mounting investigations into unidentified aerial phenomena. Regarding the recent congressional hearing on UFOs, he thought it was significant that Rep. Mike Gallagher asked about the Malmstrom AFB incident where nuclear weapons appeared to be disabled by UFOs, and the purported Wilson-Davis memo (a document that connects secret government programs and crashed UFO materials). Bassett thinks that subsequent UFO hearings will prove to be more momentous with military witnesses, and may even lead to outright disclosure of an ET presence by the US president.
He believes that it's NASA's new administrator, Senator Bill Nelson (a former astronaut), that is behind the agency's recent quest to investigate UFOs and UAP. However, he added, "I have high confidence that every single administrator of NASA from the very beginning was well aware of the extraterrestrial presence," and the agency has done plenty of classified work for the Dept. of Defense. After disclosure is confirmed, contactees will be legitimized, he said, and then we will be faced with two fascinating questions: "What should we know about what ETs are doing right now?" and "When will we see formal open contact?"
News segment guests: John M. Curtis, Charles Coppes