{"id":24646,"date":"2020-06-12T16:11:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-12T16:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/?p=2596231"},"modified":"2020-06-12T16:11:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T16:11:00","slug":"watch-astronaut-leland-melvin-and-bill-nye-discuss-racial-injustice-and-space-exploration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipsnews.net\/business\/2020\/06\/12\/watch-astronaut-leland-melvin-and-bill-nye-discuss-racial-injustice-and-space-exploration\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch astronaut Leland Melvin and Bill Nye discuss racial injustice and space exploration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"233\" height=\"24\" src=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/4000-logo-90.png\" class=\"webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" style=\"display: block; margin-bottom: 5px; clear:both;max-width: 100%;\" link_thumbnail=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"image1\" title=\"Leland Melvin and Bill Nye on a video call\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/thumbor\/jCAQZ80qEC8hSf0zRVsHuoOF46Q=\/0x0:1676x1117\/1310x873\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/uploads\/chorus_image\/image\/66926362\/20200610_leland_melvin_bill_nye2.0.jpg\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\" data-pre-sourced=\"yes\" data-sourced=\"yes\" data-original=\"https:\/\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/thumbor\/jCAQZ80qEC8hSf0zRVsHuoOF46Q=\/0x0:1676x1117\/1310x873\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/uploads\/chorus_image\/image\/66926362\/20200610_leland_melvin_bill_nye2.0.jpg\" data-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/thumbor\/jCAQZ80qEC8hSf0zRVsHuoOF46Q=\/0x0:1676x1117\/1310x873\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/uploads\/chorus_image\/image\/66926362\/20200610_leland_melvin_bill_nye2.0.jpg\" \/><\/span><small>Planetary<\/small><\/p>\n<p>Leland Melvin never thought he would be a NASA astronaut when he was growing up in Lynchburg, Virginia. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think about becoming an astronaut because I didn&rsquo;t see someone that looked like me,&rdquo; Melvin says.<\/p>\n<p>Melvin, now a former NASA astronaut and a prominent figure in the space industry, recently recorded a conversation with Bill Nye, the CEO of the space science non-profit, The Planetary Society. For more than an hour, the two men had a wide-ranging discussion of space exploration, and the lasting impact of racism in this country.<\/p>\n<div>\n<aside><q>I think about how you and I wouldn&rsquo;t be having this conversation right now<\/q><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<p>Though both men are now beloved science educators, Melvin&rsquo;s experiences growing up as a black person in Lynchburg were vastly different from Nye&rsquo;s experiences as a white person in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n<p>During Melvin&rsquo;s senior year of high school, he remembers making out with his girlfriend in his car when the pair were approached by a state trooper. He tells Nye that the officer pulled his girlfriend out of the car. &ldquo;He tried to convince her that I was raping her, because he wanted me to go to jail,&rdquo; Melvin says. His girlfriend defended him, and eventually the officer let them go. &ldquo;The crazy thing is, I think about how you and I wouldn&rsquo;t be having this conversation right now because I would have been in the prison system. Once you get into that system it&rsquo;s very hard to get out.&rdquo; Melvin tells Nye.<\/p>\n<p>The recent killings of&nbsp;George Floyd&nbsp;and&nbsp;Breonna Taylor&nbsp;by police have forced the country to contend with its legacy of prejudice and violence against black people, with widespread protests against systemic racism spreading throughout the world.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I think a lot of good people who were sitting on the sidelines saying &lsquo;this doesn&rsquo;t affect me&rsquo; are realizing that it really does affect them, it affects everyone, and we have got to make some serious change.&rdquo; Melvin says.<\/p>\n<p>That includes the spaceflight world, which is still&nbsp;overwhelmingly white. On June 5, during the protests, Nye&nbsp;issued a letter&nbsp;on behalf of The Planetary Society. &ldquo;Many of us are having a hard time looking up right now. It&rsquo;s a painful moment. We here at The Planetary Society recognize we must do more to support Black people, including Black people who love space.&rdquo; Nye wrote, pledging that the society would &ldquo;look for ways to influence the broader space exploration community toward a vision of a more inclusive future.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<div>\n<aside><q>we get over our differences in space so that we don&rsquo;t all die<\/q><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<p>Nye and Melvin talk about what that future might look like. Melvin says it might look a lot like what he experienced in space, where every crew member relied on each other to make it back down to Earth alive.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I want that life off-planet to be a model that we adopt and bring back down here. Because we get over our differences in space so that we don&rsquo;t all die. That&rsquo;s the power of working on a team in a critical environment. Our Earth is a critical environment too.&rdquo; Melvin says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"tags\">\n<div><strong>See Campaign: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2020\/6\/12\/21288743\/astronaut-leland-melvin-bill-nye-racial-injustice-space-exploration\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2020\/6\/12\/21288743\/astronaut-leland-melvin-bill-nye-racial-injustice-space-exploration<\/a><br \/><b>Contact Information:<\/b><br \/>Mary Beth Griggs<\/p>\n<p><b>Tags:<\/b><br \/><a href=\"\"><\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/category\/news-category\/wire\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Wire<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/category\/news-category\/artificial-intelligence-newswire\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Artificial Intelligence Newswire<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/category\/global-regions\/united-states\/\" rel=\"category tag\">United States<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/category\/language\/english\/\" rel=\"category tag\">English<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\" alt=\"image\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" class=\"cwdfimg\" \/><\/div>\n<div>\n<h3>Contact Information:<\/h3>\n<p>Mary Beth Griggs<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"233\" height=\"24\" src=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/4000-logo-90.png\" alt=\"\">Planetary Leland Melvin never thought he would be a NASA astronaut when he was growing up in Lynchburg, Virginia. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think about becoming an astronaut because I didn&rsquo;t see someone that looked like me,&rdquo; Melvin says. Melvin, now a former NASA astronaut and a prominent figure in the space industry, recently recorded a conversation &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/2020\/06\/12\/watch-astronaut-leland-melvin-and-bill-nye-discuss-racial-injustice-and-space-exploration\/\">Continue reading <span>Watch astronaut Leland Melvin and Bill Nye discuss racial injustice and space exploration<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/ipsnews.net\/business\/2020\/06\/12\/watch-astronaut-leland-melvin-and-bill-nye-discuss-racial-injustice-and-space-exploration\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,3,22,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence-newswire","category-english","category-united-states","category-wire"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Watch astronaut Leland Melvin and Bill Nye discuss racial injustice and space exploration - Business<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ipsnews.net\/business\/2020\/06\/12\/watch-astronaut-leland-melvin-and-bill-nye-discuss-racial-injustice-and-space-exploration\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Watch astronaut Leland Melvin and Bill Nye discuss racial injustice and space exploration - Business\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Planetary Leland Melvin never thought he would be a NASA astronaut when he was growing up in Lynchburg, Virginia. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think about becoming an astronaut because I didn&rsquo;t see someone that looked like me,&rdquo; Melvin says. Melvin, now a former NASA astronaut and a prominent figure in the space industry, recently recorded a conversation &hellip; Continue reading Watch astronaut Leland Melvin and Bill Nye discuss racial injustice and space exploration Continue Reading &rarr;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/ipsnews.net\/business\/2020\/06\/12\/watch-astronaut-leland-melvin-and-bill-nye-discuss-racial-injustice-and-space-exploration\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Business\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-06-12T16:11:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/4000-logo-90.png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Asiya\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Asiya\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ipsnews.net\/business\/2020\/06\/12\/watch-astronaut-leland-melvin-and-bill-nye-discuss-racial-injustice-and-space-exploration\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/ipsnews.net\/business\/2020\/06\/12\/watch-astronaut-leland-melvin-and-bill-nye-discuss-racial-injustice-and-space-exploration\/\",\"name\":\"Watch astronaut Leland Melvin and Bill Nye discuss racial injustice and space exploration - 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