Watch astronaut Leland Melvin and Bill Nye discuss racial injustice and space exploration

Planetary

Leland Melvin never thought he would be a NASA astronaut when he was growing up in Lynchburg, Virginia. “I didn’t think about becoming an astronaut because I didn’t see someone that looked like me,” Melvin says.
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.
I think about how you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation right now
Though both men are now beloved science educators, Melvin’s experiences growing up as a black person in Lynchburg were vastly…

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