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that's it from us for the time being. now it is hardtalk. now it is hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i am stephen sackur. the impulse to explore has taken human beings into space and to the remotest corners of our own planet. my guest today has experienced both. kathy sullivan was the first american woman to walk in space. and she has just returned from a journey to the bottom of the deepest ocean floor. she is first and foremost a scientist. right now as we try to navigate our future, are we humans respecting the science?

kathy sullivan in columbus, ohio, welcome to hardtalk. thanks, great to be with you. you can be described as a scientist, an explorer, i'm wondering what comes first for you? is that the science or is it the adrenaline filled adventure? well, i would say it's the exploration. i've never been really that much of an adrenaline junkie. but exploring is always intrigued me sent from my younger days watching mercury astronauts and jacques cousteau and reading about all the people in national geographic. their opportunity to go exotic places and learn all sorts of things fascinated me. i wanted some of that in my life. well, i'll tell you what fascinates me about that. that you don't really feel that adrenaline is your thing because you put yourself into circumstances both far above the earth and right at the bottom of the earth. where frankly, you are in life

or death situations, surely adrenaline has to be a part of it? well i don't do those things for the rest of the adrenaline. i feel because where they let me go, what they let me learn, sometimes the challenge you know, can i find doing that fly an aeroplane? it's not about all i want to feel the adrenaline in my body flowing, coursing through my veins. that's never been the draw for me. i guess what strikes me is that you are a woman who has pushed against frontiers. of course, that's in the most literal, physical sense, frontiers in space, far below the sea, we will talk about both. but there is also a different kind of frontier. you were one of the first women to be involved in the space programme, to be an astronaut within the nasa organization. did you feel at the time in the 1970s that you were pushing against a barrier, that you are breaking that famous glass ceiling? i think all six of us who joined in 1978 were very aware that this was a notable step forward.

this was a big change. this was a piercing of what had been a barrier since the start of the united states astronaut program. we felt that rather keenly, we recognise maybe a bit dimly some of us were just straight out of grad school. but we recognised that we have both the opportunity and a sense that the obligation to really step up and do a really good job, if we'd gotten the door ajar and able to squeak through we wanted the door to be opening wider and wider behind us. how bad was the sexism, misogyny that you had to face inside nasa at that time in the late 70s and eighties? you know, honestly it was not that terrible. that may and part have been because we did not come in as the mostjunior people. of course, new rookie junior people often get a dose of teasing and hazing in many organizations.

but we walked in with about the highest siege and status that nasa can bestow. the title of astronaut. i think maybe to some degree that cause people to just stop a bit and say, i know i always treated astronauts even though i've never seen month that look like these six. but you get maybe a bit of a window of time to prove yourself. of course before very long you are then standing on your own track record as everybody has to do. you've written very frankly about some of your feelings in this period. you said you are more frustrated about the attitudes in the outside world than you were attitudes inside nasa. you wrote that pretty quickly you realise that i wasn't going to be the one who was everybody was chasing. you're talking about sort of date media scrutiny, because there were four women who outwardly looked more obviously like good stories that the media would want to chase. what did you mean by that? they are sort of an archetype of beauty or good looks in any society. and i looked at myself and my five other colleagues and reckoned

several of them just sort of fit more of what i had always seen as the stereotype on magazine covers and so forth then i reckoned i did. and to the degree that image and fitting a certain stereotype would appeal to people making the decision about who flies first, i thought that might actually give them an edge. i didn't think that would ever in any way out rank confidence and judgement and our ability to perform. but i figured it would probably colour the decision. and if indeed it did it, i reckoned that would put me of a disadvantage. never been a cover girl in my life. i'm fascinated with the distance of time whether you believe it funded let mentally did affect the way you are, those six women's career progressed. i've really no way of telling because all the decisions having to do with what we were assigned to and what the task we were given we re always very opaque.

they were never really laid out or explain. so what factors went in or did not go into those decision, i have no clue. what i look back now with the distance of time, the pathway that and rae, and i can't imagine any of us having any complaints. in our class wrapped up the first fleet ——first female to fly in space for the united states, the first to do a spacewalk, the first to be awarded the space congressional medal of honor. so maybe that factor played a role one way or another now and then. but we all had a very good ride, a very good run and we were able to make really meaningful contributions to the technical side of the us space programme as well as i would like to think the cultural side of opening the door widerfor women to come on and behind us. and in terms of achievement you had won extraordinary historic achievement in your name that will never be taken away from you. you were the first american woman to conduct a spacewalk.

i'm just wondering how galling it was for you, not to put a negative spin on it but the fact is, the americans wanted you to be the first woman to make a spacewalk. in fact you were picked to the post by a russian. was that galling quiz might not particularly. we quite expected it when the press release came out announcing my first flight it included the fact that sally ride would fly on the same mission. that would make her the first woman to fly twice. and sally and i reading that press release and having all the pats on the backs of our colleagues we just looked at each other and said, they are not paying attention. this press release is already in moscow. svetlana skye is going to get a second flight and odds are she will get to do a spacewalk. they had months to fit that in before we are slated to fly. sure enough that's just what happen. we always tease that svetla na owed us her second flight on the spacewalk. and the spacewalk itself, again,

astronauts when they come back to earth they often talk about what it humbling experience it was. how we gave them a new insight and to now fragile and tiny our planet is in the great vastness of the universe. was all of that in your mind or was it very prosaic about survive doing the mission, getting through it, surviving and doing it as your bosses at nasa wanted? well, you are performing well getting the mission done and coming back home have got to be top of mind and what you're really putting your focus in your attention on. that's why you're there. you are not there for touristing. but having said that, our schedules always had enough nooks and crannies in them, enough moments maybe before you go to bed of if you wake up a bit during your sleep. where you can take in where you were. and the spectacular sight of the earth, you just had to be stunned and sort of recalibrated by that. how both fragile and elegant and yet at the

same time, immense and powerful the planet is. and that duality really struck me. the systems on our planet big storms, hurricanes hugely powerful and at the same time you would see elegant signs like little tentacles of dust coming off the sahara that reminded you about how finely balanced and how elegant the planet is as well. it's really amazing to fly at 17,500 miles an hour from the daylight side of the earth across the terminator onto the night—time side of the earth and looked down at the dark earth below you and see sunshine still shining on your spacecraft and realise there could be a little kid down there on the earth right now looking up at the sky and pointing up and saying to their mum or their dad, look mummy there goes a satellite. in that little kid is pointing at you. there aren't mind—bending and wonderful moments. we are talking about 1980, i believe your last mission was 1990. it's a long time ago.

do you fear that the nasa, the federal space operation, its commitment, it's mission has lost momentum, sort of lost its way last two or three decades? i think nasa has struggled in the united states has struggled to really seize on and target the right scale of bold objectives for nasa. and then stick with it long enough to really obtain it i think it will turn out in the long run to be a good thing that nasa has been able to turn over the ferrying of cargo and people from the surface of the earth i'm a turn that over to private sector players. i have confidence now that is heading in the right direction with some real momentum. and that does let nasa focus on broader goals

bolder goals whether that's out of planets mars or the moon. the trick of course is to be able to get beyond the glossy press release and the coal announcement and the powerpoint drawings of what it will look like. and actually to the doing of it. that takes time, it takes real firm commitment, the kind of commitment that will get you through the setbacks that are inevitably going to happen. and so that's, if i'm concerned about anything it's more about the political stability and political will of our country that can give nasa a charge and it really hold to that charge until we achieve it. i just wonder where fleet neck whether you failed in some ways there's been too much of an obsession about putting humans into space? in some ways i think, you've given in your writing about your career a sense that your greatest achievement was your involvement in putting the hubble space telescope into position. and of course it's given us this extraordinary window into the universe which has given us unparalleled knowledge about the way the universe works. but maybe there should be more of a focus on that and less of a focus still to this day, people talking about putting

men back on the moon and putting men on mars. maybe that's lesser, secondary importance, what you think? i think deciding what that balance is is a critical decision. i reject the dichotomy of it's either or, one is right on is wrong. i think exploration calls for both and if you know exactly what data and information you are after, we certainly can develop robotic and automated systems that can deliver just what you knew to ask and designed that system to deliver. but there are so many unknown still. including unknowns about, how the human body works and the opportunity to examine that both in microgravity and induced gravity. they arejust huge frontiers out there. isn't it daunting and maybe even depressing, now that we know, thanks to hubble in part, just how ferociously massive the universe is and how it is expanding and how another

we know so much more about the galaxy far beyond our own, we have a sense of the vastness and the distance. which means even if in galaxies far beyond ours, we find the conditions perhaps for a planets a little bit like our own where there might be life forms, we are never, ever, ever in any imaginable future going to be able to reach those places. all we can actually reach in bodily form are dead chunks of rock that aren't going to yield very much. there are a number of presumptions in the way you put that question that i would reject. i am not a proponent of the lifeboat theory that we should send people to the moon and to mars is because were going to have to abandon this planet eventually after we spelled it. that's a moral and unethical posture. i look at a little differently i guess, i look

of apollo and say, great, guys walked on the moon they brought that rocks, so what. i look at apollo and i see something else. i see a catalyst to advance science and technology across a wider front than any other goal i can imagine would have done. and that bled over and fed into medicine, telemedicine, digital computing, advanced materials. so the cascade of benefits that earthlings received and that are now embedded and woven with the fabric of our lives, the cascade of benefits that came out of apollo happen because the goal was so demanding and so audacious. and we stuck with it and got it done. and that to me is really the underlying fundamental value of setting a bold, national goal and sticking to it. few people think of apollo this way but it's true to point out apollo marks the moment in history of computing when people

stopped bragging about how large that computers were and started to brag about how small they were. and the reason was, you needed more computing power with some higher speed in a small and highly reliable package than any other goal had ever forced humankind to develop. and those advances in semiconductors and manufacturing and scaling, set the stage for the digital computing revolution that we've all live with and now enjoy in our everyday life. and if it took years and if you were a little bit younger and there was the opportunity for you as an astronaut to take part in a mission to mars or even beyond, which would take years potentially, you'd sign up, wouldn't you ? i wanted, i'm a geologist for top and a volcanologist by my original training. i would love to see the chasms and volcanoes of mars. i'm holding out to get thejohn glenn deal, and about another ten years

old i get another ride. well, we will certainly want you back on the show for that. in the meantime, here's a thought, you mentioned apollo and that probably was the absolute pinnacle of us space achievement. getting those men on the moon in 1969 and that's a long time ago. one could argue that the reason that kennedy and the successive administrations committed to that was because they were locked apollo and that probably was the absolute pinnacle of us space achievement. getting those men on the moon in 1969 and that's a long time ago. one could argue that the reason that kennedy and the successive administrations committed to that was because they were locked in a cold war with the soviet union and space appeared to be the new frontier for that hostility. perhaps right now, investment from governments in space my may be ramped up because of a new phase of nationalistic, possibly sort of,

militaristic perception of what space means for nationstates. do you embrace the new investment or worry about the militarization? a bit of both, i have to say. it's unequivocal that space nowadays and probably the decades ahead is going to be characterised by three features. it's going to be more congested,it‘s going to be more contested, and the actors will be increasingly commercial. and all of that is going to add a lot of complexity, legal and technical and other complexity to everybody‘s business in space. but if i may interrupt, when your president donald trump describes space as the world newest war fighting domain, when he creates what he calls, the new space force which he says it will control the ultimate high ground, do you as a very senior, former federal official do you worry about what your president is saying? well i look at those words against the backdrop of what i know is i really happening in space. and another would not other actors in space, national actors and i would kind of say that horse is out of the barn. 0ur presidents recent labelling is notwithstanding. as i said space can be hotly contested arena now with all sorts

of offences jabbing that each other already going on. and not at all just by the united states. you for a number of years were the chief of america's oceanic and atmospheric agency, you were very much involved in the american debate about what to do about scientific evidence pointing to significant and serious climate change. you ran into trouble with republicans on the senate who accused you of doctoring some information of trying to pursue a political agenda because you were supportive of barack 0bama. given your experience, do you fear there is a real problem with america and following the signs on climate —— science change? i do. we seem to be and quite a phase of quite an intense

anti—antiscience, i grew up, started cutting my teeth a national policy arena in an era where scientists and technologists like myself were tapped and appointed from presidents of both parties. because there was a widespread and shared confidence that the data or other data. science are the science. you want your best science and engineers bringing you the best insights that science and engineering can provide. those will never fully answer policy questions. they will never fully tell you what to do. policy makers and elected officials have to go beyond that. but we've moved now unfortunately, and it worries me greatly to an era where, since i served under president barack 0bama i have served under more republican presidents than democratic presidents, by the way. but in our current political climate in the united states the fact that i most recently served under president 0bama will mean that a whole slew of other elected officials will never touch me for an appointment. and probably doubt anything i've said even if it was two plus two is four. that's a recipe for grave harm and disaster in a

highly technological society and our advanced world. but sadly, it seems to be where we are. continuing with the theme of what human beings are currently doing to the planet. just a very short time ago you went on the most extraordinaryjourney in a submersible vehicle right to the bottom of the earth. i think some 38,000 feet, roughly 11 km down. to the challenger deep, the deepest part of the mariana trench in the pacific ocean. one thing i believe you were trying to do or at least the whole sort of project was trying to do is figure out the degree to which human pollution has reached the very deepest, deepest parts of the ocean. can you give me some sense of the conclusions? sure, as you said one of many objectives so little is known about the super deep areas of the ocean more than 6000 meters. we were looking at the topography,

we were working to get samples and look at the organisms. i can tell you a couple of findings from the broader sweep of the expedition that they have been running this year last year. in some of the very small critters that live in these deepest places including mariana trench, little guys called amphipods which look rather like the little bugs you find in the garden. they have found in the innards of a number of micro organism traces of micro plastic that are above the background level. which means some of the plastics produce in our industrial society are making it all the way down through the physical items of trash or litter we re physical items of trash or litter were found. last year something that looked pretty convincing like a bit ofa looked pretty convincing like a bit of a plastic bag was found on the bottom of them mariana trench. in her most recent series of dives just over the past week a soda can't was seen of the bottom of the trench floor. and finally, in something sort of akin to this debris mount

everest by climbers, there are been coils of fiber—optic cable found on the bottom of the mariana trench as well. it was apparently are left over from scientific, well. it was apparently are left overfrom scientific, robotic scientific vehicles that send their data to the surface through these very fine fiber—optic tethers. which went deep, 11 and 13 km long often times are cut loose and jettison rather than trying to haul them back in. i can't imagine very much more depressing than learning that there is human detritus at those very deepest levels of the ocean. i'm just wondering as a final thought, where do you believe human beings should put their priorities right now? because we live in a world clearly a world where resources are very finite and they have to be rationed. should we be focusing most of our efforts on doing what it ta kes, of our efforts on doing what it takes, spending what it takes to clea n takes, spending what it takes to clean up our planet, our oceans, d carbonised, do everything necessary

to give us a sustainable future here on earth or do you believe we should be pouring very significant resources into that effort that we discuss to get human beings further and deeper into space? is a question of priorities and where should they be? it's also a question of scale. if you're thinking of nasa's investment, nasa is like five tenths of the penny out of each us tax dollar. you can wipe out all of nassau and you'd scarcely be making a meaningful change to the scale of investment on sustainability or environmental protections. again, i don't think it has to be either or. ido don't think it has to be either or. i do think that priorities, certainly my priority as a citizen and in earth science is learning how to live more wisely and well on this planet. in a sustainable way with a lighter footprint. planet. in a sustainable way with a lighterfootprint. there planet. in a sustainable way with a lighter footprint. there are planet. in a sustainable way with a lighterfootprint. there are plenty of ways we can move forward on that front. we just have to get at it. kathy sullivan, i thank you so much for joining kathy sullivan, i thank you so much forjoining me on hardtalk. i look forward to talking to you in ten

yea rs forward to talking to you in ten years time as you prepare for that mars mission. i look forward to that as well. hello there. the rest of this week is looking fairly unsettled with pressure always a little bit lower. that'll bring showers through today, and also thursday, and on friday, we'll see another area of low pressure bringing some wet and windy weather to many of us. now, this is the weak area of low pressure i was talking about. across the country today, it's a weather front bringing more persistent rain to start the day across parts of central southern scotland, northern ireland and the far north of england. this tending to break up into showers, which could turn out to be heavy into the afternoon. england and wales may see the sunshine breaking through that cloud — all that'll do is set off some

heavy, maybe thundery showers. temperatures reaching the high teens, low 20s in the south, but a chilly feel to things across northern and eastern scotland and northeast england with a northerly wind here, so, temperatures at best around the mid—teens celsius. looks like the showers will tend to merge together to create longer spells of rain across southern scotland, northern england, the midlands, and northern wales during wednesday night. it'll be milder in the south, further north with some clear spells with single figure values. again, it'll be chilly where we have our northerly wind. 0n into thursday, this weather front continuing to bring further showers particularly towards england and wales, but a brief ridge of high pressure will be trying to nose into scotland and northern ireland. so, here through the day, it should turn dryer with light winds and sunshine. so a better day here, but for england and wales, again the threat of heavy, it may be thundery showers developing through the midlands into east wales, and across into the southeast. temperatures reaching again below 20s in the south with sunshine, a little bit better further northwest, but still chilly near those northeast coasts. as we head on into friday, here it is, the next area

of low pressure starts to push in off the atlantic. lots of isobars on the charts, so it'll turn windier initially across the west, then spreading its way eastward through the day. the rain will be persistent — northern ireland, especially western scotland, into the cumbrian fells, perhaps northwest wales. but i think central and eastern areas should tend to stay dry with variable amounts of cloud and some sunshine. so here, we get 20—21 celsius, mid—to—high teens further north. into the weekend, it remains unsettled with the pressure always lower, so it'll be quite windy at times and there will be rain around, particularly across the north and the west of the country. here, it will be windier and better, whereas further south and east you are, especially on sunday, it could be a bit brighter and feel a little bit warmer.

this is bbc news. i'm mike embley, with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. china's new security laws for hong kong come into force. anyone convicted could be jailed for life. a coronavirus warning. the leading american virus expert says case numbers in the us are going in the wrong direction. we are now having a0,000—plus new cases a day. i would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day. the new research which suggests the virus can lead to strokes and long—term brain damage. hi, my name is caitlin,

i am nine years old,