March 7, 2024 • 15 mins
Join NASA Engineer, Kobie Boykins and DMPA Director of Education, Karoline Myers as they discuss Kobie’s incredible career ahead of his appearance at the Civic Center as part of DMPA’s Explorer Series.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:04):
Thank you for joining us for thisepisode of DMPA Conversations. I'm Caroline Myers,
director of Education for des Moin PerformingArts, and I'm joined by NASA
engineer Kobe Boykins. Kobe will bepresenting Beyond Earth the Quest for Life on
an Icy Moon, the next installmentin our Explorer series, at the Civic
Center. These podcasts are designed togive you an insider's perspective of the fantastic
performances headed to DMPA stages. Thankyou again for joining us, and now
(00:28):
here's my conversation with Kobe Boykins.Kobe, thanks so much for taking the
time to chat with me today.Tell us a little bit about your early
years. When did you become interestedin space and how did you be in
pursuing your career. I grew upin the Midwest, you know, not
(00:49):
too far away from Des Moines here, So I grew up in Omaha and
just down the road. Just downthe road. It just seems like yesterday
I was driving between those two.It takes, depending on how fast you
drive, not very long. Sofor me, I always like looking at
the night sky. There's a nicething about growing up in sort of the
Middle America, in the Midwest.Is that amount of light that we can,
you know, see from our skyis really beautiful. And my sister
(01:12):
and I used to climb up onthe roof of our house and that really
started my love of looking at thestars and looking at space. Now that's
not my profession, but it waswhat started me thinking, gosh, it
would be really cool to build vehiclesthat go there. And you know,
as a kid, became a treky, you know, identified with Scotty and
the original and then Jeordie LaForge inthe next generation, and you know,
(01:36):
that person was the engineer, andI thought, oh, well, that
would be cool if I could,you know, be the person that fixes
things and gets called in to,you know, make things happen. And
so it was probably about fifth grade. I had a teacher her name was
missus Hanson, and she sort ofreally put me on the right path,
saying, you know, you cando whatever you set your mind to.
Don't know why that worked, Imean I could tell you know, people
(01:57):
could ask me a million times likewhy did that message get through that particular
time? Can't tell you, butthat really started a narrow focus on really
doing well in my math and myscience, my physics classes and really focusing
on trying to be somebody that actuallygot to design space vehicles. That put
me on a path to a schoolin upstate New York called Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
RPI. I got in there andI made the hockey team, which was
(02:21):
an amazing thing for me being ahockey player. And three years later I
decided to take a cooperative education whereI left school and went to work actually
here at the Jet Proposal Laboratory fora semester in the summer, and I
got to work on the first rovermission that went to Mars in nineteen ninety
seven, and so I was prettymuch hooked. This was the place I
wanted to work, and this wasthe kind of stuff I wanted to do,
(02:43):
and it just sort of, youknow, from there, it was
just sort of like a dream cometrue. It all fell into place,
and I've been here at JPL foralmost thirty years. Wow. I love
that, from those early sparks oflooking up at the stars, to you
know, finding inspiration kind of infiction and stories, all the way to
key educators who just the right momentof pushing you forward and opening your eyes
to what could be possible. Likeyou said, there's plenty of key educators
(03:06):
along that path. I go backto missus Hanson and the next year was
you know, doctor k Kaiser,and I could go through all of them,
but there's so many people that youknow were part of that journey as
well that just you know, helpedform who I became here in my life
today. So, Kobe, youmentioned you've been at the Jet Propulsion Lab
for twenty five thirty years there,what are some of those highlights as you
(03:27):
look back to kind of just giveus glimps of some of those those moments
and those key projects you've been ableto work on. You know what's funny
is that the ones that you knoware in the media, right, So
like you use spirit opportunity or curiosity, perseverance, ingenuity, so these are
you go through all the rovers thatare on the surface of Mars and the
helicopter, those are the ones mostpeople know about. And for me,
(03:51):
you know, spirit opportunity. Thatwas really my first major job here at
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I wasresponsible for delivering hardware the team and I
built the solar rays that power thevehicles on the surface, and so that
was. It was interesting, andI know I told all these big stories,
but you know, the guy thathired me, his name is Don
(04:12):
Bickler, and he's more or lessthe father of the rovers. He's the
person that sort of came up withthat concept. Now that concept is around,
I can't say he was the personthat came up with the rover idea,
but the Rocker Bogey mobility system thatwe use is his invention. And
before he hired me, he said, you know, you can go back
and get a master's and get aPhD. But he says, the first
job you do at JPL will feellike getting a PhD. You'll be the
(04:33):
only person in the world that's everdone that particular thing for that particular thing
that you're going to do in space. And so being the person that actually
designed and built the deployable solar raysfor a mobile platform on the surface of
another planetary body that had never beendone before, and so it sort of
felt like getting a PhD, whichis really pretty cool. And I mean,
you know, at some level thatwas formative. That really changed the
(04:56):
way I thought, and going throughthat process, the engineering rigor to develop
hardware and then and then deliver it, and then I was lucky enough to
be selected to the team that actuallybuilt those rovers and delivered them to the
launch pad to be sent off tothe surface of Mars. That was an
amazing and amazing thing. And sothat was at some level you know you've
(05:17):
heard and probably if you if yousaw the documentary, there's things that you
know, it feels like a child, you know, like the birth of
a child. Now that's really minimizingthe birth of a child, and I
now have three, but there isan emotional response that feels very similar to
that. And you know, itwas like watching your child grow and then
and then do the thing that yousent them out in the world to do,
(05:39):
which is explore the surface of Mars. That was an amazing time in
my life. But in between therewe worked on a mission that got canceled
that was a small, little tinyrover that was going to land on an
asteroid with a joint mission with theJapanese with the Japanese Space Agency. And
I've I've gotten a chance to workwith different universities doing you know, exploration
(05:59):
of the Roara Boy or you know, sending a vehicle down to the Antarctica
to drill a hole through the iceand investigate, you know, the water
flow underneath the ice and Antarctica,or you know, now working on something
that's going to go to an icymoon around Jupiter in this case Europa.
They're also amazing in terms of whatI get to do as a mechanical engineer
(06:19):
and what questions we get to askand answer sort of in that science realm.
And I think that's the fun ofthe job is that you know,
I never really know what the dayis going to throw at me, but
I always get to challenge myself todo something different and new and learn something
those highs and those lows and thosethings that are maybe the projects that the
average person is hearing about through thenews and the media, But to really
(06:41):
think about that day to day andpushing through those challenges and asking those big
questions and the resilience that takes isreally remarkable. Well it's the fun part
too, but yeah, resilience orperseverance as the name is. I mean,
that's sort of part of the funof it is that we spend a
lot of time and we'll talk aboutthis a little bit too, and it's
great for you know, people thatare young at young at heart is that
(07:02):
sometimes failure is just a new opportunityto learn something, and that you fail
a lot before you become successful.And for us, at least for me,
one of the nice things is that, you know, we try not
to fail, but when it doesoccur, how do we how do we
overcome that? What do we do? You know, as you pointed out,
some of the downtimes are are veryvery down. You know, something
(07:24):
bad happens, You're in the middleof a test and and something just goes
terribly wrong. Those are hard days, you know, maybe even hard weeks
to recover from, but you know, you you figure out what happened and
you work through the recovery plan sothat you can ultimately send something off to
do you know, amazing science outthere in the Solar system. Well,
(07:44):
we're so delighted that you're going tobe here in person with us in Des
Moines to share more about your careerand some of these missions that you've worked
on. What motivates you to getout of the lab and to go out
on the road and to have theseconversations. The motivation is actually quite easy.
I was lucky enough to have StarTrek as something that I watched and
found a connection to that person withinScotty or Jordie la Forge in that case
(08:07):
LeVar Burten, who I knew fromreading Rainbow. So for me, one
of it's just to make it morerealistic to people in our community about what
this job is. Right, it'snot. You know, when I was
a kid, you know, youthought NAS and NASA engineers and astronauts and
all that stuff that it was justit was almost unattainable. It was almost
unachievable. And I hope, Ihope that I can sort of make that
(08:31):
idea a little bit more achievable anda little bit more real that it's tangible,
it's not unobtainable, it's really withinyour grasp if that's something that you
want to focus on. And that'snot to say that it's not selective,
right, I don't want to getanybody to believe that you know, these
jobs just oh yeah, well herecome and work. But you know,
like any job that you you know, go out and try to achieve.
(08:52):
If you have a desire to dothat and a will to work really hard
at it and perseverance, hopefully thosethings will come true for you. And
one is to talk about you know, what is what is it like?
What does it feel like to bean engineer? And some of it's about
how the process works. And forme, it's for I said before,
the young and the young art toreally be rejuvenated by what it is to
do space exploration because I think,you know, just like it was for
(09:15):
us when we were kids, whereI should say me when I was a
kid, you know, we wouldwatch the Shuttle launch and it wasn't until
something bad happened that people actually paidattention anymore, because it just sort of
became the daily thing. Oh,they're launching another Space Shuttle, and that
was a huge undertaking of many,many, you know, billions of dollars,
and I think we we sort ofgot used to that happening, and
then there was this long lull wherewe didn't have anything right and that you
(09:39):
know, I think people are nowreally starving for that exploration. You know,
nugget that thing that drives your brainto go, I wonder what's out
there and what could happen. AndI love the proliferation of you know,
launch vehicles with SpaceX and Blue Originand some of these other industrial partners that
are coming up in private industry that'sstarting to do this type of expert because
(10:00):
I think people are starting to dreamagain about what it could be to be
space faring people really beautiful and thatidea of dreaming, and I think we
could all use something that's a littlebit more aspirational as we look around the
world right now and the mini challengesfacing us. Just good things to fill
our hearts. I know. Oneof the highlights of your time with us.
(10:20):
In addition to your evening presentation,which can be attended by people of
all ages in our community, theyoung and young at heart, as you
said, is earlier that day,you'll also be giving a special presentation on
our we call it our Applause series, which is our bust in School Mattine
series. So we have almost twothousand tickets out to elementary and middle school
students who will be coming in duringthe day as part of their school day.
(10:41):
And those days are always just filledwith so much energy and joy and
fill all of our hearts here atthe theater. But what do you hope
those students take away from their timewith you. There's a few things that
I hope they take away. Onethat all of these things are achievable,
that there's nothing outside their grasp andthat you know, some of it's just
about focus, attention and working hard, but that's you know, the high
(11:03):
level stuff that everybody wants to takeaway. I really hope that through the
conversation I have with the students,and I'm so excited two thousand suit,
that's how awesome is that failure isnot an end, it's a beginning.
And if we can learn to sortof celebrate our failures, that is a
much stronger position. And to feelthat you've done something wrong right, we're
(11:26):
rewarded by getting a the perfect grade, and sometimes that's not what happens in
real life. That there is nopossibility to get a perfect grade. The
perfect grade is to fail, butto figure out in that failure how to
achieve, how to continue to moveon. And you know, there's a
line that was in Batman. It'slike, you know, Batman's father said,
you know, why do you falldown? So that we can get
(11:48):
up right? And if you cantake away that, if one kid can
take away that, which is youknow, Hey, I'm not a failure
because I failed. I'm a failurebecause I didn't learn from my failure.
That's the thing that I want thekids to take away. And the other
thing is it's just fun. Imean, we'll have some fun. There'll
be a lot of you know,things that we can talk about, and
we'll go through some of the thingsthat you know, I fail that and
(12:11):
you know, I try to talkabout that as open as I possibly can,
which is, these are things thatI made mistakes and that you know,
nobody fired me and nobody said,you know, you're gone, and
they you know, they said,hey, this is what you have to
do to fix them, and wework through that. And that's part of
it. And the other one isyou just said, and I think it's
it's very important. Is that there'sbeen studies and I don't want to quote
all the studies, but you knowit's about you know, when kids stop
(12:31):
dreaming, and this is just anotherchance for kids just to dream, to
think big thoughts about what's possible andnot necessarily just in the space exploration,
but everything that they want to goafter. You know, don't let anybody
steal your dreams. You know,if you want to be an underwater painter
of baskets, whatever that is,maybe that's what you should do. Because
(12:52):
somebody out there is going to findthat to be beautiful and elegant and amazing.
And that's part of it too,is this sort of aspirational talk about
the things that are possible. Welove that, you know, we gather
people together in theater and the artsand presentations like this to define its inspiration
and to light that additional spark.Koby, as we're thinking about our time
together, what would you ask usto think about today in terms of space
(13:15):
exploration and why it matters? Yeah, No, it's a great question,
and I guess I would ask peopleto think about why do we do this?
And not why because of the politicalparts or what you're told by Congress,
or but why is it important toyou? And really think deeply on
why is exploration not just space exploration, but exploration. Why is it important
(13:37):
really think about who we are fundamentallyas humans and how we develop. What
is our journey from infant through toddlerto adolescence to adulthood, right the teenage
years will skip those for a moment. Let me but what is that journey
and how does exploration play a partin that journey? Because I think that
(13:58):
sets the stage differently in your mindand in your heart for how you think
about what we're going to talk about. Instead of thinking about is as a
end, think about it as thebeginning and how does that affect you?
I love that and I think thatencapsule It's so much what we hope to
accomplish through our Explorer series and bringingin great, great minds and storytellers like
(14:22):
you. So Kobe, thank youso much for taking the time to visit
with me today. Thank you forhaving me and I cannot wait to be
back home. So thank you somuch for having me there in Des Moin
and I just can't wait. We'relooking forward to it. Thank you so
much. We appreciate you joining usfor DMPA Conversations. This podcast is produced
(14:46):
by Andrew Downs. To our donorsand season ticket holders, thank you for
providing the foundation for great performances andeducational opportunities at des Moin Performing Arts.
Visit DMPA dot org or wherever youget your podcasts for future conversation. She's
like this one. Thank you forlistening.
Thank you for joining us for thisepisode of DMPA Conversations. I'm Caroline Myers,
director of Education for des Moin PerformingArts, and I'm joined by NASA
engineer Kobe Boykins. Kobe will bepresenting Beyond Earth the Quest for Life on
an Icy Moon, the next installmentin our Explorer series, at the Civic
Center. These podcasts are designed togive you an insider's perspective of the fantastic
performances headed to DMPA stages. Thankyou again for joining us, and now
(00:28):
here's my conversation with Kobe Boykins.Kobe, thanks so much for taking the
time to chat with me today.Tell us a little bit about your early
years. When did you become interestedin space and how did you be in
pursuing your career. I grew upin the Midwest, you know, not
(00:49):
too far away from Des Moines here, So I grew up in Omaha and
just down the road. Just downthe road. It just seems like yesterday
I was driving between those two.It takes, depending on how fast you
drive, not very long. Sofor me, I always like looking at
the night sky. There's a nicething about growing up in sort of the
Middle America, in the Midwest.Is that amount of light that we can,
you know, see from our skyis really beautiful. And my sister
(01:12):
and I used to climb up onthe roof of our house and that really
started my love of looking at thestars and looking at space. Now that's
not my profession, but it waswhat started me thinking, gosh, it
would be really cool to build vehiclesthat go there. And you know,
as a kid, became a treky, you know, identified with Scotty and
the original and then Jeordie LaForge inthe next generation, and you know,
(01:36):
that person was the engineer, andI thought, oh, well, that
would be cool if I could,you know, be the person that fixes
things and gets called in to,you know, make things happen. And
so it was probably about fifth grade. I had a teacher her name was
missus Hanson, and she sort ofreally put me on the right path,
saying, you know, you cando whatever you set your mind to.
Don't know why that worked, Imean I could tell you know, people
(01:57):
could ask me a million times likewhy did that message get through that particular
time? Can't tell you, butthat really started a narrow focus on really
doing well in my math and myscience, my physics classes and really focusing
on trying to be somebody that actuallygot to design space vehicles. That put
me on a path to a schoolin upstate New York called Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
RPI. I got in there andI made the hockey team, which was
(02:21):
an amazing thing for me being ahockey player. And three years later I
decided to take a cooperative education whereI left school and went to work actually
here at the Jet Proposal Laboratory fora semester in the summer, and I
got to work on the first rovermission that went to Mars in nineteen ninety
seven, and so I was prettymuch hooked. This was the place I
wanted to work, and this wasthe kind of stuff I wanted to do,
(02:43):
and it just sort of, youknow, from there, it was
just sort of like a dream cometrue. It all fell into place,
and I've been here at JPL foralmost thirty years. Wow. I love
that, from those early sparks oflooking up at the stars, to you
know, finding inspiration kind of infiction and stories, all the way to
key educators who just the right momentof pushing you forward and opening your eyes
to what could be possible. Likeyou said, there's plenty of key educators
(03:06):
along that path. I go backto missus Hanson and the next year was
you know, doctor k Kaiser,and I could go through all of them,
but there's so many people that youknow were part of that journey as
well that just you know, helpedform who I became here in my life
today. So, Kobe, youmentioned you've been at the Jet Propulsion Lab
for twenty five thirty years there,what are some of those highlights as you
(03:27):
look back to kind of just giveus glimps of some of those those moments
and those key projects you've been ableto work on. You know what's funny
is that the ones that you knoware in the media, right, So
like you use spirit opportunity or curiosity, perseverance, ingenuity, so these are
you go through all the rovers thatare on the surface of Mars and the
helicopter, those are the ones mostpeople know about. And for me,
(03:51):
you know, spirit opportunity. Thatwas really my first major job here at
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I wasresponsible for delivering hardware the team and I
built the solar rays that power thevehicles on the surface, and so that
was. It was interesting, andI know I told all these big stories,
but you know, the guy thathired me, his name is Don
(04:12):
Bickler, and he's more or lessthe father of the rovers. He's the
person that sort of came up withthat concept. Now that concept is around,
I can't say he was the personthat came up with the rover idea,
but the Rocker Bogey mobility system thatwe use is his invention. And
before he hired me, he said, you know, you can go back
and get a master's and get aPhD. But he says, the first
job you do at JPL will feellike getting a PhD. You'll be the
(04:33):
only person in the world that's everdone that particular thing for that particular thing
that you're going to do in space. And so being the person that actually
designed and built the deployable solar raysfor a mobile platform on the surface of
another planetary body that had never beendone before, and so it sort of
felt like getting a PhD, whichis really pretty cool. And I mean,
you know, at some level thatwas formative. That really changed the
(04:56):
way I thought, and going throughthat process, the engineering rigor to develop
hardware and then and then deliver it, and then I was lucky enough to
be selected to the team that actuallybuilt those rovers and delivered them to the
launch pad to be sent off tothe surface of Mars. That was an
amazing and amazing thing. And sothat was at some level you know you've
(05:17):
heard and probably if you if yousaw the documentary, there's things that you
know, it feels like a child, you know, like the birth of
a child. Now that's really minimizingthe birth of a child, and I
now have three, but there isan emotional response that feels very similar to
that. And you know, itwas like watching your child grow and then
and then do the thing that yousent them out in the world to do,
(05:39):
which is explore the surface of Mars. That was an amazing time in
my life. But in between therewe worked on a mission that got canceled
that was a small, little tinyrover that was going to land on an
asteroid with a joint mission with theJapanese with the Japanese Space Agency. And
I've I've gotten a chance to workwith different universities doing you know, exploration
(05:59):
of the Roara Boy or you know, sending a vehicle down to the Antarctica
to drill a hole through the iceand investigate, you know, the water
flow underneath the ice and Antarctica,or you know, now working on something
that's going to go to an icymoon around Jupiter in this case Europa.
They're also amazing in terms of whatI get to do as a mechanical engineer
(06:19):
and what questions we get to askand answer sort of in that science realm.
And I think that's the fun ofthe job is that you know,
I never really know what the dayis going to throw at me, but
I always get to challenge myself todo something different and new and learn something
those highs and those lows and thosethings that are maybe the projects that the
average person is hearing about through thenews and the media, But to really
(06:41):
think about that day to day andpushing through those challenges and asking those big
questions and the resilience that takes isreally remarkable. Well it's the fun part
too, but yeah, resilience orperseverance as the name is. I mean,
that's sort of part of the funof it is that we spend a
lot of time and we'll talk aboutthis a little bit too, and it's
great for you know, people thatare young at young at heart is that
(07:02):
sometimes failure is just a new opportunityto learn something, and that you fail
a lot before you become successful.And for us, at least for me,
one of the nice things is that, you know, we try not
to fail, but when it doesoccur, how do we how do we
overcome that? What do we do? You know, as you pointed out,
some of the downtimes are are veryvery down. You know, something
(07:24):
bad happens, You're in the middleof a test and and something just goes
terribly wrong. Those are hard days, you know, maybe even hard weeks
to recover from, but you know, you you figure out what happened and
you work through the recovery plan sothat you can ultimately send something off to
do you know, amazing science outthere in the Solar system. Well,
(07:44):
we're so delighted that you're going tobe here in person with us in Des
Moines to share more about your careerand some of these missions that you've worked
on. What motivates you to getout of the lab and to go out
on the road and to have theseconversations. The motivation is actually quite easy.
I was lucky enough to have StarTrek as something that I watched and
found a connection to that person withinScotty or Jordie la Forge in that case
(08:07):
LeVar Burten, who I knew fromreading Rainbow. So for me, one
of it's just to make it morerealistic to people in our community about what
this job is. Right, it'snot. You know, when I was
a kid, you know, youthought NAS and NASA engineers and astronauts and
all that stuff that it was justit was almost unattainable. It was almost
unachievable. And I hope, Ihope that I can sort of make that
(08:31):
idea a little bit more achievable anda little bit more real that it's tangible,
it's not unobtainable, it's really withinyour grasp if that's something that you
want to focus on. And that'snot to say that it's not selective,
right, I don't want to getanybody to believe that you know, these
jobs just oh yeah, well herecome and work. But you know,
like any job that you you know, go out and try to achieve.
(08:52):
If you have a desire to dothat and a will to work really hard
at it and perseverance, hopefully thosethings will come true for you. And
one is to talk about you know, what is what is it like?
What does it feel like to bean engineer? And some of it's about
how the process works. And forme, it's for I said before,
the young and the young art toreally be rejuvenated by what it is to
do space exploration because I think,you know, just like it was for
(09:15):
us when we were kids, whereI should say me when I was a
kid, you know, we wouldwatch the Shuttle launch and it wasn't until
something bad happened that people actually paidattention anymore, because it just sort of
became the daily thing. Oh,they're launching another Space Shuttle, and that
was a huge undertaking of many,many, you know, billions of dollars,
and I think we we sort ofgot used to that happening, and
then there was this long lull wherewe didn't have anything right and that you
(09:39):
know, I think people are nowreally starving for that exploration. You know,
nugget that thing that drives your brainto go, I wonder what's out
there and what could happen. AndI love the proliferation of you know,
launch vehicles with SpaceX and Blue Originand some of these other industrial partners that
are coming up in private industry that'sstarting to do this type of expert because
(10:00):
I think people are starting to dreamagain about what it could be to be
space faring people really beautiful and thatidea of dreaming, and I think we
could all use something that's a littlebit more aspirational as we look around the
world right now and the mini challengesfacing us. Just good things to fill
our hearts. I know. Oneof the highlights of your time with us.
(10:20):
In addition to your evening presentation,which can be attended by people of
all ages in our community, theyoung and young at heart, as you
said, is earlier that day,you'll also be giving a special presentation on
our we call it our Applause series, which is our bust in School Mattine
series. So we have almost twothousand tickets out to elementary and middle school
students who will be coming in duringthe day as part of their school day.
(10:41):
And those days are always just filledwith so much energy and joy and
fill all of our hearts here atthe theater. But what do you hope
those students take away from their timewith you. There's a few things that
I hope they take away. Onethat all of these things are achievable,
that there's nothing outside their grasp andthat you know, some of it's just
about focus, attention and working hard, but that's you know, the high
(11:03):
level stuff that everybody wants to takeaway. I really hope that through the
conversation I have with the students,and I'm so excited two thousand suit,
that's how awesome is that failure isnot an end, it's a beginning.
And if we can learn to sortof celebrate our failures, that is a
much stronger position. And to feelthat you've done something wrong right, we're
(11:26):
rewarded by getting a the perfect grade, and sometimes that's not what happens in
real life. That there is nopossibility to get a perfect grade. The
perfect grade is to fail, butto figure out in that failure how to
achieve, how to continue to moveon. And you know, there's a
line that was in Batman. It'slike, you know, Batman's father said,
you know, why do you falldown? So that we can get
(11:48):
up right? And if you cantake away that, if one kid can
take away that, which is youknow, Hey, I'm not a failure
because I failed. I'm a failurebecause I didn't learn from my failure.
That's the thing that I want thekids to take away. And the other
thing is it's just fun. Imean, we'll have some fun. There'll
be a lot of you know,things that we can talk about, and
we'll go through some of the thingsthat you know, I fail that and
(12:11):
you know, I try to talkabout that as open as I possibly can,
which is, these are things thatI made mistakes and that you know,
nobody fired me and nobody said,you know, you're gone, and
they you know, they said,hey, this is what you have to
do to fix them, and wework through that. And that's part of
it. And the other one isyou just said, and I think it's
it's very important. Is that there'sbeen studies and I don't want to quote
all the studies, but you knowit's about you know, when kids stop
(12:31):
dreaming, and this is just anotherchance for kids just to dream, to
think big thoughts about what's possible andnot necessarily just in the space exploration,
but everything that they want to goafter. You know, don't let anybody
steal your dreams. You know,if you want to be an underwater painter
of baskets, whatever that is,maybe that's what you should do. Because
(12:52):
somebody out there is going to findthat to be beautiful and elegant and amazing.
And that's part of it too,is this sort of aspirational talk about
the things that are possible. Welove that, you know, we gather
people together in theater and the artsand presentations like this to define its inspiration
and to light that additional spark.Koby, as we're thinking about our time
together, what would you ask usto think about today in terms of space
(13:15):
exploration and why it matters? Yeah, No, it's a great question,
and I guess I would ask peopleto think about why do we do this?
And not why because of the politicalparts or what you're told by Congress,
or but why is it important toyou? And really think deeply on
why is exploration not just space exploration, but exploration. Why is it important
(13:37):
really think about who we are fundamentallyas humans and how we develop. What
is our journey from infant through toddlerto adolescence to adulthood, right the teenage
years will skip those for a moment. Let me but what is that journey
and how does exploration play a partin that journey? Because I think that
(13:58):
sets the stage differently in your mindand in your heart for how you think
about what we're going to talk about. Instead of thinking about is as a
end, think about it as thebeginning and how does that affect you?
I love that and I think thatencapsule It's so much what we hope to
accomplish through our Explorer series and bringingin great, great minds and storytellers like
(14:22):
you. So Kobe, thank youso much for taking the time to visit
with me today. Thank you forhaving me and I cannot wait to be
back home. So thank you somuch for having me there in Des Moin
and I just can't wait. We'relooking forward to it. Thank you so
much. We appreciate you joining usfor DMPA Conversations. This podcast is produced
(14:46):
by Andrew Downs. To our donorsand season ticket holders, thank you for
providing the foundation for great performances andeducational opportunities at des Moin Performing Arts.
Visit DMPA dot org or wherever youget your podcasts for future conversation. She's
like this one. Thank you forlistening.
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