The final keynote speech at the 50th Anniverary of the Space Age event was made by Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. He spoke on the potential of space for exploration and inspiration during the next fifty years.
At the start of his keynote address, Neil Tyson dated himself as a child of NASA - he was born in the same week as the American space agency was founded.
Growing up in the tumult of the 1960s US - the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, Tyson was aware of another theme: NASA's inspiring quest to reach the Moon. At the age of ten and at the end of one of the worst years of the decade, 1968, he saw Apollo 8 circle our lunar neighbour, taking one of the most famous photos there is: "Earthrise" - the Earth appearing above the Moon.
He noted how all cultures throughout history have asked the question "Why are we here?". The second half of the twentieth century was the first period in history where we could be start to be given answers to that question. It was the period that humanity took to space.
Culture could be defined as "what we take for granted". A New York City skyscraper is normal to a New Yorker but the stuff of legend to a visitor. A non-Italian wonders at a supermarket aisle full of pasta whereas the local is used to it. The United States has a culture filled with images from space - from fridge magnets with pictures of planets on them to kids' space-themed toys. He found, on a trip to Russia and despite many other differences in lifestyle, the same space culture. This was quite inspiring -space is becoming part of everyday life. When the Hubble Space Telescope was threatened with decommisioning, it was the public who saved it. Hubble, and its beautiful images, was in the American psyche. Perhaps this was the first time that the general public had lent its voice in an issue of science.
Dr Tyson concluded that we had to look skywards for solutions to some of the world's problems - Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect; Mars is a world that lost its water. Sapce inspired us all and must continue at the heart of the future.
Please click here for the video (WMF format)
Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist and, since 1996, the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Tyson attended the Bronx High School of Science and had an abiding interest in astronomy from a young age, gaining some fame in the astronomy community by giving lectures on the subject at the age of 15.
Astronomer Carl Sagan, on faculty at Cornell University, tried to recruit Tyson to Cornell for undergraduate studies, but Tyson chose to attend Harvard University, where he majored in physics. He began his graduate work at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his M.A. in Astronomy in 1983. He earned a Ph.D. degree in astrophysics from Columbia University in 1991.
In 2001, Tyson was appointed to serve on the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry and in 2004 served on the President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy, the latter better known as the "Moon, Mars and Beyond" commission. He was soon afterward awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest civilian honour bestowed by NASA.
Tyson is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Planetary Society and has written a number of popular books on astronomy.
