As mainstream space tourism grows ever more likely, New Yorker writer Nicholas Schmidle tells Niki Seth-Smith about life inside the new space race, as explored in his new book 'Test Gods'. What motivates men like Bezos, Branson and Musk? How does the approach to risk in private business compare with that at NASA? And should we be looking to space at all, with so much unresolved here on planet earth? Plus, Nicholas reflects on fatherhood and masculinity, including the life of his father: a fighter pilot and Top Gun grad.
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**Recorded in August 2021**
Further reading:
'Test Gods: Tragedy and Triumph in the New Space Race' (2021), Nicholas Schmidle
'The Right Stuff' (1979), Tom Wolfe
'In Praise of Astronauts' (2013) Paul Sims for New Humanist magazine
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Quantum Physics & Philosophy, with Carlo Rovelli
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Why our minds need the wild, with Lucy Jones
Learning from our ancestors, with Alice Roberts
How to Fix the Internet, with Chris Bail
Writing and Recovery, with Michael Rosen
The Cosmos & Us, with Jo Marchant
Deporting Black Britons, with Luke de Noronha
Activism and Belief, with Rosemary Hancock
Desire in the age of Consent, with Katherine Angel
Looking back in anger at 'Cool Britannia' with Jason Arday
Escaping the logic of work, with Mareile Pfannebecker
Sensuous knowledge and black feminism, with Minna Salami
The symbolic power of charity, with Jon Dean
Taking sex robots seriously, with Kate Devlin
Faith, fraternity and the Orange Order, with Joe Webster
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