[ Applause ]
>>John Battelle: We're going to go over here
and have a chat.
So you can take that one.
I'll take this one.
I think we were going to start with a little
bit of discussion about the curiosity of space
and being out there and seeing that.
But I think given the events that have occurred
in the earlier part of this week, the audience
is most likely curious about your reaction.
You were in the same situation as the families
and the victims of the Navy yard shooting
in Washington.
You have been in that situation.
What was your first response when you heard
this news?
>>Mark Kelly: Well, first of all, let me first
welcome everybody to Gabby's home state and
now mine of Arizona.
Gabby is a third-generation Tucsonan which
is two hours down the road from here.
We are very excited that this conference is
here in Arizona, so welcome.
You know, I'd like to be able to say that
I was shocked.
Unfortunately, I've spent so much time focusing
on this issue and are well-aware of how often
that we do have mass shootings that I wasn't
surprised that we had another one, to be honest.
You know, it's -- we are about nine months,
maybe ten months since 20 first graders were
murdered in their classrooms in Newtown, Connecticut.
And the national response so far to that tragedy
has been to do nothing.
And with any problem, as many of you in this
audience know, if there is a problem, and
we don't make change and we don't look for
solutions, the problem isn't just going to
go away.
So I was not -- I was not surprised.
I was just -- it is just a matter of time
of when is going to be the next one.
>>John Battelle: You started an organization
to try to effect change on this issue after
the incident here.
What have been your successes, and what are
your frustrations?
>>Mark Kelly: So Gabby and I started an organization
back in January after Newtown called Americans
for Responsible Solutions.
And it is an organization that consists of
a 501(c)(4) and a super PAC.
And if you would have asked Gabby or I two
years ago or told us that we'd be running
a super PAC, I would say you're crazy.
To be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of that
political entity.
But the reality of life today is if you want
to take on a very powerful gun lobby, which
is incredibly influential because of the influence
that the NRA has in Washington, you got to
kind of take them on, on their own terms.
And for the last 30 years, the National Rifle
Association has spent an enormous amount of
money in Washington on House and Senate races.
So we looked at what the problem is.
And it basically boils down to this, that
the gun lobby spends about $20 million a year,
which to some of you does not seem like a
lot of money, but they spend $20 million a
year focusing on gun rights and supporting
House and Senate candidates in their federal
elections, about $20 million.
And all of the organizations on the other
side of the issue typically spend combined
$20,000.
So it's out of balance.
Completely out of balance.
So we formed an organization to try to bring
some balance to this debate in Washington.
And we've been around ten months, and we've
raised about $14 million.
We have a goal to raise about 35 before the
2014 elections.
And over time, we will -- our hope is to get
members of Congress to vote with their conscience
on this issue and not based on the influence
of any organization, including ours.
>>John Battelle: I know this is a difficult
subject, but, I mean, we talked previously
and you told the story of what happened and
where you were when, you know, you were in
the same situation as the folks yesterday
were.
You were in Houston, as I recall.
Is that correct?
>>Mark Kelly: I was in Houston the day Gabby
was injured, at home with my kids.
Gabby was in Tucson in her district.
And I got a call from the woman who's now
our executive director that is sitting next
to Gabby, Pia Carusone, the executive director
of our organization, was Gabby's chief of
staff.
And she called me up and she just said, I
don't know how to tell you this but Gabby's
been shot.
She didn't have much more info.
I got off the phone with her.
Five minutes later I thought to myself: Did
I just imagine that this happened?
I literally had to go walk up to my phone,
pick it up off the table and say, Okay, I
did get that incoming call.
And then I called Pia back and that's when
she gave me the really devastating news that
Gabby had been shot in the head.
And my kids and I and my mom got on a friend's
airplane and we flew west towards Tucson.
During that flight, it was pretty chaotic.
We were watching TV.
And at one point, MSNBC, Fox, CNN all pronounced
Gabby dead, which they shouldn't do.
Do we got any doctors in the audience?
We should leave that --
>>John Battelle: You mean journalists shouldn't
be pronouncing people dead.
>>Mark Kelly: Journalists shouldn't be doing
that especially on only the one source.
That was not a good idea.
>>John Battelle: One of the great stories
that came out of this is how Gabby responded.
Were you surprised and what did you learn
from that process?
>>Mark Kelly: Well, Gabby's tough.
Really, really tough.
I mean, she takes on, you know, issues like
nobody I've ever seen.
When she was in Congress, you know, she was
a bipartisan legislator.
You know, Gabby in her second term in Congress
was the person in the middle.
The National Journal, I think, ranks members
from all the way on the right to all the way
on the left, and Gabby was the person in the
middle in her second term.
So she's tried to always tackle issues in
a bipartisan fashion.
And that -- you know, that's what we're doing
on this issue.
We're trying to engage members of Congress.
We -- you know, we recently worked on this
Manchin-Toomey bill which failed in the Senate.
But we made progress.
The United States Senator from Arizona, John
McCain, voted for it.
That's a step in the right direction.
I think over time, we will convince more legislators
and also folks at the state level that we
have to do something about this problem.
I don't think people realize this, but we
have 15 to 20 times the death rate from gun
violence than any other industrialized country.
15 times is the best that we can do over the
next worst industrial country.
I was talking to a gentleman that had arranged
the Google meet-up with the Free Syrian Army
major, and I asked him, I said, "How many
people have died there in the last couple
of years?"
He said, "110,000."
You know how many people have died in the
United States from gun violence in the last
two years?
Almost that many.
Probably about 80,000.
And we're not at war.
>>John Battelle: That's extraordinary.
I want to pivot, if we can, because I think
we'll come back to this subject, but ask you,
because a theme throughout the conference
and throughout this session has to do with
wonder and curiosity.
You have been where very few of us have been.
You have seen the Earth through the capsule
of a ship orbiting it.
What's that like?
>>Mark Kelly: Well, flying in space is an
incredible privilege.
I mean, I am very thankful that I had the
opportunity to do that not once, but four
times, and I -- you know, I really treasure
every day I've got to spend in space.
My -- the part I like the most is the rocket
launch.
[ Laughter ]
>>Mark Kelly: I mean, you can't --
>>John Battelle: The G forces.
>>Mark Kelly: Well, it's not the G forces.
It's the matter that you climb into this rocket
ship about three hours before liftoff, you're
laying on your back, you got all this stuff
you got to turn on, the countdown clock is
heading towards zero.
Six seconds, the main engines start.
You don't go anywhere because you're literally
bolted to the launchpad.
Then the clock hits zero, those bolts explode,
solid rocket boosters light.
It's literally like the hand of God coming
down and ripping you off the planet.
Incredible amount of vibration.
You accelerate from zero to 17,500 miles an
hour in just 8 1/2 minutes.
Two minutes into the flight -- you guys have
seen this -- the solids come off.
They go in the ocean.
NASA goes and picks those up, reuses them.
I think they're only slightly more expensive
to reuse.
[ Laughter ]
>>Mark Kelly: And then we continue to go uphill.
At the end of that 8 1/2 minutes, the tank
comes off and you're whipping around the planet
every -- every 90 minutes.
And it's amazing to see this big blue marble
just floating in the blackness of space, no
strings attached.
You know, just as a globe.
It's just an incredible experience.
Hope to get to do it again sometime.
>>John Battelle: I imagine everyone here would
like to do it, too.
[ Laughter ]
>>John Battelle: Especially after that description.
Did seeing that -- I mean, there's a famous
image from the Whole Earth Catalog of the
earth that sort of sparked a movement, I think,
and made us all realize that we needed to
maybe start taking more drugs.
[ Laughter ]
>>John Battelle: I did not mean to ask that
question, but did it change your perspective
about the world in a way that was meaningful?
I mean...
>>Mark Kelly: The thing it did for me -- and
I think everybody's experience is a little
bit different -- but I noticed on my first
flight, first day, you know, we're up at about
250 miles, maybe, looking down at the planet
and you look at the edge, you know, the terminator
-- you know, the edge of the horizon -- and
you see this little sliver there.
And I remember mentioning it to my commander
on my first flight.
I said, "Hey, you see that little sliver there?"
And he says, "Yeah, that's the atmosphere."
And from that perspective, when you consider
when you look at it from Earth orbit and you
see this little tiny haze and that's our atmosphere,
it makes you understand that it needs to be
protected.
Half of our atmosphere is 10,000 feet and
below.
That's half of it.
You know, the other half goes -- continues
to go up, but by molecules, half of it is
below 10,000 feet.
Not very -- not very thick, and we need to
be aware of that.
>>John Battelle: Yeah.
I imagine that does give you some perspective.
What's going on with the space program now?
I mean, it's -- I think the idea of children
growing up thinking they might -- we may have
missed a generation of kids who thought that
that was something they might do.
Do you think that the next generation might
have that dream again?
>>Mark Kelly: I think they will.
We -- you know, part of our problem with our
space program is we often start and stop programs
maybe not for the best of reasons.
In my 16 years at NASA, I've seen the administration
and the White House cancel programs.
I've seen Congress and NASA itself cancel
things that if we -- if we maintained the
focus and we worked really hard, we can solve
these problems.
I think we can solve anything.
I think -- you know, we have the best engineers
in the world.
We can solve very difficult problems.
But we often give up and we shouldn't.
And it always frustrated me when NASA decided
to end a program and continue in a different
direction.
So my hope now is we're on this path currently
with a program called "Commercial Crew," which
are these smaller companies, a company like
SpaceX or Sierra Nevada, for instance, and
others -- Blue Origins -- that are going to
try to transport crew members to the International
Space Station.
And for full disclosure, I do some consulting
with SpaceX, but from my experience there,
they'll be able to figure this out and at
some point they're going to be flying people
in space on SpaceX spacecraft.
It's just a matter of the United States government
and NASA maintaining that focus and deciding
not to do something else.
Now, if you ask me when we're going to go
to Mars with people, I have no idea.
>>John Battelle: There's a fellow coming up
later who can address that.
>>Mark Kelly: I mean, we could send somebody
to Mars right now.
The problem is we can't get them back.
[ Laughter ]
>>Mark Kelly: So that's the hard part.
That's the trick.
>>John Battelle: Well, I mean, when you're
strapped to a rocket, about to be catapulted
or I suppose lifted by the hand of God, don't
you sort of figure that you might not be coming
back?
>>Mark Kelly: You recognize that there is
a real probability that that's going to be
your last day, especially on liftoff and on
landing.
Oddly enough, statistically, our most dangerous
-- calculated most dangerous time is the time
we spend in space, from getting hit by a big
rock or even a little rock that puts a big
hole in the spacecraft.
But, you know, you're aware of that.
We spend a lot of time training for these
missions.
The space shuttle as -- you know, as a point
of reference, is very crew-intensive, and
there's a lot we can do when things go wrong
to fix the problem.
But then there's all this other stuff that
we can't do anything about and can be catastrophic,
and those things we don't -- you just hope
they don't happen, you don't worry about them
too much.
>>John Battelle: Well, I think this is a good
transition in terms of the idea that you thought
it might be your last day.
You went through that experience with your
wife, so I'd like you to introduce her, if
you could.
>>Mark Kelly: So Gabby -- like I mentioned
earlier, Gabby and I have been working on
this issue of gun violence for about 10 months
now, or 9 months, with our organization called
Americans for Responsible Solutions.
We've been traveling around the country.
We recently hit seven states in seven days
trying to get legislators to focus on the
problem, and we have some focus and we have
good people in Congress that want to do something.
But, you know, the issue is, you know, unfortunately
the influence of the gun lobby, and the NRA
in particular has done a tremendous job.
You got to give them a lot of credit.
They have worked that issue to their benefit
very well.
But it's going to be our job to create an
effective counterbalance to that.
And I am inspired each and every day by, you
know, the approach that my wife has taken,
that she's willing to get out there despite
having been almost killed by gun violence
herself, her career ended, but she's motivated
to do this.
You know, Gabby Giffords reminds me each and
every day to deny the acceptance of failure.
You know, often when she gets in that car,
if we're going off to therapy each day, one
of the last things she'll say is, "Fight,
fight, fight."
She does not give up and she's really committed
to this.
So I'd like to introduce you to my beautiful
wife, Gabby Giffords.
[ Cheers and applause ]
>>Mark Kelly: So from Gabby's injury, she
suffers from a condition called aphasia, which
is a difficulty with communication, so we
were working on this statement at the breakfast
table the other day.
I recently had -- well, a while back I had
some surgery on my right elbow.
I ripped the bicep tendon off the bone pole
vaulting.
Don't ask me why at my age I was pole vaulting,
but I was.
And I was complaining to Gabby.
She was eating her yogurt.
We were working on this.
I was complaining about how my arm hurt, and
she looked up from her yogurt and with just
a raise of her eyebrow said to me, "Are you
freakin' kidding me?"
[ Laughter ]
So Gabby Giffords.
>>Gabby Giffords: Thank you for inviting us
here today.
Thank you.
Stopping gun violence takes courage, the courage
to do what's right.
The courage of new ideas.
I've seen great courage when my life was on
the line.
Now is the time to come together.
Be responsible.
Democrats, republicans, everyone, we must
never stop fighting!
Fight, fight, fight!
Be bold.
Be courageous.
The nation is counting on you.
Thank you.
>>Mark Kelly: Thank you.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
>>Gabby Giffords: Thank you.
[ Cheers and Applause ]
