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welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you'll find extended versions of my interviews on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and today we are blasting off far into the great beyond. That's right, we're talking about space. A fascinating topic with outsized implications for global security, international cooperation, and scientific discovery. Space has been in the news lot recently. You've got the malfunctioning Boeing starliner that stranded two NASA astronauts on the space station. Can't get back. To China, returning samples from the far side of the moon. To Russia, possibly launching a counter space weapon. We are long overdue for a discussion about the future of US space policy. So today I am talking to a man who knows space and security better than anyone else in Congress and better than most in the country, Senator Mark Kelly. Late this summer Kelly's name was floated as being on the shortlist for Kamala Harris's VP pick, but when I spoke with him he was best known for a different kind of floating, logging more than 50 days in low Earth orbit. The former NASA astronaut and space shuttle commander currently sits on the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committees. We talk about space defense, exploration, and the new space race with China. He's got a lot of thoughts on that 2023 spy balloon incident. And if you thought as a political scientist I wouldn't ask him about aliens, well put your tinfoil hat on my friends. It is a fun and far out conversation. Let's get to it. Senator Mark Kelly, thanks so much for being
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on. Great to be on. Thank you for the invitation. You are an astronaut or have been historically. Can I still
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call you an astronaut? Is that okay?
Speaker 1
You can call me pretty much anything except Scott, which is my twin brother's name. Who also has been an astronaut. Who was an astronaut as well. We each flew in space four times. I flew four times as the pilot or the commander of the space shuttle. My brother flew two missions on the space shuttle. Once as the pilot, once as the commander of the space shuttle. This is your identical twin brother. My identical twin. And then he flew up to the international space station on the Soyuz, the Russian rocket and spacecraft. And he ultimately spent a
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year in space on the space station.
