Laurie garver, its a pleasure to be here with you. Thank you so much. Were excited for your new book escaping gravity. And as you say in the subtitle that its your quest to transform nasa, so i wonder if you can start with why in your view did nasa need to be transformed . Thanks chris. Its a great to be here with you too. I have been at nasa in the 1990s working under the nasa administrator at the time dan golden who was actively and successfully in many ways working to transform nasa. I had previous to that worked for a grassroots organization. That was really interested in returning human space flight to more than just a handful of astronauts and nasa had sort of lost. Its way i think after the shuttle accidents when they didnt. Have the ability to get more people into space for lower costs more reliably. That was the goal of the shuttle. So coming back to nasa as the deputy administrator in the Obama Administration. I thought it was very natural goal to want to continue that transf
Transform nasa, so i wonder if you can start with why in your view did nasa need to be transformed . Thanks chris. Its a great to be here with you too. I have been at nasa in the 1990s working under the nasa administrator at the time dan golden who was actively and successfully in many ways working to transform nasa. I had previous to that worked for a grassroots organization. That was really interested in returning human space flight to more than just a handful of astronauts and nasa had sort of lost. Its way i think after the shuttle accidents when they didnt. Have the ability to get more people into space for lower costs more reliably. That was the goal of the shuttle. So coming back to nasa as the deputy administrator in the Obama Administration. I thought it was very natural goal to want to continue that transformation process and president elect obama happened to agree. So it says my quest because its a memoir, but its a lot of peoples quest for decades and thats why i wrote the
You will see historically weve been unable to meet those targets but we have shown some slow and steady progress over the First Six Months of this current year, which is promising. Planning Division Performance measures, there are two, how efficient we are in processing general plan referrals, and the programming of the Development Impact fees. Again, which general plan referrals are within our targets but we have made improvements within the last six months of this current fiscal year. Moving on to Environmental Review, youll see many of the documents take a very long time to process. An eir on average could take about two years to process from start to finish. With some of the categorical exemption reviews we have been successful in reviewing those cad ex documents within a 45 day target period. Moving on to Zoning Administration and compliance we do track how efficiently we have been able to initiative enforcement proceedings on Code Enforcement actions within 30 days and we have be
Hotels so why not grab a telescope at night and take advantage of the sky and if you look at the nemo. I would find that. Many people are interested in a different type of tourism this is no longer enough just to go and look at places they want to go deeper and have a real experience. Of the raw tourist to travel just to practice astronomy the rest of the trip is extra as if. The Iberian Peninsula offers the best conditions for observation. In addition to its geographic location and climate with a large number of clear nights throughout the year it is sparsely populated in many regions on the one of the earth and the world in central and Northern Europe the settled areas are quite scattered about there are lots of homes and small residential areas between the cities where the and the cities are compact and then there are a lot of unpopulated rural areas between them that means we have super dark skies
and visitors to spain are looking for these very dark very clear skies that have been
Astronomy arguably the first science cultivated by humans is in some danger Light Pollution from cities obscures the stars. And if you go astronomers and astrophysicists were the first to identify the danger of losing the night sky society wasnt aware of the importance of preserving that sky people thought astronomers were the only ones interested for scientific or personal reasons the nine is the most with us as is the end though we may be witnessing the end of dark nights. In the cities are excessively illuminated where you both are not. The observatory is about to move farther and farther away to increasingly remote settings. With the most remote those. Quality of the sky. If you discover in the middle of it some skies look beautiful whats that about the of but its not guaranteed theyll stay that wife is the light and the starlight certifications ensure that there are regulations that will keep the skies so dark that people can enjoy the skies. The Canary Islands is the birthplace o