Dr. Jeffrey Barnes

Bio

Jeff Barnes holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Rice University in Houston, Texas. He has more than 45 years of experience in the US space programme, working for McDonnell Douglas and The Boeing Company in manned space flight operations, manned space vehicle safety, and vehicle reliability and maintainability at the Johnson Space Center. Jeff has worked the NASA Space Shuttle, Spacelab, Inertial Upper Stage, and International Space Station programmes, and has been involved in Boeing new‑business activities covering commercial space stations, the Lunar Gateway orbital station, lunar surface vehicles, and lunar surface nuclear power. He is currently Boeing’s Lead Engineer for Reliability & Maintainability of the International Space Station.

The big questions

The kind of questions this session opens up.

1. Have you ever wondered what it says about us that we may cross the solar system before we have learned to live well on the one planet we have?
2. Is reaching for the stars an escape from our problems, or the clearest proof of what we can do when we decide to?
3. Who should own the sky, and what happens to “the common good” when the frontier becomes a market?
4. When humanity becomes a multi-planet species, what part of ourselves do we most want to bring, and what do we hope to leave behind?