“I WANT US TO LEARN MORE AND TO USE THAT KNOWLEDGE TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE. I WANT TO INSPIRE THE NEXT GENERATION TO NOT BE AFRAID OF TACKLING CHALLENGES.”


want to send humans to Mars is I want a human to stand outside on the surface, look up into the night sky and see all of us; to soak in what it feels like to be human in space seeing the other 8 billion people. I don’t think it will feel like seeing a little blue star, right? I think it will feel like ‘wow, I’m surprised we don’t treat each other more neighbourly’. I want Earth to be a better place. I want us all to think globally as citizens of this beautiful planet.”


REMOVING LIMITS TO OPPORTUNITIES Tony’s personal drive to push boundaries is itself an act of innovation – doing something new, learning, planning and balancing risk and reward – and started at an early age. “I wasn’t happy with the circumstances around me when I grew up,” said Tony. “My mom’s answer was always the same: you should go to university, get a better job, build a good future – you can do it differently.” Yet the trajectory from


classroom to space was not as straightforward as the scale of his success might suggest. “Culturally, when we write our bios, we edit out all the lows,” he explained. “It’s easy, especially for students and for


10


me as well, to imagine someone has done everything perfect and flown through tougher and tougher challenges. But it doesn’t happen like that.” Tony explained at middle


school, he “had no interest in science whatsoever” and failed a science class. A few years later, it was a teacher genuinely excited about science who ignited Tony’s interest. “He had an energy around science that was contagious. It was like ‘wow – this is cool and fun’. But if you had asked my teacher or colleagues ‘who’s going to go to MIT?’, or ‘who’s going to fly for NASA in space?’ they wouldn’t have picked me. That’s an important lesson for us all.” Tony came up against more


preconceptions about what was possible at pivotal moments in his early education – “a battle I will continue to fight” through involvement in initiatives like ISSET’s Mission Discovery. At Tony’s school, very few people went to university. Even fewer went out of state and fewer still to MIT. “I was told by my high school guidance counsellor not to apply because ‘people from our area didn’t go to MIT’,” said Tony. “There are adults who don’t know as much as they believe they do telling kids what they can’t do before they


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98