Astronaut Ron Garan Leads Google+ Hangout on World Change

During one of NASA astronaut Ron Garan's 2,842 orbits around the Earth, a need for deeper global collaboration dawned on him when he saw the manmade border between India and Pakistan from space.

Garan, who spent half of a year on the International Space Station, traveling 71,075,867 miles, believes working together can bring about positive changes for the world. The problem, he says, is a lack of collaboration and an unwillingness to share data, which can have a cataclysmic impact on society

"I launched into space on my last mission with a belief that we have all the resources and all the technology necessary to solve many if not all of the problems facing our world, yet nearly a billion people don’t have access to clean water, countless go to bed hungry every night and many die from completely curable and preventable illnesses," Garan wrote. "So we have to ask ourselves, 'If we have the resources and the technology to solve the challenges we face, why do they still remain?'" Read more...