This space veteran referencing her own work with astronauts and her personal journey challenges us all to find our mission and unabashedly pursue it.

Loretta Whitesides has a passion for using human space exploration to inspire humanity with what is possible. She has more than five hours of weightless time in a 727 aircraft as a Flight Director for the Zero-G Corporation. She and her husband George are both signed up to take a suborbital spaceflight on Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo. Whitesides was trained as an astrobiologist at Stanford University and Caltech. She has been to the hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean with "Titanic" director James Cameron to film a 3D IMAX documentary, "Aliens of the Deep."

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx