New York Times (October 15)
“India is a vigorous democracy that has sent an orbiter to Mars. Yet its children are more likely to starve than children in far poorer nations in Africa. In a remarkable failure of democracy, India is the epicenter of global malnutrition: 39 percent of Indian children are stunted from poor nutrition.”
Washington Post (April 23)
“Budget realities require a modest approach to human space exploration and not an Apollo-style moonshot.” NASA needs to adopt a more practical approach. “Rather than attempting to send people to Mars on the cheap, there’s a compelling argument that we could accomplish more with a less expensive strategy of unmanned exploration.”
Wall Street Journal (October 7)
“Billionaire Warren Buffett tossed lifelines to a handful of blue-chip companies during the financial crisis. Five years later the payoff on those deals is becoming clear: $10 billion and counting.” In terms of income before taxes, the investments to companies like Bank of America, Dow Chemical, General Electric, Goldman Sachs and Mars, have yielded Berkshire approximately 40%. Berkshire received an attractive premium, but provided the companies with critical capital and something even more valuable: “Mr. Buffett’s implicit endorsement of their long-term prospects. Shares of these companies generally went up after they revealed Berkshire’s involvement.”
Tags: Bank of America, Berkshire, Billionaire, Blue-chips, Capital, Dow Chemical, Endorsement, Financial Crisis, General electric, Goldman Sachs, Investments, Mars, Payoff, Premium, Shares, Warren Buffett
Los Angeles Times (July 21)
The space shuttle touched down for the last time. “Born with Columbia in 1981, the shuttle was NASA’s longest-running space exploration program….The five shuttles launched, saved and revitalized the Hubble Space Telescope; built the space station, the world’s largest orbiting structure; and opened the final frontier to women, minorities, schoolteachers, even a prince. The first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn, became the oldest person ever in space, thanks to the shuttle. He was 77 at the time.” It will take at least 3-5 years before astronauts can again depart America (this time via commercial carriers) for space. NASA is now focusing on a next generation of space flight, with the goal of manned flight to an asteroid and then to Mars. Both are distant goals and NASA’s future remains uncertain.
Tags: Hubble, John Glenn, Mars, NASA, Space shuttle
New York Times (May 29)
NASA has given up the search for Spirit, the Mars Rover whose 3-month mission in 2004 grew into 6 years of plentiful data gathering. “This is not like calling off the search for a missing human explorer. And yet it feels similar, even though Spirit is a six-wheeled robotic vehicle….it is strangely easy to personify Spirit. Over the years, it has seemed intrepid, valiant, determined. It has no consciousness, but there has been something self-knowing in the photographs it has taken of itself, with Mars in the background.”
