NASA’s Good Old Days

The Modest, Mighty Voyager and Pioneer Probes Are Still Generating News Today

The speed of light is inconceivably fast. It is just shy of 300,000 kilometers per second. That is, for everyday purposes, instantaneous. A signal from the space probe Voyager 1, which is investigating the limits of the sun’s influence in the galaxy, takes just over 17 hours to arrive at Earth. Voyager 1 is almost 125 times as far from the sun as Earth is, so the signal is very weak when it arrives. The tenuous radio waves are gathered by antennas of NASA’s Deep Space Network, in the Mojave …

by Konstantin Kakaes | July 16, 2013

Lost In Space

Should the U.S. Government Spend Billions On NASA?

November 12, 2012

Ever since Sputnik 1, millions of American kids have dreamed of becoming astronauts—while the U.S. has spent billions of dollars on sending shuttles, people, satellites, and more out into the …

“Privatizing” Space

Companies Shoot for the Stars, but Uncle Sam Still Pays the Bills

by Konstantin Kakaes | May 16, 2012

Later this week, a Falcon 9 rocket built by SpaceX, a young company founded by Elon Musk, is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The rocket will carry …

Chronicle of a War Foretold

Violence Begets Violence in Mexico, With No New Story in Sight

by Konstantin Kakaes | January 4, 2012

On June 8, 2005, Alejandro Dominguez, the head of the chamber of commerce in Nuevo Laredo–a busy Mexican city on the Texas border–took office as the city’s chief of police. He …

The Philosopher-Fisticuffers

The Rough-and-Tumble World of Latin American Intellectuals in the 20th Century

by Konstantin Kakaes | September 18, 2011

In 1920, Jose Vasconcelos, the newly appointed rector of Mexico’s national university, started publishing the classics in translation at a feverish pace. He would call it the “first flood of …

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