BP Finally Plug The Gulfing Oil Leak

There was massive relief for the under-fire petrol company BP last Wednesday, when they managed to finally plug the ruptured oil well off the Gulf of Mexico.  News quickly filtered through that most of the oil spill has now been cleaned up or been broken down by natural forces.

The White House claim that the majority of the remaining oil off the Gulf has now evaporated, been collected or has burnt off.  Even the fiercest critic of all, US president Barack Obama has hailed the fact the operation and the ordeal was coming to an end. 

Five million barrels of oil have spewed into the ocean since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20^th, killing 11 oil rig workers.  Local businesses and wildlife have been seriously affected by this environmental crisis, in the worst oil disaster since the Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska in 1989.  BP have taken some significant hits in the markets, both in the UK and in the United States, with their chief executive stepping down at the beginning of October.  Their handling of the spill has given the worldwide company some very troubled and distressing times.  However, it now appears that like Toyota, who have recorded handsome profits since their disastrous worldwide recall in February, BP may be about to turn the corner.

NASA's Ambitious Moon Adventure Ends

NASA has begun the process of shutting down its American spaceflight programme – which ends the ambitious plan to put man back on the moon.  This is largely down to the budget cuts that president Barack Obama needs to make, in an effort to sort out America’s deep economic problems.  The recent catastrophic oil spill off the Gulf of Mexico could also have played a role in this final decision.

America’s adventure with NASA and space stretches back half a century, to the days of ‘The Space Race,’ and the famous battle with the USSR during the dark days of the Cold War.  Initially, it was the Eastern land that was winning the duel, with Sputnik becoming the first spacecraft to enter space, and then Yuri Gagarin became the first man into space in April 1961.  The US were slow off the mark, John Glenn achieved their feat of humans in space, almost a full year later.  On May 25^th 1961, John F. Kennedy announced the groundbreaking plan, that the United States would have the goal of reaching of Moon by the end of the decade. 

On the 20^th July 1969, JFK’s mission came true, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first two men to land on the moon – ‘There’s One Small Step for Man, One Giant Leap for Mankind.’  On landing, Armstrong and Aldrin planted an American flag on the moon’s surface, as a significant propaganda coup.  With the moon landing successful, America’s next mission was to launch the first reusable spacecraft into space.  The Space Shuttle was exactly what the country needed and on April 12^th 1981, the US launched the Columbia Space Shuttle.  Five years later, tragedy struck the American space programme, when Challenger exploded 73 seconds after takeoff in January 1986, killing all seven crew members onboard, including the first citizen onboard, Christa McAuliffe.

As the Cold War ended, so did the ‘Space Race,’ as America and Russia started working together on a variation of space projects, including Mir and the Hubble Space Telescope.  More disaster followed in February 2003, when Columbia broke up on entry to landing in Texas, once again killing all seven crew members.  Now, with news that President Obama announces plans to cancel additional funding of the US Moon programme to return US astronauts to the Moon by March 2020, it is another blow for NASA, as the Space Shuttle programme is also being wound down very soon.  Certainly, the human space programme era, which has seen a lot of colourful history might well now be coming to a swift and anticlimactic ending.