James Tobin

At the same time it offered the hope, as it still does, that improved understanding could better the lot of mankind. For me, growing up in the 1930s, the two motivations powerfully reinforced each other.

In China, I lived in a dormitory, and the government paid for everything - food, buses. In Iowa, I had to run after the bus, and cook for myself. The first weeks in the U.S., I was asking, 'Where is my food?'

Ironically, it is only when disaster strikes that the shuttle makes the headlines. Its routine flights attracted less media interest than unmanned probes to the planets or the images from the Hubble Telescope. The fate of Columbia (like that of Challenger in 1986) reminded us that space is still a hazardous environment.