Rand Beers

Sir, I see a lot of documents in my day-to-day business, and I can't tell you every document that I've seen. It may have passed across my desk. It may not have passed across my desk. I truthfully cannot answer that question, other than to say I don't remember.

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.

If a man made himself an expert in any particular branch of human activity, there would result the strong tendency that a peculiar aptitude towards the same branch would be found among some of his descendants.

The challenge as we saw in the Nigerian project was to restructure the economy decisively in the direction of a modern free market as an appropriate environment for cultivation of freedom and democracy and the natural emergence of a new social order.