My mother-in-law was a Hindi teacher at the Indian School in Bahrain. One of her students was Babish Soni. My wife Sonia is several years younger than him, but remembers him coming over for Hindi tutoring. We have all kept in touch. They live in New Jersey. When Babish was flying through Houston, he had stopped over at our house. And when we went to Philadelphia for the World Chess Open one year, they came over to visit. And then when we drove to Exeter, NH from Houston, we had stopped by their house. And we had visited a few times since.
I believe they were on their way to Panama other place last year and they had a stop over in Houston.
Juliean is Babish’s oldest son and I got to sit down and talk to him about NASA plans to return to the moon.
Several things stood out as I re-watched the video.
Julian was surprised to learn that the last time we went to the moon was 1972. “Wow! That is too long.”
Q: “Do you think we should have a moonbase?”
A: “That would be useless now, maybe later.”
This made me think about our base in antarctica. What do we get from that? And are there parallels with how that developed and a moonbase?
“We need to improve down here before expanding up there.”
Global Warming is a concern. “We need to get gas cars out of here.”
And before dealing with poverty, we should make sure that everyone has food and shelter.
“How do we produce electricity?”
Solar panels is an idea. But what if we put the solar panels in orbit so they have 24×7 sun light. And what if we made the solar panels using the materials on the moon?
He suggested the movie “Mission Mangal”
Mission Mangal is the incredible true story behind India’s mission to Mars. It shows how Rakesh Dhawan (Akshay Kumar) and Tara Shinde (Vidya Balan) together with a team of brilliant scientists successfully sent a satellite to Mars in their very first attempt, a mammoth feat achieved by no other nation. This is a tale of inspiration which shows how dreams transform into reality with a vision, the courage to pursue it and fulfill it with sheer determination. #MissionMangalTrailer
We talked about fixing local problems and using that to build up to bigger solutions. We talked about Starship and point to point earth travel. That will drive the development and deployment of Starship. And once we have the craft, we will be able to go to orbit and to the moon.
We talked about the CyberTruck unveil. And many other things.
I look forward to seeing where Julian goes and what he does.