For the Space Investors!!

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, are set to lift off together aboard an Atlas V rocket on Thursday, June 18.

NASA managers postponed Endeavour's planned June 13 liftoff because of a leak associated with the gaseous hydrogen venting system outside the shuttle's external fuel tank. The system is used to carry excess hydrogen safely away from the launch pad.

LRO is scheduled for a one-year exploration mission at a polar orbit of about 31 miles, or 50 kilometers, the closest any spacecraft has orbited the moon. The primary objective of LRO is to conduct investigations to prepare for future explorations of the moon.

Launching with LRO is LCROSS, a partner mission that will search for water ice on the moon by sending the spent upper-stage Centaur rocket, about the size of a sports utility vehicle, to impact part of a polar crater in permanent shadows. LCROSS will fly into the plume of dust left by the impact and measure the properties before also colliding with the lunar surface.

Thankyou Mr. Bernanke - But we need to raise the bonus

Nations big banks are rushing to pay back government money only to increase the bonuses of their incompetent CEOs and managers.

The push to repay the funds comes a month after "stress tests" of the nation's 19 largest financial firms found that 10 needed to raise $75 billion more to protect against future losses. All of those banks, including Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, had submitted plans by late Monday to bolster their capital

Here are the banks that want to be free from the reins...

-- JPMorgan: $25 billion

-- Morgan Stanley: $10 billion

-- Goldman Sachs: $10 billion

-- U.S. Bancorp: $6.6 billion

-- Capital One: $3.6 billion

-- American Express: $3.4 billion

-- BB&T: $3.1 billion

-- Bank of New York Mellon: $3 billion

-- Northern Trust: $1.6 billion

-- State Street: $2 billion

New sharks in crowded waters - ST+NXP+EMP

ST gets NXP then sells that stake to EMP. Yes we are talking about ST-NXP Wireless which is now called ST Ericsson. Ericsson with its hands fulll with Sony Ericsson now has to deal with a new baby.Ericsson contributed $1.1bn to the joint venture, with around $700m of that going to ST so that it can buy out the remaining 20 per cent it didn't own of the NXP Wireless business.

Created as a fabless company, ST-Ericsson will utilize the wafer-processing capabilities of ST Micro. ST-Ericsson is a supplier to four of the top five handset manufacturers (Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and LG), had combined pro-forma revenues of about $3.6 billion in 2008, and has a solid cash position of $400 million.


Almost 85% of ST-Ericsson's 8000 employee workforce is in R&D. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the company also has full access to assembly and test facilities operated by ST.


ST-Ericsson will focus on platforms for GSM, EDGE, WCDMA, HSPA, as well as TD-SCDMA and LTE.