The Covid-19 pandemic rages on - a new fast-spreader strain was discovered in the UK last week leading to a fresh round of lockdowns and flight bans across the globe, but the good news is that a vaccine is on the anvil. News reports say that it's been approved in the UK and even if the vaccine is delayed but launches by Q2-2021, this will be the fastest developed vaccine in the history of mankind. This is not surprising - medical science has been making rapid progress since 2003 when the Human Genome Project got completed. Since Covid-19 impacts different people in different ways , its vaccine development also needs to take this into account. In fact, this is true of almost every vaccine and while there may not be a direct correlation between the Genome project and Covid-19, but the completion of Human Genome sequencing along with other medical strides has helped our ability to react to diseases and come up with cures faster than ever. What has happened in medicine is but an indic...

About 8 years ago, I blogged about how our generation has disappointed the science fiction writers by not making much progress in the area of Space Travel - something considered achievable by them by the 21st century. Space however is an area where we may not have matched fictional expectations in any form. We have an international space station in place but that I believe is a far cry from a space city and the days of Star Trek do not seem close enough. Time has come, when we will redeem our honour soon.  Space hasn't progressed much in the past few decades because it has remained, until now, a high expense, high government (funded and) controlled industry; much like Telecom sector in India until 2000s and Banking until 90s. Also, entry barriers in terms of cost and regulation made experimentation difficult, which in turn made risk taking difficult. Less risk taking meant less chance of disproportionate reward, lesser private sector involvement resulting ultimately into les...