Hello! The British monarchy is trying to modernize... with an official emoji for the upcoming King's coronation. Today we’re exploring:
Houston, we have a crew
NASA has revealed the astronauts set to blast off for the Artemis II assignment — the first crewed moon mission in more than 50 years.
Slated to launch in November 2024, Artemis II is a flyby mission, set to test the spacecraft’s systems, instrumentation and deep-space capabilities in order to pave the way for another set of lunar surface landings. The plan, if all goes well, is to have boots on the moon in 2025, some 56 years since the late Neil Armstrong took perhaps the most famous step in history. Next stop, maybe Mars.
Space: the expensive frontier
The missions aren’t cheap — the bill for the Artemis campaign is likely to be north of $90bn over its 13-year lifetime — but compared to the spending of the 1960s, NASA’s recent budgets have been relatively restrained. NASA’s spending has hovered just under 0.5% of the Federal total, some way off the astronomical spending of 1966 when the agency accounted for $1 in every $23 spent by the US government.
Much has changed since the days of the space race, and although the relationship between Russia and the US remains fraught, the battle for space supremacy has given way to conflicts closer to home. These days China, the US and private companies are the major powers competing in the stars. Beijing has its own goal to land astronauts on the moon before the end of this decade — competition for hotly-contested resources could soon spread to the moon.
Family time
In January, some 478,000 workers were taking parental leave in the US. That's the most since data first started being gathered in 1994, and although the figures for February and March are not as high, it’s a clear reflection of a steady trend — particularly among fathers. Indeed, paternity leave made up 16% of the total parental leave in 2022, up from 7% just a decade ago.
The Wall Street Journal, in its analysis of the data, points to the post-pandemic births boom, as well as the increasing share of Americans who have access to parental leave in their jobs, now up to 25% from 19% in 2019.
Baby steps
While access has improved — 396,000 American workers took parental leave each month on average in 2022, up from 270,000 some 20 years earlier — the US still lags surprisingly far behind other countries.
Unlike 63% of nations around the world, the US doesn’t offer a national paid parental leave program for fathers and it’s one of only 7 countries that has no mandated paid parental leave policy for women either.
Poppin’ off
French Champagne makers will be raising a glass to customers in the US, the biggest global market for the sparkling wine by value and volume, who spent $998m on the drink last year.
All told, the number of Champagne bottles shipped worldwide rose 1.5% year-over-year, fighting off competition from other sparkling wines like Prosecco and Cava, resulting in a record $6.6 billion in sales according to the Comité Champagne, a joint trade association for the industry.
Still fizzy
Besides counting bottles and collecting data, one of the Comité’s primary focuses is to battle against mislabeling around the beloved beverage. Those in the industry are quick to remind people that Champagne can only be labeled if it's actually from the Champagne region, an important distinction relating to the provenance and processes behind the drink, that Comité lawyers look to uphold around the world.
It’s only bottles that come from this region, ~85,000 acres of vines around 30 miles east of Paris, that are included in the 33.7 million figure shipped to the US last year — the second highest year on record, and up some 31% on 2019 shipments.
The only country where more Champagne is drunk than the US is France itself, where domestic sales reached 138.4 million in 2022. That shakes out to 2 bottles per person per year, nearly 20x the per capita consumption in the US.
• The unemployment rate for Black Americans has fallen to 5%, the lowest figure on record.
• Everything must go: Tesla has cut prices 2-6% across the board, the fifth time the EV maker has slashed prices this year.
• Decades of conservation efforts are starting to pay off as India's tiger population has rebounded from its 2006 low of ~1,400 tigers to more than 3,100.
• Interesting exploration of the boom in virtual or dark kitchens.
• How much Michael Jordan makes from his famous Nike shoe deal.
• Charting American reluctance to ask for more pay in job negotiations.
Quick cut: Super Mario Bros. has recorded one of the biggest box office debuts in history for an animated movie... raking in $205m in the US. Producers will have their sights on the top animated movies of all time, can you name the top 3? Answer below.
