[captioning made possible by loomberg television] to our top story. apple crushes fourth quarter earnings at a pivotal time for the company. revenue in the quarter was 42.1 billion, a 12% gain. net income, $8.5, billion.

up 13%. the company sold 39.3 million i phones in the quarter and that includes about a week of the new i phone 6 and 6 plus but ipad sales are down again. our editor at large cory johnson and i spoke with bloomberg intelligence analyst by asking if apple should be worried about the ipad. >> the ipads were meant to be weaker than expected. there was a new product refresh coming. it's been relatively stale. and people are starting to figure it out. there's a phone with a larger screen, there's a pc that can do a lot. and this tab let is stuck in between. so hopefully the refresh helps reinvigorate that trend. >> i think that there are a lot of things that are interesting. the quarter is really strong for the biggest company in the world growing at a pace we've never seen great big companies

grow. >> and ahead of the holiday quarter. and with only -- you know, they would have had every excuse to say we only had the new i phone for really one of the 12 weeks. or for one of the 13 weeks of the quarter for 12 weeks we were selling old product because the consumers knew it was going to be old but we saw a slowdown in sales. and they probably saw that. but it shows you how strong that one week of sales probably was with the i phone which is 56% of the sales. not only the largest percentage of sales of the thing that is they sell. it's most of the company now and it's really strong. >> should we be worried about the numbers? >> ipad numbers down third quarter in a row. and down 13% in a year over year. and i think it is worrisome for the company to -- it's reasonable to wonder now we've seen nine months of declining sales to say is this as big as the business gets? because it grew so fast are we already into replacement cycle territory not growth territory

for the tab let? i find it hard to believe. >> let's talk about the picture for apple globally because one of the things i said in the call that demand for the i phone is higher in every country than it was last year and higher than expected. >> one of the things we ought to do is take a slowdown, take a step back and look at it from sort of a holistic perspective. if you look at the intercon activity of the different products, there's a little bit of something in there for everybody. but one of the things that apple is very good at is promoting this subconnectivity between different products. so as you migrate from an i phone to an ipad to a mac there is seamless integration and i think they make it better than any disparate system. so maybe in 2015 the year ahead we think about what the use case are.

what do we use them for. and what screen size do we use. and if you look at it that entire product spectrum, there's an apple product in there for every price point. all premium prices relative to the competition but there's a product at every price ponalt and there's a platform across the board. >> but let's talk about the other thing, the pricing of mac. the numbers were really strong and the average price is -- my model goes back to the late 90s and there's no quarter in which the mac price was as low as the 1200 than it was in this price. that was so close to the competition. we expected a profitable thing but the idea that the mac is finally being pulled along by all this other stuff i think is awesome. >> it made a lack luster -- i also cover the pc industry and albeit improving. the mac's have surprised.

sure. back to school sales helped but it should have helped the pc guys too but it helped them more. on top they saw sales in china where if anything pc demand has been weak and all of the pc makers have been citing weakness. so this is actually a very noticeable uptick relatively different from the competition. >> i can't live without my laptop but that's just me personally. what are we looking for? what are you looking for in the coming holiday quarter? what should we be watching? >> i think you want to see the product as a whole work together. i want to see some interconnectivity between these different products. i want to see one dragging the other connecting to the other. i want to see apple pay take off. i want to see i phone 6 and i phone 6 plus sales. this is the first full quarter of those products so that should be very, very strong. and i want to see i'm really curious to see what happens to the refreshed platform.

>> another note on apple for an upcoming edition of my show studio 1.0 i sat down with hollywood screen writer and producer aaron sorken been behind some of the biggest hits including a few good men, the west wing, the newsroom. social network. the next project is a biopick of steve jobs. in an interview he said christian bale will be playing the upcoming role. >> what we needed was a best actor. it's like p the n.f.l. draft. there are some people who make a science out of exactly where we need to draft a middle inside line backer who is going to do this. and other teams say who is the best another leet on the board? we need it had best actor on the board in a certain age range. >> so you're excited about him? >> i couldn't be more excited.

>> why? >> he really is a phenomenal actor. >> tell me about the audition. how good was he? >> he didn't have to audition. it was -- well, there was a meeting. the role is an extremely difficult role. he has more words to say in this movie than most people have in three movies combined. there isn't a scene -- or a frame that he is not in. and there's a tremendous amount of language. so it's an extremely difficult part. he's going to crush it. >> my full interview will air in early november on studio 1.0. besides that news about the steve jobs movie and apples earnings, apple also released apple pay. will it change the way we pay for every day stuff? that is next.

>> welcome back to the best of bloomberg west. apple pay is here. am rolled out its long awaited payments platform on monday allowing people to use their new i phones and i pads to pay for items at retailers including mcdonald's walgreen's and whole foods. not everything has gone smoothly though. a glitch at bank of america caused some to be charged twice. about 1,000 transactions were affected. for more, we spoke with jonathan wall the cofounder of google wallet and coceo of retail data starter index as well as product tonight. how successful apple pay can really be. >> i think it has a lot of potential. i think they've done a great job with the eco system. so they control distribution of

the handsets. they have the security in their phones. they did a great job with partnerships on the banking side. i think kind of the thing people are asking about is the value added services so it's clear they can do tap and pay for terminals that are already enabled. but the question is where is the value at? where is the improved customer experience? i think that's the big question mark. >> you've used it. is there an approved -- improved customer experience? >> for our users it's fasters. it's making it fast and easy. so now it's three taps and a thumb print and you can be on your way into your hotel room really quick. >> what was it before? >> before we had three taps and we've got our signature swipe, our swipe that the rest of our users will continue to experience. but from a user perspective it's just easier to raise your thumb tap and go. >> do you have statistics that how many customers you lose? >> we don't talk about our

conversion but usually our biggest problem is not ultimately getting through that funnel but the faster we can make it for users the better it will be. >> the comparison to google wallet is that google essentially captures all the credit card information, protects it as well as they can and thus far it's been fine. but google then does a lot of customer analysis. so they know if i'm using my credit card they know me, they know where i'm using my google wallet moment, and they're learning a lot about me and finding new ways to market to me. so apple is not allowing that for themselves or for anyone else. as a user i can see why that's much more attractive, a lot more privacy but there are tradeoffs. apple can't market to me in way that is they might otherwise. >> there's some concern that this will limit the value adds that apple pay can actually provide to these retailers. i think that's one of the reasons you'll see some reticence from larger retailers to accept apple pay. it on the --

>> so target won't know i moved into a new apartment and i'm shopping for wall paper and kitchen wares and can't market more stuff to me. >> i think it will impair their ability to figure those out. target in particular has a red card. there's no specks for the red card. there's no way for them to put the red card into the wall. >> the impression is it that it didn't really break through. what were the challenges what are the challenges that apple pay is going to run into as well? >> so i would say at least for google one of the big challenges was the carriers. so the carriers made it very difficult for google to get broad distribution to a lot of different handsets. i think that one of the challenges that apple has overcome is that they control the handsets. they have distribution on all those. but the challenge for them is going to be the adoption side. convincing march rnts there's a really unique value add for them. if you think about it they have in the form of pass books they have potential, assets, reward cards and loyalty cards. if they can figure out a way to

have passbook be part of the experience then you would start to see retailers willing to play ball. but until then i don't see how this is a slam dunk. >> from a software writing application standpoint how easy was it to work with apple pay either on the pay side? >> we started a couple weeks ago and able to get the integration done by last week. >> so it was pretty easy? >> our team was down there and we were really helpful and we were working hand in hand with the developers. and when we came up with issues or cases working together to make it possible. >> what were some of the issues? >> just little things you don't think about or sometimes when you put software into product you learn new things. so working together to make sure we had all those seams tied up before we actually launched this week which is super exciting. >> one of the things i was speaking with him about is he

said apple pay isn't that innovative. it actually uses a lot of existic systems and just sort of brings everything together. would you echo that? >> i would say the trick is where they go from here. what they did is take existing standards, they worked with visa and mastercard. they are using some cool new teck. tokenization from the networks improves the security. i think the touch id improves it. i think those are incremental steps. i think probably what mark was calling out there is the lack of kind of a breakthrough value add proposition. >> so speculation also that apple is going to get anywhere from 12-1/2 to 25 basis points of the transaction. you've been in those kind of negotiations. no one wants to give up huge dollar amounts like that. do you think they got it? >> i think they did and it's kind of amazing they did. >> why? >> this is the issuers are, this is their bread winner. for them to give some of that

up they had to be afraid of missing out on the experience. >> they felt they were backed into a corner and had no choice. >> i think that's probably the case. >> why does apple have that much power? >> because they do completely control their eco system and it is really powerful. they control the hardware, the software end to end of the handset. so if you were forced to either par take on their terms or be left out, i guess they felt they didn't have a choice. >> why didn't google do it the way apple is doing it? >> i think google has a different philosophy. look at android it's not a closed system, it's an open system where the rising tide lifts all ships. i think that maybe with a little patience or apple pin now google will come back to the table and push in that direction. >> how much of a chance does google stand in this? >> it's still very early. apple has a lot of -- >> so many more phones.

you think they still have a chance to say we've got the marketplace. >> what do you think google is going to do? >> i think they have to answer this. this is too important a space. i think apple is going to say we're protecting your privacy we have this beautiful experience. google is going to say we're helping these retailers with all these value-added experiences and we have a huge number of handsets. well, is she doing enough to fend off her critics? yahoo earnings and the ali baba impact. next.

>> welcome back to the best of bloomberg west. it's been an interesting time at yahoo. the company had a $6 billion

windfall after taxes and activist investor star bord value is urging yahoo to break apart or consider a merger with a.o.l. but they showed third-quarter earnings that showed improvement. net income 6.8 billion up more than 2,000%. so is yahoo really on the comeback trail or is it all ali baba? here's their take on whether yahoo really is making a comeback. >> it's organic growth, organic shrinkage in addition to the acquisition. so the company has spent over $1 billion in acquisition since marissa meyers arrived. we don't know because they haven't released -- they've done dozens of acquisitions but they haven't released the actual cost. so only in a few cases we know how much they spend, $1.1 billion for tumbler.

but just think about that. and then on a year over year basis they see sales increase by $10 million that's not very impressive. so there are other metrics that look better. we saw 1.5% increase in sales. up 45% increase in operating profits after you strip out the ali baba gains which were substantial. so there are some signs of things improving. but fundamentally after all those acquisitions only 1-1/2% revenue growth means a lot of heavy lifting. >> now tom in new york, what's your initial read on these numbers? and that very same question is it yahoo or ali baba that we're seeing? >> here's the thing. sales growth has been very rare. that's been very elusive for marissa meyers. at the risk of sounding too much in agreement with him, she's absolutely getting some of that sales growth that you want to have. there's also profit growth.

she has been cutting jobs. the fact is this is not enough to appease concerns long term. there needs to be substantial movement of the needle and you're just not seeing it yet. it doesn't hurt that there was a big miss as a result of the gains that you saw from the ali baba stake sale. but you have an activist out there saying we want you to return more of this cash. we want it to be more meaningful than just half of what we've got. and there's a lot of concern about whether her acquisition strategy is the right one. > we heard from a.o.l. ceo tim armstrong saying we don't have any plans to merge with yahoo. we have a whole meeting tomorrow with our senior executives and yahoo is not part of it at all. is it realistic to think that's an option? >> it's the kind of idea is way out of left field for them and maybe they're trying to talk up their book to make it suggest

something they're more valuable than it seems. >> what about the idea of breaking up the company? >> i don't know if they're going to break up. there's some fundamental turns they're going to have to make. one of the things she talked about when talking about the acquisition strategy is they're going to make smart acquisitions. the suggestion being maybe they weren't before. i don't know. listen to what she said. she did in fact raise this very issue because she knows. >> we have a clear strategy and a principled process for reviewing opportunities. we will continue to seek opportunities here and we will be smart about it. >> so she's of course smart enough to not say they're done doing acquisitions but i think she recognizes that criticism and that cash is a fleeting thing for this company. >> we still don't know yet if the 1 billion plus acquisition that they made, tom, is going to pay off. what do you make of new reports out there of things like snapshot? >> well, that's probably a bit

beyond their realm at this point. one thing that another silver is a is mobile is now material distribution that's hugely important given the way we all are accessing the internet now not just on our laptops and desktops any more. >> just a quick note. yahoo has closed its funding round with snap chat valuing the company at $10 billion. scooter is the man who famously discovered a 12-year-old justin bieber and turned him into the international pop star that he is today. how did he find bieber? i sat down with him on the latest edition of studio 1.0. >> what happened when you saw the video of justin bieber? >> i saw a 12-year-old kid who had i think like eight videos at the time. and he was singing at a contest at a church.

i was consulting for acon on a different artist and i was watching you tube videos of that artist telling him what i thought of it. and they were singing aretha franklin respect. there was a kid in the distance, and i thought it was the same person. when i clicked on it was a 12-year-old kid. >> so it was an accident. >> and my gut went crazy and i watched another video and then i saw him singing neo so sick. when i saw this little canadian kid with so much soul i just knew there was something there. >> you were there tirtsbleeber. you flew his mom and him. >> illegally i think. >> down to live next door. >> and they were canadians so i brought them over illegally and kept them in the country and put them in a townhouse around the corner so -- >> you paid their bills. >> yeah. and got a tutor and did the whole thing. they became like my family. it's been a rough year for me watching him because i really care about him and you don't

want to see anyone going through stuff. but to see him coming out on the other end of that right now and knowing the plans for next year and the fact that he's a kid. i've had to learn that it's ok to let him step on that rake and let him hit him in the face. and he's learned from those mistakes. and he'll be a better man for it. he gets it. he said to me, i went shopping in france and all i wanted to do was walk down the street and just shop. i didn't want to bother anybody, i just wanted to shop and there were 14 cameras around me and 200 people started surrounding and i came to the fact don't get angry, this is your life. and i'm ok with it and there are blessings that come with this and i think he's become a young man. i'm proud of him. >> recently scooter has been making moves into film, television, among others. you can catch my interview with him on studio 1.0. up next, big trouble for big blue. the shift to the cloud forces

ibm to give up on its five-year earnings goal. we'll look at how serious the problems really are for ibm. . .

>> welcome back to the best of "bloomberg west." i am emily chang. ibm is struggling in the age of quad computing. they just gave up on a five year earnings goal. ibm is actually paying global foundries $1.5 billion to take its index of its hands. cory johnson i spoke with david kirkpatrick. i started by asking david how much trouble ibm is really in the. >> if service is going down, that is the biggest news item

despite having to pay somebody $1.5 billion to take the chip business off their hands. the reality is, this is a giant and old conglomerate and an industry that is changing really rapidly and players are becoming specialized. that is a lot of challenges altogether. >> what did you say? is someone he left holding the bag here? he took the ceo spot. >> i am always quoting warren buffett. when a manager's reputation meets a business with a bad reputation, it is the reputation of the business that survives. >> he has lost a big share. >> ibm is in a crummy business and they are trying to get out of it. they have been undertaking -- they were trying to double

profits. we have seen, when you see the net income, the actual profits of the business, it has been getting worse and worse for long time. it continues to get worse with this company. they have been trying to make that look better through shared by back. they have been buying money to do shared by back. now they have $14 billion in debt due in the next four years. they say they won't have cash flow problems. it will impede their ability to buy back shares and pay down the debt. more importantly, by lowering the free cash flow and having promised to use the free cash flow to buy back debt and to buy back shares, they are unable to get into the business that they want to be in and invest where they want to be. they have made that worse by borrowing money. >> how wrong was warren buffett about ibm?

will they pull through in the long run? >> this is for the longer term more than that. all of the gains that he has had, his investment has been erased. you start to look at that. ibm has a long way to go. they need to transform the services business. their software business, they need to get that into the era of cloud computing where they arm moving so much more quickly than i have in the past. they have to get up to speed. they are calling for more m&a and more deals. now that she is out from under this roadmap, she needs to figure out with the next steps are for ibm going forward and how they can keep up. >> we hear a lot, the industry is facing change. i hear a lot of buzzwords from her. cloud.

a social. mobile. are they really making the right choices to manage that transition to the cloud? >> they have bought some little companies that are clearly good decisions. you just did a great interview. 145,000 people came to the conference. that is indicative that we have crossed a chasm faster than old technology companies like ibm thought we would to the in of cloud. that is a serious problem for them would have such high costs to build their hardware. the infrastructure is expensive. that is why they are paying people to take off their hands the chip business. they have a lot of costs to keep maintaining their hardware businesses, which are not selling as much. people just want to buy it as a service. >> twitter ceo dick costolo is

stored into win back developers and he is making a shift while doing so. details are next. ♪

>> welcome back to the best of "bloomberg west." i am emily chang. twitter just hosted its development conference right here in san francisco. they launched a set of new tools to make it easier for developers to develop apps. they unveiled digits, a phone number login. i asked how these new tools will help twitter in the long run. >> we set out to build an amazing suite of mobile services

for app developers. it was the result of some key acquisitions that we made. one builds services like crash reporting. that is in use by thousands of applications and over one billion users. the other is the mobile advertising platform. >> what kind of developers are you targeting? facebook is doing it as well. >> it is useful for everyone from apt of a in a garage starting a startup to the biggest corporations in the world. we brought together twitter, mo pub, and this new identity offering into a single modular. it helps app developers develop more stable apps and apps that get more users and monetize more efficiently.

>> the ideas for twitter become more of a mobile services company. how does that work? >> it is an evolution for twitter. twitter has been synonymous with the consumer application. that will still be a major focus of for us. at has not changed. the application meets every corner of the world and we build a business around it. this is the next step. this is us becoming a key player in the mobile ecosystem going forward. mobile changes everything. we about mobile company for ever since we started. we are bringing our scale and expertise in helping other app developers build better mobile apps. >> twitter famously cracked down on a third-party users. how can developers be sure that they can trust you again it? how can they be sure? >> there been great business is built on our ecosystem. fabric is about helping out developers build more stable, better monetizing apps.

it is helping every app that you use on your phone be better. it is a brand-new offering. >> is it long term? how long can they be sure that they will have these tools? >> it is a huge new focus for us. we had this idea that we could really help at developers build better apps and play important role of a mobile ecosystem going forward. we've been developing all of these ideas. you can expect that this is just a 1.0 from us. you can expect a lot in 2015. all of these tools are free and one of them makes you money. >> what is a revenue model? >> this is not revenue. it is easy for developers to add monetization platforms to a net. we do make revenue through that. there is value there. that is not the success metric. our success metric for this launch is building mobile services that are so valuable

that that is the first thing they embed. >> you are on the business side of the team at twitter. over time, what is the business model for this? >> if we achieve what we set out to, and every developer builds an app, if they integrate fabric, that is going to afford us a lot of opportunities longer-term. >> there has been a lot of question about google advertising, how big of an opportunity is it for twitter? >> we have been mobile since day one. one of the big powers of our platform is the advertising is native to twitter. promoting tweets live within the timeline. wherever used twitter, our business model follows.

you're consuming tweets and we can place relevant tweets as well. whether it is desktop or mobile, our business model flows of our product. >> kevin wheel, the vp of twitter. we will take you inside some of new york's biggest startups next. ♪

>> welcome back to the best of "bloomberg west." i am emily chang. silicon valley may be the heart of innovation and technology, but it is by no means not the only place. this past week, we looked at the new york tech scene to see how new companies are disrupting old-school new york industries like retail and finance.

this is shelti holiday with a look at two companies. >> a kitchen, old board games, and themed meeting spaces. >> people say it looks like a reading room. i am ok with that. >> at better mins new york headquarters, wall street finance meets silicon valley. >> this whole side of the floor is engineers. >> the start of his trying to rewrite the rules of investing with user-friendly technology and low fees. compared to a 1% fee that traditional money managers charge, they pay as little as 0.1%. >> we use smart technology to automate a part of your life that previously had to spend a lot of time doing it.

>> john stein quit his job in financial services and launched the company in 2009. >> we thought we were getting ripped off by the financial services industry. >> the use software and algorithms to manage people's money. >> we do tax management, dividend management, all better than you could do them on your own. the result is you get a better return on your money in less time and more peace of mind. >> disrupting the brokerage business is not easy. they are expanding rapidly. manage $1 billion in assets and will grow four times per year. >> no one has reinvented this from top to bottom. that lets us provide a better customer experience. we have our own statement comes from us. we have our own tax integration that comes from us. your money moves faster.

>> they are growing in size. they are expanding the office space to 70 employees. >> i think this is a great place to attract tech talent. this is a city where people want to be. that makes it easy to attract those great engineers. this is an exciting company for them to come work at. >> what happens when successful tech entrepreneurs take over a boring warehouse just outside of new york city? you get box. >> the future of shopping will happen on mobile devices. we are just trying to get ahead of the curve. >> what they have built is the e-commerce answer to sam's club. buying in bulk minus the membership fee. >> this is about shipping and saving time and money.

>> prices are on par with other wholesale clubs, nearly eight in 10 orders qualify for free shipping. the boxes are filled in warehouses in new jersey and las vegas. they are strategic locations. >> 80% of our packages arrive in two days a less. it seems like we are very traditional. behind the scenes, we are a technology company. >> i key the orders, had i find out what's in them? >> once utep on the side, you have put it in our software. >> what is going on here? >> even if you look at the robot, we are trying technology out and trying to get better. >> embracing technology is second nature. he sold his previous company in 2011. >> you came from the gaming world, what made you want to sell toilet paper?

>> there is no overlap at all. i think when you dig it deeper, there is quite a bit. people like to interact with names in different experiences on their mobile device. we brought that knowledge into building a smooth and beautiful experience on mobile. this is a shopping experience is that of a gaming experience. >> with eight half-million dollars in funding, boxed has experienced rapid growth. they have eight figures in revenue after launching. >> commerce is something that we do very well. >> that support will be needed as they try to take a bigger bite out of the $600 billion grocery business. >> we are going to get some of the biggest retailers and companies on the face of the earth. it is not an easy task. we will get there. >> shelti holiday with a look at to new york areas startups.

it is a secret that they just raised $542 million in huge names like google. what is a potential of this new technology? that's up next. ♪

>> welcome back to the best of "bloomberg west." i am emily chang. magically can make wales fly and elephants fit in the palm of your hand. now the startup raised $542 million in a funding round led by google. other investors include qualcomm. they'll use the money to accelerate product development. what could they be working on? i spoke about it with the codirector of the reality center at miami university in ohio.

has he seen their technology? >> item the anybody has seen it. i've seen their vision. i hope they can deliver what they are promising. it looks fantastic. >> google obviously it has half $1 billion worth of faith in it. what do you make of the interest in this company? >> i think that augmented reality interfaces are going to be huge if someone can finally deliver a system that is usable. google believes that magically biz going to succeed at that. i think that the qualcomm investment is a great sign. they have been one of the main of benefactors and suppliers of augmented reality technology for several years. >> as far as you can tell, how

does magically leap technology differ from oculus? >> magic leap wants to give you a wearable that can go out into the world and augment the world. oculus is not meant for that. oculus is meant to be cheap and everybody can have it in their home. magically biz about going out into the world of presumably with a lightweight wearable that will let you have experiences in your everyday life. >> their glass projects the image onto your eye. what are the implications of that? >> i think they are going to make the device smaller and lighter. i think this has always been the direction that the technology was going to involve. google glass was a nice first step.

you can look around and see that people that were wearing them a year ago are not wearing them anymore. the packaging and the usefulness of it was not efficient. i think magic leap is going to make that step to a technology that users will actually adopt. >> they like to call it cinematic reality. what is the difference? >> that is a cynical answer, when i say augmented reality to someone, no one knows what that means. i think cinematic reality makes a more intuitive feeling about the kind of experience they are trying to design. i love the video with the submarine of flying through the sky. if they could communicate the vision better. >> what are the possible applications of this? is this purely for entertainment. it reminds me of something i

would see on "game of thrones." >> it won't be just for entertainment. we are working on technologies that will enhance people with vision deficiencies. i know people are working on applications for teaching people how to do tasks like repair of vehicle or repair a reactor core or you have a nuclear reactor and you have to get in and out very quickly. those technology designs have been worked on for a while. what we have lacked is a platform to actually deploy them. that is why you don't see them in common use. >> they have some open positions for people with phd's in optics and computer vision experts. what do those jobs reveal about what they are working on it?

>> this tells me that they really think they are going to need some custom hardware and optics. they are hiring someone who has experience making high-performance graphics cards. they are hiring people who are making circuits and mass-producing them. they clearly are working on some kind of wearable that will have custom optics, some sort of laser or diode technology. it will have custom integrated circuits. it sounds like they are in the process of holding a whole bunch of high-performance and specialized technology to make this work. they will be able to take off the shelf parts and assemble a device. they will have to customize. >> that does it for this edition of the best of "bloomberg west." you can catch us on monday through friday.

we will see you next week. ♪

>> this is not merely a race. the space is open to us now. and our efforts to share its meeting is not governed by the efforts of others. >> it is the human condition to question where we came from. >> liftoff! >> to seek answers to impossible questions. to explore the unknown. the cost of space travel has clipped our wings. 2011 was not just the end of the u.s. shuttle program.