Yeah, specifically it’s the Congressmen from Alabama who want to preserve jobs at the Marshall Space Flight Center at the expense of private industry, who will likely be able to do it faster and cheaper. But money to Russia means jobs to Alabama, the rest of the US be damned.

But you also can’t assemble a space station in orbit (of the scale of the ISS; Mir was a bunch of modules that were docked together without the ISS’s infrastructure) with a Soyuz or Apollo-style capsule. And the shuttle was designed from the start to be able to have a payload bay with which to carry stuff up and back,…

I am by no means as familiar with Buran-Energia as I am with STS, but it’s very humbling to listen to some of the nutty redundancy requirements built into the system. Did you know that there are three mechanical means used simultaneously to ensure that the nose wheel on the orbiter deploys properly?

To be fair, it’s not shitty planning that has us sending NASA astronauts to the ISS, that was the plan all along once the shuttle was retired. But yes, it’s the political bullshit that has kept us using the Soyuz longer than expected or desired. Congress is like “let’s cut space program funding to save money, even…

The X-37 was built by Boeing, which (by virtue of its acquisition of Rockwell’s aerospace and defense portfolio in the mid 90s, which included North American Aviation) also built the space shuttle. You can see technology from the shuttle in the X-37, in particular the black tiles which I believe are the same material…

There is no U.S. Shuttle that leverages some other country’s development.

The Buran was certainly going to be a crew-carrying vehicle, and it even launched with a special diagnostic module that also offered a bit of extra crew space, much like the SpaceLab modules that flew on NASA’s shuttles. But the Buran was capable of fully autonomous flight, something the U.S. shuttles never even…

So how does a horse get into a qualified stakes race, is that where the owner’s money comes into play? And if it races in the Derby, it qualifies them for the Preakness and Belmont, but then how do you have other horses in, say, the Belmont that didn’t race in the Derby? Wikipedia hasn’t been helpful in informing me…

How does a horse get to run in the various races that make up the Triple Crown? I thought I heard the guys on TV saying this is only Pharoah’s 8th start. Is it just that the horse’s owner is rich enough or something?

Yo, I’mma let you finish, but this other Ventura had one of the best videos of all time!

You were at the Lincoln Memorial and skipped the Vietnam Memorial?

And now even that's gone with 12.1. Bastards.

Baylor is the Bears, not the Bulldogs.

In addition, list the course work you took in school that's relevant to the job you're applying for, and projects that you worked on. You have to have learned SOMETHING in school, right?

And here's the Jezebel link: http://jezebel.com/did-someone-ju…

Ebay charges 9% for their selling fee, and then PayPal charges 2.9% + 30 cents for the transaction fee (even though Ebay owns PayPal), which of course you can get out of if you send a check through the mail. So that $450 will cost you $53.85 in fees (or $396.15 to you). Then you have shipping charges and insurance,…

I got a copy of Office 2010 from my then-employer via the same method. It had 5 licenses. I put it on my 3 computers and my parents 2 computers, but when two of those computers later died, it wouldn't let me reinstall. I tried using the "I don't have an internet connection, let me register over the phone" and talked…

I like how each round starts in classic boxer stance, with both fists up protecting the face, then it immediately devolves into slapping, kicking, and hair pulling. Also: I like how this is the OFFICAL [sic] video, just in case people might want to try making knockoffs.

Is there something similar that will clean up the Windows Updates folder on a Vista machine, for those of us still stuck with it?

A blazer and slacks won't have matching colors, patterns, or material like a suit will. You can get a "real" suit relatively cheaply (but that doesn't look cheap) at Men's Wearhouse, K&G, Jos A Bank, or the like.