What's the difference between a 'dolphin' and a 'porpoise?' The former may be kicking the latter's ass...

Sidemount uses the same infrastructure, basic design, and standing army required for operation, that helped make the Shuttle too cost-ineffective to continue to operate...

As if the Shuttle were the last word in orbital spacecraft for all time...

I've had a few Milky Way bars, myself...

I always liked this exterior view of...whatever their 'galaxy far, far away' was...

It's just cluelessness. Trust me on this.

Hmmm. A one-liner someone at an SF con laid on me long ago:

Yep. There's a difference.

Jet, schmet. The electric blue pants are gone!

Do you need a Chauffeur's License to operate a galaxy?

Sure it'll happen. We can tell Andromeda's coming right at us. Redshift/Doppler Effect doesn't lie.

No, if you're immortal (and have the patience of one), you sit back and watch the show slowly (and I can't emphasize the slowness enough) unfold.

"Merger' is a better word than 'collision.' Many people have visions of stars actually colliding, but it's more like clouds merging. In the end, the average distance between stars/water droplets will be somewhat smaller, but few if any will actually meet, or get dangerously close (though a few will be ejected…

You mean 'simulation.' 'Mock-up' refers to something physical, like a visually accurate, but non-functional, full size spacecraft model.

Mike, if it happens because we went on to something better that couldn't or didn't have to use that infrastructure (Does anything still launch from the Mercury-Redstone pad? Thought not...), I can comfortably live with that...

Yep. Copying the other side as closely as you can, also means copying their mistakes...

But what would someone moving along with (that is, in the same frame of reference as) the mirrors observe?

And as it's coming from all directions with near-perfect uniformity, then yeah, it's hard to call it an 'object...'

IIRC, he uses ultraviolet light, focused through a lens made from white dwarf star degenerate matter that fell to (but somehow not through) Earth...

It seems to me that Clarke had a good point. Most Monotheist beliefs have historically had little patience with the idea of no God, or multiple Gods...