In Colorado, we actually have too many trees. When it is dry we have raging forest fires.

There will be more strength to this case in the next 28 days.

One of the really attractive things about fusion reactors is you cannot have a meltdown like in a fission reactor. But IF somehow (terrorism, etc) it where to blow the reactor right open, by the time the gas reached the facility fence it would be at acceptable radiation levels to not be harmful.

The whole point of the shuttle (though may not have been actually achieved...) was to reduce costs. Engines are pricey, tanks are cheap. If you bring back all the engines and build a new tank, you can launch again. The fuel costs about 5% of a flight launch, but consumes something like 90-95% of the weight. So…

And for what it's worth, they probably started building and designing this thing years ago. The disaster was 3 months ago...

A lot of times when people do things like solve a rubiks cube with machines like this, it's to allow college students the ability to practice with machines they will someday run (ie graduating soon). You cant let them take days and weeks for simulations, but they have some sort of mathematical task that is very…

As a fellow engineer it is refreshing to hear these words. I absolutely love NASA, and everything they have done. But you do raise an interesting point that SpaceX has spent almost no money and achieved so much.

This entire article is basically wrong. There is tremendous friction, and maglev's have quite bit less friction than this vehicle would.

@erischilde: If you double the blade diameter, you quadruple the area. So by making huge ones they get better bang for the buck.

Oh ok, now I follow! Lol that is kind of ironic that there is an English accent and the American accent is actually considered no-accent!

Hence the +/- tolerance on the measurements. You can accurately predict how accurate your information is, you just need to know the capabilities of your equipment.

It's called an American accent. Just because we speak the English language doesn;t mean we have English accents :)

@TheSpoonyBard: In mother Russia, space has sex in you!

@Vinnie Vici: Hilarious execution!

@Settings: Most likely their gov't will be paying out billions to rebuild, might be in the low low millions in the safes from the sounds of it at most. In any case a drop in the bucket.

@snapper.fishes: There is a really good TED talk about this and JPL. The reason for the crane is if the thrusters were on the vehicle, there would be a lot of dust stirred up. Potentially could ruin the rover or damage it.

@pmankow: Are you an engineer or just in school for it? I graduated in Mechanical Engineering and work as an engineer now and I think you are mistaken. First, education needs serious help on the grade-levels, not as much on the college side. If they spent money on colleges it wouldn't hurt to help the engineering…

@burncycle360: Well I am an engineer, let me see if I can shed some light on the multi-engine and cost thing.

@GitEmSteveDave♥ Elizabeth Lambert: The well is 10 inches in diameter and when capped is at 5000+ psi. The item that capped the well had to be hundreds of thousands of pounds... It would take one hell of a powerful machine at the bottom to guide that assembly over top of such a strong force. A better example would…

@zen-tangent: I don't think you understand how rigorously space missions are scutinized and tested... They are one of the highest checked and tested veihcles in the planet, of which no other industry can compare itself too. (I'm a Mechanical Engineer, trust me there is nothing even close to the regulations and to…