There's also no such thing as the Force and no such place as Middle-Earth. What's your point?

Public service announcement: In real like, "nanotechnology" does not imply the same things as it does in science fiction.

No, all of the labor is done by one Australian man.

Those qualities of basalt are exactly what makes it attractive here. You're right, it's an engineering challenge for many reasons!

Don't forget the Moth!

Wait a second. Ron Swanson listens to NPR?

This comment made me realize that seeing "Gravity" is morally similar to boycotting "Ender's Game!"

Couldn't one say the same thing about Apollo 13, minus the last 15 minutes?

Given the io9 description, I was going to guess Ellen McLain.

Super green.

Agreed - but that's a historical inaccuracy thing, not a technical impossibility thing.

No, but the HST did start its orbital life from a Shuttle cargo bay.

You'd definitely have to design with load paths in mind, but I wouldn't call that "streamlining." After all, streamlining is fundamentally about managing fluid flow around an object.

These are very pretty, but almost none of them look like spaceships. They look like oceangoing ships or airplanes.

Aesthetics and no other reason. People are used to things on a planet, which is why they draw "space" ships that look like airplanes and ships.

There is nothing that a human can detect that a robot cannot also be built to detect. There is no level of human efficiency that a robot cannot be built to equal or surpass.

Space Shuttle is fine. There just hasn't been ISS, STS, and HST in the same place all at once.

Well, that's really the question, isn't it? Is it more efficient to send 286 robots with 1-year lifetimes, or 1 human for 1 year? That is a more complex question to answer than "robots, obviously."

We can make great strides without space elevators, too. The important thing is for us to prioritize, get our resources together, set ambitious goals, and strike out!

Ask any planetary scientist, and they'll take a human over a robot any day.