Unless we get the signal 4 years later from Alpha Centauri, it would be breaking laws on causality..

I think when it comes to DVD I'm going to have to do a competitive read-off. See if I can get through it before the end of the 9 hour trilogy.

Hell, London has one.

Things like this have always confused me about interstellar navegation - is it possible to to plot a course with our current understanding of solar-centric and orbiting body centric burns and catapults, when so far from a gravitational source, with all manner of interfering particles outside of the solar system?

As a genuinely curious Briton, is there the feeling that its better to test in ever increasing detail as the insurance companies will shoulder the cost?

See America, you have the space. Miles and miles of un-farmable plains and wasteland. Use it for this and come the loss of oil, or its relative price inaccessability - you will have the international energy market cornered. It amazes me that Shell don't have a solar-thermal power plant in the pipeline. Shareholder…

It was also refreshing how the designer of SMS said yesterday that he withheld patenting the idea and getting profit from it for the same reasons.

Israel uses native build drones for things like this, and others don't have drones of similar specifications. The UK army has a much smaller hand thrown one but with not enough range to be used outside of front-line service. If the size and shape reported are correct this is the most likely candidate.

But the big question...

You know, the solar sails on Apophis might be one of the most normal ideas i've heard in a while.. either that, or just coat it in aluminium foil.

Having a small Sumomo getting through the dance moves to something would be much more entertaining than the Win7 green transfer bar.

Thats margin of error for an extrapolation - fair to say its a percentage written of 58

When people say that I get the point, but I think I go into it a bit too much. Are people expecting that the butterfly would deflect an incoming asteroid somehow? I get the butterfly flapping its wings causes weather systems, but through the vacuum of space?

Depends where you are in the world and the budget they have I guess.

I think thats the quantity talking. If the US Army had been drafted to help make more models for DS9 I'm sure it would have been equally awesome.

Yet, sales in tinfoil hats are through the roof!

Coincidentally, an envelope-type system would be a good way to send them to their destination

If its not one of these two, I won't take any. I'd be happy with a Sumomo or a Chii actually.

I think this needs to be the criteria by which all other robots are judged.