Uh, no. The entire design of the shuttle is inherently more risky than a capsule. There is no launch escape system; the side-mount design is inherently prone to falling foam that damages the heat shield; the heat shield tiling system is itself prone to greater failure; solid rocket boosters cannot be throttled or…

Sounds like someone needs to get DARPA and Mark Holderman together. The latter, while still at NASA, came up with a very intriguing design called NAUTILUS-X:

You present an attractive scenario, although even you would probably agree this just is not in the cards in the foreseeable future. This general subject interests me if for no other reason that to speculate about the economics of such a production system. From what sources are you basing your estimates?

It was time to retire the space shuttle - a flawed, inherently unsafe design with far too high operating costs using mostly old technology - and yet I too will miss it.

You're entitled to your opinion, obviously. But consider the possibility that the biggest threat to privacy and freedom is not government (which is constrained by the democratic system, at least in principle) but corporations who are not effectively regulated, financially (and thus politically) very powerful, and can…

No one said you have to buy LED. You can still buy CFLs, until the price of LEDs go down.

Yeah, it is gonna be great, because your actions - or in this case the lack thereof - affect everyone else. I heard the same faux cri de coeur when CFLs came out a few years ago: "Oh, these enviros want us to buy these ridiculous expensive things!" - and now look how cheap they are. So stop with the paranoid, selfish…

This guy is just another doofus who exemplifies the oldest trick in the Republican playbook: use the rhetoric of the "free market" as a cover to shill for corporations and billionaires to garner even more opportunities to exploit the middle and lower class.

Well, given that she (mis?)used the art form of the novel as a vehicle to present her political philosophy rather than as a pure form of art, turnabout seems fair play to me.

WELL-PUT!

Whose joke? Frankly, it just sounds pretentiously silly to me. How about just "metallurgist/philosopher"?

Agree. It's bad art: the characters are completely one-dimensional, the plot boring and contrived, and the dialogue is awful. Obviously she was using the novel as a vehicle to present her (quite repulsive in my view) political philosophy. But as you point out, that aside, as art - or even just an enjoyable read - it's…

Hilarious - and being unfortunately familiar with much of Rand's work - I'm sure rather accurate review of a movie that I might just watch if I happen to be forced to upon pain of waterboarding.

Dude. I think you made a typo and you might need to refactor your comment. You suggested that someone needs to read the book upon which a movie is based before they are qualified to write a review of the movie.

Dude, you might want to edit your comment. I think you just said that someone has to read the book upon which a movie is based before they can review the movie.

I agree.

aLynHall: Btw, there's a very interesting BBC documentary on the possibility of mining on the moon. Your position is represented by Ed Mitchell, and mine (more or less - because he's a climate denier and I am not) by Harrison Schmitt. Check it out: [video.google.com]

@aLynHall: I appreciate your point, but given other known intractable problems (like population growth and rising demand for resources to meet the expectations of an increasingly affluent global community), I think that a pragmatic approach that builds on current systems is far more likely to be successful than an…

@aLynHall: I mostly agree with you on some of this: new technology would be required to make space-based resource exploitation economically viable. Yes, we'll need new mules (current rocket launch systems aren't anything approaching efficient enough).

@WickedNick: You are making the opposite mistake from aLynHall. Climate change is a fact, and even if you ignore or refuse to understand that, the economic and national security costs of continued reliance on oil/coal is untenable. That commie magazine The Economist wrote recently that "The idea that…