Or is it to ensure that they are using the method taught and not some other inferior method, perhaps one taught to them by their parents?

This Sarah Connor reminds me of Liefeld’s version of Captain America.

Is anyone really still anticipating a single avatar sequel, let alone 4 of them?

Yes, the copy would be perfectly fine. The original would be dead.

Anyone else hoping that with the success that the new Daredevil Netflix series has seen we’ll be seeing him at least cameo in Civil War?

I’ve had the same one for close to 30 years.

Dyson spheres definitely won’t be rigid structures, there isn’t a material that could hold up, even theoretically. They would have to be lots of individual pieces in various orbits.

Or perhaps you need a machine at both ends of the trip, so you can’t travel back earlier than the first machine was built (as would be true for any wormhole based time machine).

If you made a perfect copy, without destroying the original, would the original see out of the copy’s eyes? Would it ever experience any of the copy’s remaining life?

There is a Saturday header missing in there. Outlander is also Saturday.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_…

No connection, just magnets.

I'd assume the ball is some sort of plastic.

This means the customer is paying more, or SpaceX is eating the difference to keep the price competitive.

I hope he doens’t have a gaytality.

I suggest you go back to the start of your posting in this thread and read it again, you seem to be moving the goalposts. This started with (paraphrased) “who would pay for a rocket that crash lands” and me saying “they’re paying for the launch, not the rocket”.

No, exactly like every rocket launch, them “suffering a loss” is exactly what happens with every rocket launched to date by any company ever. The rocket not being reusable is built into the cost. SpaceX isn’t charging customers extra to test this new technology. They are charging a competitive price to launch things…

So either they are paying for unsuccessful landings because Space-X is putting the price of replacing the rocket into the contract,

The buyers aren’t buying the rocket, they’re paying for delivery to orbit. Whether or not the rocket lands successfully after that makes no difference to the customer except that it will lower costs once spacex can do it repeatedly.

At this point they aren’t throwing a lot of money at it, the rockets are being paid for by their customers and are performing successful deliveries to orbit.