Out of curiosity, why is this any more special than just rebooting the servers by hitting the power button? Oh, it sounds way cooler, but what does this do that’s so special that it requires a partial key encryption system to set it off?

Well, that’s going to be one intense case of “back in my day...”

All this has got me wondering: why is NASA so much better at landing on Mars than the ESA? NASA has a larger budget, sure, but still...

While I can’t speak for everyone obviously, at least in western Melbourne, the storm wasn’t nearly intense as expected. It’s still windy and whatnot outside, but no observable damage in my neighborhood at this point.

What is that from?

Question, having not seen the movie... If gunslinger was a host previously... What’s to say he still isn’t? Suppose he realized it was all a hoax but came back, thereby tricking the system into thinking he’s a guest. As a host, he still bound to the park, but as a guest, he’s immune to gunfire and keeps his…

As much as I hate how much ULA cost taxpayers and resisted competition, sabotage is a bit much. Don’t get me wrong, I love a poetic ending as much as the next guy and something like this would be amazing to watch unfold (especially if it ended in hordes of corruption convictions), but I doubt it.

Dammit, now I’m going to have to watch it a fifth time, immediately followed by a second Korra rewatch because of course I’ll have to. Man, I love these shows.

The first season definitely does keep the reality of the darkness of a world at war at bay, but it grows. With the third season’s addition of blood bending (if you’re familiar with Korra, you’ll know Katara is renowned as a healer, but at the end of ATLA, she’s downright terrifying in combat) and just how unhinged…

As much as I think you may be right about this being a superior design, I do think focusing on public interest generation at this point is the most important thing. If you could generate all that support and then say, “look guys, we cut the cost by 50% again by making it modular!” it’ll be a lot better for you than…

...which is why you do so with heavy radiation shielding... I agree it’s a terrible spot for the time being, but it’s by no means “not even remotely suited for colonization.” It is, but we need more economical radiation shields before it will be feasible. It’s great in a lot of ways; it’s just that right now you’d…

Given that space is ruled by maritime law, if, upon landing on Mars, the colonists “spontaneously” decided they were an independent nation with whom they wished to have “favorable trade relations” with the US, couldn’t they basically do just that? I think all the US wouldhave to do would be immediately recognize the…

People like Europa because of all the water. Obviously surface colonies would be dumb, but a few feet of ice is going to go a long way toward blocking it.

Not really, no. Sure, it’ll have the power requirements, but if you’re going for full-on post-singularity brain uploading mega-simulation, we’re not going to leave Earth at all; we’ll just burrow down into the crust to keep the servers safe. Not to mention no one will want to be on a satellite because your ping will…

Not really sure what the point of the snark is; it’s not funny. Sure, it’s funny to make jokes about him being a supervillain, but him straight-up saying that people are gonna die as part of this isn’t really something that can be turned into a joke. Colonization is hard. Jamestown and Roanoke, for starting examples.

It was a long time then and a long time now. That doesn’t mean that people won’t still do it though.

I believe that’s more the R&D costs rather than the operational costs which will be paid for by the tickets of the passengers. As much as SpaceX wants to paint themselves a colonization company, really all they are is a fancy shipping company. The total cost of setting up a Mars colony will probably be in the…

There’s nothing intrinsically “wrong” with it, but these guys want to make a colony, not an outpost. That’s a lot easier to do with an atmosphere and the resources that are easily accessible on Mars than those that are available on the Moon.

The fuel logistics of the ITS are completely from the Saturn V. The Saturn V had to take all resources with it in a single go. The ITS will just launch itself and the crew up to LEO and then be refueled 3-5 times by support craft before it is ready to head to Mars. If you were to make this one single giant hulking…

No need to be pedantic about it. Realistically, when people say things like that, they just mean “we” as in “intelligent beings.” To be perfectly honest, I personally don’t see Homo sapiens sapiens lasting more than another century. I see two, three generations tops, before genetic engineering of human children is…