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There's no such thing as "enough money" in the corporate world though. Electronic devices used to last decades before needing to be replaced (I know someone who still has a fully-functional first-gen microwave), and businesses could still do fine if they made devices that good now. BUT, they can make them cheaper, break easily, and still charge the same price. That means more money, so they do it. The same thing will likely come out of this.

The analogy I generally used for this is "what goes up must come down." We now know that rule varies greatly based on distance from a governing body and any velocity to counter that pull. But... yeah. I don't know how relevant the point really is though. It's very similar to "you can't know if there's a god or not because you can't scour every nook and cranny of the universe in however many dimensions there are." But science isn't really concerned with that anyhow. It just aims to prove what it can with the data that we have available.

So we're going from planned obsolescence to forced obsolescence. Still waiting for the day that hammers have chips in them designed to detect 50000 impacts, and if you use it again, it sends a signal to the police to come and arrest you for violating the EULA. I'm going to assume the wording in the article is far too "idiot-proof" by the way. When they talk of "evolving circuitry" doesn't this mean they could say... "Oh it's a phone when you pass through security, but later on it will overload the battery to explode, when you're half-way across the Atlantic."

USCM Dropship. Just what fun this would be to have. A hybrid spacecraft/helicopter. And armored enough that re-entry is a roller coaster ride instead of an all-out panic attack. And the Valley Forge. Scientifically thrown-out since we know now that we'd just store the DNA of all life on Earth and toss it into a tiny container, instead of going to the bother of having to keep an eco-system running. But such a beautiful romanticized concept.

Bit of a tangent, but this talk of Psyche, is reminding me a lot of the old idea that the asteroid belt was a planet that either failed to form, or got destroyed by an impact. But I thought that hypothesis was killed years ago?

Anyone think this might be enough to NASA a little extra political leverage? They now have a chance to answer the "Are we alone?" question with facts instead of mere statistics. I think it's definitely time for a raise.

I just hope NASA gets a bigger budget now. This will probably be the most important thing we've done since Apollo. I've been saying for a long time that something really groundbreaking needs to happen to get the whole country interested in space again. Something on the level of a moon landing, and another huge manned mission could be that. BUT, finding life on Mars would do that job just fine, and we don't need to send people there to do it.

When there's quality music on youtube and it doesn't get identified by the copyright-detectomatic, it's usually Kevin MacLeod, who gives his stuff out free-to-use. http://www.incompetech.com

Pretty cool you caught something that close to the moon. Is that a star or a satellite?

Bad, Kerbiloid, BAD. You go to Charon prison now.

Yeeeah... read the last sentence again on my last post. Be thankful we actually have the freedom to choose the forms of entertainment that take us from "just surviving" to "living."

Yeah, I'm out in the sticks. The only light pollution comes from the car dealers. Makes me wonder what it would look like in the middle of nowhere with no man-made light sources.

Survival is the first instinct of life (on Earth anyhow). Nothing would've gotten any further without that. So I'd say that is the purpose of life, to strive for existence no matter what. So if we CAN last long enough to be clinging to whatever energy is left over at the end of the universe's life, then that's what we should be doing. You don't need a command from an all-powerful deity, or any kind of philosophy to get that. It's right there in our DNA. Beyond that, even by religious standards, "concrete knowledge and understanding" is impossible. If we want to make it more fun than just survival, that's up to us.

Even with the cloud cover, I can see it. The entire sky has taken on a rusty color. Kinda creepy.

Is that all they used it for? ALL torture is hit-or-miss for interrogation, but it seems like it would've been a pretty (relatively-speaking) humane form of punishment compared to other techniques that were typically employed in that era. It's downright overbearing, without any of the messiness worthy of a "Saw" film.

I hate to sound abrasive, but you sound like someone who is trying to get justification for suicide via people failing to sufficiently answer your question. If life is meaningless, then so is bickering about it.

A dark path, heading down, this thread is.

The surface features that everyone seems to agree this is going to be about.

IMO: If we kill ourselves, we lost. If the universe kills us, we won. Though, we should still make the universe work very, VERY hard to kill us.

Don't knock it. I can predict the weather with it. It's easy. Anytime there's ANYTHING happening in space that's worth taking note of, it'll be cloudy. *looks outside* Nailed it again.

Similar to holding your finger up to the bridge of someone's nose, I think. Some people absolutely can't handle it, or ANYTHING being put around the face for that matter. Probably as much of a natural 'reflex' as certain phobias are.

Is that all? Well, that's a relief. I thought it was going to be something insanely difficult.

I asked that before and something was said about non-metal being unable to withstand space travel. I don't really see why though. However, once it got to Mars, the dust storms would probably erode it pretty quick.

I'd settle for someone sticking one on a weather balloon payload with a camcorder though.

The number of times I've had to do that because I forgot to load a tourist...