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You do realize just how closely the first Abrams Star Trek rips off of Star Wars, right? It can be done.

Doesn't even classify as Flash Gordon to me, it's not stylized enough. Looks more like the first A-Bomb. If it DID look like a proper space rocket though, I'd almost feel sacrilegious using it as a trash can. It almost feels like a metaphor for how most people feel about tax money being spent on space exploration.

The 'habitable zone' is a very near-sighted concept. If there's sufficient energy, then something might be able to harness it. And I think most of us are very intrigued by Europa.

That had my attention too, but thought maybe they were fissures in the ice created by rapid heating? I don't think the comet has enough gravity for anything to 'roll' on it, much less make an impression while doing it.

Many of the old Toho movies contained an element of sadness for the monsters who were slain. None I think were more emotional than the original Rodan. Even translated, the 'epitaph' if you can call it that was rather moving. I might've actually shed a tear for them as a kid after imagining what that twisted reality must've been like. To wake up after 650 million years in a completely alien world, find the only other survivor for a mate, and then get killed. Owch.

Ah, stereotypical skeptic rage, with the most predictable of terminology. As if other aspects of particle physics as any less 'crazy' in how they work.

I didn't see any reason for them to NOT still cover it though, given how much of a big deal it is. It's all over their website, so why not? Now I just need to find a time where I won't be interrupted. Livestream seems to reset automatically if I try to pause it. Even accounting for that it could go awry. If they land on a chunk of rock that's only held to the rest of the comet by ice, it could still wind up taking an unexpected trip.

Well this is disappointing. Unless they just didn't announce the schedule, there's no indication that NASA TV will be running anything, which means I can't even record this.

Well, yeah. With conventional space travel, weight is the biggest killer though, making heavily-armored ships a HUGE pain in the butt to construct. The best alternative I can think of to launching it all from a planet is to build a dry-dock near a big iron-rich asteroid, and slap it onto the ship after the hull is already finished. All that extra mass is also going to make your maneuvers ridiculously expensive though. Hard to say what kind of velocity would be needed to penetrate sufficient armor though. For instance, if the missiles contained diamond fragments, and those fragments were traveling at over 100,000 kps, what kind of a mess would that make? The inbound debris would be a shotgun blast at that point, and CIWS is probably going to be useless. Now it's either up to the armor to soak the damage, or an evasive maneuver. An armor-heavy ship is going to have a heck of a time dodging something coming at it that fast. We're probably getting into paper-rock-scissors territory at this point. Space certainly presents some interesting tactical challenges, the kind I haven't seen since perhaps, submarines vs. destroyers. Well we're in an era where Playstation 3 chips are being converted to guidance systems... might as well go all out with this. First and foremost, the most advanced instruments will be on the deployment box. On approach, it will gather as much data on the target as it can, and upload it to the missiles, so they have the best possible profile. The missiles themselves? Well heck, when you've got 100 missiles coming from a single shot, why not give them everything? And by that I mean having different sensor packs on different missiles from the same box. They'd be the same in other respects except for what they're scanning. It's a 'swarm' so why not let them communicate with one another via a hive mind? If one sensor type gets fooled, those missiles can rely on the data from others to get a more complete picture. They can still operate independently if they need to in the event of the 'wifi' being jammed. Though personally, were we living in "magic Star Trek land" and have any kind of high-tech sensors we want? I'd probably opt for a "gravity-wave-seeking" missile. The only way for a ship (in the absence of artificial gravity generation) to fool a missile like that, would be to shed a LOT of its mass. Depends on how quickly the shields can go up or down. I don't know if frequency modulation in Star Trek works this way, but this is my guess anyway... it can perhaps be best explained with a simpler system that was designed for a similar purpose. When air combat was first devised, they had a problem with the fixed forward guns chewing up propellers. The initial solution to this was to armor the propellers (yes, to protect them against friendly fire). That is, until someone devised a way to mechanically link the guns to the prop, so that they would only fire when the prop wasn't in its path. I would envision any kind of advanced shield system to be linked to the guns in a similar fashion. This is probably the hardest thing to speculate about, given that I don't think there's ever been a theoretical shield design. That's right up there with "how do lightsabers parry each other?"

I think the new thread was created specifically because it's more of a fair reaction to the news than the articles cited in other threads, ones that led to a "It's got to be bogus" attitude.

I don't think there's a need to worry about that. If it happens, then it would surely get factored into building codes. In order to prevent fires (guessing that's your primary concern) than all you need is to apply an insulating base coat beforehand, and a protective clear topcoat. Compared to the solar layer, those would be a pretty simple thing to develop. I certainly still wouldn't recommend such a thing for road or walkways though. The only other thing I don't know about is what would happen if such a painted surface were damaged, such as by a falling tree.

I don't think we're implying that this would do away with solar roofing, only that going about it could go in a radically different direction. Just imagine if it became possible to paint your own solar panels? No need for fragile arrays. Just pick your surface, paint the thing in layers, and you're done. Yeah, I know that's a huge stretch, but I've seen 'EL paint' before that looks very similar to electroluminescent wire. Just brush it on a surface, connect wires to both ends of your brush stroke, and it sparks to life. Imagine if we could do that in reverse, and have the brush stroke be the power source.

Ah, thanks for that. Of the blogs I've been following, I haven't seen that image before. Hopefully the comet will start 'performing' when it nears the sun. I vaguely remember it being much brighter a few months ago and then it suddenly fizzled to the state it's in right now. Wow... that's about the most complicated thing I've ever seen. Why the sudden reverse from counter-clockwise to clockwise orbit at about 0:35?

Farmers have occasionally converted vehicles to run on manure.

I wonder how long it will be before we can paint our houses with solar... stuff?

Don't give the Universe devs ideas. We don't need another incident like cold fusion, with the EmDrive being regarded as an exploit.

That's almost like saying, "I'm not sure if this airfoil will fly, so let's test it in a vacuum chamber instead of a wind tunnel." I can't see any reason to NOT get erroneous readings from testing the Em in normal atmospheric conditions.

Well, CIWS lasers are completely new, but like most tech, will very quickly become more powerful, smaller, and with better heat dispersion. From what I've seen of 'mirror armor,' it's not nearly as effective against lasers as one might think. The armor will still heat up and lose its effectiveness. On the topic of the debris, that's another thing to consider with regard to using missiles. Even if they're destroyed, the shrapnel could still be a serious concern. What I would do, if I were designing such a system? Long-range deployment. All the missiles loaded into a larger delivery system (this is your 'bomber' if you want to call it as such, only it isn't meant to return home). This missile accelerates towards the target (could be on the other side of Earth, could be in a different orbit). The trajectory is planned out before firing and obviously, different designs are going to be better for different ranges. By the time its within a reasonable intercept range and has done its final burn, it breaks apart. The missiles remain asleep unless one of them is "attacked" after which they begin evasive behaviors. The end result I'm picturing is equivalent to the . Hopefully that covers at least somewhat of what you're asking. Tech specs on speculative weapons based on speculative technology isn't exactly a simple process. I'm basing this on the future of what our warfare is currently looking like, and applying it to space combat. The big thing happening now is the "iron dome." Tanks have that and we're building them for nations now. It's not a forcefield, but the end result is similar. The most feasible option for getting around such a problem is to throw more stuff at the target than its countermeasures are able to reasonably deal with. Of course, if someone figures out how make "iron domes" so effective that they can even knock down ballistic artillery shells, and do it using energy instead of ammo? We might be approaching a new era of "ironsides."

Can someone explain why this wasn't done in a vacuum to begin with? That seems like a no-brainer.

I've always felt that much of the NSA (or insert your cyber-espionage program of choice) boils down to people paid tax dollars to sit at a computer all day and 'do stuff' while watching amateur webcam 'stuff.' There's certainly not enough legitimate data being collected on suspected targets to keep those folks busy all day... They've even been 'entrapping' innocent individuals to go on Jihad, to the point of giving them access to weaponry, only to 'catch' them in the act later and arrest them. Some of these incidents have been touted as a legitimate reasons to keep the cyber-spy stuff going. On a lighter note... Not real guns, but check this out. This is a thing that began a few years ago at an annual model airshow. After hours, they bring out the old 'junker' planes, send them up, and then people gun them down with airsoft and paintball. It's become more elaborate now with some people experimenting with custom weapons. Starts around 9:45.

Unless you give the fighters some darned good shields, a auto-targeting laser turrets would make short work of them. Unlike a human gunner, a computer could easily pick out one target at a time and stay focused on it. The U.S. Navy is currently experimenting with this very concept. It's also questionable at what point it's worth the trouble to launch a swarm of hundred fighter drones, vs launching a swarm of a hundred missiles. The former is probably only more cost effective if they're capable of using massless ammo.

So now, random moron question. Does the comet just have a very weak coma or are they generally so dim compared to the nucleus that short exposure times easily filter it out?

That both labs have gotten the same results now is just bizarre though. Cold Fusion at least only 'happened' once. And "non-functional metal box" is probably far too simplified for the control experiment. Either way I hope this doesn't end up being something we have to wait years for to hear of further tests. The media probably won't even peep about it again, like with the Alcubierre even though more results have come in.

"she said she didn't know if she wanted to be together anymore" Wow, this irks me even more than it did before. I was envisioning this as a relationship between two teens, but 29? Girls still pull that kind of thing at that age?