vger

Was soooooo disappointing to find out that ships can't be built from scratch.

Can't be worse than the kind of *** whooping one can get from a paintball match. Those things have some nasty kinetic force.

I think you really need to read some history. If there's any old-world parallel for space travel, it's the ocean. The ocean was downright deadly and could snap a ship in half on a whim. There was practically no job more dangerous than sailing, but able-bodied people LEAPED at the chance to go out onto the high seas, whether it be for fame, fortune, or just some healthy adventure. I think you greatly underestimate the ambition of humans. And really, if we only did things after we were 100% sure it was safe, we wouldn't even know how to use fire.

Just tossed in my two cents... or Kerbits... whatever they're called.

Also if you compare humanity's space travel as a whole, compared to when we were exploring the Earth (particularly when it comes to sea voyages), we have a pretty darned good safety record.

It's been done with games from the 80's and 90's. I see no reason why it won't be done with current games a decade or so from now.

Last time I checked, rockets have exploded with people on them. We're still putting people in space. And as sadistic as it sounds, when things go wrong, it'll only make it safer for those who come after, because we can learn from the mistakes.

Yeah, only the most powerful people in the world have such security measures. The john doe's, even though statistically should be less intelligent, don't get such undo measures.

Indeed. Few expeditions would have happened if the explorers didn't accept the risks. This really isn't so radically different from how things were done in the past. You're just dealing with new planets now instead of continents.

... unless you're Mars One.

If there was a chance at surviving a while, even if death was inevitable, I'd like a scenario that allowed me to see how many of the mofos I could take down with me.

Heh, I don't care about then that much, though if I'd had the money, I would've gone out there to witness the excavation. Probably as close as most of us will ever get to "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

I must say, I've had a fleeting concern about this in recent years. Everything is becoming 'just business.'

And even if it didn't, wouldn't you more or less have a really expensive garbage incinerator? By drilling to the mantle, you more or less would have a chimney. Anything that gets dropped down there is going to ride the thermal vents right back up in the form of smoke and ash. Might as well burn the stuff on the surface. You'll get just as much pollution at a fraction of the cost. On the other hand, if you could drill deep enough without reaching the mantle. you'd have an interesting concept for a vertical landfill. Being that deep it's unlikely a lot of the poisons would get into our soil. It might even seep down into the mantle on its own.

Waiting to see these cartridges show up on Thinkgeek at $100 per unit.

That'll teach you to go to the darkside of a planet and forget to bring batteries

Heh, not going to happen. The paradox is, while everyone is whining about better education... educated people are bad for business. They make more calculated decisions, which means they're more thrifty and independent. Businesses want us to be impulsive, not critical thinkers. And they definitely don't want us to be able to spot all of the classic marketing tricks that get employed in every TV ad.

If infertility starts showing signs of being an issue, I'm buying stock in cloning But it would certainly make a particular aspect of recreation more worry-free.

You might do alright for a while, until the sun disappears. You pretty much have two choices. Fire or ice. With a shockwave travelling at 500mph? You wouldn't get to see much before you were smashed.

Too fast though. If we're all going to die, I at least want the show to last more than ten minutes.

I don't think anyone should be trying to put a colony on mars unless we can build a self-sufficient biodome. Experimentation with that concept never should've stopped. It's just too impractical to keep shipping supplies to a colony. In the long run you'll save tons if they can produce their own air and food indefinitely. Even more if they're able to harvest and purify the water there.

Godzilla's cooler. Plus, you can bring the big robots in to fight him. Two birds with one stone.

That may quickly go the other way if weather control ever happens, and already sort of is. The scientists who seem to have had success 50+ times at making rain in a bone-dry desert, are now stuck with the difficulty of proving that the rain wouldn't have fallen anyway if their ionization towers weren't there. This gives technological weather control an only slightly better chance at being proven than rain dancing.

Naa, it's more like the way to make economics look as though it is not a science, is to call something a logical fallacy when it isn't.

Yep, on the basis of repeatability, meteorology isn't even a science. With that, just like economics, you're dealing with almost infinitely complex systems. The 'Butterfly Effect' describes how easy it could be to change the weather, and the same certainly applies to economics.