How is this any more than a revisiting of the ancient discredited NERVA/ROVER program which began in 1956 and dragged on to a miserable failed end in 1973?

That's exactly what it is. I think most people here realize that.

This shares the fundamental flaw of all rocket technology: the fact that any rocket has to carry and throw away a vast load of reaction mass. The Saturn V employed a total mass of 2970 tonnes to lift a mere 118 tonnes to LEO. But the actual raw energy needed to lift 118 tonnes to 200 km is E=mgh = 118,000 times 9.81 times 200,000 = 232 GJ, which is the quantity of energy contained in just 5.47 tonnes of gasoline. So the efficiency of the Saturn V was 0.184%, not because it was a "bad" rocket, but because it was a rocket.

Well, until someone comes up with a workable theory for a reactionless drive, we're stuck with reaction mass. But that doesn't mean we're stuck with chemical rockets - if you could accelerate you reaction mass to some nontrivial fraction of the speed of light you wouldn't need very much of it.

A very good chemical rocket will have an ISP of 450-460 seconds. A nuclear thermal rocket will have an ISP of around 900-1000, or roughly twice as "good".

Nuclear thermal rockets will be heavy, though, and that detracts from their efficiency.

I wonder if gas core nuclear rockets are so pie-in-the-sky nobody worked on them, or they're pie-in-the-sky because nobody worked on them. In theory you could get crazy ISP and thrust numbers from a gas core rocket.

If the speed of light really is absolute, it really won't matter. We'll never see them, and even communicating will be like sending a letter to the other side of the world in about AD 1300.

Who prosecuted you - the feds or the state of New Jersey?

The FBI doesn't bring charges. That's the prosecutor's job. Didn't you ever watch Law & Order? With all the spinoffs in sindication it's on pretty much 24 hours a day.

But what you're saying is true. 98% of prosecutions are pled out, and you know lots of those people are innocent. But the way the system is set up now they can throw 100 charges that all bring 3-5 years at you and all of the sudden you could be looking at 500 years in prison. Orrrrrr, you could take the plea and get three years.

Objectively it's smart to take the plea, too. On average people who go to court get 20% longer sentences.

Three felonies a day. We all do it. Congress has set up a situation such that if the feds really want you they can find things to charge you with. I don't have a lot of sympathy for this particular guy, but you're right.

You are an unattractive girl, mid 20s, who has glowing stars on the ceiling of her bedroom and who goes to hot yoga class without realizing that yoga pants are not for everyone. You are lazy and significantly overestimate your intelligence.

Mein Gott! I totally know her.

I should have said "people who actually played..."

This sounds about right to me. The only takeaway question I have from it though; is how does anyone give a shit about Zoe Quinn?

Nobody does, really. The anger, I think, really comes from the fact that these people got caught with their pants down, and instead of offering a mea culpa and moving on they decided to attack their customers... and it worked, to a certain extent. I mean, look at the slashdot headline! They've been successful at creating the GG = misogyny meme by visiting 4chan and chumming for some crazy.

I'm not sure how to read the larger picture except as another indication facts don't matter to SJWs, as if we needed more evidence.

Do all the reviewers in "the best presses in the United States" bang the same girl and give her pathetic game good reviews? This isn't about people "knowing each other", unless you're talking in the biblical sense.

Let's recap here. Zoe Quinn slept with all the major game reviewers and/or their editors. She gets rave reviews for a game people who actually bought have panned mercilessly. Literally caught with their pants down, they point to their customers and scream "sexist!". That's the point of the scandal. You can dress it up however you like, but at the root it's about corruption in the gaming press.