Read moar Vernor Vinge, less Iain M. Banks.

(Not that The Culture novels aren't a fun read...)

So let's say you're an advanced interstellar civilization looking about for other worlds with life for trade and/or colonization. You have system spanning optics capable of resolving individual planetary systems and resolving the atmospheric spectra thereof. And you find a small yellow star with 8 or 9 planets, including a couple of respectable gas giants and three rocky planets in the habitable zone. Two of those rocky planets clearly have stale atmospheres that have long ago achieved chemical steady state. But the third has an interesting mix of O2, CO2 and CH4, along with multiple other hydrocarbons, all apparently far from a stable state.

But alas, that planet has a HUGE moon... a well-known explanation for the spectra, and the cause of many, many failed planetary exploration missions.

The investment bureacrats HATE uncertainty. If you take a risk and it fails, it will cost your entire clan their wealth and status. You instead decide to commit your finite resources to explore planets with more exploitable natural resources than humongous gas giants and small rocky planets deep within the stellar gravity well.

Mod Parent up, I'm gonna post instead.

This explains why I must keep my phone on the left side of my desk to avoid tangling the handset cord. When it's on the right, I give the handset nearly a full twist to get it from the cradle to my left ear (to keep my right hand free for writing/mousing) -- and then another twist back to set it back down on the cradle. Since I'm grabbing with my right hand, the right hand twist is "counter to its initial chirality," which is left handed for most cords I've seen. (Left hand rule - wire coiling in the direction of the left fingers advances in the direction of the left thumb.) After only a few months, it's twisted into such a perverted state, it won't stretch without tangling, and I have to replace it.

Keeping the phone on the left seems to prevent this... the half turn picking up the phone is left-handed, concurrent with the chirality of the coil. Also it's closer to a half twist than a full twist.

Nice to finally have an answer to why this works the way it does.

From the bottom up, of course...

Next up: flinging poo at mach 25.

Well if you're gonna go there, then ultimately, pretty much everything is radiatively coupled to interstellar space.

This.

I switched to recording America's Funniest Videos on Sundays after the sloppy wet one they gave Amazon last year. They were on probation after the propaganda microphone they gave to the NSA last year, and the string of soggy panty pieces Lara Logan has been giving for their coverage of the US military abroad.

There's more truth in 60 seconds of AFV than there is in an entire episode of 60 Minutes.

I voted (3), but really, the answer depends on the purpose of the mission, and the overall purpose of the space program.

If the point is to colonize other worlds, open new frontiers, escape the confines of this single planet in order to ensure the survival of humans and other terrestrial species, then there's no point. If you can't establish a viable colony, then you're not ready yet. Send robots until you are. Build and expand in stages.

If the purpose is commercial, then the answer is similar but for a different reason: it has no ROI. If you can't return, then the investment required just to get humans to Mars alive is too great. Again, send a robot.

If the purpose is PR (which is one of NASA's priorities) then the answer is maybe -- as in yes, but only if the PR is positive and promotes the kind of optics the agency wants. This kind of mission is more of a stunt, a spectacle, than promoting science and exploration. Right now, NASA's PR mission is more of the latter than the former, but who knows -- perhaps NASA needs more of a spectacle. Look at how much attention the Mars rovers get, and it's because they're more than a little bit spectacular.

If the purpose is pure science and exploration, then yes. If there are volunteers, why not? Plenty of explorers throughout history have taken huge risks and paid for their lives to expand human knowledge, and we've benefited. If they're willing, then who are we to judge?

In my city, every signal-controlled intersection has sensors, even though most intersections between heavily trafficked streets appear to work on timers. The side streets with signals, however, use the sensor to interrupt cross traffic - usually after some combination of delay and count of waiting cars.

Unfortunately this combination appears more often than not to waste fuel and create more pollution. This is because the algorithm doesn't coordinate between intersections, or use cross-street sensors to detect a break in the cross traffic that will allow the one or two side street cars cross. Instead, Murphy's law reigns, and one or two cars needing to cross the main boulevard will be forced to wait at a red light while gaps in the cross traffic go by, and then several dozen cars will be forced to stop while the one or two cars use the intersection, and then several dozen cars must accelerate from a stop again.

My city is home to JPL and Cal Tech. We can send robots to Mars and spacecraft into interstellar space. But we can't coordinate sensors across the city to prevent me (and 30 others) from having to stop at a red light so that one car can pass, and then watch the intersection go unused for another 90 seconds... again and again and again as I cross town. Even more frequently, I see people sit at lights on side streets waiting thru gaps in traffic clearly long enough for crossing.

We have the necessary high bandwidth wireless communication, mesh networking technology, and computing power to change this. But it isn't happening.

I know that the only reason it's not already done is because it's not important to the people who manage this sort of thing, not important enough to spend the necessary money on R&D and implementation, anyway. But air quality and pollution are very important in Southern California. Isn't it important enough for something as solveable as this?

Surely someone in Pasadena or Cambridge or Santa Clara or Pasadena or Austin or Raleigh or Atlanta -- name your tech hub -- has an interest.

In my city, I've seen numerous instances where the countdown timer gets to zero and the flashing "Don't Walk" sign goes back to "Walk."

My initial response was "WTF? Is the designer just fucking with the peds' minds?"

Since then, I ignore them.

If I could do that, I'd never leave the house...

And when the levees break?

You'll have no place to stay?

Mama, you got to move?

Cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good.

Oh, we all know what the killer app is: the same one that vaulted the VCR and the internet to ubiquity.

But for VR, this app needs more than a pair of goggles...

I'll buy one after they work the kinks out and the prices come down.

I did my stint as an early adopter in the 90's. You younguns can pay the high prices to debug stuff that's rushed to market.

And with things like VR goggles, who knows what the kinks might be. (Anyone remember the Opti-grab?)

The "cover" or "skin" of the suit is also functional. As a systems engineer (for space-based sensors and cameras) I can think of a few requirements that need to be addressed right off the bat:

- Visible Contrast, so that the wearer can be detected/identified by humans, from a distance
- EM Reflectivity, so that the wearer can be detected/identified by active scan sensors (lidar/radar/whatever)
- Customization options, so that wearers can be distinguished from one another
- Glare reduction, so that the wearer's visibility isn't compromised under direct sunlight
- Thermal conductivity and albedo requirements, matched to the performance of the suit's internal thermal regulation
- Micrometeorite protection (probably addressed by deeper layers, but also a factor here)

And that's just from 2 minutes of brainstorming...

Of course, since this suit will never actually be used in space, the systems engineering process above can be abandoned in favor of public relations, which NASA spends a small but significant chunk of its budget on...