Why?

NASA's obsession with Mars is weird, and it consumes the lion's share of their planetary exploration budget. We know vastly more about Mars than we know of everywhere else except Earth.

This news here is bittersweet for me. I *love* Titan - it and Venus are my two favourite worlds for further exploration, and dragonfly is a superb way to explore Titan. But there's some sadness in the fact that they're launching it to an equatorial site, so we don't get to see the fascinating hydrocarbon seas and the terrain sculpted by them near the poles. I REALLY wish they were going to the north pole instead :( In theory they could eventually get there, but the craft would have to survive far beyond design limits and get a lot of mission extensions. At a max pace of travel it might cover 600 meters or so per Earth day on average. So we're talking like 12 years to get to the first small hydrocarbon lakes and ~18 years to get to Ligeia Mare or Punga Mare (a bit further to Kraken Mare), *assuming* no detours, vs. a 2 1/2 year mission design. And that ignores the fact that they'll be going slower in the start - the nominal mission is only supposed to cover 175km, just a few percent of the way, under 200 metres per day. Sigh... Maybe it'll be possible to squeeze more range out of it once they're comfortable with its performance and reliability, but... it's a LONG way to the poles.

At least if it lasts for that long it'll have done a full transition between wet and dry cycles, which should last ~15 years. So maybe surface liquids will be common at certain points, rare in others.

If we don't manage to use electricity to merge neutron stars, it's probably not feasible. Until then it's like making gold from lead by nuclear processes: doable, but the price per atom is not market compatible.

Because people are fucking cowards.

Rockets are rockets.
Nuclear warheads plus rockets isn't an additional complication. ICBM RVs are a static load. That's why ballistic missiles existed long before any other kind of rocket to enter space.

You're an idiot.
Russia and the US regularly do ICBM test launches.
We notify each other when we do it, and when one fails, we love to broadcast it.
Russia's last launch was this month.

Solid fueled rockets that deploy a payload on a ballistic suborbital trajectory are simple devices.
There's very little to go wrong, and that's why they're used.

Thanks for sharing your dumbfuck opinion, though ;)

Ya, that just sets the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE\BypassNRO=1

That's what I meant- you have to break out of the OOBE, set a key (or run that program now, apparently), and then reboot.

Sure, each launch provided Russia with about 0.004% of its GDP.
Russia, like the US, utilizes solid-fueled ICBMs.

Russian birds are built to fight a war, just like ours were.
China, which has a no-first-use official nuclear doctrine, served just as a deterrent.

Re-run?
It won't let you get past it without a Microsoft account unless the registry keys are set....
I believe there's a program that'll do that for you, but you have to open a terminal during the OOBE to run it.

Nuclear weapons aren't more complicated than rockets. In fact, they're far simpler.
Despite the corruption, they're not having trouble getting rockets into space. I have no doubt their warheads, ICBMs, and RVs are in workable shape.

You're completely right.

However, I am however inclined to agree with the criticism invoked in the conservative Justices questioning.
The law is in fact written so broadly, that even a peaceful protest would be subject to this rather harsh penalty. That means the law itself is bullshit. If i were one of the fuckwits being charged with this shit, I'd want to attack it from this angle too.

Bingo.

Manufacturing novel legal theories is the idea of absolute Presidential immunity.
As for the charge of "Obstructing an official proceeding" being used with a rather liberal interpretation, that really stems back to 2019 with several high-profile cases tried by the Trump Justice Department.

As for the congress-critter, I'm inclined to agree with you.
However- that one is a bit tricky. Congresscritter says it was an accident.
Even if it obviously wasn't, the burden of proof is on the Government to prove otherwise.
A charge of such with zero provable mens rea would be immediately dismissed.
Further, it's additionally complicated by the fact that it was a Congresscritter at all.

In general, Congress polices itself, and the DOJ doesn't usually get involved unless at the request thereof.

I'm afraid politics has tainted your mind. It's pretty sad to see.

Oh, I agree.
If he had one iota of fucking balls, he'd have did what he openly said he'd do, or wanted to do, or did.
And then yes, he would have been a dictator.
Fortunately, he's a fucking cuck. But that doesn't change the fact that people voted for him hoping he wasn't, and those people are worth having a discussion about.

Na. It's quite easy to draw parallels.
Of course MAGA twits aren't Nazis... well, at least not a majority of them. Nazis sure do march with them too.
And there's a reason for that.
The real Nazis aren't afraid to stand next to what they support.

They seem to be able to reliably get rockets into space.
Getting rockets up into space, at suborbital velocities- even easier.

So no, I'm quite sure their nuclear arsenal is still plenty operational.

Exactly that's what rating is for: To know how much you can tow.