There is no such thing as "zero gravity", in fact the force gravity in LEO is only slightly less that it is on the surface. Astronauts and spacecraft are in free-fall around the Earth which is equivalent to what they experience in the Vomit Comet. The only difference is that in orbit, you're moving fast enough that you continually miss hitting the ground. The Vomit Comet isn't so lucky and thus needs to pull up periodically

I guess then the new cover building and fuel transport crane that has been built over unit 4, doesn't exist. Not to mention all of the work to restore the service floor and fuel handing machinery plus the testing and inspections that are being done in preparation of starting to remove stored fuel next month is a figment of peoples imagination. The 123 pgase updated TEPCO decomissioning plan approved June 27 by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry must be a fairy tail. Care to try again with some facts instead of "AHHHHHH WE'RE ALL DEAD!!!!!!!!!"

I wouldn't exactly call the LM "privatized", it was a typical Cost Plus contract, just like every other component of Apollo. Boeing build the S-IC stage, North American built the S-II stage and Apollo CSM, Douglas built the S-IVB stage, IBM the instrument unit, etc. All to the governments exact specifications Cost Plus is the traditional method of government procurement for "new" things. It's typical for most weapon systems, rockets, satelites etc. The contractor charges the actual "cost" of developing and manufacturing what ever it is the government wants (including all of the overhead required to deal with the government) "plus" an agreed upon profit margin. The government provides detailed specifications and the contractor provides the bodies and facilities. Under this model, there really isn't any incentive for the contractor to bring things in under budget or schedule. The government assumes all of the risk. What is different with the new commercial space agreements is that they are all milestone or service based. NASA pays a pre-set amount of money when specific milestones are achieved or service is delivered. Doesn't matter how much it actually costs SpaceX or Orbital to deliver that service. In this case the government assumes very little risk and the contractor is highly incentivised to achieve its goals efficiently.

Except of course only ~300 tonnes of partially treated water IN TOTAL leaked (not 300 tonnes per day) and the leak has been stopped. Some of the water was recovered, and soil removed. It is also unclear if ANY of the water entered the ocean as nothing has been detected in any of the drainage ditches. And while 100 mSv of Beta radiation was detected at the surface of one of the puddles, only 1.5 mSv of Gamma radiation was detected (as the water was already partially treated to remove any Caesium). So don't go bathing in or drink the water and you'll be fine.

Spacecraft 2 (Virgin Galatic's production craft) is not an orbital vehicle (not even close). The problem with wings is that except for the last few min of flight, they are dead weight that needs to be carried all the way to orbit and back. The result is a very inefficient vehicle (the Shuttle stack for example was capable of launching about the same payload as the Saturn V, the problem is, most of that payload was taken up by the shuttle itself. When you're dealing with payload margins of a few percent, the difference between using an engine you already need and some lightweight landing legs vs much heavier wings is substantial.

It depends entirely on the nature of your business If your business primarily reselling an existing product or making modest customizations of an existing product then most of your costs will be related to marketing and sales. Apple for it's size spends comparatively little on R&D, but a lot on marketing and sales. If you're business is at the cutting edge of technology constantly pushing new boundaries then you would expect a lot more in R&D and less in marketing. Intel for example spends quite a lot on R&D for it's size. It's like asking what's the right size of building for a company

SpaceX was founded on the the "cost-is-everything" perspective as well. Elon's whole purpose in founding SpaceX was to substantially reduce the costs of payload to orbit. BTW, Falcon 9.1 prices to orbit are currently ~$4000/kg, while Falcon 9 Heavy should be half that, also if they are successful recovering and reusing stages, prices should drop below $1000/kg

It's not the party that gets 15% of the vote that concern me. It's the one that gets 2%, gets 5 seats and then effects significant shifts in national policy as other major parties solicit its support. I'm not American, but I shudder to think of the kind of fringe parties that would wield a disproportionate amount of power in the US if this were ever enacted. While "winner take all" election systems do encourage larger parties, they also encourage more inclusive parties that have broad platforms that encompass the numerous issues needed to rule a country. Proportional representation encourages single issue, or regional parties that. The problem with the list approach, is that the most connected political insiders and hacks are the ones at the top of the list. If you don't vote the way the party leader instructs you, then come next election you'll find yourself way down the list. As a politician your main mechanism for ensuring re-election is to ensure you're near the top of your parties list. In Canada like most first past the post, parlimentary systems, it's possible for a party to win, while defeating the party's leader, or right hand man (this has happened several times). Ultimately since it is politicians that vote in their respective houses or parliments, I would rather have the ability to vote for a person, rather than the abstract concept of the party

Proportional representation isn't a panacea. Sure it gives small parties a chance to win seats, but it that also means the "I love cheese" party and all sorts of other wack-a-doodle parties get their voice. As well, since you're more likely to have minority governments, these minor parties often have a disproportionate amount of power since they're needed to get anything done. Sounds great for the Pirate party and Green Party, but works just as well for the neo-nazi and right wing religious extremist pary of your choice. The worst problem with proportional representation however is that candidates are chosen off of prioritised lists prepared by the parties themselves, meaning it's all political insiders beholden to the party rather than those who elected them

More like if JFK had a son that never did anything except for ride on his dad's name. Like or hate Pierre Trudeau, he had an impressive background. A successfull lawyer, he studied at Harvard and London School of Economics. He helped lay the intellectual foundations of the quiet revolution in Quebec. As a politican he served as Minister of Justice and introduced sweeping legislation to decriminalise homosexuality, and legalise contraception. When he ran for leadership of the Liberal party, he didn't win until the 4th ballot with 51% of the vote. Justin on the other hand, while very charismatic, he is not his father. His background is a few years as a high school teacher and a few years as an opposition MP and yet he wins leadership of the party on the first ballot with 80% of the vote.

The MBA degree was initially developed specifically to give engineers a business background so they could move into executive management. When I did mine a full 70% of students were from an engineering or tech background. In the 3 years since I graduated almost everyone I keep in touch with is now in management

Tesla's power plant was only capable of producing 75 MW of power. Not exactly awe inspiring. While the modern plants around Niagra falls can produce updates of 4,000 MW (about the same a a modern Nuclear generating complex), it's not like Niagra falls are a time a dozen. While run-of-river stations do not impound significant amounts of water, they either suffer from variability and are usuited for base load power, or they are dependent on large upstream dams (that do impound a lot of water) to regulate the flow.

Part of the problem is that NASA is so hamstrung by political interference, it's hard for them to change anything. NASA HQ has been trying to divest itself of unneeded real-estate assets for years or close marginal centers, but each time it tries, the congress person representing the district in question raises holy hell. Never mind the Senate Launch System, the $40 billion dollar rocket NASA doesn't want

It's not quite that simple. With the Mir approach, each module needs to be a self contained spacecraft with engines, batteries, docking and guidence systems (as they have to fly them selves to the space station). All of this stuff is no longer needed once docking is completed, meaning half your module is wasted. Just compare the cramped Russian modules to the wide open US, Japanese and European modules on ISS. The biggest problem with ISS (just like the Shuttle before it) is that Congress and the OMB are penny wise and pound foolish. To save a few hundred million in the late 90's, they cut funding to the ISS utilization office. This office was supposed to work with Universities to develop the pipeline of scientific experiments for the station. So now we have an under utilized $150 billion asset, rather than a fully utilized $151 billion asset. Same thing happened with the Shuttle. NASA engineers said it would cost $10 billion to develop a fully reusable shuttle that could fly 50 times a year. OMB gave them $5billion and said to build it twice as big to support one misstion that the USAF might have flown at some point (The KH-11 polar once arround mission). So to save $5 billion in the 70's we instead spent hundreds of billions over 30 years on the expensive hanger queen that was the Space Shuttle

This is actually the whole point of what SpaceX is trying to do. The numbers aren't as bad as you make them out to be, but they plan to deliberately trade performance for re-usability. The economics of launching 25,000 lbs to orbit 10 times using the same rocket, rather than 40,000 lbs to orbit once is the whole point. If you're legacy space, getting cost plus contracts from the DoD or NASA, then building a cutting edge rocket you toss into the Atlantic each time is a great gravy train.