We send spacecraft on comparable missions all the time. And it doesn't really take a spectacularly large payload to destroy (yes, destroy) an asteroid a few hundred meters in diameter. 1/2-kilometer-wide Itokawa could be blown into tiny bits which would not recoalesce, via a 0,5-1,0 megatonne nuclear warhead, a typical size in modern nuclear arsenals (in addition, the little pieces would be pushed out of their current orbit).

I know it's a common misconception that "nuking" an asteroid would simply create a few large fragments that would hit Earth with even more devastation, but that's not backed by simulation data. And anyway, even if it didn't blow the asteroid to tiny bits (which simulations say it would) and even if it didn't push the remaining pieces off trajectory (which they say it does), anything that spreads an Earth impact out over a larger period of time is a good thing - it means the higher percentage of the energy that's absorbed high in the atmosphere rather than reaching the surface (less ejecta, lower ocean waves, a broader (weaker) distribution of the heat pulse, etc), the weaker the shockwaves, the weaker the total heat at any given point in time, and the more time for Earth to radiate away any imparted energy or precipitate out any ejecta cloud. If the choice is between 15 Chelyabink-sized impactor (most of which will strike places where they won't even be witnessed) or one Meteor Crater-sized impactor (same total mass), pick the Chelyabinsk ones. 50 10-megatonne meteor crater impactors or one 500-megatonne Upheaval Dome impactor? Pick the former. The asteroid impacts calculator shows the former generating a negligible fireball and 270mph wind burst at 2km distance, while the latter creates the same winds 25km away (156 times the area) and a fireball that even 25km away is 50 times brighter than the sun, hot enough to instantly set most materials on fire.

But that's all irrelevant because, quite simply, simulations show that nuclear weapons do work against asteroids.

What we need is enough detection lead time to be able to launch a nuclear strike a few months before the impact date (to give time for the debris to disperse). There is no need to "land" or "drill" for the warhead. There is no pressure wave; instead, an immense burst of X-rays is absorbed through the outer skin of the asteroid on the side of the explosion, causing it to vaporize (unevenly) from within, especially near the ground zero point, and creating powerful shockwaves throughout its body. In addition to ripping it apart, the vaporized material and higher energy ejecta flies off, predominantly on the side where the explosion was detonated, acting a broad planar thruster.

On the other hand, if they're doubling capacity, then you only need half the number of cycles (it actually even works *better* than that, as li-ion cells prefer shallow charges and discharges rather than deep ones - but yes, fractional charge cycles do add up as fractional charge cycles, not whole cycles). If you have a 200km-range EV and you drive 20 kilometers a day, you're using 10% of a cycle per day. If you have a 400km-range EV and you drive 20 kilometers a day, you're using 5% of a cycle per day.

Top commercial li-ion capacities are about 30% more than they were 5 years ago. And today's batteries include some of the "advances" you were reading about 5 years ago.

I'm sorry if technology doesn't move forward at the pace you want. But it does move forward when you're not looking. Remember the size of cell phone batteries back in the day?

Taubira doesn’t actually have the power to offer asylum herself, however. She said in the interview that such a decision would be up to the French president, prime minister and foreign minister. And Taubira just last week threatened to quit her job unless French President François Hollande implemented her juvenile justice reforms.

So, basically, "not going to happen".

Scalia is in the dissent because the majority created a legal liability out of whole cloth. That's pretty consistent on his part..

Nothing wrong with a piece of fiction with laughably bad science on almost every page. If someone gets a kick out of the book, then it's met its purpose. But when the author gets treated as a "Mars expert" due to his his "hard sci fi" novel, that's where I start having a problem.

We should colonize Jupiter by resurrecting the dead there.

Why would you build a moonbase for a radiotelescope or gravity wave detector? What's the argument for dropping it into a gravity well (where it can be exposed to moonquakes and moon dust) and having people operate it when you can just have it unmanned and in space (Earth-Moon L2 for a radiotelescope, Earth-Sun L5 for a gravity wave detector) at orders of magnitude less cost and far greater effectiveness?

Every one of these sort of proposals just screams "I'm an excuse that was made up solely to give us a reason to go back to the moon". The most glaring is surely 3He mining, of course ;)

We see the propulsion breakthroughs right now - there's a wide range of propulsion systems possible with current technology. Unfortunately, the turnaround on these sort of things is measured in decades (generally with a number well over "1"). And if it has any form of the word "nuclear" in the title, multiply the average time from conception to deployment by a large number.

Nobody of course is requiring rockets to be our long-term future. I have a soft spot for the Loftstrom loop concept, for example (aka, a track that holds itself up via the centrifugal force of a rapidly spinning rotor magnetically suspended in a vacuum inside it). Way more efficient and high throughput than a space elevator and requiring no unobtanium.