Even better - unlike what they try to impose on us, it's completely opt-in. Don't want to be subjected to ubiquitous surveillance? Stay out of politics.

Great. Where? I'll do you one better - there's a 100% chance it will hit the Earth. Only very slightly less useful information.

And actually, without knowing the orbit we can't even state that 70% probability: 70% of the total surface area doesn't translate to 70% of the surface under it's flightpath. I can draw plenty of great circles that traverse far less than 70% water. And a fair number of those those pass over Russia...

>$100k plus "I get to go into orbit" tier.

What part of sub-orbital are you not getting? Getting a payload out of the atmosphere only requires about 5% of the energy required to get it into orbit at the same altitude (and that's just the required energy delta, before even considering the rocketry inefficiencies) - orbital launches are in a completely different league. These guys aren't competing against SpaceX - that would be like having your souped-up moped "compete" in a Formula 1 auto race. Suborbital launches are useful for throwing bombs at your enemies, doing brief microgravity experiments that still require at least a couple minutes and thus can't be done on a "vomit comet" parabolic flight, and... umm... tourism maybe? What would you be willing to pay for a few minutes of dark sky and free-fall?

If it could be done cheaply enough there might be a market as high-speed intercontinental transport, but that's a LONG way away. In the meantime it's an extremely niche market.

Automobiles are only responsible for a fraction of global CO2 emmissions - how are Teslas going to reduce emissions from factories, residential and commercial power consumption, concrete production, international shipping, etc? They're not. Cars are only one part of the problem - a part that needs to be solved, but that's just the beginning, not the end. And the clock is counting down fast.

Meanwhile coal and natural gas are only getting cheaper, while nuclear is unlikely to be truly competitive until we crack cheap fusion (and that's ignoring the long-term externalized expenses of waste disposal). Renewables have potential, but will require massive investments in power storage technology before they can supply more than a small fraction of total consumption.

I do agree that, thanks to regulatory capture, government intervention tends to cause as many problems as it solves - but then that also suggests a first-step solution: Let's remove all government "subsidies" from the fossil fuel industry. No more wars to secure cheap oil. No more subsidies or tax breaks for exploration and exploitation. No more exemptions from environmental regulations. No more immunity from prosecution for companies poisoning our groundwater with fracking chemicals.

Unfortunately that's not going to happen any time soon - too many entrenched interests willing to funnel a portion of their ill-gotten gains back into the system to keep the money flowing. The best we can hope for is a similar level of subsidies and regulatory advantages for the competition - the established interests fight those too, but without the urgency brought against direct attacks to their current cash cow.

Having used head tracking in a number of racing and flight simulators I can tell you it aids the immersion and situational awareness *immensely*, even more than you would imagine. I haven't actually had an opportunity to try an Oculus or its competitors, but I would suspect that adding a screen that stays in front of your eyes, offers "perfect" 1-to-1 motion tracking, and stereoscopy, would be another massive step forward. Consider that in the real world you're moving your head constantly, and your brain is stitching that information together into a coherent picture of the world - you don't get that in modern games. Even TrackIR-style head-tracking, impressive as it is, barely scratches the surface.

I'd absolutely prefer that resources be spent to improve the substance of modern games and movies, but for now at least it seems that the market is chasing "Dreck 3, now with 1.5-D characters and 70% more explosions!". Meanwhile for gaming, basic VR promises to come almost for free for the developers - just add trivial head tracking and make sure you don't have framerate or lag issues. The hard/expensive part - generating content and gameplay that people will pay for, is largely unchanged.

As a food metaphor: I'd love fillet mignon, but if hot dogs are all that's available I'm going to welcome the gourmet fixings.

Meanwhile, think of how impressive the occasional good game will be with the addition of VR immersion.

No, that's "substance". A.k.a. cognitive immersion. A completely orthogonal attribute to sensory immersion.

Also larger screens - FOV is key in getting (most people's) eyes to override their inner ears for motion input. I tried several of the "higher end" consumer VR headsets years ago - not one of those sets of postage-stamp goggles gave a true sense of immersion.

And faster computers are *vital* to reducing lag below subconscious perceptual levels - you may as well say the only difference between a pedal-cart and an Formula-1 race car is a faster engine and better seat belts.

While we're at it how about making accepting bribery in any form (including campaign contributions and industry "revolving doors") be considered treason - accepting political bribes is almost by definition a betrayal of the people, and by extension the nation. After all the ultimate authority in a democracy is supposed to be the people.

How about mandatory 24-hour surveillance on all politicians, publicly live-streamed? Sure it's an invasion of privacy, but it's an invasion of privacy that could be mandated as the price of wielding the power we grant them. They want to watch us - who can individually do so little of significance, we should be able to watch them *MUCH* more closely.

Of course there's a bit of a "can't get there from here" problem, but periodically opportunities for major revisions do arise.

Sure. All we'll need is a radical revolution in gestational engineering... which is probably even further away that a revolution in relativistic travel or reliable long-term cryogenics. The uterus is a surprisingly sophisticated organ. Or maybe not so surprising when you consider that it's designed to safely host a parasitic organism for nine months while sharing a circulatory system with its host, and preventing either organism's immune system or incompatible blood chemistry from killing the other.

How could you possibly know this early? If it hasn't already fallen then it's in orbit, which means atmospheric drag is what will eventually bring it down. And atmospheric drag, especially on a tumbling structure at that altitude, and on a presumably elliptical orbit, is extremely chaotic. Add in the 11+km/s of orbital velocity and you'd have to somehow estimate its final reentry time within a few minutes to even guess which continent or ocean it will be over.

Well, you probably have a local surgeon who could attempt the operation - the robot simply allows a specialist to do the job instead. If the datalink drops out the local surgeon can take over - it may drop the patient's recovery chances considerably, but nothing compared to having a scalpel-wielding robot suddenly go berserk on their innards.

Also, did you miss the part where they said satellite links are one of the options? Probably the ONLY real option in the aftermath of a major natural disaster. And battlefield data links are probably some of the most high-priority assets available to a modern military, they're unlikely to be disrupted effectively, especially miles from the front lines where hospitals are set up.

Sure - but the implications of the robot going "dead" halfway through a surgery are much less severe than someone suddenly hijacking the signal and switching to "blender mode". A dead 'bot is still a problem, but you probably have on-site staff capable of at least attempting to stabilize the patient.

What does that have to do with anything? If someone on-site is compromised, they don't need to compromise the sophisticated surgical robot to kill the patient, there's plenty of other ways to do the same job.

The risk now is that some script kiddie half way around the world (or a neighbor with an ax to grind) takes control of the robot midway through the operation and implements "blender mode". Rather than worrying about the handful of professionals on-site, now you have to worry that anyone, anywhere on Earth might want to kill the patient.

Just be glad they never thought of creating the world's most dramatic whoopee cushion...