Not having a sound theory to explain the phenomena is hardly a condemnation of the phenomena itself: see gravity - we've got essentially no idea how it works beyond "very well, thank you", but everybody trusts that it does. In fact a lot of major technologies have worked that way: We were making cheese, beer, etc. for thousands of years before we had any sort of microbial theory to explain the process. Gunpowder long before we had a sound theory of the chemistry involved. Etc.

Now the shoddy experiments on the other hand are an absolutely good reason to not take the initial results too seriously - but *good* experiments on something like this are expensive, so it's only natural that the preliminary experiments are shoddy - they're essentially the proof of concept used to justify the investment needed to perform better experiments. And that's exactly what we've been seeing: a progression through increasingly rigorous experiments which have, thus far, continued to confirm the phenomena. Now it's been tested in hard vacuum, ruling out the leading conventional explanations of ion drive and/or thermal convection effects. Assuming they again tested it in multiple alignments to rule out systemic flaws in the testing apparatus, it's beginning to look like there may really be a new phenomena present. Hopefully now someone will be able to get the funding to build a thruster powerful enough to be tested by NASAs more accurate and time-tested facilities.

And assuming they're still seeing the effects after a rigorous ground-based test, then probably someone will eventually be willing to invest the millions of dollars necessary to launch an EM-driven satellite to give it a real-world test. Though if the results are conclusive enough to spend that kind of money, it may well be that it then attracts more serious R&D dollars for further development on Earth until it's powerful enough to be useful.

Keep in mind that that 10% *expected* return on investment already factors in the 50% risk factor. Assuming an over-simplistic pass/fail investment, the expected return = value of investment on success * .5 + failure*.5 = 1.10. or s = 2.2 - f. So if failure would cost you a 10% loss (0.9 return), success would net you 2.2-0.9=1.3 : a 30% gain. Much more tempting.

Basically, if you're making lots of diversified investments at x% expected return, then your overall portfolio can be expected to go up at at x% regardless of the success or failure of the individual investments. The challenge of course is that it's nigh impossible to accurately quantify the expected return. And risk aversion will tend to effectively bias that number downwards when making your decision. Of course the same can be said for trying to anticipate the inflation/deflation rate, and with it the risk of investing in cash.

What has thrown a lot of "science based" traditional economic theories is that they were based on the theory that humans are rational actors - a theory which has since been proven rather emphatically false by modern research. Heck, the entire advertising industry pretty much depends on that fact.

I don't contest that the situation is more complicate and unpredictable than I've portrayed above, just throwing out some food for thought.

It's called tribalism. Tribalism is very alive and well, thank you for asking.

Whistleblowers have been coming forward, the people have been loudly criticizing it, we elected the Presidential candidate who was most opposed to it in both of the last two elections (the second guy was distinctly more of a "lesser of two evils" than the first), and we've been taking them to court.

So, to recap, that's soap box, ballot box, and jury box that we've been using. To claim that we're letting them get away with it is to betray your ignorance of the facts. Short of revolution, we have done everything we can. This is the oligarchy ignoring the law and the will of the people.

Yes, just like everybody could be great at higher mathematics if they just studied diligently, and win Olympic races if they would just train regularly.

Recognizing that you're incompetent is an important first step - but it does not directly imply that you can substantially correct the deficiency.

You are conflating currency supply with inflation/deflation, which muddies the waters. Inflation/deflation depends on both the amount of currency in circulation, AND the amount of economic activity represented by that currency. The only way Bitcoin inflates at 10% is if the amount of economic activity conducted in Bitcoin grows 10% slower than the currency supply.

Of course at present the value of BTC is dominated by currency speculators, which throws everything off, but the basic principle remains.

Not true, it simply raises the investment bar. Let's say that at present a currency is inflating at 5% per year - that means any investment where the expected (risk-weighted) return is better than -5% is worth considering. If instead the currency is deflating at 3%, then only those investments with an expected return of better than +3% are worth considering. That does mean that low yield investments will tend to stagnate, but the high yield ones will still do fine.

You're also conflating money supply with inflation/deflation: Let's take a hypothetical world in which there's a fixed amount of the One True Currency (OTC) which is the only medium of exchange. That does NOT mean that the value of the currency will increase, decrease, or stay the same - THAT will depend on the total value of the economic activity. Lets say that initially the economy is growing at 10% - the value of the OTC will likewise grow at 10%. And since it's hard to find investments with a 10% expected return, investment will begin to stagnate. For the sake of argument lets say that directly implies that the economy will stagnate as well (there's a huge debate to be had there, but let's ignore it for the sake of simplicity), so next year the economy grows at only 3%. So now the value of the OTC will likewise only grow at 3%, making far more investments become viable, and the economy stagnates less, but perhaps not enough to avoid sliding into decline. So the next year the economy shrinks 2%. Wham - now the value of the OTC is shrinking at a 2% rate, and even investments that are only expected to break even become more attractive than sitting on your money - we're back into the current inflationary currency situation. So investment picks up, the economy begins to grow, along with the value of the OTC, and we're back into a deflationary scenario. Basically the economy would tend towards the historical norm of equilibrium rather than the perpetual growth that has characterized the last few centuries.

But of course that scenario is based on there being only one currency to deal with - which is unlikely. Without oppressive regulation there's nothing stopping people from creating alternatives, and at least some of those alternatives will inevitably go on to capture a share of the total economic activity - thus reducing the percentage of activity conducted in OTC, and with it the value of the currency.

Honest question: Is the Argentinian currency actually tied to the economy? In other words, is the their economy shrinking at a comparable rate to the value of its currency, or is the government just playing the common trick of printing money rather than raising taxes/cutting spending?

Sorry, that should be "if you answered no to both questions"

Perhaps Microsoft was counting on Moore's Law rendering the hardware unable to "get the job done" by now rather than performance improvements pretty much stalling out for the last decade, but that's their problem. If you want to bet on unstated "gotchas" crippling a contract in your favor, you've got to also be willing to have that bet turn sour.

Is the hardware dead/retired? Is the support still free? If you answered no to either question, then they *aren't* honoring the deal. Unless the contract specifically said "service life" AND gave a definite maximum duration for that term, then the life of the hardware is until its owners decide to retire it. Running 15 year old hardware that still gets the job done is hardly an unusual scenario.

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.