Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile, he just made it cost-effective.

Actually, from their website, their first step is to create a fleet of assembly-line space-based telescopes, which will start launching in 18-24 months. In addition to scouting for asteroids, the telescopes will be licensed/sold for both astronomical and ground observation for a few million each. Over time they'll be producing incrementally-upgraded versions with the capability to chase down asteroids, survey other locations in the solar system, and eventually perform sample return missions. Even if the company never reaches the point of asteroid mining, their Arkyd series of telescopes/probes looks like a big (and potentially profitable) game-changer for planetary exploration and orbital monitoring.

Coincidentally, it looks like Planetary Resources (a new company backed by several well-known billionaires) is going to formally announce tomorrow their plans to launch 2-5 orbital telescopes in the next 18-24 months. The primary of the telescopes will be to look for near-Earth asteroids to mine, although this will of course also be useful for detecting potentially-dangerous asteroids. They also plan on selling orbital telescopes at a cost of a few million dollars each, which is cheap enough that you could probably get a decent planetary protection effort going on Kickstarter. ;)

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/23/11339522-billionaire-backed-asteroid-mining-venture-starts-with-space-telescopes
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/planetary-resources-asteroid-mining/

Yup, if I recall correctly all of the PhD student characters were actually played by Caltech PhD students, except for the 'Nameless Grad Student' who was played by a Caltech undergrad. I actually had a minor speaking/dancing role in the film myself. :)

I was pretty surprised by the low number as well, but it's possible that they're currently only planning on doing equatorial and low-inclination launches from there. Polar and high-inclination launches will probably still be from Vandenberg AFB and Cape Canaveral. I suppose it's also potentially easier to get a permit for a lower flight rate for now, and then ask for a separate permit for the increased flight rate at a later date.

Execution is a legal killing carried out by a government as in the case of capital punishment. The victim was brutally murdered, not executed (executions are by the way illegal in the EU).

I believe the common term is "execution-style murder".

His plan sounds a lot like Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct plan detailed in The Case for Mars

Robert Zubrin actually had a piece in the Wall Street Journal last year where he described how to adapt his Mars Direct plan to use SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rockets.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703730804576317493923993056.html

This 60 Minutes piece on SpaceX from last weekend shows videos of Dragon capsules under construction at 4:50, video of the exterior of the capsule they returned from orbit at 10:08, and video of the interior at 10:50.

Similar results here. I occasionally host board game nights, mostly made up of PhD students at a well-known tech school, and my most recent one had 5 women and 3 men. Of course most of our gamers are also dancers, which explains part of the gender ratio. ;)

Hint: The fact that you're asking this question is possibly a part of the explanation for why women tend to not attend your board game events.

The summary somewhat misrepresents what Worden said. From the article, here's Worden's actual statement, which seems quite sensible to me: "Governments can develop new technology and do some of the exciting early exploration but in the long run it's the private sector that finds ways to make profit, finds ways to expand humanity. ... Most of private individuals I've talked to about interest in settling on Mars, including Elon Musk, talk about in the next few decades they think the private sector will fund settlement missions - whether to the Moon, Mars, or asteroids. As a government laboratory our job is to develop to enable those kinds of things by developing technology and early exploration, and we hope the private sector will find a way to do something like that."

To me the site just seems like a blatant promoter of cronyism, promoting the hiring of friends or aquaintences over those who may be more qualified.

It's not who you know, it's who knows you don't suck as an employee or coworker.

SO...a rational person at NASA, if the organization was not at the mercy of Congress for every project, would dedicate ALL of their budget to getting that $10k/kilogram cost down to something affordable.

Quick correction: It's actually down to a price of ~$2k/kilogram with the SpaceX Falcon Heavy. That's still a fair bit of cash, but somewhat reasonable compared to the cost of developing a payload.