That would be perfect except the IAU already had a planet named Vulcan. It was thought to orbit inside of Mercury. Turns out Mercury just had a very elliptical orbit. Since they used it once, they typically wont use it again. Bummer.

I left my last job because of the workload. I was hired as a programmer and ended up doing all the programming during the day and all the systems administration at night. Nothing was ever done fast enough (go figure) and there was never any money to get the tools or help needed. It was leave the job or leave this life. I like living.

My new job is only some part time programming with a lot of field work. Almost zero stress and I get to travel eight states.

The world may have a massive collection of computers. Huge sums of those machines are in cloud computing. But they are all separate. When all of them are connected and act as one, having access to everything all at once, then we will have a world computer. That moment is not now.

Everything is a risk. Rockets extremely so. Why is it that thousands can die in car accidents every year and that is considered acceptable but oh, change the way we do things on a rocket and that extra risk keeps the flight grounded? I understand the risks is rocketry. Things can go south real fast. You need to mitigate the risks, not try to eliminate or ignore them. Every time you launch, you risk losing the payload or the crew. What that percentage is you only find out after you fly a number of times (the more you fly the more you know). SpaceX has launched over 20 times with densified fuel. The SLS has flown zero times. I think SpaceX is in the lead on this risk situation.

Why did the movie "Real Genius" just flash through my head?

The Apple Watch looks good and one day I hope to have one. Waiting for gen 2 or 3 before I commit.

Still rocking my original iPad though.

Well, we ran it only as a science inquiry project. The judges were only given the grade of the students and their research application. All other identifying data was removed. Ten groups made the cut based on the strength of their work and nothing else. While it seemed the best approach, maybe things would have been better if we first pre-selected the winners based on socially acceptable moors and then worried about the science. Thanks for pointing out the error of my ways. :)

All the science is done in metric. The experimental frame is a 10cm cube. The final mass is under 1 kg. All altitude and temperature data is metric. 90,000 feet is something the public can relate to.

You are correct at the relative strength of the winds at that altitude. It was such a problem that airflow to the biological experiments had to be adjusted so we could get enough of a sample rate. That altitude is a good analog for Mars.

The teams selected were not chosen with any race or gender elements in mind, only the science. But we have two teams predominately African American, one Latino team and the other teams are made up of blended groups. Some groups as you have correctly pointed out, have little to no minority presence (we are working on that). For the record, not all groups have posted photos, not were all the photos posted suitable for media use.

There are an almost even number of girls to boys with the girls edging out the boys. We have one team exclusively made up of young ladies. Three student leads and five teachers are women. The teams range from college to kindergarten.

I understand the concern and yes, the experiments could fly on a balloon - as has been done many times. The advantage of the glider is level stable flight. You cannot effectively steer a balloon, it mus be carried by the winds. The glider gives us the advantage (to a better degree) of picking the direction to fly in. If an experiment picks up something interesting on its instruments, the glider can fly back. The balloon cannot.

The Perlan II was designed with the payload capability in mind. It is also why the glider and payloads are being tested in Minden Nevada before the actual 90k attempt.