Just wait until you take your kids to the pediatrician.

Much beyond physics and straight engineering, this is what you get.

And I'm not so sure of physics.

Oh shut up.

First of all, if you even bothered to wake up in the morning you would see that chemo treatments, even 'cures' are very, very profitable. The MBAs running the pharmaceutical companies are way smarter than you are.

Next, it is a potential treatment, nothing of a cure so even Big Evil Pharma will be joyously happy.

Third, it's just a proof-of-potential, not even a proof of concept. Dealing with the protein effects of a single point mutation, AFIR, hasn't been shown to treat any clinical cancers. In fact, this seems to be a better fit for creating an antiviral or antibiotic than a specific cancer treatment.

Only a billionaire can say that damage from an exploding rocket booster landing on top of something is 'minor'.

A parachute would really limit your maneuvering ability. You've essentially made yourself a very long pendulum. Then you have to get rid of it. And high speed parachutes aren't exactly simple tech either.

Rotating a thousand ton barge at 60 rpm would be interesting.

A booster is really a pretty fragile thing. It's designed to be really strong in one axis only. It also has to be lightweight. Grabassing the thing from the sides is going to make for a bunch of expensive scrap metal.

You're just jealous 'cuz you're mom won't by you a quadcopter.

Speaking about getting a life ....

We'll see. Although I agree it is unlikely to move the ball any, he stands a lot better chance doing it this way than say, taking off his clothes and running through a mall or some other stunt. He's going to get his 15 minutes of fame (and a huge passel of legal hurt) but if some politician were to take this up and push it, he has the enormous advantage of being thrown into the world's eyeballs for the next little while. It could go viral and maybe bang on the system a little bit.

This day and age, that is a pretty significant accomplishment. Moreover, he actually sounds cogent and reasonable which is truly unusual.

And they say that history doesn't repeat itself.

He's a mailman, not a computer guy. It's all the big blue "E".

"OK, hold it guys, Citizen 23408387387 just activated their vagus nerve. Something's happening. Get the team ready.,,,,"

"Ah, it's OK. He just burped."

I think not.

We shall complain about you on Slashdot.

Reddit even ...

Again.

You can do that one-way though. The old 'data diode' approach. IIRC, the FAA was annoyed at Boeing precisely because the 787 really did not separate the essential flight control bus from the non essential parts. Boeing engineers disagreed and it was more of a philosophical difference than anything else.

The plane manufacturers aren't stupid. They understand the risks and tradeoffs. Whether or not the FCC really needs to get involved in that is, again, philosophical.

And to the trolls that want to bring out the 'CEO bonus' approach to everything - could you all please go somewhere else?

If only Doritos were good at blocking gamma particles ...

Sure, you can simulate things, but that often takes more work than actually building it and testing it. Especially for the little gizmos we are talking about (not Boeing 777 class aircraft where it is worth several billion dollars to build up the simulation suite). Writing simulation software is hard. Collecting the physics to run the simulation software is hard. Things like Adobe Inventor and Solidworks are often a start but even these expensive programs don't have the necessary data to simulate something as complex as a quadcopter. Right now they're closer to being able to deal with Pine Derby racers and such.

I think software people sometimes forget how hard the real world is sometimes.