Thanks!

Brian Webb isn't listing this on his Vandenberg AFB Launch Schedule yet. I think he's going to wait until someone official tells him a date.

With some optimism that might only be thousands of years rather than hundreds of Millions.

But it's only necessary for Earth to be uninhabitable for a short time to end the Human race. And that can happen due to man or nature, today. If people aren't somewhere else during that process, that's the end.

Of course. But if I'm going to use an antenna, then what the fuck would I be paying the cable company for?!

More to the point, I think the situation violates at least the spirit (if not the letter) of the FCC's must-carry rules.

The answer to both of those issues ("green" fuels for aviation and trucking) is biofuel or synthetic (hydrocarbon) fuel. (FYI, we had an article here about the latter just a few days ago.)

Nobody said we need to be "carbon-less;" it's sufficient to be "carbon-neutral."

Excuse me; let me clarify: I'm talking about laws restricting people's ability to get on the ballot as a candidate (especially when said candidate lacks affiliation with the Democrat or Republican Party).

Having laws restricting who can vote is a different issue.

Pick almost ANY topic and the parties are going to take polar opposite views of it.

Only the ones that don't matter, but make for good sound bites. On the actual important topics, both halves of our oligarchic regime enthusiastically agree:

1. Both parties love the PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretapping and Gitmo.
2. Both parties think corporate "rights" -- particularly "imaginary property" -- are more important than the real property rights of actual people.
3. Both parties love pork and wealth redistribution (albeit not necessarily to the same groups).
4. Both parties love Federal control, and hate Federalism (i.e., separation of powers between the Federal government and the States).
5. Both parties abuse the Commerce Clause and the Elastic Clause.
6. Both parties feel free to ignore various parts of the Bill of Rights.
7. Both parties are big fans of restrictive ballot access laws, gerrymandering and first-past-the-post voting systems (to hamstring third parties).

And that's just off the top of my head, not anywhere close to a complete list.

Actually I was thinking nuclear power rather than magic.

I agree with the other commenter, there will be lots of people living in space if they can only get there. Mars is a good start.

Obviously I am missing something, then. Please fill me in on your better information sources. Email to bruce at perens dot com if you don't want to put them on Slashdot.

It's time to start planning another trip to Lompoc. The Motel 6 was sort of yukky last time. Maybe I'll try something else. There was an official visitor observation site that I found and got into last time, but that was for the Delta, and it was on Pad 4 if I remember correctly. This one is all the way on the other side of the base on Pad 7 or 8, isn't it? There are some farm roads that might be good observation sites if they are open.

If the science can be discredited, should the federal government really be using it to impose burdensome regulations onto the public?

There's a difference between "actually discredited, according to a reasonable person's opinion" and "'discredited' as an excuse for a biased person to ignore it." With this law, we're talking about the latter situation.

In particular, the Republican goal is to make the burden of proof for climate change so high -- by eliminating consideration of "non-reproducible" data, like all historical climate records -- that in order to be allowed to regulate greenhouse gas emissions the EPA would have to construct two full-scale artificial Earths, build a civilization's worth of polluting industry on one, and wait 100 years to see what happens.

I am not confident that the world will remain a hospitable place for life until we are ready by your standard.

Getting the resources and people there is very close to being within our technical capability. The task ourselves, if we perform it, will take care of the remaining gaps.

Creating a self-sustaining colony outside of the Earth's environment is going to need a lot of work, but it is not work that can ever be achieved on this earth. We have to actually put people in space to achieve this. Our best experience so far is with submarines. Academic research has so far yielded only farcial frauds like Biosphere II.

Technically, making transceivers work when there are 30 of them in vehicles next to each other can get difficult. People wonder why you can buy a dual-band walkie talkie for $60 but the one in the police car costs much more. If it's well engineered, the one in the police car has some RF plumbing that isn't in the $60 walkie talkie.

You are exactly right. One thing though, it's "Ham" or even "ham". It's not an acronym. Thanks!

You do know that science isn't the only reason to go to space, don't you?

There is the issue of continuing the existence of the Human race, and whatever other life we choose to bring with us.

Planets and suns aren't sure things, you know. We sort of take ours for granted, but there is the evidence of the sky around us. And the ominous silence of a galaxy that should be filled with intelligent life...

Is anyone still taking June 7 seriously? And where is it supposed to happen now? Cape Caneveral instead of Vandenberg? I would certiainly drive down if they held it at Vandenberg. I was there for the first try on DISCOVR.

The first test was supposed to come off much earlier than May. There are both commercial launches and government ones in the way, and there was the Helium pressurization issue which put some things off schedule.

It's said that making a mistake in manufacturing work on equipment for the Russian space program could have consequences a lot worse than just being fired.

It's true that we place more value on lives of famous astronauts lost than we place on all of those people inconveniently freezing to death because they have nowhere to sleep but our city sidewalks, etc. Nobody's holding a years-long investigation about them.

And I am totally, totally pissed off at all of the news coverage that goes to a few westerners killed on Everest compared to the 10,000 little people who got buried alive in Nepal.

But I am not sure any of this says a thing about what nation will lead in space.