Orbital Sciences' Cygnus freighter is one time use, so throwaway. Don't understand all the throwaway freighters, it's like throwing away your semi-truck after every shipment.

Do you really think that SpaceX developed all of Falcon 9 with just $248M? That also covers Falcon-1. SpaceX spent around $500 million through the first launch of Falcon 9. Rockets are expensive. I'm pretty sure if NASA could have developed a rocket for $250 million they would have done it a long time ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacex#Funding

You do realize that a fair chunk of the development cost was paid by SpaceX. NASA subsidized the development of Falcon 9 and Dragon, but only with set payments when set milestones had been achieved, they didn't just write a blank check and say 'go build us a rocket!'. Read up on the COTS (round 1 and round 2) and CCDev programs before spewing disinformation.

The $133.3M/flight also includes the cost of the Dragon capsule and associated services and whatnot. $54M for a Falcon 9 launch is only for the rocket and associated services. NASA is paying for a lot more than just a rocket launch. In the end it's still a lot cheaper than a shuttle launch.

DNA sequencing is becoming faster and cheaper at a pace far outstripping Moore's law.

Moore's law, or rather Moore's observation, has absolutely nothing to do with performance and everything to do with the number of transistors. For the love of deity of your choice, will they stop using it regarding performance? Simply mentioning something computer related doesn't make the writer look smarter. Yes, an increase in the number of transistors can see an increase in performance but it isn't guranteed. Eg. Bulldozer

Hey Tesla Tank, I raced on the Michigan team in the 2007 WSC, were you there?

I'd love to go back to Australia and follow the race...

I am over in intern land, done on Friday though. We prefer the 10 to 10 kind of schedule, just like we're still in college.

Narmacil, what department are you in? I'm currently interning in Avionics for my second summer.

If you're in the LA area I can give you a tour of the SpaceX facility and show off awesome rockets and spaceships.

Arnold is from Austria, not Australia, get your own geography education.

Um, what?

Top of the line Lithium Ion batteries (they'll soon trickle down to automotive) are at about 240 Wh/kg, or 0.864 MJ/kg. Now, here's the cool thing about electric cars, you can get ~70%+ efficiency from battery to tire patch (aka, 70% of the power is used to move the car), and 80%+ fairly easily. Gasoline engines top out at around 25-35% efficient (Carnot efficiencies). Assuming a gasoline efficiency of 35% and electric car efficiency of 70%, you need half as much energy per kg storage capacity for electric cars.

The second cool thing about electric cars, regenerative breaking. You can recover around 70% of the energy from stopping as electricity and put it back into your battery. It is easily more efficient to use batteries/electric drive trains than gasoline in urban transportation. Why do you think hybrids get such great city mileage? This further reduces the storage density needed. Hybrid buses are awesome at city transportation, serial hybrids at any type of transportation are just epic. Electric drive train to maximize drive train efficiency, gasoline or other generator for range running at most efficient gearing.

I definitely agree with you there. Should simply be a meter that monitors and records power usage with remote viewing. No remote disconnect or any such.

There are undoubtedly a number of products you can install to do the same thing.

Touche. I think a small device that monitors your power usage and that the owner can connect to is a great idea. I don't know if smart meters in their current form are a good way to go about it. Why do you feel they are an exceedingly dumb idea?

I really don't know what to say to this other than wow. Seriously? Wow.

That's got to be the first time Australia got something first or at least before the States. Lucky bastard :)