Memorizing? Writing? Hah! I find that unlikely!

Actually, at 160 Mbit, it would take just a bit over 30 minutes to max out a 40GB cap.

Actually, you should probably ask how big it is before accepting that as payment for your work.

It could be even cheaper. Imagine if he used these!

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives regulates firearms ammunition?
Maybe that has something to do with firearms rather than explosives?

They regulate alcohol too, but that doesn't mean it explodes...

Extracting ammonium perchlorate from APCP wouldn't be too difficult--the AP is basically just mixed in with a bunch of other compounds that control the rate of deflageration.

However, I think you're missing the point here. APCP is not an explosive. That is the issue. The BATFE does not control chemicals that can be used to make explosives. In fact, binary explosives, ammonium nitrate, and black powder in quantities of less than 50 pounds are all supposed to be out of their jurisdiction. Why then, should they be investigating a mixture that doesn't even detonate?

It's painfully obvious from your post that you are not interested in science.
Do people really need cigarettes and liquor just for kicks? Or is it just "haha lookit me do drugs!"?

Most of the model rocketeers that would be using these engines would send up scientific payloads (temperature and pressure data, video telemetry, etc). Sure, they aren't doing the latest and most breaking scientific discoveries, but you'd be hard pressed to find people building model rockets with warheads in them, although I'm sure some do.
Besides, and probably most importantly: terrorists will always have the tools they need to do what they need to do. If they need to break the law to blow up a building, that's not going to stop them, it's only going to mean the hobbyists need to break the law or find a new hobby.

I think your door analog doesn't really work. It's not like the administrators of TPB go through every single torrent, "opening the door" for each of them.
It's more like they installed an automatic door opener, even though they knew some people would use that to escape the bank after robbing it. I mean, the Pirate Bay founders are nice guys I'm sure, but they aren't going to hold the door open for millions of people, it's far easier to remove human involvement from the process.

Take a look at your numbers... you keep switching the size of the LoC from 20TB to 20GB in your calculations...

My guess is anyone important enough to wear bullet dodging armor is someone important enough to fetch a large ransom.

Does the S stand for soldier, scientist, or snake? Or something else I'm missing entirely.

Because unless you have unlimited free energy, it's not going to be practical to travel many light years away whenever you feel like it.

Well, I would imagine that if we sent a mission there, we would want them to stay for a while.

Part of the issue, which I stated originally, is that there isn't much to do at Alpha Centauri for humans, we would be much better just sending probes.

Going to another planet or something would be different though. We would probably station astronauts there for a few months at the least. And unless we have the resources for them to take a 10ly trip whenever they get lonely, I think they might have some problems.

I'm not talking about the trip, I'm talking about the communication. If you are at Alpha Centauri, you cannot send communications back to Earth and have them arrive instantly, unless I'm missing something.

You're right, I'm still not getting it... if they are still 4 light years away from Earth, and can't communicate with anyone but the people on their ship, I am pretty sure there is a good chance they would go crazy...