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Comment Re:Good luck (Score 1) 148

Yes, you could be hit by a large piece even so, but that would be amazing bad luck; space is damn big.

It's not up to luck if there is an explosion in LEO, if something in orbit dies it WILL eventually make it to the surface one way or another, that's just the nature f orbit. The concern is that those large pieces of the spacecraft would be radioactive and an explosion in orbit would undoubtedly send them back into our atmosphere. While the actual fallout from an explosion wouldn't likely cause any damage (the Earth's magnetic field protects us from far worse than nuclear fallout on a daily basis)) any debris left over from the probe and especially the reactor sections would likely be very irradiated and would poison wherever they landed/flew over, and since re-entry can cover a distance of thousands of miles I think you can imagine what kind of damage that could cause.

As has been discussed before fueling and launching the probe from a La Grange point or Lunar Orbit would be the safest way to do this, using chemical rockets to provide the initial thrust to fire it out of our immediate orbit will help to minimize this risk. Now getting the fuel into orbit is a bit trickier, you would need to send small amounts of fuel multiple times and I believe it could be performed safely, we already have casks used to transport nuclear material and these are already proven to be capable of withstanding large forces so I'm not too terribly concerned about that as long as most of it's launch transit occurs over ocean)

Comment Re:Handwringers & luddites (Score 5, Informative) 224

comparing creating fire to creating a super flu is retarded. When they screw up and it is released, and they will f*ck up, they are humans, i hope your the first one infected.

This statement is just fucking retarded and ignorant. There has been research going on like this for the better part of a century, including WEAPONIZING even more dangerous bugs than the flu, and none of that has ever been released. Why does everyone think that this one will be any different, the system is proven to work and I'm not the least bit concerned.

Comment I dont really disagree (Score 1) 505

I completed the books when I was 10 and have read them probably 6 times since then, most recently when the movies came out. I'll be the first to tell you that when I was younger I would skip over vast swathes of the books just because they were incredibly dull, I had no desire to read about singing elves in Lothlorien or the triumphant march of the King through Ithilien for an entire chapter. While I enjoyed them if someone watches the movies and comes up to me and asks "Should I read the books", generally I ask them if they could stomach reading the entire Bible, if they say yes then I tell them to go ahead, otherwise I tell them not to bother and sorta fill in the blanks that the movies didn't cover.

Comment Don't look at it from just a money standpoint (Score 1) 848

I doubt you will get paid for it, employers usually aren't too keen on shelling out for things they didn't specifically ask for, and they can get a bit pissy if you hold something out on them that they could actually get use out of. Think about it like this, if it makes your/your employee's jobs easier, then that means you should theoretically get more done in the day. This makes you look better, and in turn could turn into a promotion later.

Another solution, as stated elsewhere, is to just open source it before you tell them about it, then let them use it. At least then you get credit for the work and if you ever want to do more work in the field later (paid work especially) you can use this.

Comment Re:Portfolio & Certification (Score 1) 523

What you're looking for is a portfolio. They're common in any artistic arena such as photography, web design, hair styling and fashion.

This. A good way to work on a relevant portfolio is to head over to sourceforge and do some open source work, then your name gets attached to referable material and you can also do a bit of networking there too. No better way of getting a job than proving yourself to someone and having them recommend you.

Comment Re:Forgiveness at no cost? (Score 1) 768

This is what happens when you spend 100k on a good college getting an english/art/history/worthless degree. You leave school with almost no useable skills in a very competitive job market and end up working at damn near minimum wage for 5 years just making yourself marketable in some field, during which time you're probably not paying anything on those loans. I think a good first step would be to require registration of your major when you apply for loans and then to be a little more selective on those degrees that wont really contribute to society as a hole. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not advocating the broad dismissal of loans for these majors, just grant alot less of them making them alot more useful in their given roles.

Who knows, this could also have the beneficial effect of driving more people into engineering and practical science, things the US has been losing ground in recently.

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