A one way mission to mars with not advance the human space frontier one iota. It will however cost a lot and have good odds to fail to even get them to mars.

A robot that costs and has the mass budget of a human mission could easily do all those things and more. Current robotic missions have mass/energy budgets that are a small fraction of anything a manned mission could be.

3D printers are going to do nothing of the sort. You can't control micro structure for example on the few that can "print" metal. A good example is the metal frame of the iPhone. Its forged to get the right micro structure that gives it the properties it needs. Its quite impossible to print.

Also 3d printers have been used in industry as a rapid prototyping tool for the better part of 2 decades. And they are not that much of an improvement over a good mulitaxis CNC machine which we have had for even longer.

I travel a lot. I don't watch DVD much anymore. But i have 3 different zones in my collection. Its not uncommon for people to have at least 2 zones. Where they are from and where they currently live.

Same magnitude but not the same. Its not used because of a conductivity. Silver is both much cheaper and a better conductor.

This is true. In fact if gold was cheaper.. It would probably find a lot more uses that it currently does.

Gold is not a superconductor at any temperature. Its not even a great conductor. It is soft and makes good "push" connections, hence its use in connectors.

Also most of golds value has nothing to do with its usefulness. About 10% of mined gold is used. The rest is hoarded for perceived value based historically on the fact that its shiny when not many things where.

The current nuclear detection network is struggling to keep its funding. So no this angle will probably not help with funding.

I wounder if you will still go when its 3x more expensive that the non real waiter places?

Speak for yourself. I work less and play more.

it was 50% sarcasm. But seriously. Read the papers, not the web sites, not the press releases, not the political reports. But the actual papers these scientists are prepared to put in ink and have peer reviewed. The picture is quite different from the consensus "internet" view of AGW.