don't forget the Millennium Falcon can fly too - I've seen it on the big screen !

also its 5 millions dollars per checked bag - no carry on

more than likely its a one way ticket for the investors to bankruptcy....

I think the point is that taking down the government web sites serve no purpose and might even be beneficial to the drug cartels, it just doesn't make any real sense to me.

that's a fact, but in reality it is human nature to not be humane - we've been killing each of for thousands of years for land, riches, over religious ideologies, or just for power.... The first Empires in the true definition were Middle Eastern and North African, its kind of ironic in my opinion - I don't think humans will ever have the utopian Star Trek world, but it would be nice....

by the Webster definition of sabotage - it fits. Although it was hard from being "passively" interfered with, GPS antennas on most military aircraft are designed to be resistant to jamming (usually through spatial diversity) however if a sufficiently strong signal is directed at you it all comes down to physics and can the GPS receiver recover the small satellite signals out of the noise. I wouldn't be surprised if the aircraft in question was being tracked with a ground based radar and the GPS jammer was directionally aimed at the aircraft.

I read the presentation and I found it interesting because of the challenges of developing the interface for a wide variety of platforms with vastly differing capabilities. I am in a constant battle with my own software guys to get them to develop for a lower performance hardware, instead of always giving me code that needs the next generation hardware to have an acceptable user experience. Sometime I miss the old days when software developers HAD to think about the hardware they were running on and optimize their software appropriately. I can remember when some software would actually run TOO fast when it was run on newer faster computers....Those days are long gone, many of the software guys I know have little understanding of what goes on under the hood and really don't care unfortunately - I am going to make sure some of them read this presentation

I really wonder what would happen - I guess I just don't see how a private company is ever going to make money on this, space tourism will make a little off of a select rich few until the day that a major accident happens and people die - then the government will crack down on it. I don't think you can legally build an aircraft past a certain size without the government (FAA) getting involved - I'll bet if I built a jet and went flying someone WOULD shoot me down as you suggest - I grew up on the space coast of Florida watching Saturn V's and space shuttles launch, I worked out at CCAFS launching expendable rockets for 10 years, I sat in Burt Rutan's Space Ship 1 BEFORE it won the X-prize. I would dearly love for space travel to be successful but it is not a trivial venture and I will maintain that if it was going to make any money that we would have seen the privatization a LONG time ago.

"Yeah, I'd rather so much to have a government running stuff that can land on your house where some government bureaucrat say "so sue me.... oh that's right, you can't!"

which is exactly why privatized space ventures are doomed, this is why aircraft systems cost so much, product liability insurance.... I will maintain that until a private company can either:

1. Make so much money that they can finance their own product liability insurance OR
2. Have complete protection from the litigation of landing a rocket booster on a school

the whole thing is destined to FAIL....

So if the argument for privatizing space is that it will cost less than the government doing it, I think you are dead wrong. I was a founder of a company back in the 80's that built some of the first "glass cockpits" for yachts - we briefly entertained making some for aircraft until we looked into the cost of that - trust me its phenomenally expensive - when a failure can result in massive property damage or loss of life any business man with half a brain thinks twice -

Seems like the root of all evil is really lawyers and insurance reform... That MUST happen before this even stands a chance of long term success...

well that's a comfort - although if our tax dollars can pay for shrimp on treadmills it wouldn't necessarily surprise me...

why can't NASA spend its budget on space exploration instead of some absurd study like this - Lots of /. post about how we spend too much on defense - I agree that we need to spend more on NASA and have a REAL space program again instead of the current joke we have today. I would point out that MOST of the technology that has made space exploration possible (and lots of other things too) comes out of defense spending and technology initiatives for defense. The thing I find even more insane than this study, is that the current bunch of losers in control of our country (and I include all political affiliations) believe we should let the take the privatized health care system and put it in control of the government and take government funded space exploration and privatize it...... I keep saying this - until a private corporation can make real money on space its not going to happen, that means money that offsets the risks involved - the government can assume this risk, private companies aren't going to - the first time a space tourists dies in a horrible accident you are going to see the government clamp down like you never thought possible and it will all immediately come to an end.... Lawyers and Insurance companies are driving this boat, Maybe an alien race SHOULD facilitate an intergalactic highway construction project and take of this problem.....