The Blackbird craft has a ratchet in its drive system which categorically prevents the propellor from ever powering the wheels, whether by air interaction or by discharging built-up/stored rotational momentum. Its presence (and verification of functionality) was mandated by the organisation refereeing the record attempt (NALSA).

That would be glorious nation of Kazakhstan, who do not take well to visits of lawyers from countries run by little girls (and especially not Uzbek ones).

Also, even the recovery teams from Roscosmos themselves sometimes take a while to locate the landing site of a Soyuz spacecraft.

Not if you fly Soyuz.

Which is what anyone wanting to get to the ISS will have to do in a year or two, until US commercial transport becomes available another few years down the line.

Earnshaw's Theorem doesn't apply to diamagnetic materials (e.g. superconductors). For such materials Earshaw's formulas dictate the exact opposite they do for dipoles and paramagnetic materials: diamagnetic materials can be stable in all directions at once, but not unstable in all directions at once (both can be stable in some directions and unstable in others at once, though).

In case anyone was wondering (and since TFA doesn't mention it), the nearest sextuplet star, is, of course, Alpha Geminorum, a.k.a. Castor, the second-brightest star in the zodiac sign of Gemini, a.k.a. the Twins. It's some 50-odd lightyears away.

Note that Beta Geminorum, a.k.a. Pollux, is actually the brightest star in Gemini (whether Johann Bayer labelled Castor as the alpha star because it rises first in the night's sky, or because mythologically, the twins are always labelled "Castor and Pollux", is unknown). Pollux is a single star, with one confirmed exoplanet, Polydeuces orbitting it.

Frank: "Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?"

Reg: "He's over there."

People's Front of Judea: "SPLITTER!"

You can (somewhat) blame the Japanese for holding up the start of the project; It wasn't until they were bought off with a separate research facility that they dropped their claim on the reactor location.

Oh, and by the way, ITER is not just an EU project. It's about as international as the International Space Station (minus Canada, plus China).

I'm sure Frank De Winne would've told us all about this other ESA astronaut called "Frank" by now... If there was one.

You mean, placing politics in faith?

Except, he's not dead yet. Grognardia blog

The only changes in the ISS's orbit are caused almost exclusively by:

• Atmospheric drag
• Reboost maneuvers
• MMOD (micrometeorite/orbital debris) avoidance maneuvers

All of these do virtually nothing to change the orbital plane of the station, which is â"at an inclination of 51.6 degreesâ" optimal for Russian launches only (and we're bloody grateful for their participation, with US access to the station going away for an indeterminate interval starting 2011).

The type of orbital plane changes you allude to would require massive amounts of energy and/or propellant, neither which is available (even with the final segment of the US power truss in place).

As described in here, the point of putting the observatory in a Lissajous orbit around the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point is to have the three nearest and largest sources of infrared light pollution (the earth, the moon, and the sun) sufficiently far away and in the same hemisphere relative to the observatory, allowing for a clear viewing angle anywhere in the other hemisphere.

Actually, the size of a KiB (Kibibyte) is not in question, it's most certainly 1024 bytes. The kB (Kilobyte) on the other hand, is used by drive manufacturers to mean 1000 bytes, and in this they are only following IEC, IEEE and ISO standards.