Doesn't this already exist as the beagleboard? Arm cortex A8 @ 1GHz, 512 MB RAM, USB host/OTG, DVI out, SD slot, Ethernet, RS232... It's not as small as a Rasberry Pi or a PCMCIA but it's still pretty small (about the size of a 3.5 inch floppy). Draws about 1/2 amp at 5V at full load. Can be powered off USB as long as it's own USB host is not used. Lots of projects already going on it and it's open HW, schematics for everyone! It's trivial to get one up and running with several flavors of Linux (I've been using Ubuntu). Plenty of other options as well.

With all the rabid budget cutting going on, we'll be lucky if NASA is still around in 2020.

Well, you have a very good point there.

IAANE -- 2nd law of thermodynamics. That Carnot will get you every time. The plants need to dump about 60-75% of heat produced to reduce entropy. For plants of this size that is a considerable amount of energy. Dumping to seawater, river or lake water is easy, cheap, and typically a non issue. I'm not sure there are any other solutions that are better than what they are doing now, even with the sea critters clogging the condensers.

Jellyfish clogging marine heat exchangers is a common problem at sea, but is of particular concern for US Naval vessels using nuclear propulsion. Typically the only fix is to open the exchanger and manually clean the stuff out. Some ships have a capability to flush with either low pressure steam or reverse flush with firemain water (although the firemain is now also likely to contain jellyfish). How these multi-billion dollar machines are designed without a method for removing dead jellyfish is beyond my comprehension.

So, to get much past O-3/O-4 in the military you need a masters in something. It doesn't matter what. Luckily, the various services offer correspondence courses so you don't ever have to enter a classroom....

All have watchdog timers on exceedingly short reset schedules AND the microcontrollers never load the program out of ROM...literally the only memory for the ECU is the registers. Controlling ignition advance and fuel duration is so basic it can be done on even the oldest versions of PIC and ATmel controllers. Put another way, if your car has a distributor and uses batch fuel injection...a 2 servo controller is no more complicated. I think the simplicity of these engine control systems is what has kept this from already being common.

I had a Radio Shack 60 in 1 when I was 10. That thing changed my life! I literally played with it every day for years. Anecdotal evidence warning: I'm a electrical eng now. I don't think they are as straightforward now as they were back in the early 90s, regardless I have a 5 year old niece that will get one when she turns 9. Anyhow if you do go that route, RS also has a cheap book about basic electricity and electronics that is great for kids - the author's name is F. Mimms. It looks hand-written but it's super simple and has some circuits in it WITH explanations of how they work. Also, science picture encyclopedias are pretty inexpensive.

Gold? Gold is so yesterday. Minerals and vespene gas is what we should really be looking for up there. Everyone knows you can't build any spacecraft without vespene gas!

Dude, this is /. Nobody understands the words coming out of your mouth.

Quick wikipedia search results in: The longest stay in space was 438 days, by Russian Valeri Polyakov onboard Mir. Separate search for time (one way) earth to mars is in the range 6 - 9 months. The trip would require O2 production and CO2 scrubbers or some equivalent. The scrubbers used in industry and on submarines are generally toxic to people (and presumably to microbes) or get really hot. Either way I think the idea of cleansing the air to reduce illness would be trivial. Bring plenty of hand sanitizer and I think it'll be under control.

This isn't news...the Nuclear industry in the US has been using charcoal based on coconut shells to filter particulates for awhile. This news is literally decades old.

These guys are already going to be sued into oblivion by Lucas, so what's one more lawsuit going to matter....throw the clip in.

One other thing jumps out, according to the graphs teen pregnancy is slightly down, and education levels of mothers is slightly up! Both good things, even if it is an incredibly small margin...