People tend to have basic ideas for acting in natural disasters, but planning for zombie outbreaks adds the advantage of planning for a disease outbreak without the concern in the general public about infectious disease planning. It also gets the planning people to think outside of their usual box. I know it sounds silly, but it's a good exercise to get people thinking about population movements and control, disease spread, natural resource limitations due to deadly agents, overloading of medical response personnel, ect.

That Should be 8.8 to 8.9 m/(s^2). Slashdot doesn't like my use of the squared character.

You have both. Weight is the acceleration due to gravity times mass. The fact that the station is orbiting the Earth instead of flying off means that is under the effect of Earth's gravity and therefor has weight. The acceleration due to gravity is roughly 8.8 to 8.9 m/(s) at the altitude the station orbits at. The difference is that the station is moving fast enough to fall to the ground, but miss.

This message brought to you by someone who tutors college physics.

The TASMs were pulled from service years ago.

Right now the USN doesn't use any OTH missiles for ship-to-ship duties. We keep the Harpoon (XGM-84) around because it's cheap and with some minor mods (a GPS unit) can be used as a land attack missile.

The preferred anti-ship system right now is an SM-2 because with them you maintain positive control throughout the entire flight. It's also a hell of a lot faster than a subsonic Harpoon, which combined with the solid fuel makes it a lot more dangerous.

I've found that if you pay for extra support from Dell (such as an at-home, or other higher end service plan) you tend to get quite good service I may bitch about how I needed 5 power bricks and 4 motherboard replacements for my Inspiron, but I did get them free of charge, and within 48 hours every single time.

Transit/Transportation drivers in the US have similar rules to those in Europe. It makes it rather weird that a hospital can require doctors and residents to work long hours on very little sleep, but we don't allow a train engineer to do the same. Yes the economic cost of the train engineer screwing up is higher, but it could be argued that the doctor's screwups have a higher personal cost.

Well if they bust the myth that President Obama is pro-applied science (see just about everything he's done relating to science), or President Obama uses this myth as a chance to change is position of the AirBorne Laser program then I'll be happy.

That's because the US has
1. Had them for longer
2. Had more of them than other people for a a significant period of time (The US arsenal was larger than the Soviet one up into the 70's)
2A. Has enough of them to ensure a reliable deterrent even in the event of a first strike removing most of the devices from the arsenal (this is why NEW START is bad - it gets force levels low enough that ABM [which isn't and shouldn't go away] and a first strike can eliminate the threat of a counter attack).
3. For over a decade had a policy of using conventional forces as a tripwire for the nuclear forces (see the development of nuclear artillery and the Pentomic Division).

They have one (around Moscow), and it's been operational for decades. They just didn't shut theirs down when the US shutdown the Stanley Mickelson Complex in North Dakota. I'm sure they would love to see how the US solved some of the systems and sensor integration problems (which have been holding up the S-400 SAM).

You do realize that the agreement that was just signed simply ties the current and future European systems (Dutch, German, and Spanish SM-3; German-US-Italian MEADS; French SAMP/T; and US SM-3s in Eastern Europe) to the current and future US sensor network? And you realize that the current network already ties in mobile THAAD batteries, SM-3 equipped AEGIS Cruisers and Destroyers (US and Japanese), and the GBI bases in Alaska and California?

And that the whole thing is in it's simplest form a giant systems integration problem, one similar to what the US has already done?

Yes I have. Earlier this year, they ran one during the Superbowl.

Because that ICBM can be shot down with 60's era tech. The ICBM is going to come in on a fixed, and therefor predictable course, while the bomber can maneuver, carry ECM gear, and even in certain situations (look up DAMS and Pyewacket) shoot back.

Last nuclear armed UAV we had (QH-50 DASH) suffered from reliability problems, while the non-nuclear version we sold to Japan, didn't. The positive control links needed for nuclear devices present problems when you don't have people on board.