And in the case of properly utilized public/private key encryption, see both the sender and the recipient. You will need both private keys to decrypt the message. And no, the mail transport and storage host should not have either private key.

I don't see large numbers of people moving to seasteading, which is a much closer analogue to space settlement.

Having said that, I don't think any of the four destinations is any indication at all of the will present to move to such places. All four are very capital-intensive places to live, but with the massive concentration of wealth happening in the US and around the world, very few people with the will also have the capital to do anything about it. With respect to the fourth destination, space, only one person in the entire world has both the will and the capital: Elon Musk.

There may be hundreds of thousands, even millions, who are willing to risk the frontier, but only a handful of them are suicidal about it. They're the ones who signed up for a one way trip to Mars. The rest are aware that it takes a significant amount of money to do such a thing, and they're aware they don't have that kind of money.

Bullshit.

Density of gasoline: 0.73 kg/L
Typical gas tank capacity: 57 L
Typical number of fillups per year: 52

0.73 * 57 * 52 = 2200 kg/year.

Gasoline contains various different organic molecules starting from hexane and running up through decane. Hexane is C6H14, so the carbon makes up 84% of the mass. Octane is C8H18, so the carbon makes up 80% of the mass. Call it 82%.

A single average-sized car emits 1800 kg of carbon every year. Less than 2 metric tons.

Yeah, NSA is busy upgrading all their gear. They took out Charter earlier this week. Today it was Time Warner's turn. They'll get to Comcast in a day or two.

That would be the MBA who said no we can't afford to buy that much connectivity, cram it all through one connection. 'cause we need more PROFIT! MOAR!

I have no doubt at all that Oracle committed fraud and lied a lot. I have no doubt Oregon's project management failed to give adequate oversight to the project, failed to adequately specify the project, and repeatedly changed what little specification they provided.

Neither matters. I have no doubt this lawsuit will ultimately fail, because the Oregon attorney general doesn't have the technical ability to prove the fraud and lies. The state has already proven they don't understand what they're doing. We're about to get a second demonstration.

What corporate shills? SpaceX is not publicly traded. They're privately held and self-funding from their own profit. What is said about them on random Internet discussion forums has absolutely no affect on their continuing success or failure. They will have to have a satisfactory explanation for the contracts people who have put down heaps of money to buy launches, but none of those conversations will involve random Internet discussion forums.

We're spectators, having a rather short and noncontroversial discussion about a small explosion in the sky. What are you, that you feel obliged to shit on the subject? A corporate shill perhaps? Employed by a SpaceX competitor?

Probably not. You're just a random Internet misanthrope.

He was probably referring to the elemental weight, not the weight used.

It's not much of a risk. Every single battery chemistry has been played with, at one time or another. And by that I mean rigorously and exhaustively scientifically investigated. In consequence, not only has everything been tried, but we now know what works and why it works. That's why it's science, and not merely engineering.

Lithium will always remain a preferential element because it's the element that is the strongest reducing agent in the periodic table, short of hydrogen, which is too hard to hold on to. The stronger the reducing agent, the higher the voltage a cell can develop and the better a battery can be. At the other end, you want a strong oxidizing agent. Fluorine would be ideal, if it wasn't such a viciously strong oxidizing agent that it eats your whole battery, not just the electrons you want it to. Presumably this situation is what the spokesdroid was referring to, without explaining what the hell he was talking about.

Lithium is the cathode of choice since it's a metal that can be conveniently nailed down while still possessing a very good electrode potential. As an ion, it's nicely compact, being the lightest of metals, so it migrates through a battery most conveniently. What to pair it with is a little more complicated, and the subject of much research. This is where manganese, cobalt, and carbon come in. Various combinations of those elements and their immediate neighbors on the periodic table are used to make anodes. Some work better than others. Some may work better yet depending on how they're assembled.

Rest assured, whatever develops in terms of battery assembly, lithium will remain the cathode, and much of the macroscopic assembly will be the same or close enough to the same that the gigafactory will always be busy. The assembly and packaging to be done is fairly common, regardless of chemistry.

You're probably correct, at least for the prospects of an initial outpost. Except for freezing sewage. I can't imagine they'll ever have excess sewage to freeze. All that water gone to waste. Not to mention valuable nitrogen and readily metabolizable organic material. More likely it will get processed and its constituent parts reused, and fairly quickly. Yes using human waste as feed stock for food plants is a little risky, but the chill and near vacuum conditions allow for industrial processes that could mitigate the risk rather cheaply. It certainly won't be an option to once-through all that material. A closed cycle will be required.

Cubes do seem to be likely, for an extended period, despite the issues with pressurizing them. Ease of precise assembly and speed of assembly will be the watchwords for building pressure vessels.

In any case, it'll be Elon Musk making the real decision. I suspect hexagons will get short shrift.

You forget who Comcast owns. They wholly own NBC and Universal Studios, two major sources of Netflix content. And they're already screwing with the availability of NBCUniversal content on Netflix. If Netflix tries to play hardball, a whole boatload of shows and movies will just vanish out of their catalog.

A media company that owns the last mile is an abomination, and the FTC should do something about it.

So, John Steele's brother Robert Steele?

Experiment on Venus first. I'd rather not suffer through yet more perturbations on Earth thankyouverymuch.

Venus has a serious greenhouse problem. Fix that, then we'll talk.

But they soon will be doing something illegal! I mean look at them. They're obvious criminal types. Her clothes and his hat offend the sensibilities of all decent right-thinking people. Obviously they should be locked up.

</sarcasm>