Johnny Appleseed brought reliable apple trees and apple jack to western Ohio. It was the apple jack that made him successful. There are also stories that he had a ten-year-old bride. Mr Chapman was not quite the person that folk mythology portrays him as.

The AC was talking about Germany 20 year ago. East German ceased to exist more than 20 years ago.

The real question is who got the job? I have worked at places where the economist's answer would have been considered correct.

Posted to undo an unintended moderation.

The astronauts had better hope that there are no Lunar sarlaccs.

These glassholes who whine about Google Glass are not very bright.

Photons need to have gamma-ray energies before they can create virtual electro-positron pairs. Visible light simply does not have enough energy to do this.

I wish that I had mod points to mod your post as funny. It was a good laugh to start my day.

Wrong. Do you know who were the first to push for paved roads? Hint. It was not motorists.

You mean like motorists do?

People in many parts of the world already pay the equivalent of US$7 for petrol, so the projected cost is quite viable for automobile use. However, it is likely that efficiencies of scale will bring down the price of seawater fuel if a mass production system is developed. If that is the case then this fuel could easily compete with conventional petrol at the pump.

Um... Where do you think I work?

> I wouldn't trust your average yahoo who has a plane and license.

Fortunately your average yahoo does not have a plane and a license. In Canada and the US (I can't speak for anywhere else) getting a pilot's license is not easy. It requires significant training, studying, and testing. Your average yahoo simply would not be able to cut it.

The original cost for JWST was capped at $700 million in the late 1990s. The cost is currently about 20 times that. There are people on the project who are confident that the final cost will be much higher.

That is not the reason. The reason that there has not been a dedicated Europa mission is because it will be a very expensive mission and the money is not available. The reason that the money is not available is because the US government does not want to give NASA the required funding. If the US congress offered to give NASA the money, and kept the funding going for the 15-20 years that would be required to do a long-term exploration of Europa, then NASA would jump at the opportunity. There is also a matter of rivalries between JPL and various NASA centers, but a reliable funding stream would go a long way towards resolving those.