Unfortunately I agree.

Sadly 1 is pretty unlikely, Its difficult to imagine anything of enough value that only exists in space

2 could happen, but as a society we are moving away from high energy density technology like nuclear because there are better options on earth. Rockets already make pretty efficient use of chemical energy. Other schemes like space elevators seem really improbable. (I hope I'm wrong).

So 3 seems the most likely.Eventually maybe some space-faring race will discover and catalog the ruins we left behind.

The important technologies haven't advanced very much - there is little difference between a 2015 rocket engine and a 1965 rocket engine. Also, lots of technical details can be lost, so its expensive to rediscover them.

Space was societal focus in the 60's the best and brightest worked on it. Now it is a niche.

The reason is to learn how to do it again. Right now the US can't even put astronauts in orbit.

We like to think we *can* but just don't want to. Its a very comforting thought.

Of course if we don't want a future that includes space colonization, then I agree, there is no reason to go. Its nice up here in the trees - we can let someone else climb down and worry about the predators.

Even some sort of peer review to say that you have at least solved the key problems.

In today's competitive marketplace you need to do everything you can to generate more business.

Used an ultrasonic rangfinder part for cheap cameras to echo-locate breakdowns in high gradient accelerator structures.

There is some loss of laminar flow, but 5% seems wildly optimistic for eliminating bugs under any normal sort of operation. I only fly piston planes so maybe someone flying jets can comment, but 5% is enough to affect your fuel reserve calculations and I've never heard of a "bug" correction.

Looks like they have seen 99% reflectivity. Q must be on the order of 100 (give or take a pi and a 2). That is OK, but mirrors above 99.99% are commonly available at a single wavelength and I think they can get down to a few ppm with enough effort (and in clean conditions). I haven't worked with low loss mirrors in decades, so I don't know where the state of the art is now.

Since you pay the salaries of govt employees, you probably don't want them to demand more money when they discover that OTHER govt workers are earning more than they are....

Good presentations are valuable. They convey important information. Bad presentations are a waste of time.

Powerpoint makes it easy to produce bad presentations, but it allows you to produce good ones.

Bullet points are useless if they contain no information "Improve product market share!". "Reduce failures".

Bullet points are valuable if they remind the audience of specific points: "Balance IP3 and Noise at each stage of the RF chain". "Using too high a gain in the first stage of a RF receiver is the most common mistake".

Used incorrectly, fancy graphics can be useless or distracting.

Used correctly, fancy graphics can illustrate a complex process such as the operation of a transverse deflection cavity for femtosecond timing measurements .

The question is *why* more men than women want a career in science (if that is true).

Is it due to some innate biological difference? Is it due to discrimination or harassment when they try to enter science? Is it due to a wide range of subtle societal pressures that are difficult to quantify?

I think the best we can do is to look for and eliminate any detectable discrimination and try to ensure that women have the same opportunities as men.

One thing to do is to study why the ratio of men to women is quite different in different technical fields.

I was an OS/2 user for a while. The problem I found was that major applications (like Lotus123) were more expensive on OS/2 and were often older variants. Since OS/2 had a windows compatibility mode I used that to use cheaper / newer apps. The compatibility mode seemed no more stable than windows itself (not really surprising). so I eventually decided running OS/2 was just an affectation and went back to windows.

By the time OS2 came out, IBM just didn't have the muscle to drive the entire market anymore. I suspect it would have also died if it did not have a compatibility mode, but I think windows compatibility doomed it for sure.

How does this work?
Hackers claim they have a huge database of embarrassing information. How do they prove that they didn't simply invent the information?

I have a "database" showing that Senator XYX has as thing for furries and garden implements. See - here I have a text file with Senator XYZ's name and a list of preferences......

You could take any list of names and add arbitrary kinks, then threaten to release them. How do you show that this is the *real* database and not one you made up?

But that isn't how we execute people. We spend millions of dollars and pay to keep them in prison for many years. In the end it can be more expensive than a life sentence.

He is a murderer and some will say he deserves to die. But - a death sentence will keep his name in the news for a long time. Better that he be locked up and forgotten.

Personally I do not support the death penalty. It is too rare to be a deterrent. Too irreversible if there is a mistake. Too barbaric for a civilized society.