We know how to put people in space and have been doing so for over half a century - spaceship2 is not doing anything new. The comparison with very early engines and engine driven vehicles is really not appropriate. The largest problem is that it has been very expensive to put people in space. Does spaceship2 address that problem? (there is also a very real safety issue, but presumably that would get better if the volume of space travel increased).

Spaceship2 uses air launch, and a conventional but low delta-v rocket to do a parabolic flight. Air launch has been used on small rockets before but is very difficult for manned missions because of the enormous fuel weight required to get a manned craft into orbit. Spaceship2 doesn't address this issue because it doesn't attempt orbital speeds and so can be very light weight.

Spaceship2 does not need to deal with significant reentry heating so its high drag mode doesn't really apply to a "real" reentry.

So I don't see any clear use of the spaceship2 technologies to "real" space vehicles.

That said, it is somewhat mysterious why space is so expensive. The fuel costs are 1% of the total launch costs, it is is not a fundamental "energy is expensive" problem. Presumably the cost is related to the combination of very low volume production and very difficult design issues. It is possible that the spaceship2 program would be able to address some of those issues, but I have not seen any discussion of specifics.

"Space planes" seem about as practical as "air ships" and "flying cars".

I know terrorists aren't the brightest bulbs in the chandelier but they know enough not to name their networks after a famous terrorist group. What exactly is the threat that caused the delay?

A "few hours" X 400 passengers IS a big deal - and delayed flights mean missed connections, The aircraft my not be available for its next schedule flight etc.

The compelling reason is that self-driving cars could free up tens of billions of man-hours a year in the US alone. People could use the time they spend in cars for entertainment or productivity. It would be one of the truly great labor saving inventions.

For that to work though, the car would need to be truly autonomous and that gets into tricky legal issues.

Agreed, and the problem with haggling is that it takes time. If I buy a $300 piece of electronics, it is not efficient for me to spend $100 of my time to reduce the price by $50. Unfortunately if it is possible to track individual purchasers habits, vendors can continue to increase the prices those consumers see until they are essentially forced to waste time price comparing.

Of course it won't be an "increase", Instead the "list" price will be $1000, and people will get varying discounts depending on how much price comparing they do. People who compare a lot, must not value their own time, and are more likely to only accept a low price. People who don't compare probably place a high value on their time and are willing to pay more.

This has the positive effect of effectively reducing wealth disparity, but the very large negative effect of providing an incentive for people to spend a large amount of time in a non-productive activity (price comparing). Its great for vendors, but bad for the overall efficiency of the economy.

Yes, by not seeing something under know conditions, you can rule out some possibilities. If the particles had properties withing a certain range they would have shown up in this experiment - since they did not, we know that the particles do not have properties in that range (assuming the experiment was done correctly).

This sort of null experiment is common in many types of science.

Why is matlab on a cluster stupid? It has some parallel tools that work well for certain types of jobs.

I use Matlab and Python at work. They are good for different things.
IMHO matlab has much more powerful graphics and debugging features. It is better set up for doing vector algebra problems. Python is better for some other forms of non-mathematical data operations. For most of my work Matlab is the better tool. On the windows platform it is much easier to install and manage .

We run the SLAC accelerators using both for analysis and non-realtime feedback, but Matlab is generally the preferred tool by most of the physicists.

Talking about which is better is like asking if a Semi-truck or a bus is a better vehicle. It all depends on what you are trying to move .

You can solve any problem in either of them (or in C, or fortran or COBOL if you really want), its just a case of which tool is better for the types of problems you are solving.

Seriously. By a large margin I am most likely to die due to an age related illness.Somewhere after that are non-age related illnesses. Then accidents.Then Suicide. Being killed by "bad people" is WAY down the list. Why on earth should I give up my rights to protect myself from a tiny chance of death?

Obviously people in power would like more control over me, but why should I agree to it?

We could go to mars. Build colonies, expand into the universe. It would be very hard and very expensive and take centuries, and all we would get in return would be... everything.

Economics has the concept of "externalities" - basically effects of an activity that are not captured in its production costs. These can be negative (like pollution) or positive (like increasing productivity from a transit system).

One of the primary jobs of governments is to help correct the effects of externalities through regulation and taxes. The particular problem here is that the externalities (for CO2) are global, but the governments are local. This makes proper taxation / regulation difficult. If a government taxes industry to account for global pollution, but if other governments do not, that will tend to drive industry to non-regulated and likely dirtier locations (resulting in MORE pollution not less). It may be possible to fix this with import taxes on these goods, but that gets into the very difficult and political world of international trade regulations.

Not saying it can't be done, but its tricky.

That is EXACTLY the problem. Determining a chain of trust is tricky. Producing a chain of trust that a non-expert can trust is almost impossible. Most users cannot verify the algorithms themselves so they have to rely on the evaluation of other people. But, how to trust those other people?

Government organizations have the resources to flood discussion groups like this with reasonable-sounding statements about how well something has been verified, while discrediting anyone who posts an message disagreeing.

If someone posts that I am wrong, how can I, or any non-expert know if the arguments against this post are valid?

There are too many ways for this result to be wrong.

As many have pointed out an open-air calorimeter is the wrong way to measure heat. Any competent experimental scientist would know this. Its very easy to get this wrong by a big factor.

A very big problem is that the "dummy reactor" was operated at low power .(500W). since the thermal emisssion and convection are nonlinear, this is a very poor way to do a calibration. The excuse:

". In fact, it is well known that some Inconel cables have a crystalline structure that is modified by temperature, and are capable of withstanding high currents only if they are operated at the appropriate temperature"

Is VERY thin. If true it simply means that the dummy reactor is not an appropriate calibration. Again a competent experimental scientists would know this.

Then if it is intentional fraud, there are a LOT of ways to sneak power into the system. We are only talking a couple of KW of output - you can hide a wire carrying a couple of amps at a KV very easily. Also if there is a possibility of fraud you need to check EVERYTHING. Is the mains voltage what is claimed? Did the experimenters provide all of their own test equipment - thermal cameras, voltmeters etc. Is the lab locked and sealed from any possible entry? Are there hidden wires or fuel lines inside of the test apparatus?

The combination of poor experimental technique, lack of a physical model for fusion without radiation, and the huge financial motivation make it extremely unlikely that this is real. Whether it is outright fraud or misunderstanding is not clear.

Could just be an oversight.
I support anyone's right to self identify gender, dress as they want,engage in consensual activities with anyone they want, If I'm missing something on this list I likely support that as well. But - I don't actually know the correct all-inclusive term to use and had though that LGBT covered everything.

Its not easy to compare costs for projects done by different governments. There are different accounting standards for what is "in" and "out" of the project costs. I know nothing about the rules in India, but in Europe, scientific / engineering labor is not included in the "project". I expect the Indian probe was less expensive than a comparable NASA probe, but maybe not by nearly as large a margin as it seems.

This doesn't detract from the mission being a great success for India.

If this is expensive (and maybe it isn't) then the question is whether this is an efficient way to spend money to reduce rapes. Its possible that other approaches (better surveillance in bars for example) could be more cost effective.

Again, I'm not objecting to this, just saying that it needs to be compared to other approaches. If it is cheap then it is probably a good solution. Even if its expensive, I think it is good to have it available to women who want to purchase it.

No question that having people stop committing rape would be great. I just don't know how to make them stop except through very indirect methods (like this one).