People get to talk tough now, including Cheney's latest comments, but when a similar incident happened early in the Bush/Cheney administration, we did nothing of the sort. A Navy EP-3E made an emergency landing on Hainan island, and the crew was detained for approximately 10 days. During that time the Chinese had sole access to the plane and the avionics.

The US issued a Letter of Two Sorries, in which the US government stated "We are very sorry the entering of China's airspace and the landing did not have verbal clearance..."

Diplomatically, probably the right way to resolve the crisis, but lets not act like all other presidents would have sent in Seal Team Six.

>Frankly, humans themselves are a *lot* more likely to make Earth uninhabitable and a lot faster than a million years.

Which, if you think about it, suggests that maybe we shouldn't head off into space until we figure out how keep ourselves from making planets uninhabitable.

What are these "backups" of which you speak?

Obviously the outer layer would have to be made out of popcorn kernels.

>but I'm no expert here so I could well be wrong.

Welcome to Slashdot! You'll fit right it!

Well, now that Microsoft has done somebody will try to copy them by driving around Rome in a car that takes pictures of everything around it. Oh wait, http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&g=colosseo,+roma&ie=UTF8&layer=c&cbll=41.891293,12.49059&panoid=haogKvGCLWGZlNYPmGLLPA&cbp=11,130.48,,0,-7.13&ll=41.891294,12.490585&spn=0.002588,0.009645&t=h&z=17

>which meant they had to go in with dumb bombs

The HMS Sheffield was sunk (basically) by an Exocet fired from a distance 20 - 30 miles. Not a dumb bomb.

Who got it from the Grays after they crash landed in Tunguska.