#onlymoronsrelyonnonsequitursinlieuofintelligentcounterarguments

He had no point, so he had to rely in the good old ad hominem fallacy.

I voted Republican most of my life, and I say that. So your statement is false. Proof by fucking contradiction bitches.

Did you just called GD an "upstart" (relative to the time the F-16 was built)? #youarenuts

GD is a century old tech mega-ass conglomerate (think GE of defense) that builds from armored vehicles to fighters to satellites to naval warships to communication systems to artillery, you name it, with branches all over the world.

If GD was an upstart at the time the F16 was being build, I'm batman!

We are talking about NASA and space exploration, not implementing and deploying ER software systems. Re-using existing designs is a very acceptable approach, but for the type of R&D and work that this involves, NASA (and we) need to also explore new designs. The time to do is now.

I think *our* money is well spent by funding both proposals and to put them into competition. The point is not just to have someone deliver something, but to do R&D and extend our body of engineering knowledge. Our money *would not* have been spent well if only one player had been picked to the exclusion of the other.

He didn't say anything about one being better than the other (#fileitundereadingcomprehension.)

With that said, from a fault-tolerant point of view, this makes absolute sense. It would be extremely hard and un-probable that any major flaws in one system will be present in the other system. This has been a typical way to create redundant, fault-tolerant solutions, expensive, but totally appropriate when critical systems are concerned.

Re-using an existing design has the advantage of leveraging known factors, specially if the design is already proven.

That hast its limits when it comes to innovation, however. Here is where a from-scratch approach can push innovation forward (at greater risks obviously.) Reuse when you can, but don't be afraid to break new ground with from-scratch systems if the potential ROI warrants it. That is the nature of engineering complex shit.

Your post has little to do with compassion, and a lot to do with a base need to show to the world that you *care* and drop a tear for it. #dramaqueen

Bingo. OTH (and to add more fuel to the speculation pyre), WP is reporting that the news will announce contracts will be awarded to both Boeing and SpaceX. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Exactly. Relying on average Joe to determine a piece of knowledge on very complex shit (or wisdom) is pretty stupid no matter how we cut it.

There, fixed that for you (since we are starting from a hypothetical.)

Not to mention the Simpson's Halloween special - characters turned inside out. I'm sure the scene is someone in the youtubeez. And there are plenty of "shooting" games that do not involve blowing shit up. A quick visit to GameStop would show the options. Or jeez, man, Angry Birds.

Asking for a non-violent FPS option as if there weren't any is just an exercise in drama.

Hyperbole and histrionics are not really good (read "intelligent") choices to make your point on the subject. Just sayin'

Angry Birds.

Mod parent up. I was (still am) a big fan of the old Doom/Doom 2/Quake/Heretic type of games .I was seriously put off by (IMO) the excessive interactive dialog that I had to do with Doom 3 just to get going. I didn't buy Doom 3 to have a dialog with the characters, or to listen to them telling me the back story. I bought it to shoot demons and blew shit up. Almost every other game I've tried since then, I've felt them to be overly verbose and "immersive" in Hollywood crap.

It was like dealing with the FPS game version of Microsoft Bob!!!

If I wanted to be immersed, I would simply GTFO and talk to people or something else IRL.

True, but non sequitur to the nature of scientific debate (true scientific debate, not just "debate").

A) Yes they are responsible for explaining, and B) yes, they do explain themselves. But just because a explanation for a complex thing exists, that does not mean the explanation can be made to simple enough to reach a large untrained audience. Try creating an explanation to Wiles's proof for Fermat's Last Theorem that can reach anyone without any exposition to Algebraic Number Theory.

Of course.

Most of the time, of course. Just because something is discovered, that does not mean we know the mechanisms that make such a discovery a part of reality. Like, when we discovered that Archaea was a branch of life completely different from Bacteria (and not just a form a Bacteria). Then we have to debate, why are they different, how they came to exist, are they even closely related or separated from each other in a similar degree to which each of them is related or separated from from Eukaryota? Do they have a common ancestor (very likely) or they arose independently and their commonalities are just the result of lateral gene transfer?

Think a simpler question: what is electricity? We more or less have an idea of what it is, but for a very long time after its discovery we didn't quite know.

So, for as long as new discoveries and observations are made that cannot be taken into account from predictions made out of existing theories and discoveries, everything is up to debate by a) qualified people using b) the scientific method in c) a manner that is correct.

Of course. The scientific community must have channels to discuss the nature of, say, HIV, by qualified individuals (virologists, health specialists) using methods and observations that are reproducible by other qualified people.

OTH, the scientific community must not have a channel for someone like me (who has no fucking clue how to conduct virology studies) to come and say that HIV doesn't exist and that it is just a flu can be cured by eating peyote while looking at the stars from Stonehenge.