Nope. The SLS will launch up to 70 tons. It may one day launch more, but that'll require a whole load more development funding.

Nope. You just need more launches. If NASA are going to send humans to Mars, they're not going to do it with a single 130 ton launch.

It's going to fly once every couple of years, if you're lucky. It's going to require thousands of people to prepare it for launch. It's going to require all the facilities for those thousands of people, and more who aren't involved in the launch, but are involved in the rest of the program.

If you think NASA can fund that for $500,000,000 a year, I've got a bridge you might like to buy. Remeber, a shuttle launch didn't cost $1,500,000,000 because of the variable costs of each launch, it cost that much because of the fixed costs of keeping them flying.

SpaceX will be flying astronauts in their Dragon capsule. I believe the CST100 is designed to be Falcon-compatible, but it's unlikely to ever fly on one.

As for SLS, there isn't a single budgeted mission outside low orbit. And there's not likely to be, when it will cost billions of dollars every time it flies, due to the high development costs, low flight rate, and standing army and facilities required to launch it.

Uh, no, it's not. There's nothing 'deep space' about SLS that's not 'deep space' about Falcon 9. You can launch a deep space probe on Falcon 9, and you could launch a deep space probe on SLS if it's ever built.

SLS, as designed, is just a very expensive way to put 70 tons into orbit. Maybe, at some point, if Congress funds it, it might become a very expensive way to put 100-130 tons into orbit. Well before then, Falcon Heavy should be putting 50 tons into orbit for less than 5% of the cost of an SLS launch.

They're getting into the phone business for the same reason Apple did; to tie phone users to their app/video/ebook/music stores.

I haven't looked in detail, but I presume the phone is using their version of Android, like the Kindle?

Dude, making money is just so 19th century.

They're short more money than SpaceX spent to develop the Falcon 9.

I got the same error after a glitch. Turns out the redemption was successful the first time, but because the server was too slow responding to the redemption request, the App Store app timed out. For whatever bizarre reason, it appears that the app store server infrastructure doesn't treat redemption requests as idempotent (clearly a bug), so subsequent attempts to redeem the same code from the same account fail. Ideally, those subsequent attempts should do nothing, but should return whatever magic value tells the App Store app to update its list of purchased items and then do whatever other work it needs to do.

To make a long story short, if you quit the App Store app and relaunch it, the Yosemite beta should appear under the Purchases tab in the App Store. From there, you can start the download.

A nonprofit competitor is required by law to spend any profits they make on upgrading infrastructure. So unless they massively overhire or have higher expenses because of economies of scale or renting a more expensive building, the nonprofit is pretty much guaranteed to be able to undercut any for-profit competitor while providing better service, because it doesn't have the extra overhead of profit taking.

Particularly if all you need is heat. You could potentially build an almost entirely passive desalinization plant fairly readily by building a greenhouse atop the ocean and making the roof slope towards the sides with catch basins that then flow downhill towards the shore. The only thing required is an insane amount of glass (and an insane amount of space to dedicate to it).

Rum, of course. Or, if you prefer, vodka.

No, the web site needs a developer with a bigger brain. Screens come in all sizes and aspect ratios, and any developer who doesn't realize that is an idiot.

Yes. Even pilot astronauts are--or were--allowed to wear glasses or contact lenses. I believe the concern with laser surgery was about the effect of pressure changes on the eyeball.

Last I looked, you couldn't become an astronaut if you had laser eye surgery?