Have you read the actual job application? "Distant and near visual acuity: Must be correctable to 20/20, each eye"

Has Facebook any physical presence in Hamburg?

Yeah sure, now we have Gnome 3 and Unity.

You are right, data storage is overrated. Things should be put in the "cloud"...

I still think it's a good thing to have finally ended the Shuttle program. Sometimes you have to break with the past to get to the next level. The Shuttle has a miserable safety record, was too expensive, etc. The original plans even claimed there would be 50 launches a year. Seeing how things had gone, they should have retired the space Shuttle in the mid 90s.

They already answered to the suborbital flights part. Regarding orbit, “If there were people sitting in the Dragon capsule today, they would have had a very nice ride,” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/science/space/09rocket.html The main reason they do not fly humans on Dragon (yet) is because it still lacks an escape system (that the Shuttle never had, and would have probably saved the Challenger crew). "Musk: Well actually if our safety threshold was equal to that of the Shuttle, then we could do that this year. In fact the Dragon spacecraft that we flew in December, if we had put someone in there with a seat, they would have had a fine journey. However we think that there needs to be an additional level of safety which is that there should be a launch escape system which the Shuttle does not have. And so that launch escape system will take us a few years to develop and verify all the functionality and so that's why we're expecting our first astronaut flight in about a few years." http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/07/08/pm-elon-musk-on-the-future-of-space-travel-and-exploration/ Apparently they are so ahead of schedule that they will be berthing the Dragon Capsule to the ISS this December instead of waiting for another year as originally planned. Of course the road is still long but I'll make sure to be near Vandemberg to witness the launch of Falcon Heavy, double the payload of the Shuttle and a tenth of the cost. As for the "third world countries" where you think they will be building their stuff: "[E. Musk] also outlines why he believes American innovation will trump countries like China in space –even though that country has the fastest growing economy in the world and lower labor rates than the US" http://www.universetoday.com/85409/elon-musk-why-the-us-can-beat-china/

Do you really feel *that* unsafe when you take a Southwest flight?

Now that the Shuttle is gone, it will be possible to focus on much better ways to send humans to space. If we really wanted, there are American companies that could send humans in space, with Dragon or Atlas, at the same level of risk of the Shuttle. It's only a matter of certifications, after all. I think that the Russians are *very* nervous.

Why didn't you use a "for" loop?

Me too, I would actually take pictures of people taking pictures.