At my company I'd yell something unintelligently and grab the nearest car, and everything would sort itself out afterwards. I walk to work, so I've been in the situation. It's really not a problem.

Automation engineer here.

I (obviously) don't think that automation is inherently unethical, but I very much agree that societies can use it in unethical ways, e.g. for concentrating the wealth of a country on only a small percentage of the population. I don't see the current skewed distribution of wealth as a problem of automation, but as a problem in the government. I miss a good debate about who should benefit from the increased productivity, how the wealth should be redistributed in a "fair" way, and what role the government should take in this endevour. I miss hearing views like Nick Hanauer's.

Here you go.
Nazi party's anthem: Horst Wessel Lied or Die Fahne hoch.
Socialist song from the same period: Die Internationale (Still in use.)

Both are quite fun to sing. (I sang them in a musical we did in high school.)

It might not be news, but it is still stuff that matters!

I want the world I live in to be a good place, not a place where, as you put it, people are tortured and spied upon. I want to be able to sleep at night, knowing that my government works for basic human rights, including the right to privacy and the right to not be tortured in some prison camp!

The more the wrongdoings of the governments of the west are exposed, the easier it is to stand up against them using non-violent means like voting and demonstrating. So, don't come here and tell me that it isn't in the category news and/or stuff that matters. I for one don't accept the world I live in, and I want to change it for the better.

Yep, perfectly normal. Most (if not all) cubesats tumble when they're jettisoned from their launcher.

For them not to tumble when they're jettisoned, they would have to have their center of mass perfectly on top of the spring and they'd need to have the exact same friction against the launcher on all four sides. It's much easier to just fit them with a de-tumbling system, e.g. a magnet on a spring.

That's one side of the coin, and the're some tendencies that really point in that direction - the most important being the capital needed for automation. Automation is horribly expensive up front, but pays off over the long run.

But as an automation engineer I really hope we can find some way to stop this madness before it goes too far down that path. I don't do automation because I want to enable the rich, I do automation because I want to help lower the prices of goods so that everybody are able to afford them. (Without having to leech off cild labor in third world countries.) I want to minimize hard, dangerous, boring and/or manual labor as much as possible to enable the common man with free time and better buying power.

The problem as I see it isn't with the capitalists, it's with informing the common population that there is another way, so that they will wote the right people into office instead of yet another front man for large multinational corporations.

Castings, sure. But rocket engines are usually welded. It's not really a usefull comparison.

Most don't really need two cores, but that's not a reason not to want two cores.

I fell in love with multiple core processors when I first got one, not because my computer in general became faster (I'll bet that all but one of my cores are idling most of the time) but because my computer wouldn't get unresponsive when I was doing computationally heavy tasks (or programs crashed).

Interesting. Who's going to ask me to "go large for just $0.99 more", so I get the genuine experience that's so integral to McDonald and their competition?

It was the last time I checked.

Actually, cubesats need at least a simple attitude control system, i.e., detumbling. Without one they spin up. See e.g. AAUSat II:

That said, being able to actually point in a specific direction with the sat is quite hard, and a lot of work.

Kinetic energy is 1/2 * m * v^2, so using your numbers gives ~5195 joules. It's actually a lot of energy, about the same as a car going at walking speed, delivered as you say, at a knifes edge.

They'll easily chop a man in half if the rotors don't break first.

No worrys. I got a good smile out of it. ;)

An external "ship-suit" could perhaps be usefull in some cases, e.g. on the ISS for EVAing, but I'm not really convinced. The only reason I can think of to send an astronaut out to do something is because her hand/eye coordination and manual dexterity is required on a particular spot. (otherwise they'd just send a robot) So, the "ship-suit" would have to have sleeves and gloves with which she could manipulate objects as easily as from a normal space suit.

Tethering the astronaut would on the other hand be much simpler. Just clamp the Canada-arm onto the suit. No need for foot-fasteners and all that other fancy stuff.

It's an interresting concept, but there's a lot of engineering tradeoffs to consider before judging one of the solutions superior to the other.