The ISS has cost about $150 billion.

Letting private companies use it as a transfer station for their own flights, might bring up questions of ownership. The ISS is essentially owned by politicians. That's a very uncomfortable situation for any private company, if they want to rely on it for their own missions.

Maybe it would be cheaper and easier for private companies to launch and maintain their own simple orbiting stations for a few $million, than to have to deal with the politics of the ISS.

We can see Proxima Centauri from here, so there is not enough junk there to block the light. That means it's mostly empty space.

When only nerds have PC-s, it will become much easier to ban them (because PCs can run "unapproved" code, or some other excuse). Only large companies with government licenses will be allowed to operate general purpose PCs.

The tablet owning grannies will not oppose that of course. Why would they care.

And let's ban the internet. All those computers use so much electricity.

Here is how: you scan a person at atomic resolution. Then you send a *description* of their body, atom for atom via powerful laser. At the destination, a nanotech assembler builds a copy atom for atom.

That's kind of like writing a program bit by bit, and in machine language...

Maybe more efficient methods for writing that program could be invented.

Not so sure about the gmail thing, though I don't appreciate being scanned, which is why I don't use it.

Such freedom could do wonders in politics.

Ah, the figure refers to traffic and number of unique visitors per day. It was in the article, I just skimmed over it... (I thought those diagrams were ads)

In that Megaupload song they say it was 4% of the internet, and what does that mean exactly? 4% of all internet users used it? 4% of all traffic?

It might be possible again with RFID technology combined with face recognition.

A camera on the bus records your face, and the detector in the door scans your RFID-enabled bus ticket or pass (which is linked to your face data), then charges you a fee... all automatic.

True, the rockets have served their purpose by that point. But any kind of reuse would be better than letting it crash.

From the way it's shown in the video, the amount of fuel it uses to fly away could be enough to allow it to land softly instead.

I think they are wasting the descent stage module. In the video it hovers above the ground with rocket propulsion, at a very low altitude (10 meters?) while the rover itself descends to the surface, then releases the rover and flies away in a random direction like crazy (and presumably crashes) - what a waste after it flew all the way to mars and got so close to an actual landing? Why not just let the descent stage land softly nearby, and use it for something, maybe as a radio relay or as a backup solar panel?

I wonder if it might be possible to point a laser at the craft's solar panels to recharge its batteries? That is if it has opened its solar panels and they are pointing towards Earth at least some of the time?