>> the US portion is capable of running on it's own today.
Aha. and how do you send people to it ?

>> Furthermore, an aborted launch would end up exploded on the launch pad, or in the ocean.

or burning on reentry...

>> If an out-of-control rocket falls on my head
Perhaps, but, statistically, a failing rocket will not fall on your head, but nearby. Then you care if your land is only burned or irradiated

it just weights 4 times as much, and it's extremely dangerous.

>> The biggest impact of a dirty bomb in a city would be psychological.

Yeah, like around fukushima : they all developped psychological cancer, you know...

>> I had the mistaken belief that all space probes / landers were nuke-powered.
No.
On a lander, you need short term peak power >> batteries
On a probe, you need long term avwerage power >> batteries + solar _or_ batteries + RTG

>> I'm curious why they went with solar power

they went with battery power, solar was a bonus.

>>in 10,000 years ... the parts that are still shiny
yeah, except when irradiated. Then they deform. crack, leak, and just turn to (very toxic) dust.

it didn't fail. it ended it's mission sucessfully.

travelling and passing borders with a gun ? really really really really not a good idea.

>> do you really think people will turn of the TV and turn down the heating?

That's not hte point.
But they will turn away from electric heating/AC in the first place, which is the point.
Also, some will launch washing machine at the right time, or even better, washing machine makes will integrate a detection.
TV is negligible compared to cooking, washing, heating.

>> US is how far from living under the Stasi?

The US surveillance system is much worse than the stasi, it has much more power because it controls nearly all data flowing...
http://apps.opendatacity.de/st...

Or even better : The nice thing is systemD is not portable. It will infect only linux.

No, we can't.

>> I think we just created thousands more people...
Make Love, not airplanes