IDK if this is relevant to your particular work, but there are some very good Javascript libraries now - d3js.org comes to mind. IIRC Google has one or two as well.

If/when I ever get a new TV, it'll be hooked up via HDMI to the XBMC video server I'll get around to setting up. No ethernet to the TV, that's just asking for trouble. But, of course, I'm an aging curmudgeon and I do things like that. :P

Funny! :D
I even checked out thefacepalm.com - it exists, but the domain is parked. Maybe there's an opportunity for someone - a discussion site for skeptics, of everything? The motto could be "News you can ignore, arguments you disagree with." :) I'd say that there is a need for a site where folks who disagree with everything can go and agree that everything else is crap, but most discussion sites are filled with them already.

Anyway, I enjoyed your comment. :)

I'll just put this here: How Japan Plans to Build an Orbital Solar Farm.

IIRC Volvo and Mercedes, and maybe some other car makers were working with active suspension systems that had this feature about 10 years ago. But IDK if it ever made it to a production model.

Interestingly, I just received a link to an article in IEEE Spectrum, about How Japan Plans to Build an Orbital Solar Farm.

I'd be interested in seeing how a human would do at proving they are not a computer, or attempting to prove they are. Either one would be an interesting test, whether the tester was human or computer.

Sorry, wrong on all counts. :) I will say that one of the reasons I'm skeptical about space solar power is that (IMHO) to make it feasible will require using materials mined from space rather than shipping everything up from Earth - that makes it much more speculative. Others disagree on that. OTOH, solar panels seem to last a lot longer in space, and the sun is always shining. On the third hand, I see a lot of political difficulties.

Mining asteroids for aluminum or iron for use on Earth is not likely to make economic sense for a long time - it's true that shipping from orbit down to Earth is much cheaper than shipping up, but it's still not a win. But other materials do make sense. If you review the plans of Planetary Resources, you'll find that for several rare materials - platinum being the most famous - mining asteroids _potentially_ makes good sense - it's still highly speculative. But the folks who are pursuing this are used to high risk high reward ventures. Platinum mining today is a filthy, dangerous, extremely expensive, environmentally and socially disastrous enterprise. It's almost certainly cheaper to get platinum from an asteroid than from the present mines, even with the terrific cost of the initial infrastructure.

Here's a useful quote, from Wikipedia:

"Famously rich" above means, in the "Merensky Reef" zone of the Complex, approximately 10 parts per million of Platinum group metals - that's the whole group, not just Platinum - can be found. This means that a gram of Platinum must be extracted from more than 100 Kg of ore. This is by far the richest part of the richest mine on the planet. Other active mines are processing ores with much lower concentrations.

The top line on all this is that commercial space development is already reducing the cost of space launches. SpaceX is launching for 1/4 of the price of prior vendors, and forcing the prices of every competitor down. Their reusable vehicle technology has the potential of significant further reductions. We still need additional cost reductions, ideally an order of magnitude. There are methods with that potential but it's hard to say which one(s) will get there.

I should add - 'the company' is Integrated Space Analytics LLC, for which publication of analytical and reference data via the poster, the website, and subscription is the business.

Nope. The company's primary business is analytics and our primary interest is not defense but commercial space, particularly start ups and privately held companies that may become public. We are all 'space nuts' who have been working to advance non-government space for a long time. (Except me - I've been doing bleeding edge computer stuff most of my career. I've been more of a space groupie.)

We are doing this project because we think it's important. Development of space as an economic resource has more potential to 'fix' many of the biggest problems here on Earth than anything we can do down here. We are doing what we can to help make that happen.

"There be dragons out there" - and beyond them, the New World.

Rumor has it that Planetary Resources has already found a good target asteroid for their mining plans. If they are successful, the price of platinum may drop from $1500/oz or thereabouts to $10/oz, turning it from a curiosity used in expensive jewelry and (in extremely small quantities) as a surface in catalytics converters into an industrial metal with huge numbers of valuable uses.

Space Solar Power (which I'm somewhat skeptical of, mostly for reasons having to do with the politics of Earth) has the potential to replace every thermal power plant - nuclear, coal, oil - within 100 years, and providing enough power to allow all cars to be electric, thereby removing most of the present day sources of air pollution.

An economist a few years ago analyzed the potential effects of space development, and concluded that it had the potential to improve the standard of living of everyone on Earth by a factor of 10 within 100 years.

With that level of activity, even with the great number of robotic systems in use, the number of humans in space will gradually increase, and the cost of bringing them back to Earth will become more than the cost of keeping them up there in good health. And space habitation will become permanent.

Indeed. I think this might be a very useful part of the project. I'll include it in the plan! And hopefully you and Geoffrey will participate!

It all takes planning. The Space Shuttle took nine years from initial plan to launch. It took almost 10 years of a crash program to get humans to the Moon. We do need cheap access to space, or at least cheaper. SpaceX was founded in 2002, and now after 13 years is only a year or two from launching a human into space. And those are single programs, not an entire movement.

But in a larger sense, you are right. Our approach to the new Plan is that there are many entities, each doing their own thing in a combined cooperative/competitive manner. Rather than trying to do a huge, fixed 'top-down' plan like a centrally-planned economy, we think it's more useful to use an ecosystem approach to the Plan, letting each independent entity find its own place. In this approach, our Plan can provide valuable information to entrepreneurs looking for a niche, and companies and national agencies looking for partners, customers and vendors. And they can all both see and if desired help to determine the long term view. This is, if you will, an 'organic' approach to planning.

But don't discount planning, engineering, documentation and obsessive attention to details and avoiding anomalies. Space will always be a very dangerous place, ready to kill you with a moment's inattention.

Even Columbus was a part of a much larger, longer term initiative. I quote:

The basic goal for the Kickstarter is in fact for the poster - we are committed to making this poster a common sight. The primary purpose of the poster is to get distributed to schools, offices, homes, and dorm rooms and publicize the present state of the 'art' of space, and inspire folks about this great endeavor. So, after the various costs of Amazon, Kickstarter, and various other things, the money is primarily going into actually making and shipping the posters.

This is going to require substantial research and quite a bit of work, first generating the database, then constructing the draft layout and then refining it to a real production quality poster. Not least is the actual cost of printing and distribution. Last night we were reviewing the cost of shipping internationally - we've had some requests. We'll try to do something about that, but that's really expensive.

Then, once the poster is done, that same data will become an initial component of the database for the website. The website will only get significant funding from this Kickstarter campaign if all of the poster costs are satisfied, as a stretch goal. The website should be self-supporting in the long run, but in the short run even though we can set up the basic website and the basic data processing engines ourselves, we will have significant costs.

We are already spending money on web services and evaluating both free and commercial software, and talking with vendors about sponsorships. Much of the advanced linked data and visualization software is open source, but even so the development of the system is a significant labor commitment, and we'll need a cadre of people to run it, as well as to provide help with the vast quantities of data collection and updates. We are evaluating the possibility of using Amazon AWS and other cloud services to support what we hope will be rapid growth in the use of the system.

I, and many others, have thought about this quite a bit. During the period when activities and people in space are still dependent on Earth, Earth politics will be controlling the policies. So for example, it might be that mining on the visible side of the Moon would be restricted.