This presumes that people regularly leave the tower, or at least the upper floors of the tower. Science fiction has plengy of examples where Elvis may never leave the building. Probably not workable in today's society, but what if everything needed for daily life could be reached within a few floors.

Think in terms of the arcologies in "Oath of Fealty".

Sorry, but it's a bit early for that. Search for "Patricia Vasquez" and you find two of any prominence, an acress and someone who mediates natural resource problems. Add "mathematics" to the search and the top hit is utterly irrelevant - some dude named Greg Bear.

We took the family to DC for a vacation, and of course one of the things I had to see was Smithsonian Air and Space. I didn't know that the original Enterprise model was there, and was surprised to see it on the lower floor.

The next surprise was that the model was never finished. One side had all of the lights, striping, and everything. The other side had a little striping, and was otherwise pretty much blank. I remembered reading that in one of those books, and how all shots were of the finished side, or mirrored in post-processing.

Well, being from Harvard also, I disagree.

I am willing to bet that the average analytical skill and critical thinking ability of a Harvard freshman would far exceed that of most Slashdotters.

I thought I also read something about kerosene leaving some sort of residue in the plumbing, turbopumps, etc. For a disposable it just doesn't matter, but for a reusable it means extra maintenance. The other thing was Zubrin suggesting that methane/oxygen was relatively easy to generate on Mars, for a return flight. Since Musk probably isn't planning on returning, that would be for a Mars space program.

Since you sound familiar with this stuff, I'm wondering about Falcon Heavy. I've seen that it's moving to methane/oxygen propellents. My understanding has been that kerosene/oxygen were generally best for a first stage, and hydrogen/oxygen is best for an upper stage where specific impulse is more important than tank size.

With methan/oxygen it seems obvious that they'd like to run the engine on mars-native fuel. But I also get the impression that kerosene/oxygen might not be the best thing for reusability because it gums up the works, and methane/oxygen would be better.

So I see three factor here - Earth launch, reuse, and Mars launch. Do you have any feel for this tradeoff set?

I must have skimmed TFA too fast. So this appears to be for the capsule, not the launcher? I thought there was a launcher competition going too, and that was going to be bigger than Atlas 5 or Delta IV.

"Safe" and "Exciting" have a different meaning in this context. Realize that Falcon 9 has already flown several times, and though plagued with the delays that plague pretty much all launches, has a good track record which will presumably continue through its use in a manned launch. The "Exciting" choice sounds about as "Safe" as it gets in rocketry, to me.

The Boeing design is new, though presumably using tried and true components from a tried and true design. There will no doubt be unmanned test launches, but the first men on top will still be sitting on a rocket with far less launch history than the Falcon 9. The "Safe" choice sounds just a bit more "Exciting" this way.

Disclaimer - TFA doesn't say if this is for Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy. Falcon Heavy is all-new, with only the company track record behind it. That puts SpaceX and Boeing on a more even footing, with Boeing having a longer track record and SpaceX having done more launches recently.

OTOH, I seriously doubt that the head of Boeing plans on going through a Boeing launch personally. The head of SpaceX does.

Seriously... If we really want to foster a private space industry, both companies need to be kept moving forward. At this stage of the game, the contract needs to be split in order to improve the viability of both efforts. Cutthroat cost competition can happen later.

Of course, but that's "sunk cost" in a manner of speaking, available under no better terms to SpaceX than to any other US-based company.

However given that basis, typical contract projects are then paid for by the government, on top of "historical knowledge." SpaceX used the historical knowledge, as others do, but then paid for their additional development themselves.

If you're just going by features, then there have been many other products out there that have been much better than the Apple counterpart.

From the iPod to Macs, Apple rarely tries to win on features and specs. Their products are often good enough, but not great.

SpaceX did the development themselves, from what I understand. They're now doing fixed-cost government contracts, unlike the rest of the space industry in the U.S.

My beef is with the way it seems that most US companies are there to make money, and see their products as a way to do so. I'd rather see them be there to build their products, and see money as a way to keep making those products.

For the car analogy, assuming support for both ways would properly continue, would you rather by a car built by a car geek, or buy a car built by a money geek?

Wow, this is really fascinating!

One set of systemd advocates suggests that the Unix Way is obsolete, holding Linux back, and is overdue to be discarded.

Now another systemd advocate suggests that systemd is fulfilling the Unix Way better than SysV Init.

I will say now, as I said months ago, that systemd would be much less controversial if it had been packaged differently. I'm not the only one making that statement, and yet for all of its claimed modularity at compile time, systemd is still one package.