Indeed.

"Heartwarming kitten found murdered -- Film at 11"

It just might have had something to do with being involved in a high speed chase, smashing into several other vehicles and then finally hitting a large metal pole sideways.

While some popular US vehicles might be able to drive away from that kind of collision, it seems that the Tesla model S isn't in the same league as far as survivability goes.

Just like /. posters are world famous for being able to remain on topic.

If by "some blogger" you mean "Kent Police Assistant Chief Constable Allyn Thomas" and by "wrote something" you mean "issued an official statement, which was reprinted in full at the bottom of the article", then yes, that is what happened. The rest of your claim doesn't seem to follow from that.

This is England. Being taller than a police officer is a crime there.

I don't see why not.

But on the other hand, it's a new and convenient place to keep pr0n.

How much is that in Volkswagens? And how fast is it travelling relative to imperial standard sheep? Can you measure the kinetic energy in terms of double-decker busses?

You need to meet more people with doctorates.

Many of them are actual people with senses of whimsy and humour. It's not like they joined some sort of academic cult and were turned into mindless zombies.

Not that that doesn't happen, but it's not part of the PhD process. Many people are able to survive academic life and still think that thagomizer is a perfectly fine name for the spikes on the end of a Stegosaurus's tail.

When I grow up, I'm going to Bovine University!

Do you have a hypobaric chamber large enough to test a helicopter in flight? Even if you use a quarter scale model, you need a pretty large chamber. Furthermore a scale model doesn't behave the same as a full size unit.

The problem is that you were interviewing him for a job working with "Clipper", which he had almost no experience in.

If you had asked about adjusting the settings on his "#3 Clipper", which allowed him to produce anything from centimetre long shag to a 1 mm buzz cut, then you would have been amazed at how much he knew.

I noticed that the guy who wrote their slideshow code wasn't on the list.

To properly test a prototype, you would need to fly a prototype helicopter (probably with very large rotor and very powerful turbine) to 33,000 meters altitude on Earth to test equivalent atmospheric pressures. The current altitude record for helicopters is only 12,442 meters.

There's another major problem posed by Mars. 96% of the atmosphere is comprised of CO2 and there is only trace amounts of oxygen. That means not only would you have to carry fuel, but you would need to carry your own oxidizer as well which adds a lot of weight.