Most of the other clean tax subsidies are given to the clients (e.g. SolarCity, Tesla) not to Musk's companies directly.

On the contrary - SolarCity retains the tax breaks and the subsidies. They even counsel against the "buy it outright" option because "you'll need an accountant specializing in energy credits and taxes". (Read "our business model is based on being an unregulated utility and utterly depends on monthly cashflow from leases".)

They forgot the benefit that it gets us out of the Middle East. That sandtrap is a massive waste of resources that I hate is being subsidized.

If only the Middle East were our main source of oil... it isn't.* And even with the shift to electric vehicles and solar power, petrochemicals are still vitally important industrial feedstocks, and thus a stable Middle East is still of prime economic interest to the West.

A police bullpen or typing pool may be fine in a big open area. The same goes for sales and marketing types. However, if you're talking about any work which requires stretches of concentrated effort then it's just a Bad Idea. Engineers? No. Programmers? No. Accountants? No. Any kind of researcher? No.

Have you ever seen a picture of an engineering/drafting office from say... anywhere between the late 1800's and the mid/late 1980's (when draftsmen started to be replaced by computers and the size of said offices began to shrink dramatically)? Big ass open plan offices - sometimes thousands of square feet of big ass open plan offices. The same goes for accounting departments. One of Frank Lloyd Wright's most celebrated designs (from 1936) had a big ass open plan office as it's centerpiece.
 
We went to the bloody moon in vehicles designed in big ass open plan offices.
 
Somewhere in my book collection, I have a book intended for professional engineers and engineering managers from the 1950's... which devotes three whole chapters to the knotty problem of laying out (invariably open plan) engineering offices and drafting rooms - mapping a 3d object onto a 2d arrangement of desks and drafting tables.
 

This is the only real reason they're pushing this model. It's a clear terminus of the erosion that's led us from offices, to cubicles, to the little half walls, to just acres of desks.

I don't know where this idea came from that "everyone had a private office until Evil Management latched onto the open plan" comes from, but it's complete bull. Private offices have long been the exception, proof that one was senior enough to rate one and to have Made It, not the rule.

Citation please?

An informed expert opinion based on thirty years of studying the Apollo program. (Actual studying, not just reading pop histories or getting my urban legends from other equally ignorant people on the 'net.)
 

Hmm, let's see. The Soviet programs were cancelled in '72 according to you (actually that's not quite right but it's close enough). When was the last mission to the Moon? Oh that's right, December 1972. Quite a coincidence that...

Pretty much, yeah it's a coincidence. Either way, your original claim as to the order and connection of events is incorrect.

We went to the moon because we were in a (cold) war with the Soviet Union at the time.

We started to the moon because JFK needed a spectacular - but once the cost estimates started coming in, he started seriously considering backing off. We went to the moon because JFK took a bullet to the head allowing LBJ to push it (and the associated pork) as a monument to JFK.
 

Once the Soviets cancelled their moon missions, so did we

Apollo was essentially cancelled in the budget battles of '65-'67. The Soviets didn't get serious about their lunar programs until around '66-'67. (And most of them weren't cancelled until '72 or so.)

As great as Apollo was for tangible technology spin offs

Other than NASA press releases and articles written based on them - I have yet to see any actual evidence this is true.

Hence the walled garden and "ecosystem" approach by apple. There are many people that don't want to figure out which phone/tablet/laptop is good and bad. They know if they buy an Apple product it will be good. They don't sell junk. Sure it's overpriced if you compare specs to Android phone/tablet or Windows laptop but you also don't need to do hours of research to see if the product you are looking to get sucks.

This. It's not about being l33t or a hipster or any of the other patronizing bull so often tossed about here on Slashdot.

I bought my first iPhone because (at the time) the app that finally caused me to pull the trigger and move up to a smart phone was only available on the iPhone. I've replaced it every two years since (buying one version back on sale when the new version comes out) and plan on continuing to do so for the forseeable future. Why? Because it Just Bloody Works. I come home, plug my new phone into my (Windows) computer, open iTunes, and with a few clicks my new phone is identical to my old phone. In, out, and done.

My experience in buying my Android tablet just confirmed that this was the way to keep going. Didn't want an iPad, because they were too expensive for modest needs... and trawling through dozens of models and hundreds of reviews trying to discern the truth ended up being a massive PITA.

And if you find one from a rover rolling on the surface, it obviously does not need considerable earth moving equipment to gain access.

The mind boggles that anyone with an IQ over room temperature can make such a statement. Have you ever actually been out of your parent's basement and looked at geological formations in the real world?
 

And the low gravity on Mars means structural strength is most likely a non-issue, since lava tubes are already plenty strong on earth.

Yeah - that would be why one of the main methods of locating lava tubes in aerial or orbital photography (on the Earth, Moon, and Mars) is to look for collapsed tubes and collapsed segments (called "skylights").

Presuming there are lava tubes in useful locations... and that they're sufficiently structurally sound... and that you don't need to do considerable earth moving or construction to gain and maintain useful access... Etc... etc...

Lava tubes make for a great buzzword, but there's still many complicated practical considerations.

There's still a big killer lurking out in space that can't be easily avoided: radiation.

Except underground, which is the obvious solution but people are too fixated on making housing above the ground.

Except, like most obvious solutions - moving underground poses as many (if not more) problems as it purports to solve. For example, adding many tons of earth moving machinery to a manifest already bulging at the seams. (Machinery which will add to the maintenance burden as well.) This solution also limits the location of your colony/base to places where the Martian soil can be (at least relatively) easily worked. (If such places exist.) The there's the question of chemical reactions between the soil and the structures. (The chemistry of Martian soil being... well, it's being extremely charitable to call it extraordinarily poorly understood.) Etc... etc...

"science" kits where you make kitchen goo instead of actual chemical reactions is lame and boring

Someone who doesn't grasp that making kitchen goo involves chemical reactions, or deliberately ignores it in order to fuel their rant... shouldn't be judging state level science fairs, or taking teachers to task for not understanding science.

Maybe science went off the rails when we replaced the scientific method with scientific consensus?

That presumes some golden era of Pure Science when no scientist ever had an ego, or an agenda, or a patron that had to be appeased, or any other motive to play fast and loose with the truth ever existed.

It didn't.

This news is about as surprising as the Sun rising in the morning. As I, and others, have explained multiple times across the years - the average person isn't the tinfoil hat privacy nutter that so many here on Slashdot are.

That's quite the difference, and something you entirely failed to mention.

I didn't mention it because it's a difference without a distinction - whether you press a key and the command is saved to a file for later replay, or immediately processed and sent to the "instrument", it's all the same. It's something that's been done many, many times before.

No doubt inspired by this guy, or any number of others like him who've been doing this for several year now.

Though admittedly without the buzzword worthy but otherwise pointless 3D printed plastic brackets.