I'm not outright against some manned missions, I just don't think they should be our top priority and shouldn't crowd out robotic exploration of new places. A manned "space race" is unlikely to get us much relative to other options.

In addition to the robotic missions I mentioned, powerful telescopes that can detect and do spectrographic analysis of planets of other star systems would be far better science than more manned missions to local rocks. We could detect another Earth with clear-cut life signs, for example. That would be a bigger discovery than simple microbes on Mars (which robotic sample return missions can perform).

There would be no Saturn V, no Falcon HR etc.

They are cool in the "wow, big!" sense, but maybe we don't really need them right now.

Nothing, because those patents don't get patent term adjustment. And while, yes, there are still a few patent applications floating around from that era, that law was changed 20 years ago. It's already been taken care of for everything since then, and since you can't apply it retroactively, there's nothing more that can be done.

which is unlikely to be touched by a human being ever again

Something slashdot readers can relate to

It's not a flaw, it's a feature.

Some of them are good and some are bad, in my opinion. It's just that the reactions are inconsistent. And to be fair, the opposite pattern is probably true when the other party is in power, I just haven't noticed it as much.

Capacitors store energy, they don't dissipate it. Likewise with inductors.

Transmission lines represent both capacitive and inductive loads simultaneously. The capacitance, inductance, resistance of the transmission line together combine to form the characteristic impedance of the line. (Ok, there's one additional term: the conductance of the dielectric between the conductors. But, for high voltage transmission lines that are widely separated, this term is effectively 0.)

The characteristic impedance of a transmission line is of primary importance for determining the ideal load impedance for the line. In an impedance matched system, the maximum power will be transmitted to the load with no reflections.

Reflections can cause a phase shift between voltage and current, making a transmission line effectively look reactive or inductive. (See surge impedance loading.) This can be corrected for in the same ways as reactive or inductive loads by adding capacitance or inductance elsewhere.

If the load itself is reactive or inductive then you can get reactive power transfer. Reactive vs. inductive is in some sense a matter of sign; in one, current leads voltage, in the other current lags voltage. In both cases, current is out of phase with voltage and that's the problem to be solved.

Reactive power doesn't transmit any actual power to the load, but it still sends current through the system. Current is subject to ohmic losses (thanks to our friend I*I*R). Sending current without delivering real power subjects you to losses without any benefits.

In general, the capacitance of the transmission line itself isn't the culprit on its own. Rather, if you have a reactive load (either capacitive or inductive), or you have imperfect impedance matching between the load and the transmission line, you can get current flowing through your wires that isn't driving a load. That excess current incurs plain ol' resistive losses.

There is one way high capacitance can cause real problems for transmission line management, though. The rate of propagation of waves through a conductor slows in proportion to the square root of the product of the inductance and the capacitance. So, for a highly capacitive line, reflections move slowly through the system, and it becomes more difficult to compensate for transients. That seems to be the real bugbear for buried high-capacitance lines. Again, you're not losing to the capacitance directly, but rather to the knock on effects that lead to poorly compensated reflections and reactive power transfer in the system.

(Dr. Jetton, if you're reading this... EE305 may have been 20 years ago for me, but I haven't completely forgotten it. And Dr. Schertz... I didn't completely forget my T-line theory either. I wouldn't be surprised if either of you would point out flaws in my summary above.)

It's odd how it seems to politically matter who does something more than what is being done. Examples:

"GOOD" (or neutral) WHEN BUSH DID IT:

Corporate welfare
NSA
TSA
DHS
deficits
stimulus
bombing
medicare part D
golfing
hugging Saudi oilers
saluting with things in hand
feet on desk
subsidized cell-phones

"BAD" WHEN OBAMA DID IT:

Corporate welfare
NSA
TSA
DHS
deficits
stimulus
bombing
medicare part D
golfing
hugging Saudi oilers
saluting with things in hand
feet on desk
subsidized cell-phones

You'd think NOT GETTING ANTHRAX would be an effective incentive for your lab monkeys to follow the lab's safety protocols. Is it really THAT depressing a workplace environment?
"Hey Bob! Looks like we need to ship some anthrax to Korea."
"Ok! Did you make sure it wouldn't kill us before we start handling the samples."
"Does it really matter?"
"... No... I guess not..."

I used 5v as an example as the linked article spoke specifically of running 5V and 12V everywhere. I agree that you really want a higher voltage for distribution. 48V goes a long way, although it still requires quite a lot more copper than 110V or 240V for the same power carrying capacity. (About 5x if I did my math correctly.)

Now, if those in-wall adaptors could store some charge locally (small capacitor bank), and you didn't have to wire for peak current, only sustained current, maybe you could get away with smaller wiring that way. I'm skeptical.

motors are not typically shielded much at all.

Typically? Somebody with enough resources could add shielding with high-end light materials. Catching nuts with deep pockets or lots of time may be a much bigger problem than catching off-the-shelf attempts.

What about a combination of image detection and echo-location? Image recognition and/or regular sound detection would identify candidate objects, and narrowly-focused echo location would then scrutinize the candidates further.

And so what if you take out a few birds accidentally? Just place a KFC nearby to handle such. They'll enjoy the free raw materials.

So the secret really is going to plaid.

That's indeed a plausible explanation for the apparent coincidence. Our view of the "recent" universe is essentially limited by the speed of light to a pretty small chunk of the entire universe. It's almost like being stuck with a cable service that plays mostly old reruns.

+1 Funny, I gotta admit.

there are also multitude of valuable scientific experiments that are done on ISS

The science-per-dollar in such ISS experiments has been very poor, considering the total cost of ISS and life-support and maintenance. 100 billion US dollars can buy a hell of a lot of R&D otherwise.

all the Moon missions brought back precious information about its geology. If we could make a self-sufficient base on the Moon and even send a single geologist there they will bring more data then all probes that we sent there to date.

I'm skeptical of that claim. One generally does not know what one is looking at until it's taken back to a lab. And robotic sniffers can do more preliminary analysis than an on-site human geologist per dollar. Robots (multi-spectral cameras) can "see more colors" in a sense. Human eyesight is limited. And we'd have more rocks/soil from more sites if we had sent robots under the same costs.