Especially that new exhaust system.

> If we ever get bulletproof failproof rocket launches

Well if you're just going to wave your fairy wand and create perfect rockets, why not just skip a step and wish the fuel into non-existence?

After all, it's much easier to build bulletproof failproof reactors and bulletproof failproof underground storage, but we don't have those either.

Also, $10,000 a kg does really bad things to your OPEX.

> Of course, much of that delay you mention is the endless lawsuits by the anti-nukes and NIMBY types.

No it's not, the vast majority is due to the long lead times providing ample time for "something to go wrong" and the project goes into hiatus.

Why? Because if the time-to-build crosses an election boundary, the cancellation probability goes non-linear. Not so much a problem where there are no real elections to speak of, like the Philippines during Marcos, but a serious problem for places that do have free elections, like the Philippines after Marcos.

If they took 18 months to built, like a wind farm, we wouldn't have partially completed plants all over the place.

> solving the problem is NOT what most environmentalists really want.

And as long as you keep blaming them for the problem, then the actual problem will never get solved.

> Note: I'm not asking the impossible, climate change luminaries like James Hansen have called for nuclear power to be used

Not impossible, just expensive. As the CAPEX is generally three to four times that of wind, and the lead times are four to five times as long, no one is giving them the money. That's it, end of story. Start here:

http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf

Now turn to page 11. On-shore wind was going in for $1.40 to 1.80/Wp in 2014, it's gone down since publication. Combined with a 30% CF, that gives you an effective CAPEX/Wh of $4.66 to 6. Lazard gives $5.39 to 8.40 for nuclear, although it's gone up since publication (current average is around $9/Wp). Combined with an 85% CF, that's $6.35 to $10/Wh. Which means, all else considered, wind power costs around half that of nuclear.

And that's why no one other than the Chinese, who are handing out billions of dollars of interest-free and risk-free money for infrastructure, is building them. And even their program is on serious hiatus. The money simply isn't there.

The *actual problem* with nuclear is that practically every other option is cheaper and lower risk. It is, straight up, a bad investment. So unless you have a few hundred billion sitting in your bank account to buy one, guess what, you're part of the problem.

"At the same time, sending a rocket into space, through the vast gulf that separates Earth's and Mars' orbit, and then firing thrusters in the opposite direction to slow down, requires a great deal of fuel."

The Hohmann Transfer is, mathematically provably, the *most efficient* way of travelling between any two orbits. It may require a "great deal of fuel", but that's still a great deal less than any other trajectory, which is precisely why we're willing to wait for the launch windows.

As to the rest, aerobraking and aerocapture is clearly more energy efficient. This article is like saying coal is better than wood for heating your home, while failing to mention gas.

Me too. It was certainly funny enough. It was one of the funnier movies I've seen in a while. Excellent pacing too.

Another childless, rich, white male plans to live(practically) forever - STOP THE PRESSES!

Dude, have a kid. It's cheaper, more reliable and far more fun.

> Greatest among them is to safeguard the species from any catestrophic impacts on Earth they would extinguish us

The majority of extinction threats are either man-made or multi-planet. GBRs don't care about the distance between Earth and Mars.

And why is this a "good thing" anyway? What's so special about us? We could set up an ant colony on Mars far more easily, there's forty trillion of them.

"It's certainly not true for places like where I live that are running 6.5-cents/kwh."

Does that include all distribution fees and taxes? Because if it doesn't then your parity rate is likely closer to 10 to 15 cents, which is about the current going rate for large scale PV. Residential it's higher until you remove the price of a roof job. Still not parity, but not far.

> "Ability fix things"

Yes, like...

> How do you source something that didn't happen

What's the link?

> Between 2010 and 2014, the cost-per-bit delivered over the Internet has fallen about 58
> If we assume that curve continues

We don't.

And even if you do, that's a five-fold decrease when bandwidth went up 15 to 20 times.

> Therefore, we can conclude

Stop using it then.

> What I do think is reprehensible is raising the spectre of ads in the fundraising banners

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Spectre. Really.

> 's a shame that your memory is failing so much.

It's a shame you don't actually edit, and just whine about it.

> . I wonder who should be believed?

Maybe the guy with 7500+ articles and an FA that uses his real name that anyone can verify in seconds.

> Let me help you with some facts

RED HERRING ALERT! RED HERRING ALERT!

Watch carefully kids, "thekohser" constructs a totally bogus metric, posts his conclusion as a question because he's gutless, and then uses that "conclusion" to moan about this and that.

> generated about 5 million edits per month

Well anyone reading this who has even the slightest clue about how internet billing is handled, which I assume includes "thekohser", knows that the cost of hosting is based on throughput, not "the number of edits".

So:

1) the number of bytes per article in the English wiki has just under doubled since 2005:

http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesArticlesBytesPerArticle.htm

2) the number of page views has roughly doubled since 2008 (oldest number I have):

http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyCombined.htm

3) binaries have increased five times since 2005:

http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesDatabaseImageLinks.htm

4) the database as a whole has increased over eight times since 2005:

http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesDatabaseSize.htm

5) meanwhile the number of edits has grown only three times since 2005:

http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesDatabaseEdits.htm

If we consider bandwidth to be size times accesses, this implies that the total bandwidth has increased about 15 to 20 times since 2005. Yet the number of edits, which you have divided by, as increased only three times.

So, then, that seems to go a long way to "explain a 30-fold increase in spending per edit", doesn't it?

Don't tell me I'm wrong until you've written your FA and got the admin bit.

> Except the software was already 90% developed back in 2003

Oh BS.

The current software is absolutely nothing whatsoever like it was in 2003.

I say that as someone that joined well before 2003, and have been editing continually since then.