Ok, the U.S. (through the NSA) has been revealed (through Snowden) to be able to:
1) record and retain EVERY phone call made in an ENTIRE country (actually two, the Bahamas and Afghanistan I think)
2) hack into the e-mail of at least some world leaders (for example: Germany, not exactly weak in the technology department)
3) subvert (and exploit?) the standards for some of the world's most widely used security protocols
4) hack into the networks of Huawei to view source code (and change it?), one of the largest vendors of routers and other critical network gear
5) collect and retain for later data mining, the text and metadata for hundreds of MILLIONS (billions?) of people for YEARS
6) record conversations, videos and other intel through devices even when they appear to be OFF
7) has planted HARDWARE back doors in the equipment used worldwide for computing and communications
and on and on...

So why can't they tell China to STOP HACKING our networks for business advantage or ELSE
1) release the e-mails and other documents showing the favors given to the families of the top Chinese officials
2) publish the electronic money trail where the HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars worth of bribes have gone (at that scale you don't use scraps of paper)
- this includes MONEY and other assets like property illegally squirreled ABROAD, which may be an offense (under Chinese law) punishable by DEATH
3) publish information regarding kept mistresses of the marriage officials of the elite, their names, dates of assignation, children born out of wedlock, assets
- throw in pictures (videos?) and every tabloid would have a field day
4) detail the political "assassinations" (sometimes literal!) and other dirty deals the elite have done to get into and remain in power

It appears that as a byproduct of their goal(?) of ferreting out security threats to the U.S. (or just plain building their capabilities) the NSA has a treasure trove of information that could topple MANY corrupt, authoritarian governments. Of course the U.S. is not immune to corruption but (I read) the (illegal) corruption in the U.S. is measured in the millions not billions of dollars. That's to be distinguished from the legal forms of corruption, lobbying, that plagues the U.S. :(

The NSA, starting from WWII, has had many decades (and a budget in the tens of billions A YEAR) to build up their technological supremacy (as well as being the single largest employer of mathematicians on the planet. Think of what THAT means). That is not an insignificant amount of money, it DWARFS most countries entire defense budgets! Also remember that the U.S. (and to a lessor extent Britain) are the CREATOR of the Internet as well as the modern computer; remember that Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Cisco, Intel, IBM, AMD, ARM, Nvidia are all Anglo-American companies. Think of all the "backdoor" connections that have been made over the past half-century at informal (high school/college buddies), formal (legal demands for information) and top secret levels (matter of national security or else go to prison). It's at the point where, to a foreign government, every CPU made or designed in America (basically all of them) and every packet (sent from America) must be suspect.

So the Chinese have MUCH much more to fear from the U.S. If they don't want a "digital Pearl Harbor" they would be wise to play by (America's) rules.

You may very well be right, I mean I saw this article when I was just a kid which puts it way way back (cuban missile crisis anyone? :) There was no laser ring gyroscopes back then (I remember when they were invented), there was barely electricity! (just kidding).

And how does one keep a superfluid liquid in a sealed container (let alone one that is in a hopefully low maintenance solid fueled rocket in a nuclear missile submarine that is then subjected to the forces of an undersea launch and boost phase)? My skepticism meter wasn't nearly as sensitive back then but now I wonder. Can a superfluid liquid even STAY in a sealed container for long if it wants to get out? (I remember that superfluid liquid helium can climb the walls of its vessel as well as squeeze through microscopic pores).

Oh well, the picture was cool looking, like something out of "Akira".

He's right! I'm sorry, I don't know which is wrong, if the isotope of Helium that is used for superfluidity is Helium 3 or something or if it is not so scarce.

My bad.

A long time ago I saw something that (according to the caption on the photo) was an inertial guidance unit for SLBMs. It was an instrumented(?) sphere that floated in liquid helium 4 which, at that temperature, was a superfluid (which I guess is a kind of quantum effect). This was to compensate for the motion of the submarine AND the flight of the SLBM because in a nuclear war I guess you can't count on any external sensors like a star tracker working. Since this sphere was suspended in a frictionless fluid presumably any frictional losses would be zero (and I guess very precise accelerometers could do the rest).

Now that I think of it, this might have been B.S. (how does one keep liquid helium 4 a liquid in a device, a solid fueled rocket, that you don't want to have to keep constantly maintained?). Still, "maybe" it actually worked, in which case why don't they just use this system in the sub? Are the running out of helium-4? (I think it's a rare isotope of a scarce gas).

That's what I meant in my original post by having a (very) corrugated sphere. But maybe a "prickly pear" or "cactus" or "sea urchin" shape would be better.

Anyway, the diffraction questions are way beyond my (non-existent) knowledge of optics. Anyone care to chime in? How about using a coating of the new "magic" meta-materials? (Not that I have any idea of that could solve anything).

Just trying to think outside the box.

What I mean is, instead of a shade that looks like a "flower" with "petals" can they make something that looks more like a (very) corrugated sphere?

That way if the spacecraft maneuvers to a new position relative to it, it won't have have to rotate (making it much less complex with no active mechanisms required). Also, multiple telescopes could simultaneously use it from different angles.

It could be a simple inflating balloon (perhaps with a fast setting foam) or something more complex like a "hoberman sphere"(?).

If they put it in geo- sync orbit and made it the appropriate size could multiple ground telescopes use it? With good adaptive optics of course, perhaps firing a laser at it (using it as a reference target) at a different wavelength of course for atmospheric aberration correction.

... that they got from another study: http://www.grg.org/SMelov.htm

but at least these mice weren't genetically engineered to only live a week to begin with so this result may have a (lot) more relevance.

Fortunately despite the worries of the (first!) poster, hopefully we won't descend into a civilization where the old literally becomes a vampiritic parasite on the young. They've already identified, isolated and synthetically produced (the?) protein which causes this effect so we'll be able to get the benefits without bloodletting. Still makes (made?) a great premise for science fiction/vampire movies.

As an aside, I'm impressed by how Harvard, a decade or two ago, seemed to make the decision not to go into (what I thought) was the trendy/hot science of genetic engineering but instead has invested hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into becoming the(?) center for stem cell research. Meanwhile, genetic engineering seemed to have been sidetracked by "junk DNA" and epigenetics and in general the overwhelming complexity of the human genome (although the invention of CRISPR is a major major advance). Was it obvious to biologists that this was the right decision? Go Crimson!

I'm not British so I don't know the correct way to spell that cheer.

Still, I just want to say, good article or bad (according to Ecuador 740021), it opened up my eyes to a remarkable individual. Especially illuminating was the photographs of the Andromeda Galaxy which shows how much his techniques improved astronomy.

Enough with the jokes. I wish to praise him, not pun-ish him. (no, really). Maybe in his case instead of "Here, here!" we should say "See, see!".

I'm afraid that even if Space X comes to the rescue and gives us a 2-order magnitude (factor of 100) reduction in launch costs it still doesn't make economic sense. As other posters have mentioned, why not just put it on earth? The relative lack of efficiency is more than made up for by not having to pay $$$ per kg to get it into geo-sync orbit. (However a great many cool, exciting and useful things like semi-affordable trips to space for the semi-rich and really good planetary exploration will become possible with a 2-order magnitude reduction in launch costs so let's hope that Space X can give us fully reusable launch systems!).

No, the only way this makes economic sense is if we have a space elevator (or cheap, lightweight nuclear fusion engines*, or anti-gravity, or giant swans pulling us in winged chariots to the heavens). Now there may be other applications (military? propulsion system for interstellar vehicles?) for having a large power station in geo-sync orbit but many of them don't make sense either (a simple bucket of sand at orbital velocities could do major damage to it).

*but if we have nuclear fusion, why would we need solar?

Since he had to go to some length describing the troubles he had because the low pressure formed bubbles due to cavitation, etc. (remember he could not perform this at zero atmospheric pressure because the water would boil), why use water?

Why not use a liquid that will not boil in a vacuum, like (I think) mercury? That would very easily prove that atmospheric pressure is not required to make a siphon work (because there's no atmosphere!).

Take a flexible tube and dunk it in a bucket filled with mercury letting it fill up. Now, sealing the ends, keep one end in the bucket while lowering the other end to another bucket positioned substantially below the first. Pump all the air out of the chamber and unseal the ends. If the siphon works, it is definitely solely due to gravity (remember there's no air!).

Actually, not knowing what the intermolecular bonds are like between mercury molecules, will the siphon still work? If mercury molecules have little or no attraction between them (unlike water which has very strong intermolecular bonds as seen with its high surface tension and high boiling point), perhaps it would behave like discrete particles and there would not be any siphon effect. For example, imagine the bucket and tube to be filled with sand. Would there be a siphon effect? I don't think so because the grains of sand wouldn't "pull" on each other so the sand in the tube would just run out in both directions from the high point in the tube.

Another way to think of the intermolecular bonds is to think of a coiled chain which is held aloft. If a part of it is pulled over a pulley and a substantial length is allowed to dangle down the other side, the rest will be pulled up to the pulley and then down. Of course if all the links in the chain are broken (no intermolecular bonds) then the chain will simply fall away from the pulley on both sides.

The landing of the first stage in the Atlantic (a process that required decelerating it and bringing it to a hover just above the surface of the ocean before letting it fall in), is part of the resupply mission to the ISS. That is, once the first stage boosted its cargo towards the ISS, it then performed this test.

Too bad that they didn't try to return the first stage to land and then try to land it there but I understand their desire to do things one step at a time (it's safer this way also). I'm curious to know if this first stage had landing gear attached (maybe not because of the additional weight, drag). Also, in the future when they DO try to land it on land, where will they be aiming? If the flight profile of the first stage is mostly vertical then, without much fuel I guess they could return to Florida, otherwise would they be going for a Caribbean island? The Azores or Canary Islands? Africa? I'm sure they've got this figured out, I'm just curious.

Anyway, if they manage to recover the first stage by soft landing it without dunking it in salt water, it could REALLY drop the costs of space flight, even if they don't manage to reuse the 2nd stage (which they plan to do also). I remember reading that of the $20 million cost of a launch only about $500,000 was due to fuel, so this is a complete game changer. Even if the stage can only be reused a few times it'll make access to low earth orbit (the expensive part of space travel) much cheaper!

I only hope and pray that it works reliably and that the weight penalty is not too great! I thought they would have to use a lot more fuel to slow down and turn around but I guess they're using air resistance for the braking and the (now almost empty) booster is very light. Pretty unbelievable when you see a 10 story tall rocket turn around and land on a pillar of fire.

The article (and video) doesn't make clear how large the "heads up display" is but considering that they say it is along the lower portion of the windshield that implies it must be pretty big (to cover the area of the "hood").

The range rover isn't a military aircraft where the H.U.D. is going to be relatively near the pilot's face and directly in front of the pilot. For the range rover it wouldn't be safe or convenient to hang a piece of glass so near an ordinary automobile driver. The H.U.D.'s purpose in this case is to "mask" or overlay the hood which subtends a large part of the driver's viewing angle. Since it is placed far away (at the lower part of the windshield) it must be large. Hence it will also occupy a large portion of the (front seat) passenger's viewpoint and thus will project a distorted view unless corrected as I described above.

Well this will work (well?) for one point of view, the driver presumably. The passenger will see a distorted view unless they use some sort of system that can show two different images for two (or more) different viewpoints. They could use the "micro louvers" screen filters (patented by 3M I think) or some more sophisticated system that are used on some large screen LCD TVs that provide multiple points of view (or 3D images) without glasses. It's the same problem basically.

Why stop with just the hood? Why not make the door panels, the dash, even the roof and supports transparent? This would require displays that can be placed on curved surfaces but with OLEDs that is hardly a show-stopper. The big advantage to this, as opposed to most applications, is that the position of the driver (and passenger's) head and eyes are pretty well defined so the system wouldn't have to be calibrated to work with a lot of extreme cases (say with the driver's head down around the feet).

I think it might be one of Orson Scott Card's books, either "Capitol" or something related to his "Worthing" saga. I did a (very) quick google search and found this review:

"enjoyed this series of short stories dealing with Capitol, and the drug Somec, which is given only to Capitol's elites, and allows them to extend their normal life spans over hundreds of years by sleeping a good part of the time. How Somec was developed, how Capitol was constructed, the used and abuses of the immortality drug in a strange society, are described in these interconnecting glimpses into fascinating characters. "The Worthing Saga" is the novel connected to these ideas, but I preferred the format of this book, rather than the drawn out plot of the novel. "

The real(?) key to long-term suspended animation (months, years) would probably involve cooling the body to sub-freezing temperatures.

At that point, you need something to keep the ice-crystals from rupturing cells. In certain antarctic fish they have glycoproteins that do this (I think other hibernating animals use glycol or glycogen).

Until we get nuclear fusion(?) it's clear that spaceflight even just within our solar system is going to require some pretty lengthy journeys. On the other hand, if safe long-term suspended animation is attained, there might be a whole bunch of "future" travelers who might decide to jump (one way of course) years, decades, centuries into the future.

I think there was a science fiction book which talked about the (disastrous) effects such a technology had on society.