The maximum exhaust velocity of a Space Shuttle engine is approximately 10,000 mph, they are shooting for a velocity much higher than this. Why not use the Slingatron as a direct propulsion device once in space? You could use solar or nuclear to generate the electricity then your fuel could be anything. You can use all your waste as propellant, just fling it away, or cannibalize unneeded (spent) portions of your ship as you go. You could use BB sized objects as the propellant so I imagine this thing could be scaled to a something easily within current launch capabilities.

If this research pans out I doubt GDF-11 is the only factor that can repair damage. While stem cell treatments have not worked well in the past I have to wonder how well this treatment method would work with a clone of yourself. Indeed these lab mice are probably very closely related if not nearly clones. Just to increase the Yuck-Factor here, how about creating therapeutic clones for just this purpose (or any other) by not letting the higher brain develop.

We seem to be having an unprecedented set of advances in extracting hydrocarbon based fuel sources other than conventional oil (and all that implies for the environment).

I support clean energy and would really like to see research expanded into fusion energy. However not a week goes by I don’t see someone preaching doom and gloom about Peak Oil. Even if these methane hydrate deposits don’t pan out (which actually they probably will) Oil Shale deposits have proven reserves of over 1 Trillion Barrels equivalent using current technology (and an insane potential with future advances) and the U.S. has the largest reserves worldwide. This is equivalent to approximately to all the known reserves for conventional oil and we have hardly begun to exploit it. Check out this link on Wikipedia for the numbers : Oil Shale Reserves.

Energy may become (slightly) more expensive in the future, there may temporary shocks from transition periods as we go to new hydrocarbon sources, but in the long run usable energy is there for the extraction in an economically viable fashion. If anything all this PEEK-OIL talk over inflates the value of energy. One has to wonder about agendas here. The only thing PEEK-OIL is doing is selling a lot of books for scare-mongers.

Perhaps we should go slow on utilizing these sources because of the environment, but even so I don’t see why prices are so high when every indicator seems to suggest there are massive new sources at hand. On the other hand if prices where low would we continue our slow march toward efficient use of what we have (LED replacement bulbs for instance and better insulated houses).

In case anyone misses your reference, here is XKCD's dumbed downed explanation for flying a Saturn V

This end should point toward ground if you want to go to space.

If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today.

There might be some small attempts to do this, but it will be so vilified that no developed nation would be able to do it to any great degree. Automated free roving killing machines will be FAR easier in the near future and politically acceptable as well, as you are not dehumanizing/exploiting your own citizens to achieve your goals. Plus I don't care how outlandish your mutant enhancements are short of Wolverine regenerative powers, MACHINES, BULLETS and BOMBS will splatter you just like any other flesh based entity.

The future is automated or remote controlled killing machines -- bank on it.

(dang, my first post was AC)

Likely the car will not self-drive if the sensors are not clear. A whole windshield will not be needed for the sensors, their port/lenses will be small and likely they will largely self-clear of ice and water. The occasional leaf may cause a warning light and instruct you to clear it from the sensor. Redundant sensors will allow safe opperation should some fail while in drive, but will probably demand rider/driver intervention.

I got a PS3 early, but not $600 bleeding edge early. 6 months $450 with 13 free Blu-Rays early.

We use it mostly for watching Blu-Rays in a home theater system. We have not gotten many games for our daughter and have tried to steer her to the more puzzle solving or physically active ones. She has not been much of a gamer, but the Playstation Move works good enough (though expect to do a lot of fiddling every time to get the camera and wands working just right) and they do tend to her favorite games.

It has been a good investment, though mostly we use it for entertaining when we have company. We hadn't been firing it up more than about once a week.

That has all changed for my Daughter, who is age 9 now. She is an avid Harry Potter fan, has read all the books. I bought her the Wonderbook with Harry Potter for here birthday last week and she is addicted. To be honest I was underwhelmed by the Blue-Bar coded Wonderbook when it arrived a week ago, but when used with the Move system this thing finally offers an augmented reality home run of entertainment for kids. PS3 owners shouldn't have to look sheepish when taking to Wii or Kinect users if you have one of these. I always preferred the more accurate Move tracking, but lamented the Party appeal of the Wii and Kinect. The Wonderbook does not solve the Party solution, but it does make a solid rejuvenation of our game system for our daughter.

Someone should make a bar-coded Move dance pad version of DDR (perhaps there is one I'm unaware of) instead of the flaky DDR pads we have tried to use. This would be a more Kinect like experience and potentially more accurate. With bar-coded props Sony could create a new genre of gaming. How-about bar coded steering wheels or space ship controls, fold out cardboard spaceship bridges that morph into Enterprise like helms on-screen? The Wonderbook definitely shows this is possible.

In any event all the next gen systems are coming out next Christmas, milk another year and half from the system you have now and get what ever seems best come the summer of 2014. I'll probably get an Xbox 720 with next gen Kinect then, you know, for parties.

Perhaps more people just wanted to vote for Obama.
I'd hate to think it all comes down to how good your IT team is (even though I'm on one).

Then again, perhaps it is some comfort to the Republican's -- "All we have to do is better IT next time" -- and not bother to change the message.

Except fundamentalists interpret this as: “Instruction, Wisdom and Understanding” as documented in their holy texts alone. No other sources are allowed.

I would hazard a guess that people that are do not easily change their positions in light of new evidence are more subject to this effect than others, a sort of elastic collision of opinion inertia, tricked into a since-that-is-what-I-believed-before-I-will-continue-to-believe-it.

It seems odd to me that there should be such a Luddite tone here on Slashdot, and an egotistic assumption that humans will always be better at these tasks for the foreseeable future. I see several problems with your lane marking example. 1. If lane markings are so bad humans cannot easily discriminate them, then this should be addressed ASAP autonomous vehicles or not. 2. You seem to assume the self driving car will have no other lane confirmation information other than lane markings from some camera with human eye like contrast discrimination when in actuality, having taken the recent Stanford AI course, they will use multiple input sources and cameras to determine proper lane usage including statistical probability based on previous lane markings, the sides of the road, GPS, LIDAR, RADAR, and placement and movement of other nearby vehicle (and of the latter it will place much more avoidance weight). With Google’s quarter of a million miles already autonomously driven I would assume they often navigated areas with less than ideal lane markings (else we would be hear the hilarious situations the Google cars where constantly getting themselves into).

Yes people will balk at first, but this really is a task humans are REALLY bad at. We may be wonderful at discriminating a dog from a cat or recognizing a pizzeria from the pizza shaped sign, but the self driving car will be hugely better at determining that there is an object at of size X at distance X traveling Z miles per hour towards us. It doesn’t need to understand what every object on the road or side of the road is to operate, it won’t be distracted by video billboards or scantily clad persons of the opposite sex – it is just obsessively crunching data on position and moving object hazards all the while confirming the road ahead is true drivable pavement.

This is a hugely complicated problem, but it is well constrained with clear rules. There is nothing new about driving the self driving car needs to figure out each time. Until streets are better designed for autonomous vehicles they may be overly cautious, but I doubt hazardous, and as streets become optimized for self driving vehicles and as the vehicles themselves improve, they will be able to tear around at incredible speeds safely – if we decided we wanted to let them off the leash so to speak.

Wow, sucks to be you I guess or rather those of us who would like to have our experiences more immersive and realistic should shut up an never change things. You probably would much rather enjoy the Keystone Cops at 12fps as well. As far as all this crap about 120hz and 240hz framerates looking sooooo bad, this is almost always because there is an algorithm trying interpolate 24fps or 30fps to something higher. The early days of HDTV were especially excruciating when trying to take 480i content to 720p or 180p. If the framerate were high to start with (and no interleaving) there would be no issue. Most (all?) sets with upconverting to 120 or 240 can have it turned off. Please do so and quit whining.

With higher framerates producers could use faster pans which totally suck at 24fps. 3D will also look much better. When scenes are in motion in 3D the lower framerate causes the target image to be different for each eye and the 3D effect breaks down -- sometimes painfully so, this maybe at least one reason so many complain that 3D causes headaches.

Thousands of Exo-planets discovered. Viking’s life detection experiments are being reconsidered. Life has been found to have started very early in Earth’s evolution. Various Extremophiles discovered. For the last twenty years the evidence keeps tipping in favor of extraterrestrial life being more and more likely. That we haven’t yet discovered said life says more about our commitment to doing so than its likely-hood.

Sadly this article will be linked to a thousand times by the ID crowd shouting we need to stop wasting all this money looking for ET and realize how special and God chosen we are.

I’d also add Bayesian analysis sucks when it comes to these all or nothing analysis with such a small sample size. Bayesian analysis can be used to say we have approximately 50-100 years of civilization left. HOWEVER the same analysis 200 years ago would have given roughly the same result. These kinds of statistics mean nothing until you have a large data set that is properly categorized. We don’t even know for certainty our next nearest planetary neighbor is lifeless. Finding life on Mars would sudden explode Bayesian stats to near certainty that life is everywhere.

I do not own a 3D TV (yet), but I have a few strong opinions about 3D.

At sometime in the future I anticipate getting 3D. That said most 3D to date has been bad or unneeded. I could go on for some time about bad 3D, but even good 3D is still deficient at its current frame rate ESPECIALLY with LCD shutter glasses. If you watch fast motion scenes like those in sports with LCD glasses you see the most annoying stutter artifact from both eyes not seeing that same object at the same position in space at the same time. In low motion shots this is less annoying, but even with polarized glasses and seeing two images at the same time 3D seems to exaggerate stuttering. I have heard that the Avatar sequel will use 48 or 60fps 3D. Perhaps we will finally see true 3D nirvana when it arrives (plot not withstanding).

Even without 3D I would love to see frame rates pumped up. Despite what I hear over and over again about a “Movie Feel” at 24fps, I want as close to reality as possible for optimal suspension of disbelief. One fine note about 24fps and the “Movie Feel” there are lots of panning effects movie producers would probably use to enhance movies if the stutter from rapid panning at 24fps didn’t look so God awful.