Said who? It costs the same as a BMW 535i, yet only goes 265 miles. That's *not* revolutionary.

Call me back when he's got a $25K minivan that can go 300 miles at 80MPH while carrying 4 people and a whole lot of stuff. That will be revolutionary! Maybe my teenagers will be able to buy such a vehicle. But I doubt it.

Using an engine designed by someone else using taxpayer money is IN NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM revolutionary.

It's great engineering and no-nonsense construction from a company that hasn't (yet) become bloated by sucking on the DoD & NASA teats, but that is *no* revolutionary.

For it to be revolutionary, they'd have to come up with something *really* game changing, like... a fuel better than LH2/LOX which doesn't corrode everything it gets near, or spray radioactive death half-way across the countryside.

Practical, reusable rocket engines (where you don't have to strip down and rebuild the engine every time like they did with the SSME are stupendously important, and I hope SpaceX can get that working.

However, and sadly, getting a booster to land on a floating platform is "mere" engineering: throw enough time, money, sensors, accelerometers, actuators, etc -- IOW, stuff that we already have and know how to use -- that's not revolutionary.

A *real* revolution would be to find

So, while Musk is doing some important work

The air on the outside is still going to *aggressively* want to rush in through any little crack.

Let me see if I've got this straight: we can't build regular maglev trains because they're super-expensive (the engineering, construction and maintenance would be incredibly difficult), so... we'll just make it that much harder by wrapping a (partial) vacuum tube around it???

You've got to understand that as much as Europe loves it's trains, there's a reason why high-speed trains aren't draped across the continent: the tracks have to be *perfect*, and they're always stopping and starting; even the express trains don't get up to full "steam" for very long stretches.

There's a reason that autobahns/Interstates are such a great idea: they combine all the benefits of an express train, with the flexibility of a two lane road (if you're near one, there's an on-ramp close by). And when you get "there", you still have your car to drive around in.

So, no. If maglev was a good idea, it would have already been built.

I've been around long enough to know when an idea is a crock of shit.

Wow, you have drunk the Kool Aid!!

What's the purpose of developing a technology which we *know* is WILDLY impractical beyond the Pneumatic Tube Transport developed for local delivery of small items. See the Wikipedia entry on "Pneumatic tube".

Too bad there's not much flat ground where it would do some good.

How tiny of a fraction will be equivalent to the great works of art, and how many 100s of billions of years will be needed for all of the Great Works to be represented on a CCD that will degrade in less than a decade?

Go re-read my post. Companies like Boeing or Airbus won't develop super-expensive planes unless carriers will buy a *lot* of planes.

Sadly, there aren't enough of the 1% who need/want to fly across the oceans on a regular basis for carriers to need a fleet of planes.

He (she?) was at one point soldier. Tell me that his/her parents never thought that he/she might never die.

And tell me that his parents never noticed that their short, soft boy-girl was "sensitive", and might one day crack under the pressure? Especially when he/she did something that he/she *knew* would piss off the government...

I bet they'd show a tape of a white American (preferably a cop) shooting black kids...

Let's go for the trifecta!
1) School shooting,
2) by a black guy,
3) with a Muslim name.

Exactly. Just wait until some guy with a thick accent named Abdul Mohammad Mustafa buys a couple and they wind up in Syria or Palestine...

But there are a lot more cars (and people to buy them) now than 100 years ago. That's a big problem, and why I said that the GS is unsustainable.

It does?

See that? It's past tense.

So... he's not even an actual biologist???

But wouldn't that be just a regular biologist who specializes in "a-thermal" extremophiles? Or maybe the kind of geologist that studies things like stromatolites?