It's a standard application of the First Amendment. The whole point is to allow it no matter how much of a problem you or the powers-that-be have with it.

Of course that is wrong. As ScentCone noted, the law in question was preventing people from pooling their resources (via a corporation, a very common organizational structure for non-profits) to distribute a political message, which is a legitimate application of the First Amendment.

But that mass is not as big a factor as recovering those engines. It's not just not having to build a new set of engines every launch, but also reliability. You have both tested engines in actual flight and some increased ability to recover failed rocket engines.

Actually, it is pretty close to solved. They probably just need to improve the control system a little bit.

Second, they have a reliable vehicle by the standards of current rocketry. They aren't competing head to head with a Boeing 747, but vehicles like the Atlas 5 or Soyuz. And a more reliable vehicle is a matter of using the current reliable vehicle a lot to develop the knowledge to build that vehicle more reliably.

There are two things to note here. First, it's not the most "fuel inefficient" way as your alternative demonstrates (all that crap has to go up as well as come down, that uses far more fuel than the current approach does). Second, fuel efficiency is not that important. The rocket engines that SpaceX is trying to recover are far more costly than the additional propellent required for the current scheme to recover them.

Because salt water is bad for rocket engines.

The US wasn't using drones to assassinate people in Iran. And so what if Iran can do it? It's not the same as someone elsewhere achieving the same feat, particularly without creating a military target in the process. Keep in mind that the US strategy is to always have drones in the air. So it's not that useful to be able to detect drones, because you will always be able to detect drones. Merely detecting drones tells you nothing about whether the controllers of those drones know enough to commit an effective assassination strike.

The Second World War and the Cold War are obvious counterexamples. The US won both wars in large part because its opponents could not afford to match the US's industrial/economic strength. I don't see that working at all with China in the next few decades. And even ignoring the competition from that emerging superpower, we still have that the US military and its ongoing activities are a huge drain on the US.

I think a completely autonomous system will eventually be feasible. But then how would you know that it is working as intended? That implies the involvement of independent sensory systems, which would eventually have humans in the loop.

Further, it runs completely contrary to how modern military systems and strategies work. A key aspect of US military development is the combination of improved intelligence of the enemy with more accurate and precise delivery of military force. Manufactured ignorance which impairs decision makers' knowledge of ongoing military activities runs completely counter to that approach. I don't buy that anyone would allow the entire US military to run autonomously and unsupervised (especially given the many constraints that have been put on the US military over the centuries) just so they could have marginally better plausible deniability when it comes to killing innocents.

Drones were never immune to detection and shutdown. Nor is that their draw at present.

Aircraft that are many times more expensive than drones and which contain a human pilot.

The same reasons that morality would get involved in a weapon system with a human pilot, would get involved with any other weapons system. We see it with landmines, for example. The cost/benefit of remote or autonomous systems is different, but your morality should apply equally.

And humans would still be involved. It's not like they'll throw away all information about the kills the autonomous robots are making. After all, they'll want those robots to be more effective, and you can't make anything more effective by ignoring it.

Just feel good that you'll never be as bad as your children.

Good thing the carve up isn't actually happening then. From 1988-2008, two thirds of humanity increased their income by at least 30%, adjusted for inflation.

Except when that real research doesn't, of course.

My "postulation" is often well documented in the literature of the time such as the documented behavior and infighting of the Roman elite during the centuries of the empires of Rome or similar activities of other large empires of China and Egypt. Famines, disease, etc are often also documented, which may partially support your claims of climate change.

While it is claimed that Ataturk was in a different part of the Ottoman empire at the time of the massacres, he had similar policies during a later war with Greece with several notable massacres happening under his watch, particularly, the so-called Great Fire of Smyrna.

It's not a stretch to wonder if Ataturk (or for that matter other powerful supporters) had a greater involvement in the genocides of 1915 than his official record suggests.

And there's some indication that reduced farm fertility may have helped destabilized the Roman empire as well as several Chinese empires. My point remains. Climate disruption is not an automatic death knell. But societal parasitism tends to undermine adaptability.

I think a big part of the reason it's so taboo is that the founders of modern Turkey were probably involved in the genocide, including Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the president of Turkey from 1923-1938. To admit that the leaders of Turkey of the past, were involved might call into question the legitimacy of Turkey today (particularly among minority groups like the Kurds and the hardcore religious) and undermine its secular myth building.

Yes.