You could say this about a lot of surgical and medical procedures.

I agree. This is also why I was pondering about interplanatary travel... Once we are well established on the boundry of our own solar system, I will start to speculate about deep space travel.

How do you believe that nuclear fusion would improve the speed of travel through the solar system?

Sometimes its small details that make a huge difference and allow old ideas to become reality.

Just think about blood tranfusions. The first attemps to store blood to transfuse it at a later point all failed. A simple stabilisation agent made the procedure possible. I wouldn't expect the New Scientist to produce such details in their publications though.

It would be interesting to see a paper from a medical journal on this topic.

This sounds more like science fiction than anything else to me. But if it works and the technique becomes viable to handle patient with heavy injurie - and assuming the patients can be kept suspended for long periods of time without creating further damages, I wonder if the technique could be adapted for space travel. It would solve a lot of problems related to long-duration interplanetary travel.

The idea is not new. I just wonder if this could be the first step in this direction.

Obviously, the crew became incapacitated after they - or someone else - maneuvered the aircraft to its last course. I haven't seen anyone suggest it could have been the other way around.

The sherif was the wrench.

On the contrary. A completely silent CVR tells you a lot; it tells you that the airplane kept on flying with every one on board either unconscious or dead for at least 2 hours before the crash. That's a critical information for the investigation.

Furthermore, through data/media forensic, you might be able to recover the previous data that was overrecorded, although I wouldn't count on it after 3 to 4 record cycles.

I thought he was quite font of his spelling.

I find your view somewhat naive. I've been involved in multiple space projects (some very big ones), although never with NASA. But through my interactions with NASA and JPL scientists and engineer, I doubt that the situation there is any different than the one with the agencies I work with.

We are speaking of purchasing organizations run by politicians. Not scientists. How often have I seen scientists and engineer sake their heads on the attribution of a contract or selection of a mission? I stopped counting when I ran out of fingers to count on.

The attribution of the contracts is highly dependent on geographical distribution rather than on expertise. The selection of wrong contractors, based on geopolitical motive, costs years in delays and millions in over costs. It magnitude over the interaction you describe. If only that was the only source of higher costs...
The selection of the projects or mission that get financing is even worse. It became a real political farce, and is undermined by political marketing (eg. what sells well to the people financing the agencies) and by the true role of these agencies: financing the aerospace industry.

I would answer in short that people who assert things like you do haven't been in the business long enough or have been doing so with their eyes and ears closed. What you describe is entirely correct, but accounts only for a minute fraction of the cause of the high costs found in the space industry.

wooooosh, makes the shooting star.

Of course they know how. But they are not allowed to... or more accurately they do not allow themselves to do cheap.

But that is the first part of the price equation... equally strong is the polical part. A lot of decision are based on politcal decision rather than engineering choices or, even, common sense. Those decision often drive the prices to new hights.

I had at first trouble as well understanding the concern, which I have initially related back to me not being a physician. But if I put my engineer hat back on, I start to understand what the issue is (I deal all the time with people having issues, they can't correctly describe or explain). My believe, and I hope someone here can confirm or infirm this, is that the potency is not that much the issue, but rather the variance of the potency. In order word how different is the potency of the drug for different patients, which make dosage very difficult. Albeit this view might be biased, then it is the only logical explanation I personally can find for having an issue with the approval of this drug.

When I read the article, I have the impression that the a lot of different half-arguments are put fore in attempt to convince the reader, through which the real arguments gets diluted and lost.

I'm sure you'd get bonus points at the game for posting fake material about posting fake material to manipulate public opinion in order to manipulate public opinion on the material published.

How is that irony? And, much more important question, how would you come to think that it is any different in the USA, UK or any other western countries? Whats the point of trying to change the focuse of the discussion towards Russia? They all have been doing that since even before the Internet existed. I can't see how things could have been any different in the Internet Era.