No, you just aren't pleasant to talk to.

No, single stage was a non-starter - both projects failed at that goal. But there was still hope that it could be used for the stages individually - which is exactly what SpaceX is doing.

My point wasn't to be dreamy eyed and show that "with a little more time, NASA could have..." My point was only to show that others have (mostly) solved the problem that Mr. Musk is currently chasing. I applaud his very pragmatic approach to engineering - the man is really to be admired. But credit where credit is due :)

You are right that you are "locking in" a certain development environment. But that is only part of your application... you will have end-users actually putting your application to use. It is one thing to lock in your single development machine or handful of machines to a single vendor - quite another to lock in all of your users as well. It was all well and good to blow off the 5% of people back when smart phones and Macs were marginal 10 years ago. It is quite another to blow off 50% of people on alternate platforms... the calculus has changed.

It was mostly a dead end because NASA felt forced to play with it, and when it fell over and caught fire they felt very little motivation to rebuild it. Their money was on the also-doomed Lockheed space plane (Venture Star?). It's pretty clear that DC-X technology could have been used to land the first stage, even if the capsule itself still did a traditional "splashdown".

I can't be the only one old enough to remember the "Delta Clipper"...

There is a huge difference between being locked into a single vendor and being "locked in" to every major platform of the day.

Maybe you are trying to start some kind of pedantic discussion, but I don't really understand your argument. The reality is:
ActiveX: Works on MS Windows running IE.
HTML5/JS/CSS: Works on Android, IOS, MacOS, Linux, Solaris, the BSDs, Chrome, Windows, Windows Phone, etc.

You can play with definitions all you like, but you are not locking yourself into a single vendor like you do with ActiveX.

Aren't you civil? Good choice posting anonymously.

Yeah, a crash. Diamonds aren't really all that rare and can be manufactured. There might be some fashion value in "gemstones from space", if it can be proven that they are lunar in origin by some kind of analysis.

That video is, quite literally, the band playing their instruments. Sure, they added some crappy after-effects and swooshy camera work, and the setting is a tree instead of a stage. But it is a zero-budget video with nothing but the band playing music.

Sound Garden "Fell on Black Days". Alice In Chains "Man in the Box" has a few cut-aways, but is about 95% the band playing. One of their others was "them playing in a pit" - don't remember the song.

Don't get me wrong, I hated crappy videos like that... but they were all over the place. That is part of the reason I stopped watching MTV.

No, quite specifically. Every decision has to be weighed against "getting caught". Every single decision. This will make the market behave very oddly.

Then we are talking about two different things. I consider that tax evasion on the part of the gardener. There is nothing illegal in the US about paying a contractor to render a service. Tax evasion alone does not make a market "black". The price is still set by consent of both buyer and seller, the government is (mostly) not involved in regulating the transaction, and I can choose from a number of gardeners in a fiercely competitive and open marketplace. I'm free to share information with others about the reputation of the gardener. This scenario seems quite free and it is hard to even compare it to buying something that the government will throw you in jail for possessing, let alone selling.

Agreed... but it is simple arbitrage. Taking advantage of an artificial price discrepancy does not require much to be successful. It's still not a "free market" - it's just a bit freer than the price-controls that the government is trying to impose.

From TFA: "Transition-metal salts called oxo-degradable additives catalyze the oxidation of the polymer chains in the presence of oxygen and ultraviolet light or heat. "

So yeah, burying them underground in an anaerobic landfill is unlikely to degrade them. The additives are meant to keep them from lingering when disposed of improperly. Who cares how long they persist once the decision has been made to entomb them?

By who? This is exactly the mentality expressed by the top level poster, and exactly what I was disputing in the first place. How anyone could argue that a black market represents a free market is beyond me. The primary constraint of being undetectable just blows away many tenets of an ideal free market right off the bat.

How is a black market a "free market"? How can you have any more government "regulation" beyond completely forbidden?

You mentioned Aerojet Rocketdyne in your message. They are in CA, and it is where the Delta IV main engines are manufactured. Only the Atlas V uses the Russian engine. Anyway, since when does Lockheed or Boeing need to make every single part of something in order to profit enormously from it? They would be the natural recipients of a "giant space missile" contract. They regularly do space launches, build rockets, build satellites and space probes, and integrate navigation systems. They also make all of the nuclear missiles that we have in our inventory (Trident II is Lockheed, Tomahawk is Boeing).

In any case, I would hope that Russian help would also be forthcoming in any big expensive plan to save humanity.