Efficiency is irrelevant when fuel makes up about 1% of the cost of a launch and bigger tanks are cheap.

Until the larger tank and extra weight then means you need an even larger (or more) rocket motor(s) to get off the ground and into orbit.

Considering that the Russian RD-180 engines designed in the 70's&80's are still seen as state of the art it is obviously a stagnant situation.

Just wait until you find out how old screwdriver and pliers designs are...

The rest of the world does NOT resemble IT. Stability is a good thing. If you've got a 99% efficient rocket engine that's reliable and cheap to produce, you should stick with it as long as you possibly can. The real shame of the US space program is that we stopped making Saturn V's... If we had the production in place to keep turning those out, we wouldn't have to spend many BILLIONS of dollars to design and start production of a new SHLV.

How is this any different from aviation and automotive industries?

It's almost like this is "rocket science" or something...

multiple reflected signals can wreak havoc

Each generation of ATSC tuner has gotten progressively better at rejecting such interference, to the point that DVB-T no longer has any advantage.

I can't control airplanes, moving trees,

Airplanes are a FAR bigger problem for satellite, and usually don't affect OTA reception at all. Moving trees are absolutely something you can control, and is easier to do so with OTA antennas than satellite.

So Obama can blame Bush, but Bush can't blame Clinton? :)

Obama never blamed Bush for Ukraine, and I certainly never blamed Bush for Ukraine. I've only demonstrated that the situation would not be any better with Bush in charge... not at all. Where did this paranoid persecution fantasy of yours come from?

"US sanctions against Russia imposed by the Bush administration were lifted by the Obama administration in May 2010."

And? How does that negate the fact that the country was invaded on Bush's watch?

Russia pulled out of Georgia, so the sanctions against them should have been lifted, as they were.

the Chechen wars both started under Clinton

And continued, unopposed, for many years under Bush.

Why do people that read a legitimate news story always try to assume something is advertising.

Perhaps because it's utterly and totally devoid of valuable information on the subject? When your copy is just "Ooh, look... Shiny!" and uncritically copying bits of info out of the manufacturer's press release... you are doing nothing more than advertising a product.

If everyone blocked ads, many quality web sites would likely cease to exist, including Slashdot. Just because you can block, doesn't mean you should.

Adblock Plus allows non-annoying advertisements through the filter, to be displayed by default...

If every site used non-annoying ads, ad-blockers "would likely cease to exist."

In what way were German fathers "assholes" during World War I?

Starting the war... Invading neutral countries... Sinking ships of neutral countries... Introducing chemical (poison gas) warfare... Executing "over 6,500 French and Belgian civilians between August and November 1914, usually in near-random large-scale shootings of civilians ordered by junior German officers." etc., etc.

the next generation doesn't tend to copy his behavior.

They did, and took it up a notch, too.

"it was common for Germans in the 1930s to justify acts of aggression in terms of perceived injustices imposed by the victors of World War I."

It will last approximately until the Gen2 kids of the Jihadists realize " Dad was an ASSHOLE ". Nazis, Japanese, USA vs. Mexico/Indians... it usually self corrects if Dad gets paddled.

It didn't work with Germany after WWI. In fact WWII is usually blamed on the harsh "paddl[ing]" Germany received.

Care to explain how Obama was responsible for Chechnya or Georgia?

Why is plugging in a charger difficult?

Because any of a million things can happen to render a microUSB port useless... And the failure of that tiny part makes your $1,000 smartphone similarly useless and worthless.

I'd go for something like a magnetic surface-mount charging cord, if I got to make all the R&D decisions. But since I don't, an induction coil with some power loss is better than having to fiddle with fragile microUSB jacks all the time.

The most terrifying moment in history was Nagasaki, because they already knew what happened in Hiroshima.

Early nuclear weapons aren't modern fusion bombs. More Japanese were killed by conventional bombs and napalm.

And more than that, they simply didn't know how many we had... Which is actually a GOOD THING, because we spent the only two that were available, and the threat of us dropping lots more of them (which we didn't have) ended the war.

I think there are enough examples in history to prove that appeasement does not work.

Seems to have worked pretty well for Mexico.

It is the tepid response given to atrocities elsewhere that has sent the message that Putin can do this with impunity.

As opposed to Bush's decisive action, which led to Russia invading Georgia with impunity...?

The proper response to this is to strengthen military forces in new NATO member states surrounding Russia,

Ukraine trying to get NATO and EU membership was a major issue causing this crisis in the first place. At the first sign of other neighboring countries expressing an interest in NATO membership, expect another invasion force, BEFORE US forces have a chance to ever get on the ground.

I think we're better off with the Afghanistan model... Give Ukraine a ton of man-portable anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, and pay them a few dollars for every multi-million dollar Russian tank they destroy. Just think of it as faster sanctions...