Eh. Better yet, build a nuclear rocket that doesn't release any radioactive material at all. After all, you only need the heat. Use a propellant that absorbs UV and flow it around a nuclear lightbulb, and you have a rocket many times as efficient as anything we can build today, even at the low end of its theoretical range. Anyhow, it should be usable in atmosphere...

A new plane doesn't make a new engine possible. A new engine makes a new plane possible.

It's great that there Elon Musk is pushing out gains in performance, reusability and most importantly cost in chemical engine design! Kudos to him (and his company).

Of course for the real exploration of the solar system to begin, we'll need nuclear (fusion!) or other such unrealized technologies. Still it's a good start!

You say it like it's a bad thing. One of the objectives of bitcoin users is to avoid paying tax. And yet you believe governments should "bend over backwards" to help cover the inevitable losses from an unregulated market? Covered presumably by the tax paid by people using ordinary currencies.

You can't have it all ways.

Yes, because the advocates of those currencies are loudly crowing that the entire point is to enable criminal acts. That it's a perfect money laundering service and that this is a great thing.

But if a government responded rationally to this widely advertised lawbreaking by shutting down the people who launder money and the mechanism they're using to do it, that would somehow be immoral, and anyway they wouldn't do it. Because, um. Government bad, government inefficient, Bitcoin rules, FBI drools?

I'm shocked, shocked that Bitcoin exchanges might conceivably be running into money problems related to fund and transfer freezes from ongoing international drug investigations. That's simply not possible, because Bitcoin!

I'm sorry, I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but blaming the gov for this is just tin foil men on too much Jolt soda. What are we looking at, a whopping half a million stolen in Flexcoin and what, 700k stolen in MtGox? If a loss of less then 2 mil, or actually, whatever the total amount of bitcoins available is a threat to any government, that government is even flimsier than bitcoin is showing to be. Sorry . . . .

Other than making it harder to spy on transactions, how does bitcoin threaten government?

Fiat money means precisely that: all debts are legally satisfiable in dollars. Bitcoin becoming popular cannot change that basic fact. If you sell me a widget on the promise that I pay in bitcoins, I fail to do so, and you sue me: guess which currency the court is likely going to force me to pay you in. (Disregarding any penalty for me being a dick).

Contrary to the liberatard delusion, government doesn't have a monopoly on currency.

Bearer bonds have been around for years and are in effect private currency.

Corporate script as also been around and is also explicitly private money.

Private industry has been hiring convicted felon Mitnick for years.

Your tirade shows nothing but ignorance.

Keep in mind that private currencies undermine government monopolies.

As I said, small potatoes. The magnitude of bitcoin isn't enough to really concern most governments, and certainly not the ones with the resources to do what you suggest.

Sure. Could it be alien space monkeys trying to destabilize our currencies and use us for slaves to harvest tasty bananas? Sure, I guess

There's about as much evidence for either of those, which means there's zero evidence at all.

I generally tend to fall a little on the tinfoil-hat end of the spectrum -- but in the absence of evidence, I fall back to "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

You're well into just claiming it could be a conspiracy, but I just don't see the need. It could be if you want to be paranoid enough. But there's nothing real to suggest it's true, which makes it just pure imagination for the moment.

BitCoin is a fiat currency by definition.

Dependable banks pretty much require somebody large enough backing them. That is generally governments who can print money.

Why is anyone assuming this is being done by 'criminals'?

Because currently Bitcoin is small potatoes, and the exchanges are so far doing some of the work for them, and because if there's money to be had criminals will go after it.

Is it possible this is some grand conspiracy? Sure it is. Is it more likely that the people running these things have failed at security and actually been ripped off? Sure. Is it also possible that the exchanges are really just scams and these were inside jobs? Sure.

I just don't see the need to assume governments undermining the credibility of these -- it seems to be happening just fine without the need for government help on that front.

Nobody believes that any more. Not even the corrections departments make any effort to reform, because 100 years of trying has taught them that it doesn't work.

I don't presume to know how close you've ever been to full-on drug addiction,

but in my own admittedly small sampling,

many an addict's confinement is the only time in their adult lives they're not using. A great friend passed last year at the ripe old age of 48, but his life was probably extended a decade by frequent periods of abstinence as a guest of the County and State.

Well, theoretically, but the EPA is in the process of instituting new regulations under the Clean Air Act. Congress has held hearings on those regulations and the EPA promised to send them the studies upon which the regulations are based over two years ago, but have so far failed to do so. Once this law is passed, if it is passed, it will be much harder to justify opposing similar laws for other regulatory agencies. One thing to point out is that passing such a law for an agency that has been open and forthright about the science behind its regulations is probably a bad idea. However, the EPA has demonstrated an unwillingness to release the data behind at least some of their regulations, making this law necessary.

They have been asking that the private medical data of everyone whose medical records were used during the evaluation of soot and particulate rules for the Clean Air Act be made public. The authors of those studies don't have the authority to release that data, neither does the EPA. Though I'm certain the GOP would love to berate the EPA publicly for betraying patient confidentiality if they did disclose that information

http://www.epw.senate.gov/publ...