No. A fuel cell is a device which turns chemical energy into electrical energy without having to turn it into heat first.

Still, when the NSA wanted access to Google's information, they went for tapping fiber optic cables instead of hitting them with National Security Letters.

The solution is encryption of course, but IPSEC is a royal pain and MACSEC is too limited.

Line of sight. Sorry, it's a pet peeve.

Fiber optic is trivial to tap. Almost as easy as analog phone lines.

Zimbabwes loans are primarily in foreign currencies. Never do that.

That is called elastic demand. Almost everything has elastic demand. Assuming the opposite would be very silly indeed.

You cannot be forced to go bankrupt as long as your loans are in a currency you can print more of.

I was being facetious, I thought that both ideas were so ridiculous that it would be obvious to everyone why no one does that.

Obviously I was wrong about Stirling engines. Perhaps I will end up wrong about steam turbines too one day.

Indeed. There was protests about that, and that was just a single pass IIRC. It is just not worth the bother unless it is the only way to accomplish the mission.

You are lucky to get 10% efficiency from an RTG with a thermoelectric element, and proper Stirling engines or steam turbines are not popular in space for some reason.

However, Philae only needs 32W apparently.

Rosetta/Philae came back to Earth several times for gravity boosts. It would not take much to make those flybys into direct hits, probably turning the RTG into radioactive dust.

Agencies who are dependent on public funding are generally wary about spreading radioactive dust.

True. I was definitely wrong about that.

Still, I think the number of weapons ready for use is cause for concern.

They compensate for two if they are land turbines. It is a problem for such a few hours a year that it is not worth worrying overly about. Once we get electric cars integrated into the grid, they can tide us over for a couple of hours.

It is interesting that fears of nuclear war have disappeared almost entirely. The arsenals are still in place, almost as powerful as they were at peak. More countries have significant amounts of nuclear weapons and there are doubts about the maintenance procedures in at least some of the countries.

You are absolutely correct. Taco Cowboy was implying that solar power would take up too much land to be feasible. I showed that it is not land use that is stopping solar power in Denmark. Denmark is a lousy place for massive solar power for multiple reasons, but land use is not one of them.

I get annoyed when people talk about trumpeting and blowing smoke, and then proceed to do the same thing,