Don't invest in and artificially scarce commodity.

You mean like Bitcoin?

Of the estimated 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, only one in 10 can support complex life like that on Earth

10 percent of 100 billion is still 10 billion galaxies. That's a lot of real estate. Even if you apply all the other characteristics that give rocky planets in the habitable zone of their star billions of years to evolve life. There are features like having a Jupiter in a circular orbit instead of an elliptical orbit or a moon that creates tide pools. That's a lot of habitable planets and a lot of potential for intelligent life.

Netflix has a really interesting series narrated by Laird Close called Life In Our Universe that covers the topic in great detail.

"There may be times when they want the cars to drive them, but they won't be buying autonomous-only cars."

A future where people can opt out of buying an autonomous car sounds great but it's not feasible economically. Traffic lights and traffic signs are all things needed for cars being piloted by humans, autonomous cars don't need them. At some point we'll be spending billions maintaining human-readable infrastructure and road rules when there are fewer and fewer actual humans driving.

It's just like the Sunpass you use out on the tollway in Florida. There are fewer and fewer options for driving on the tollway when you don't have a sticker. It won't be long before it's mandatory. It's the same with autonomous cars. Once cars start to take over the day will dawn when we don't want to collectively maintain the signage, traffic lights and human readable infrastructure.

Elon Musk isn't just daydreaming, those are product announcements. It would have taken NASA 15 years and billions in contracts to create a reusable booster, it would have crashed more often than Musk's prototype and ended up costing more on a per-launch basis than one-shot boosters. NASA is why we can't make big steps into space.

The proof of that statement will be when Musk comes sailing in with a reclaimed booster in tow.

NASA keeps looking for long duration spacecraft. They have a -dandy- one already in orbit.

What it needs is a large ion thruster module. The ISS would make a really great long duration space probe. We already know that people can live on it for months at a time, and it's got many of the instruments one would want to explore deeper space than LEO. Flying supplies off Earth would take a whole lot less energy than launching an entire space probe.

Plus, it can be done incrementally. Attach an ion engine, fly ISS up to geosynchronous orbit, then fly it back down.

Seems like a much better idea than "Hey, let's burn this up in the atmosphere and count on the Government(s) to buy us a new shiny one."

It was thinking like that that led us to the Superconducting Supercollider -- oh, wait, we don't have one of those. But CERN has LHC, and they have studiously repurposed and refurbished their old accelerators since 1959.

C'mon, NASA. Think outside the box. For once.

Wow, and I thought solar people were being pushy here on Earth. You nuculer power guys just never give up. By using solar panels, Philae avoided polluting comet 67P and there is no problem with nuculer waste disposal.

The top 1% of American income earners pay 24% of Federal taxes per the Congressional Budget Office.

If you look at the actual CBO report, it shows that the top 1% of income earners are paying less tax now than they did in 1995, even calculating the new higher 2013 rates.

Nice try Koch brothers.

I lived in Titusville for two years covering the end of the space shuttle program and the private space industry is not going to save that area. Most of T'ville's problems are self-inflicted and, even as businesses continue to close and young people can't move away fast enough, government leaders are not investing the kind of money in the type of projects it would take to attract new businesses.

For decades T'ville was anti-growth and most of the policies still cling to the dying relic of the area, which is a study in decay and abandonment. Titusville is a craphole and there's little to recommend the area. It's ironic they're still looking for space-industry solutions to save them.

Titusville is not yet Detroit, a city verging on complete decay.

The author obviously didn't spend much time there because that whole area is decaying. The restaurant he was talking about is called Dixie Crossroads down on Garden and it's not a place locals frequent, not that there are a lot of options.

And I'm still not convinced that NASA is the right organization to define the future of space travel, but that's a different discussion.

I remember when the US was the country people would come to when they wanted to get away from oppressive regimes.

a common objection to wind turbines being how unsightly they are to human eyes.

The only people I remember complaining were the rich folks who live along the coast. As far as I'm concerned they can just STFU.

I didn't see Ubuntu or *nix flavors listed in their target operating systems. All the more reason to support open source.

Are you kidding? Did you see Bill Nye tear Ken Ham to ribbons?

The problem is deeper than that. When God has told you how things are, you are free to ignore inconvenient things like facts.

The oncoming of fully automated vehicles won't happen the way that being discussed in geekish circles. Governments tend to move with all the speed of a glacier, and insurance companies will go out of business if the number of traffic accidents plummet. (Yes, they will. Water conservation sounded great until a lot of people started actually conserving water, now the water companies are having to jack up rates to stay solvent.)

What will happen is that "safety features" will be added to top end vehicles and work their way down. This is already happening with rear-watch, lane obstacle detection, and others. Insurance companies will like safer cars, as long as they aren't so safe that they are no longer needed. Public safety groups will lobby for these safer cars.

The myriad of state legislatures in the US will be very reluctant to authorize fully automated vehicles. Instead, manufacturers will just keep introducing "features" that reduce traffic accidents, things like lane following and collision detection and braking. Then, as the number of features mounts, the distance between a fully featured safety car and one that will drive itself will become smaller and smaller until it doesn't seem like such a giant leap. In addition, we may find automated vehicles licensed only for certain pieces of highway. It takes a lot of CPU to automate a car, adding GPS is a detail.

Look around, the changes have already started.

If you like the smell of rotten eggs, horse urine, formaldehyde, bitter almonds, alcohol, vinegar with a hint of sweet ether,

In other words, a comet smells like a college frat house.

So the idea that a higher minimum wage would drive automation is bullshit, as we suspected all along. Companies would automate jobs if they were being paid $2/hour. Humans get sick, they have a bad day and require training. Humans need managers, machines just need maintenance.

It was always a bullshit talking point. How many companies have a receptionist these days? Or a switchboard operator? A higher minimum wage never explained ATMs and online banking.

Maybe it was just Koch brothers brand bullshit all along.