Who cares what that idiot thinks? She is completely unimportant.

But 200 miles certainly covers any and all local in-town and in-area travel possibilities, and nearly everything but very long distance travel.

Nope. You need 250 plus a safety margin - on mountains for part of the trip.

In my case that's half a commute between my Silicon Valley townhouse and my edge-of-Nevada ranch. But that's virtually the same trip as between Silicon Valley / San Francisco Bay Area and many weekend vacation spots: Lake Tahoe ski resorts, Reno gambling, gold country camping, etc.

Make a car that can do 30-mile-one-way commute efficiently and has this 250-and-chage range, and a Northern Californian who works near the coast and blows off steam near the CA/NV interface only needs ONE vehicle. (So it takes four to six hours to charge when you get there and when you get back - so what? It'll be parked longer than that anyhow.) Less and he/she needs TWO, with all the environmental impact of building both. Further, the long-range one is a gas hog by comparison.

Does a loaded F-150 even get 500 miles on a single tank of gas?

Yes, it does.

But it's a 37 galon tank.

I love everything about my F-150 Lariet EXCEPT the gas mileage (and the refusal to pan the weather map except when the vehicle is stopped). Unfortunately, when you have to haul several tons up and down a mountain or across an unpaved desert from time to time, it's hard to avoid a tradeoff in that department.

Different requirements drive different designs. Before WW2 seaplanes were common because of the lack of runways. After WW2 airports proliferated, and seaplanes couldn't keep up with technical advances due to the compromises involved in allowing them to land and take off from water. But that doesn't mean there aren't applications for aircraft with a flying boat's capabilities, it just means there isn't enough of a market in places like the US to support an industry. Even so, here in North America there are some 70 year-old WW2 Catalinas being used in aerial firefighting. China is a vast country which is prone to many kinds of natural disasters that could make airlifting in supplies difficult, so they may see potential applications we don't.

It's also interesting to note that seaplanes were highly useful in the pacific theater of WW2, and there hasn't been a protracted struggle for sea control *since* WW2. Also, China is a country with no operational aircraft carriers; aside from its training ship the Liaoning, it has a handful of amphibious assault ships that can carry a few helicopters. The US by contrast has ten supercarriers and nine amphibious assault ships that dwarf the aircraft carriers of WW2. The technology and expertise to run a carrier fleet like America's would take many years for China to develop. It's conceivable that the manufacturers imagine a military market for aircraft like this in the interim.

...or if he's using shell style wildcards, he could mean "pure and utter sherbet."

Reports of trains *not* running on time certainly decreased, but that's not quite the same thing...

You, sir, are an abusive moron who is obviously not intelligent enough to realize that the Mars rovers are spinoffs from Apollo. Were it not for Apollo there would be no Hubble, no Martian robots, no ISS, none of the space exploration done today. Obviously unlike you, I remember Sputnik. We can thank the Russians for Apollo.

Now crawl back to 4chan where flamebait like yours is welcome. Where in the hell are the moderators?

I agree, more investigation is warranted.

NASA doesn't have a lift vehicle, but three American companies do. The last ISS resupply was delivered on an American rocket, and the Dragon capsule being tested now will hold seven people.

I was working at Disney World when the first shuttle took off, and saw every shuttle launch before Challenger without a TV. One was a night launch I saw from my mom's house in Tampa. We drove to the cape to watch one, man that thing is LOUD.

The first one I not only didn't see firsthand was Challenger; I missed that launch completely. I was in Illinois looking for work (we'd just had our first kid and moved back to be close to family and besides, Florida is a shitty place to live).

You're my age then, I was working at a drive in theater and brought my TV with me (I had a little twelve inch Panasonic). The boss was pissed. I've written about it before.

Bullshit, were it not for Apollo we would not have the ISS, robots on Mars, telescopes in space, or probes all over the solar system.

I reposted this journal the day before the anniversary; it's my story of that day.

our driver of innovation today? cat pictures and dashcam video of accidents.

Telescopes in outer space, robots crawling around Mars, all sorts of robotic probes all over the solar system, self-driving cars, a permanent space station, GPS, private space launches... And, you know, when Apollo 11 took off, flat screen displays and Star Trek communicators were only fantasy. Those cat pictures themselves were impossible science fiction; a computer as powerful as a smart phone didn't exist. Hell, cars didn't even have seat belts then, let alone ABS, disc brakes, air bags, bluetooth... I think your memory of just how primitive it was and how far we've come is a bit faulty.

Investigators would not say whether the shooting occurred inside the home or in the alley behind the house. According to the station, Greer is not under arrest and police are still determining whether or not the homeowner will face charges.

The guy was eighty years old, the young people attacked and robbed him in his own house and had done so before. If he shot her before they left, it was certainly justified. If it was indeed in the alley he should certainly face murder charges. As the article says, that hasn't been determined. Personally, I'm going to withhold judgement.