Shooting down a Mach 6 aircraft is extremely difficult.

Lets say an SR-72 was going to go the full length of Iran, and Iran had recently deployed S-300 missiles from Russia. The S-300 is considered a world-class air defense weapon (despite having never been fired in combat). It has a 5 minute deployment time and a 24 mile range.

Mach 6 is roughly 4,567 Miles/hour or 1.26 miles every second.

It will cover the 48 mile engagement envelope of an S-300 (24 miles each way), in 38 seconds. What this means is a missile site can't detect and engage the target. Someone has to detect and transmit targeting information to air defense sights in the path of the plane, so they can be ready to lauch, when it gets within range.

Just some moderate maneuvering and route planning, keeps the SR-72 out of range most of the time.

There was rumor that the SR-71 was detectable with long range radars, but stealthy to weapons guidance radars. Add in stealth characteristics and the task becomes even more difficult.

From looking at a map, the absolute longest flight path over Iran appears to be about 2000 miles. Meaning the SR-72, worst case, would only be over Iranian airspace for less than 30 minutes. If a plane came in over the Caspian Sea, crossed over Tehran, then turned for the nearest border, they could be in and out of Iran in less than 5 minutes.

All in all, a very challenging exercise.

There aren't any more active silos in Idaho

They are in Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota

But even there, we capture the exhaust and use it to power a steam cycle.

I am not up on Power plant designs, but I am not aware of another technology that exists to turn power plant levels of heat into electricity, except through a steam cycle. It would be nice if there was some material we could expose to that much heat, and have it generate large amounts of electricity directly, but I don't think it exists.

We even use the waste heat from Gas Turbine generators to power steam cycles, to gain extra efficiency

Because when you are 17 years old, and told they will send you to prison is you talk about secrets, you tend to keep your mouth shut.

The Navy doesn't spend a lot of time telling you which stuff they are teaching you is secret and which is common knowledge. They classify it all as secret, and you keep you mouth shut about what you are learning

The side effect of this behavior has infected our whole nuclear industry in my opinion. Because so much of it was classified for so long, there was a long period of time where the only people talking about nuclear power to the general public, was the anti-nuke people. Led to a lot of Fear Uncertainty and Doubt.

I first heard about Hunt for Red October. I still have my first edition copy.

I had lots of questions from friends and family about how Nuclear Reactors really worked, and until that book came out, I was really scared about what I could and couldn't say without jeopardizing my security clearance.

After I read that book, I would reference people with questions to that book. It answered their questions.

Some legal professors, who know more than I do, think the court was a little insane with their suggestion that the NSA was lying to them

http://www.volokh.com/2013/09/11/fisa-uncanny-valley-article-iii/

Problem with the Court's argument, radar detectors in cars

The legality of radar detectors rests on the radio broadcast exception "if you broadcast it, someone else can listen to it".

If police agencies can argue that radar detectors are "illegal wiretapping" devices because they didn't intend for someone to receive their broadcasts, a lot of people are going to be charged with wiretapping.

I don't have any expectation of privacy when using an unencrypted WiFi connection. Specifically because someone could intercept it.

Because I understand I am broadcasting a radio signal in the clear, and know what that means.

Judge made the mistake of trying to interpret the motive of the person setting up the unencrypted hotspot instead of the intent of the people who designed the WiFi standard. He also doesn't understand how WiFi and networking work.

He decided that in general, someone setting up a hotspot doesn't intend for the traffic to be snooped, therefore it "isn't publically broadcast". The law should be based on the design of the technology, not the intent and misunderstanding, of the person who turns it on.

WiFi doesn't work if every computer listening in on the hotspot doesn't examine every packet, at least as far enough to see if it was intended for it or not. It doesn't take a special $600 adapter for someone to snoop, or packet capture, the network traffic. That may be the easiest way for an untrained person to do it, but it isn't the only way.

We need special judges, who are trained technologists, to rule on technology cases.

What the NSA was doing was approved via a Warrant by the FISA Courts

This wasn't a case of the NSA going off and doing something unsupervised, they requested and had permission from US Judges for what they were doing.

As such, they would probably be immune from damages

We are a machine company in the Pacific Northwest. We are still English rather than S.I. Our Vendors call it the "Boeing Effect". Most of their customers are metric. Only ones who do a significant amount of aerospace work tend to be english.

I would gladly refuse all Federal Dollars in my State, as soon as they turn over title of all the land in the State they own to the State Government.

Feds own 60% of the land inside my State borders. Much of that Federal "welfare" is just money the Feds are spending maintaining and operating on THEIR land.

Consider the money the Feds pay my State as Rent for operating Wilderness Areas, National Forests, National Research Laboratories and Military Bases for them.

It was a smoke grenade. It might have started a fire, but it wouldn't have brought down the plane.

Part of the reason for the US bias against diesel is the fuel taxes.

The US Government, and the States, have huge fuel taxes on diesel because "those big trucks do more damage to the roads". That could very well be true. But in my region, because of those taxes, diesel has been more expensive than gasoline for a long long time.

Most of our refineries have been modified to produce more gasoline than diesel now. If we were to switch the buying habits, they would have be be changed back.