Because carbon fiber is not a particularly effective material for armor and impact resistance?

Well, an 18650 Li-Ion cell, of which the Model S has thousands of, is about the right size and shape for an armor-piercing round. (The 18 is "18 mm diameter", the 650 is "65.0 mm length".)

The F-1 flywheel systems have a vertically oriented axis, so that the gyro forces are reduced.

The model demonstrated by Volvo has a horizontal axis, so the gyro forces will be greater and must be dealt with. Thankfully, it's pretty easy to quantify. If you get the flywheel spinning in the correct direction, you can even make the forces work in your favor to reduce roll during a turn.

if that thing were any bigger and heavier, it would need braces to your shoulders and hips. non-starter

Yes, because we all know that technology never evolves. This thing will always remain big and heavy, and no amount of Facebook money will ever allow for a rev 2.0 design that is smaller, lighter, more stylish, or more capable.

I mean, aren't you still sporting a cell phone like Gordon Gekko? Doesn't your laptop still weigh 25 pounds?

So what you're saying is ... "Citation Needed" ?

Our food system would actually be more efficient and less polluting if we could. Depending on the crop, there's more energy value in the fossil fuel inputs (fertilizer, diesel, pesticides, transportation) than there is in the resulting food.

Being stationary installations well designed datacenters could often use more efficient and environmentally friendly options, like flywheels or thermal storage

Except that, to date, none of them do. Batteries are already used and understood in datacenters, so this would be a pretty easy to implement.

The inequality they are talking about is social and economic. The children from well-to-do families always have opportunities beyond those of poorer children. A precocious or "gifted" child from a wealthy family has access to all the resources necessary to realize their potential. Where can an equally gifted child from a poor family turn? Their potential is completely unrealized in the U.S.'s current educational system, even though their abilities could easily vault them and their families out of poverty and into prosperity. Meanwhile, the mediocre children and dullards from wealthy families, owing to the resources available to them, gain entrance into Harvard. This situation reinforces (social / economic) inequality and ossifies mobility. In a country that purports to be a merit society, this should be disturbing.

I don't begrudge wealthy parents doing everything they can to provide for their children - gifted or otherwise. But as a societal matter, opportunities should exist for exceptional students no matter what their economic status. It's not simply a matter of fairness or equality - we are talking about exceptional children here, by definition not the same as everyone else - but of developing the best talent for the good of all.

You can't deny coverage in a single-payer system

Oh, well, thank God I live in the United States, where we don't hold with that socialist crap. Everyone knows our health care is the best in the world. [/sarcasm]

Yes, but every since the Great Depression, when the FDIC was instituted, you could always have confidence that the dollar you deposited at the bank would still be there tomorrow (up to the fairly generous deposit limits). Similar insurance programs exist for stocks - so long as you use a recognized brokerage, who in turn uses a clearing house to execute trades, your ownership of the shares and your cash is never in question. The stocks may fail, totally wiping you out, but your ownership of them is never in doubt.

And such safeguards exist because of...wait for it...regulation.

So if you're going to make snarky comments about Americans, be sure to throw in a few about the French as well.

I thought that was obligatory no matter what the conversation is about.

John Boehner, is that you?

on NASA budgetary scales

You say that as though it is supposed to bolster your argument. NASA's budget is somewhere around $15bn/year, or about 0.5% of the total federal spending. That covers everything from advanced research to planetary exploration to human space flight. The line item for the Mars Exploration Rover program (i.e., Opportunity) is $13 million. I suspect a lot of that goes to personnel costs, some of which might be reduced through volunteer efforts. It also costs a lot to maintain the control center and the program infrastructure, which cannot be replicated through an "API and 'simple prototyping program' ". The costs associated with people coding instructions for the rover is really a small part of the program budget. The cost to create and administer some sort of volunteer program might be small compared to $15bn, but it would be quite expensive relative to costs it is trying to replace.

Solar constant approx 1300w/sqm

That's measured out in space. On the ground, under clear skies, normal to the incident rays, it's under 1000 W/m^2. Many things affect the calculations, which don't all fit neatly on the back of an envelope. For one: you can't ignore latitude and assume it's at the equator. Sambhar Salt Lake is located at about 28N, so you are already down to maybe 700 W/m^2 on horizontal ground at noon on a perfectly clear day. Second, the capture and conversion efficiency of most panels, even with anti-reflective glass, is relatively poor, meaning that you don't get much power at until the incidence angle gets above, say, 15. That will tend to make that cosine integral more like cos^2: more concentrated in the middle of the curve, much less at the tails. Third: I don't know how the weather is at this location, but surely it isn't perfectly clear every day of the year. When the monsoons come rolling through, there may be days or weeks when it is overcast. Last: there's fill-factor. You won't be able to carpet the entire area with wall-to-wall panels - there will be streets and avenues to allow any part of the array to be reached.

But NG is peaking and dispatchable as hell, unlike solar.

But NG also requires an ongoing outlay for fuel and a heft amount of maintenance. Maintenance on a photovoltaic installation is modest by comparison.

And that assumes you would want to use NG. India produces natural gas from some offshore deposits, but not near enough to power the country. The United States has produced about 20 * 10^12 ft^3 of natural gas (I apologize for the units) pretty consistently for decades. With widespread fracking, the US will hit 30 * 10^12 ft^3 pretty soon. India, by contrast, produced just 1 * 10^12 ft^3 - it's just not an abundant resource. Natural gas accounts for only about 10% of India's total energy consumption. In order to use more, they'll need to get it from abroad, which from a national strategy standpoint may not be attractive. Transporting NG is difficult and expensive, and India would have to compete with China for access to resources in Iran and the *stan countries.