It's not clear to me that the cube law is applicable. The cube law comes into play when all three linear dimensions (height, width, and depth) are changing by the same factor, so you are assuming that a width and depth (or girth) increase proportional to height increase is all healthy weight.

While this may be true it's something that needs to be examined in more detail to see how healthy weight is a function of both girth and height.

Wow, you're nitpicking very specific features of a system that doesn't even exist in prototype form yet.

1. Windows will no doubt be added so long as it is mechanically sound and doesn't endanger the passengers, and so long as seeing the landscape at such high speed so close to the ground isn't disorienting.

2. I'm sure before any people travel on this system (for which there isn't yet even a prototype) a safety analysis will be performed to see if an auxiliary air supply is necessary. They may well add breathing masks similar to what airplanes have for the event of high altitude depressurization.

3. Just because there's no indication yet of multiple "lanes" yet doesn't meant that there won't be.

The price of installed solar has dropped by half so new panels without the subsidy would have the same payback time. 8.8kW installed capacity at $3.46 per installed watt (as stated in the article) would now cost $30.4k.

While solar panels will not last forever they already pay back much more than their installation cost (even subsidy free) in much less time that you think. It is folly to compare the reliability of cell phones to solar panels.

You seem to just be looking for reasons to bash solar. Solar is not a silver bullet, there's no such thing yet. But it works and it's available now. And over the long term it more than pays for itself.

NASA develops very high-end solar panels for space applications where weight and energy are both at extreme premiums. This has little to do with panels being produced for residental PV.

Why so negative? This is a feel good article, and there's nothing wrong with that. It is pointing out quite rightly that solar has achieved a new milestone in adoption rate which is a good thing.

Yes it is well known that solar installed capacity does not correspond to generating capacity. And there is the problem of storing energy when intermittent renewable sources like solar become larger percentages of total capacity. But the solutions to these problems are available now if we choose to dedicate the resources.

Your numbers are also way off, solar has risen over 50% over the past year:

So yay. We went from half a percent to 0.51% total power input.
And oh darn. We maybe stayed around 20% at coal.

The correct numbers Source:
March 2014: Solar 0.4%, Coal 41%
March 2015: Solar 0.6%, Coal 33%

Most of the drop in coal usage came from the sharp uptick in natural gas. That same uptick is probably why solar outpaced coal. Solar is rising rapid though still very minimal, but accelerating the rate of install will get us to total renewable energy faster.

The above article points out that the cost is now $3.46 per installed watt, he installed 8.8kW, so today the same installation would cost around $30.4k (his out of pocket cost 10 years ago).

In other words the subsidies accomplished their precise goal of helping to jump start a solar panel and solar installation industry which now gives a payback time in the above case of about 10 years.

The Big Bang Theory is a superb example of this. It's treated as absolute and indisputable fact, yet it was never (and likely never will be) directly observed.

That's quite incorrect. The Big Bang Theory is treated as the best explanation that we have, for now, for explaining a combination of observations. I'm not saying that all middle school teachers get this subtle but important point across in their science classes, but rest assured that the scientists themselves are familiar with it. And if a better explanation comes along that fits the data better than the big bang then scientists will eventually jump ship to the better theory.

Did you find a good strategy for communicating with this kind of worker to avoid that kind of problem?

A lot of reviews are blind, but in several fields even in a blind review the fields are small enough and the reviewers sufficiently well read to be able to tell which group or individual is writing the paper anyway.

I don't understand why people who vaccinate are afraid of those that don't.

It's not fear, but there are several legitimate reasons to be concerned about people who choose not to vaccinate their children for personal non-medical reasons:

1) Some people have legitimate medical reasons why they cannot receive vaccines or it is harder for them to get vaccines, e.g. allergies.
2) Vaccines are not 100% effective but increasing vaccination rate provides greater protection to all.
3) We still care about kids who are not our own and we don't want them to catch easily preventable diseases like measles.

Yes, but people thought that these things would happen at a pace similar to the pace of computer technology development. It didn't, it took a lot longer.

Also a lot of these are still in development, not yet at the stage of a real product or with limited adoption.

Weather doesn't want to cooperate.

Don't try to anthropomorphize the weather. It hates that.

Oh wait, you're talking not just about jamming the datalink signal, but also ILS and LPS? Nice jammer you've got.

Jammers are not technologically difficult, if you have enough money to build/buy 1 jammer it's not a stretch to add 2 more.

Get yourself some 200 proof booze, put it in a flask, and if you want drink, then mix that with some amount of water because you really don't want to drink 200 proof booze straight unless you're completely crazy.

At least 15 states already ban 190 proof alcohol, in those states 150 proof is typically the maximum allowed by law.

That does not change the fact that the math is pretty solid and it would work.

You haven't done the math or cited any.

There is a big efficiency problem in space-based solar with the double conversion from DC to RF/laser and back to DC. Total efficiency neglecting transmission loss is about 64% (80% twice). Then you have to invert it back to AC usually, but that is also needed for terrestrial solar.

So 35% power is thrown away, but since the sun is stronger in space without atmospheric attenuation, and there are no clouds, some of that will be made up.

So to a first approximation the power per unit of panel area is the same from space as it is on earth.

Now factor in launch costs which are tremendous (even if SpaceX succeeds in yet another 10x reduction in launch costs as claimed) and the difficulty performing maintenance in space versus on land, and I don't see a strong case. Installation costs on land are around $1/watt, I'd like to see you come within a factor of 10 of that in space.