I notice she skipped addressing the questions dealing with the EV1.

Probably necessary, since there is not going to be much more she's likely to be able to add to the subject, but it would be worth hearing anything she did have to say.

To be fair, 90 days was not, in fact, the estimated lifetime of the mission. It was the design specification of the mission. That is, each of the subsystems was designed with the specification "design a system that will operate for a minimum of 90 (Martian) days, even under worst-case conditions."

Think of it as a 90-day warranty-- after 90 days, it wasn't expected to be dead, it was just out of warranty.

(and note that since the engineering specification was validated by testing the subsystems to either three times design life, or testing to design life under three-sigma worst-case conditions, it would have been very difficult to design for 4000 days...)

Now revived as a kickstarter, Exos Aerospace

Four, Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic

Five, Paul Allen, Stratolaunch/Vulcan Aerospace

From https://www.blueorigin.com/new...
"We continue to be big fans of the vertical takeoff, vertical landing architecture. We chose VTVL because it’s scalable to very large size. We’re already designing New Shepard’s sibling, her Very Big Brother – an orbital launch vehicle"

So: yes.

This infosys:
http://www.computerworld.com/a...
http://www.computerworld.com/a...
?

Exactly. That's why it's not a plausible solution for agricultural use. If your application is to take water and spray it on the ground, yes, it needs to be cheap.

For urban and suburban use-- well, given the rents, and the cost of housing, in San Diego (not even to mention San Francisco!)-- the cost of water just isn't a factor. You could triple it and not notice.

Those are engineering problems.

You are clueless.

Look, I hate Nestle and I think bottled water is stupid too, but the amount of water they bottle is trivial compared to the trillions of gallons of water shortage representing the drought. They could bottle a hundred times more water, or a thousand, and it still wouldn't make a lick of difference.

The problem is measured in trillions of gallons. It's not drinking water that's the problem here.

We looked at lasers for space-to-Earth power beaming, but it's less practical than you might think-- heat rejection gets to be a serious problem. Most of the practical applications were Earth-to-space or space-to-space power beaming.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl...
http://proceedings.spiedigital...
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10...
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.js...

Desalination is a plausible solution for water for consumer use--that is, urban and suburban locations.

It is not a very plausible solution for agricultural use-- too expensive. Do you realize that those people take the water and just dump it on the ground?

*(well, some of the suburban people just spray it on the ground, too. But they spray millions and millions of gallons on lawns. Sounds like a lot... but agriculture uses trillions of gallons.)

Water rights are complicated. Since the rule is, whoever grabbed it first owns the rights to the water, the people who own it aren't necessarily the ones who use it most responsibly. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Agriculture is 80% of California's water use (although only 1.5% of California's economy) The big problem is almonds. Who would have thought that such a niche foodstuff would drive agricultural water? https://www.bostonglobe.com/bu...

Trillions? Yep: http://science.nasa.gov/scienc...

Too bad it's a semi-arid climate-- that's to say, much of the time it's a desert.

The idea of using lasers to de-orbit space debris has been around for a while.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/...
Back when I was working on lasers for power beaming, the idea was discussed as an alternate use for the ground-based lasers.

Now. That's why I said " in the late 19th and early 20th century."

Back then, they would get frozen in, winter-over stuck in ice, and in the following summer, do the exploration.

Not any more isolation than expeditions to Antarctica in the late 19th and early 20th century.

There are many possible reasons to not like the movie, but this isn't one of them. The movie itself doesn't in any way hide his name.

This, for example http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/n... or this http://www.slate.com/blogs/bro...
might be reasonable excuses to not want to see the movie.

Yes, I've mentioned this before-- if there are bacteria on Mars, they will be extreme halophiles.
http://online.liebertpub.com/d...
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.js...