If/when the price of jet fuel is 10-100x higher (which will admittedly be a long time from now), high-speed rail will make a comeback.

I agree that super-conductor based magnetic levitation systems have questionable economics, at least with the current state of high-temperature superconductors. However, that hasn't prevented Maglev train test-tracks from being built.

In contrast, standard active magnetic levitation bearings are very economically viable, particularly in applications requiring extremely high rotational speeds, long operating times, and low oil contamination, e.g. turbomolecular vacuum pumps.

Unfortunately that's not the case. Homeopathic remedies often do have content other than water, but in uncontrolled and untested doses, sometimes resulting in dangerous effects. See Zicam nose spray, for example. The FDA finally stepped in after hundreds or thousands of people lost there senses of smell and taste.

Not to mention that Pu238, the isotope used RTG's is not fissile and cannot be used to make bombs.

Unless massive population migrations and world-wide famines spark a nuclear war...

The project looks interesting from an academic perspective, but the stated application to biological microfluidics seems ridiculous when it requires the droplets to be filled with magnetic materials that could potentially compromise any test you might want to perform.

Microfluidic channels are fairly easy to produce using traditional lithography, and a simple water pump produces all of the motion necessary. It's difficult to see how this really improves upon that model.

Fairness is irrelevant. If you make it illegal to do security probes, many of the white hats will just go black hat. There's no way to effectively regulate it.

Or you can start a "war on hackers", which will be even less effective than the other ill-defined wars.

Unfortunately, the discovery of buzzword reserves has not yet peaked, so we're still at least 30 years off from Peak Buzzword.

That would be incredible if increasing the pressure caused water to boil. I think there's a perpetual motion machine in there somewhere.

(Lowering the pressure could cause water to boil, but not increasing it. Maybe you meant the heat from friction, but I doubt there's that much heat being generated.)

Note, though, that spacex is using payed-for launches to test its recovery system. Thus, the development costs are much lower than they could be.

*15m, not 105m

It's already been shown that the SpaceX design can get within 105m of a landing pad. If it ends up being too difficult to finish the landing as is, adding more landing site sensors to improve prediction, and adding a catching mechanism should solve the problem. And note that all of these additions are one-time costs that don't have to be lifted to 100km. My money works definitely be on the spacex design.

Sorry, I'm on my phone. "Shopping those lines" was supposed to be "along those lines".

I would actually love to see more research being done shopping these lines. The complete failure of biosphere as a self-sustained ecosystem shows we have a lot to learn before independent colonies become realistic.

It's a phenomenon I call delusional optimism. People see the exponential growth that the semiconductor industry experienced for most of their life, and assume it's typical. Exponential growth in a finite world is transient. The generation just now being born won't be so delusionally optimistic.