Screw big-media mergers. We need more competition as the current oligopolies have some of the worse customer service records there are, and high prices compared to the rest of world, even in denser population areas where the "rural long wire" argument doesn't hold up.

Oligopolies & monopolies almost always result in crappy service/products/prices.

The "economies of scale" argument for defending them is weak. That claim was used to protect the Detroit Big 3, but the Medium 7 from Japan came along and kicked the Big 3 in the ass.

I'll take the downsides of (alleged) lack of "economies of scale" over the sloth of oligopolies.

I have only 2 realistic ISP choices in my area, and it's not rural by any stretch. It's a hefty suburb right next to a major city. And both suck. The pushy sales persons on the phone eventually admit their service sucks when presented with undeniable evidence, but will blatantly make the argument, "Okay, we suck, but we can get you crappy service at a better price than the other crappy guy". Even they know they suck; they just claim they suck for less $ (at least until the "special offer" period runs out).

It's like two satan's arguing, "Okay, yes, we are hot here and your ass will indeed get burned off. BUT, we have better elevator music to listen to while you fry."

NASA's vaunted "Asteroid Redirect Mission" is now widely regarded as crap.

ALL suggested manned missions seem contrived. We don't really need space humans at this point; robots do raw space exploration cheaper.

It's better to think about it as preparing for future colonization when technology catches up someday to make self-sufficient colonies viable. Issues related to astronaut health and emergency rescues are probably the most important lessons to be gained.

Another possibility is an orbital lab, away from Earth. If we bring back Mars samples, we probably don't want to risk contaminating or infecting Earth with Mars "bugs" until we know more. Thus, the sample analysis labs should probably be in a wide orbit.

What we really need is something like a space Lego set that can be reconfigured for multiple kinds of missions. But, maybe that's not entirely realistic. As software people know, making something generic is not without trade-offs and usually extra complexity.

NASA has been misleading the general public about this for years.

Can you provide evidence for that? I've only heard it referred to as a "stepping stone" or the like for bigger missions.

Apollo was built largely by private contractors also.

In hindsight, you are correct.

Armstrong: "I thought we had a 90% chance of getting back safely to Earth on that flight but only a 50-50 chance of making a landing on that first attempt. There are so many unknowns on that descent from lunar orbit down to the surface that had not been demonstrated yet by testing and there was a big chance that there was something in there we didn't understand properly and we had to abort and come back to Earth without landing."

Seems like a decent estimate. The landing computer had issues that almost was cause for an abort. I'm surprised NASA decided to ignore the alarm. Who wants to try to land with an active error code? Two even. In hind-site it was the correct decision, but the cause was unknown at the time.

http://www.theguardian.com/sci...

In that case, I don't care if they DO fake it!

some money on the side that's still worth something despite the inflation

Inflation has been relatively mellow. The cost of raw materials has gone up largely due to higher demand by a modernizing Asia and Brazil. But, services have been almost flat due to a jobs recession such that total inflation averages out to a "typical" historical rate, perhaps even a little low.

Favorite "Apollo" moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Bart got to see stars & moons himself.

Don't include JCL, for heaven's sake.

It was felt by many economists that letting all those big banks and car companies fail would have triggered a ripple effect on suppliers and the economy as a whole. Whether that is true or not is an academic issue that is difficult to test because we cannot fork history.

And most of the new banking regulations don't affect small banks.

Multiple studies keep coming out that say there is no general STEM skills shortage. But big biz lobbies the opposite view and gets its way by essentially legally bribing politicians using campaign donations and ads.

Same with global warming: the plutocrats don't want to pay for pollution reduction & clean-up, so bribe in place the political "belief" that warming is a hoax, and half the population believes the lie now.

Same pattern, same shit: the middle class takes it in the balls so that they can get even richer.

Do you have any evidence about the skill category of workers they laid off?

this is the result of global free market economy

Even if technically true, H1B visas are legally only supposed to be used when there is a real shortage of domestic talent, not body-shopping for the best deal.