That's what SHE said.

Suborbital flights only last for minutes, not days. It's a roller coaster, not a cruise ship.

They're not trying to be 1960s NASA. They're trying to be 2015's Star Trek.

The same thing they do with other impactors - a flash of light. Then they can do a spectral analysis from which they derive the chemical composition.

I'd rather have a radar tracking system tell me where the other planes are than to rely on a fragile human pilot looking out the window.

Now fully out of fuel, the spacecraft smashed into a region near Mercury's north pole, out of sight from Earth, at about 20:00 GMT on Thursday.

That, to me, is the really sad part. They should have reserved enough fuel to deliberately crash it so that the impact could be seen and analyzed.

Save it for what? So it could spend three or four years STUDYING NOTHING before running out of fuel?

Blast it away from Mercury for what purpose? What else are you going to study out there? Mercury doesn't have any moons. There's nothing Sunward, and not enough thrust do climb away from the Sun to anywhere else - even if you could break out of Mercury's gravitational pull. The instruments were purpose built to study the surface of Mercury, so they're not going to register anything meaningful if you do break out of orbit.

So I ask you, why blast away from Mercury? What are you going to accomplish?

I believe the conversation goes more like:

"Honey, should we have another kid?"
"No."
"But..."
"No! No! No"
[dejected] "Alright".
"Oh! Come on Ref! That was blatant interference. How could you not call that?... Um... Did you say something Sweetie?"

No. Having families is what happens when there's nothing better to do. That's why the population booms whenever there is a power outage. You want to reduce the population growth? Give everyone a TV, and internet access.

Yeah, that's what it says on the tin. In reality they just eat up a lane of traffic that could otherwise be used to alleviate rush hour congestion. It might be different if they actually ADDED HOV lanes instead of taking one of the normal lanes and rebranding it. After all, who's going to get into a car with a bunch of strangers, and not have a vehicle when they reach their destination?

Yes, it is what you said. I apologize. I saw your "Yes it does" in response to the statement that this tech "doesn't exactly solve the problem of greenhouse gas emissions" and went from there. I didn't read your post thoroughly enough.

We don't know if holding at the current CO2 levels solves the problem, or not. We may plug all the holes in the boat and still be too heavy to float. Besides, diesel is only one slice of the fossil fuel pie. Can this blue crude form gasoline? And what about replacing coal? We have a long way to go before we can consider the the holes in the boat plugged.

No CO2 is being sequestered anywhere with this process. It may stop the greenhouse gas production, but it does nothing to reduce what's already there. It's like plugging the hole in the boat. Sure, the water isn't coming in anymore, but you still have a hull full of water with nobody bailing.

So THAT's what they're fracking with!

It's a small scale test plant, not a full, industrial scale production plant.