The problem with trying to USE Van der Waals forces for anything is that in order to stick together, both surfaces must be microscopically smooth; the sort of "smooth" that would make plate glass or mirrors look like "volcanic rock under a magnifying glass". "Reflecting telescope mirror" smooth. Making materials that smooth - and KEEPING them that smooth - is going to be a challenge.

As physics, it's pretty neat. From an engineering perspective, it's going to be a problem.

SpaceWeather.com has a "Flybys " website; enter your zip code (USA) or Lat/Long (Anyplace) to see a list of overflights of the ISS and a couple dozen other satellites that are bright enough to see.

http://www.spaceweather.com/fl...

The web site is free; they have an Android and iOS app for five bucks, I think, that sounds an alarm.

More than good enough. Although I can see how designing your own device and programming it yourself is more impressive than buying an app or navigating to a web site.

Agree completely. Here's a classic example of how foolish, supposedly "well meaning" citizens screwed themselves....

http://www.mystatesman.com/new...

POLITICS: Woman who voted for every Austin, TX tax increase discovers that now she can’t afford to live there. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”

Whenever "We the peepul" allow the government to "take care of us", we allow rapacious wolves to take over our lives. Democrap, Rinopublican, Socialist, "Green" - most political parties will promise you ANYTHING to get the power to jail you and steal everything that you have.

It might - just MIGHT - still be possible to roll it all back. Probably not, but I'm the eternal optimist. Vote Libertarian if possible, or Tea Party - and then roll THOSE crooks out of office at the next election. We don't want to "control government spending"; we want to abolish departments and sell their buildings. I want to revoke their pensions and jail a few. Cut all government salaries by a third - and then do it again the next year. We want to make Washington D.C. a ghost town. As it is, 9 of the ten highest income zip codes are in or next to the Beltway. Legend says that in ancient India, new rulers were weighed every year, to see if they had gotten fat at their subjects' expense. It ought to be illegal for a government official to own a luxury car or a boat or a swimming pool; those things mean they're making too much money.

I blame air conditioning. Washington D.C. used to be a fetid, barely inhabitable swamp. That's why Maryland and Virginia were willing to give it up. Air conditioning lets the parasites live in comfort. Ban air conditioning within 100 miles of DC, and just SEE how quickly the government shrinks!

I'll have to break out my copy of the book, but I'm pretty sure O'Rourke said it first.

Marketing people would much rather use the word "more" than the word "less", and bigger numbers rather than fractions. So in trying to say "uses one-eighth as much", it comes out as "saves 87% MORE than".

Humorist P.J. O'Rourke once wrote that English doesn't just take words from other languages; English chases other languages into dark alleys and mugs them for their words.

"Proven" is, perhaps, the wrong word. "Made to be practical", perhaps. A $5 radiometer from a craft store proves quite readily the idea that light has pressure. The trick will be, as with the nuclear fusion proposals that are perhaps twenty years in the future - and have been "20 years in the future" for thirty years now, to make it big enough and practical enough that we can extract usable amounts of energy from it.

There's nothing new about the idea of spacecraft being propelled by light pressure. There was an Arthur C. Clarke story published in "Boy's Life" in the early 60's about sunlight powered "sailing yachts" in a race from Earth orbit to the Moon. Or the Niven story "The Fourth Profession", in which an alien trading ship arrives at Earth, wanting humanity to build a launching laser to send the crew on the next leg of their journey.

And it's been 30 years since Niven & Pournelle published "Mote In God's Eye" in which an interstellar probe riding a the combined beam of battery of laser cannons arrive in human space.

So if actual human physicists are finally going to get around to proving the concept, so much the better!

There's this great tool called "Google". Or use DuckDuckGo. Or any search engine of your choice. You won't believe the results of my research, so do your own.

But this is somewhat far afield of the original "Should the unlicensed be allowed to 'drive' autonomous cars. No.

You also won't find any law prohibiting a child from nibbling his Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun, but a 6-yo was suspended from school for having a "weapon" - or anything which a mentally-disturbed teacher might think LOOKED like a gun. Yes, it happened.

ThisIsTrue.com is a weekly compilation of bizarre but true news stories; search for the "zero tolerance" ones.

But here are a few selections from a Google search for "parents arrested for leaving children alone".

http://stratford.patch.com/gro...

https://answers.yahoo.com/ques...

https://secure02.kidshealth.or...

http://www.lawandparents.co.uk...

Go ahead; leave your 10-yo child at home alone. When CPS takes your children and the cops arrest you for "child endangerment"- which HAS HAPPENED - your (true) argument that you can't find any law about it WILL NOT get your kids back or your bail reduced.

The problem is that the bureaucrats who are supposed to ADMINISTER the law often, with judicial connivance, are making up the law as they go along.

Sorry; he neglected the tag, and it was not obvious to me that sarcasm was his intent. If it was, I apologize - but the problem is far too real.

I wish it WERE "laugh out loud" funny about this. But read the newspapers; this is all too common. If you're not in the USA, you may have trouble believing this; I _DO_ live here, and I sometimes have trouble believing how far the nation has fallen, and how quickly. This is no longer the nation that I grew up in.

"Certified professionals" at child rearing tend to do a TERRIBLE job of it. The rarity of the exceptions are remarkable. Abuse and neglect are far more common in boarding schools and government child care facilities. "Child Protective Services" is almost Soviet-like in the inappropriateness of the name. When parents abuse a child, the courts get involved; when CPS abuses children by the dozen, it gets covered up by the government. Here in Sacramento, CA, CPS has been the target of several investigations concerning dead and "missing" children.

However, taking children out of the home and having them reared by "certified professionals" has always been de rigueur among communists, socialists, and leftists of every stripe, so I guess you've made your own position abundantly clear.

The government would jail you for leaving your child at home alone. If your autonomous vehicle is as safe as being at home, then the government should also prevent children from operating such a vehicle. Perhaps the child could be allowed to ride alone only if a parent or guardian programmed the destination....

Or perhaps we need to go back to the 1970's and allow children as much freedom and autonomy as I had when I was eight or ten, when my mother would tell me "Go out and play, and be back before dark."