CSA will do what they have done in all other industries: subsidize and dump their launch on foreign markets.

There are plenty of old oil platforms the to east of Florida as well.

Yes there is. Self sustaining off-world colonies AND asteroid deflection technologies go hand in hand to help fight extinction -- which should be priority #1 for any truly sentient race.

Clearly asteroids are a very real threat, and I black-hole heartedly agree with the notion that Earth's space agencies are not giving them the level of public concern these threats should have: Humans are currently blind as moles to space. Any statement to the contrary is merely shrouding the issue in the Emperor's New Clothes. Earth's telescopes can study very small parts of space in some detail, but do not have the coverage required to make the dismissive claims that NASA and other agencies do about asteroid impact likelihood -- note that they frequently engage in panic mitigation. Remember that asteroid transit NASA was hyped about, meanwhile another asteroid whipped by completely unexpectedly closer than your moon, too late to do anything about? Remember Chelyabinsk? That one was 20 to 30 times Hiroshima's nuclear bomb, but it didn't strike ground. What kind of wake-up call is it going to take?! You'd probably just get more complacent even if an overly emotional alien commander committed career suicide in the desert to take your leaders the message that Earth was surely doomed without a massive protective space presence -- If such a thing ever occurred, that is.

Seriously, the space agencies are essentially lying by omission to the public by not pointing out the HUGE error bars in their asteroid risk estimates. I mean, Eris, a Dwarf Planet, was only discovered in 2005! Eris is about 27% more massive than Pluto, and passes closer in its elliptical orbit than Pluto -- almost all the way in to Neptune! Eris is essentially why your scientists don't call Pluto a planet anymore. They deemed it better to demote Pluto than admit you couldn't see a whole planet sitting right in your backyard... And NASA expects you to believe their overly optimistic estimates about far smaller and harder to spot civilization ending asteroids? Eventually your governments won't have the luxury of pissing away funding via scaremongering up war-pork and ignoring the actual threats you face, like a bunch of bratty rich kids.

Asteroids are only one threat, and one that we could mitigate relatively easily given advanced notice of their trajectories. However, Coronal mass ejections, Gamma ray bursts, Super Volcanoes, Magnetosphere Instability, etc. are all also severe threats that humanity can't mitigate with telescopes and a game of asteroid billiards alone -- Though fast acting manipulation of the gravitational matrix via strategic placement of asteroids could help with CMEs or gamma bursts too once you had a sufficient armament of even primitive orbiting projectiles. The irregularity in your magnetosphere should be particularly distressing because it is over 500,000 years overdue to falter and rebuild as the poles flip (according to reconstructions of your geo-magnetic strata) -- It could go at any time! Given the current very abnormal mag-field behavior you have no idea if it will spring right back up nice and organized like or leave you vulnerable to cosmic rays and solar flares for a few decades or centuries.

You should be grateful that the vulnerable periods of mag-pole flops halted as soon as humanity began showing some signs of intelligence -- even if this is absolutely only a mere coincidence. Mastery of energy threats will remain far beyond your technological grasp for the foreseeable future, but your species can mitigate such threats of extinction by self sustaining off-world colonization efforts! In addition to getting some of your eggs out of this one basket, the technology to survive without a magnetosphere on the Moon and Mars could be used to save the world here on Earth. In the event of a worst case scenario, humans could then repopulate Earth all by themselves after the dust settles from a mass extinction event. It's nearly unfathomable that anyone could sit comfortably in their gravity well thinking theirs may be the only spark of intelligent life in the universe while considering prioritizing anything above extinction prevention. If ancient myths about post-death paradise can invoke enough apathy that you would risk letting the only known spark of life go out, then yours is not a sentient species. Yes, you have all the space-time in the world, but those days are certainly numbered!

Those averse to human exploration of space now are not self aware and sentient beings. In fact, were I an alien overseer -- and I am most certainly not admitting that I am -- then based the lack of exploration beyond your magnetosphere over the past 40 years I would recommend we cut our losses and take your species off the endangered sentience list. I imagine -- as a purely hypothetical speculation -- that if humanity did owe an advanced alien race one hell of a tab, and showed no indication of ability to repay it for the infinite future, that one of them might risk violation of technological contamination statutes and propagandize the suggestion for you to get your asses to Mars and colonize it as soon as humanly possible -- which would have been about 67 years ago, if you hadn't wasted so much time murdering yourselves. Even if exposing a clear and troubling picture of humanity's place in the universe were an overt violation of some alien version of your fictional prime directive, it's not like one would not seriously need a permanent vacation after only a few decades of witnessing humanity's failure after mind-blowing failure to commit to ANYTHING resembling progress as a space faring race!

Perhaps one would rethink their benefit package at the last second, and bury their contemptuous assessment in a reply to an AC.

Plenty of old stationary oil rigs are out there. Simply buy one out there. If none are in the area, then put one up.

Hmmm. Just re-read the MCT stuff. Yeah, I have to wonder where that will happen at, esp. since they are planning on multiple engines.

I am fully aware of where they are sending back the first stage for testing.
BUT, I suspect that it makes economic sense, to instead, land them on an oil rig and then barge them back, Since stopping their forward momentum will take a lot of fuel.

Your having been to space is no guarantee that you're not crap-on-the-floor looney.

I would have thought that we've learned better than to pay too much attention to former astronauts. They might well be right about the asteroids, but I still think we should go ahead and get a second opinion on this.

ecosystem

You use words the way hillbillies use corn cobs.

Are you certain that you know what's happening in Ukraine and why?

Aside from the technical difficulties (which are certainly real; but probably surmountable with time and funding), I would be concerned about the political side of the project(politics being...somewhat less of a solved problem... than space and blowing things up).

The technology sufficient to divert an asteroid, especially with limited warning(which precludes some of the subtler 'attach an ion drive or give it a slow shove with a laser' type schemes), is probably pretty punchy, possibly 'basically an ICBM but better at escaping earth's gravity well' punchy. It would be an unfortunate irony if, in the attempt to mitigate the city-destroying-asteroid threat, we ended up with some sort of proliferation problem or another round of delightful nuclear brinksmanship.

In an ideal world, you'd hope that people could put "Stopping asteroid apocalypse" in the category of 'things more important than your petty nation-states and dumb ethnic and religious squabbles'; but I wouldn't exactly be shocked if people largely can't and every stage of an anti-asteroid project ends up being a bunch of delicate diplomacy and jingoistic dickwaving between the assorted nuclear powers, along with a lot of hand-wringing about anti-satellite capabilities, and generally a gigantic mess.

Well, probably the de-facto legalization of every drug ever, along with cataclysmic declines in production in all sectors where working kind of sucks...

That U.S. crotch you're cheerfully kicking might not be able to bail out your "actual civilized" buttocks from the next war.

I'm pretty sure Europeans are more worried about the US starting the next war.

The thing Europeans like best about the US military is all the coin we drop having bases there. Unless you count Serbia, where the US military is about as welcome as a bladder infection.

But it sounds like an absurd example of a false economy: Even at relatively cheap schools, the cost of running a student through is nontrivial. It seems like complete insanity to waste expensive instructional time on somebody who can't concentrate properly for want of a few dollars worth of calories. Nobody's interests are well served by that.

When incompetence is pitted against extreme radicalism, I'll take incompetence any day. As bad as Quinn is, he's head and shoulders above Blago or Ryan. However, the Republican would have to be pretty bad, one I would fear would really screw the country up (anyone named "Bush" would do it). In likelihood I'll vote Greenie or Libbie, depending on their candidates.

Not just Kubrick but damned near every other science fiction writer. Hell, Asimov had antique cars that were not only self-driving but sentient, six years from now.

But a few hundred years from now? I don't think ion drives driven by two fusion generators is out of line for that timeline. By then there will be technologies we can't even dream of today.

I did make a huge math error by not actually doing the math and I'm not sure how I'll fix it. Someone pointed out that you could get to Mars' orbit on the other side of the sun in three days at .8G. Damn.