Two months ago I was sure it was a scam, I'm not so sure now, this might be it.

I agree with much of what you say, but diversified is not something I would label Google, they sell ads, and it accounts for +90% of their revenue, then they have a small cloud operation going, but if anyone would eat into their ad business they would be toast.

I do not move them of my computer, I use a backup service called backblaze (www.backblaze.com) that gives you unlimited storage and continuously backup for 5$ / month, hassle free and cheap.

x-43 is a hypersonic plane , x-34 is a test bed. Both programs are terminated. Do you refer to x-37 ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_X-43

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-34

"What have we gotten from the moon?"

Million of kids in a whole generation interested in Sciences ? ROI comes in many flavors.....

Since we seems to be talking about Windows development, its probably cheaper to pay for Visual Studio then to supply your developers with an open source tool chain, man hours = expensive...

If you do not have $200 after two years your company have probably failed.

No, we would be in IT support hell, maintaining our dads and moms P2P servers......

China ramping up its space presences , US is winding down its program. What message does that send to the rest of the world do you think ? NASA have been one of the most effective PR machines selling the US brand to the rest of the world for more then 40 years now.