Right. I'd have to say that this "shift" is remarkably unobservable. Frankly, I think things haven't progressed beyond the arguments of the ancient Greeks. Either you think you know the answer to empirically unknowable questions (religion, atheism as popularly defined) or you don't think such (some flavor of agnosticism as popularly defined).

We've had this technology for millennia, though specialized for the Earth environment. Cramming it into a one ton device for use on an extraterrestrial body is a bit of effort, but I don't see the part where we'll need a few centuries.

I think we're probably ten to twenty years out from building a 3D printer for the tabletop that can work on Earth using a somewhat contrived set of raw materials and build copies of itself.

How about a comparison to a launch system with far higher launch rates? I'm not arguing for current launch systems at current rates. I'm arguing for mature transportation systems that reuse the launch vehicle, have very high frequency of launch, and for those two reasons, look nothing like any launch system in existence today.

People factors are sublinear with launch frequency. The cost of people in R&D is independent of the launch rate. The launch and operations workforce can be more efficiently used over many launches than a few. There are economies to scale when using people.

No it wouldn't. The key behind using a multiple of propellant is that rockets need to expend a fixed amount of propellant to do a particular job. Nothing else has to be expended in a rocket launch.

Not the rocket, not the workforce, not the launch platform or control systems. Obviously, a lot is currently expended by rockets, especially the disposable kind, but that current necessity doesn't scale with launch frequency. At higher launch frequencies, reusable rockets of increasing sophistication are economically supported. That what drives the cost per launch to a multiple of propellant cost.

In particular, rockets don't need to expend a fixed amount of engineers' coffee, in fact that particular number goes down as launch frequency goes up!

To the contrary, "made possible" means your country gets invaded and you get booted from power. This will provide considerable disincentive to future governments to play that sort of game with the US.

Well, I've since been steered to references (in an ineffectual attempt to show that sea level rise of this degree was significant) that claim at most 1-2% of the world's population affected over the course of a century and minor loss of agricultural land. So even if I didn't have a clue then, I certainly have one now. And that clue indicates my original statement is still correct.

Except one impact is on a braced arm while the other impact is on a ribcage and heart muscle.

But that's just it: They will never release a product that has broad consumer appeal. If they had DRM that used signatures instead of encrypting it, only allowing playback on certain devices, with an internet connection that's always on, etc., they'd have a lot better sell rate. But the truth is, the product is overpriced and heavily restricted to the point of being useless. If I could make a 1 time payment and get a license to watch A Movie(tm), and to play it anywhere, anytime, on any equipment, in any format -- for personal use... I'd do it if the price was reasonable. But that's the hideous evil about their marketing: They'll never give you that kind of a license. That's what you were buying in the 80s, and since we've gone digital, it's easy to create the extended edition, directors cut, ultimate, super, 1.5 version, diddledodedo edition -- and then we're going to release it on vhs, itunes, dvd, bluray, youtube, netflix, and in 23 different regions, at different times and price points... and you're going to have to PAY PAY PAY if you want to use any of them. Who cares if you already bought it and it's sitting on the shelf -- fuck you, you have to buy a slightly different version just to use it on your new streaming internet player, plus pay your ISP to stream it, plus pay the stream provider, along with the cost of the equipment, oh -- and every time you pay, we're right there, mouths wide, waiting to take a bite out of everyone else's sandwich.

I'm a pirate and proud of it. Because I'm not just doing it because I can, but because there's no other choice. The business model is corrupt, it doesn't serve the public interest, nor does it serve the artists interests, nor does it really even serve the industry as a whole; It serves about 150 people who are middle men for a dying industry. The only reason bluray has any traction at all is because our internet connections are shit and we can't download it or stream it on demand. There's no reason for optical drives anymore; even mechanical hard drives are going the way of the dodo bird. But these guys are pushing their distribution model onto the world and passing laws and crap thinking it's going to save them. It's just re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Bitches, ship's going down -- and the pirates already hopped in a life boat, cast off, lit a big fatty.. and now they're waiting for the artists and wondering what'll happen to those poor bastard consumers in 'economy'.

RIAA and the MPAA are middle men. Middle men don't add value: They don't produce the product, and they don't use it. They're worthless. Fuck them. Get the consumers to the life boats (teach them how to torrent and bypass torrent blocking), and let the artists and the middle men figure out whether they want to drown together in each other's cold, unfeeling arms, or get on the goddamn boats and end this crap.

And most of those fleshy parts tend to be on the outside. The human body is actually fairly good at protecting one from these sort of wounds. For example, throwing up your arms to protect your head and chest works much better against knives than it does against bullets.