I think this latest X-51 flight may have been longer than the sum of hypersonic burns on all tests thus far, but I may have overlooked some of the more recent ones.

Suffice it to say, a several-minute burn, with acceleration, is not a trivial accomplishment.

So what's your beef?

The power tools built by their subsidiary are works of art.

http://festoolusa.com/

Golly, those phones have really big screens. And mouse pointers. Are you sure you're following the conversation?

And all you have to do is trust that Microsoft will not abandon their existing customers.

I'll leave the consideration of that track record as an exercise for the audience.

It's not a royally stupid idea. It's literally the only thing that matters, in the medium-to-long term.

There will be an extinction level event. The only way for our species to survive it is to live on places other than Earth. If you don't think that humanity ought to preserve itself, well, I don't know how to explain that to you.

Mind. Blown. The TV show just writes itself!

No, it's not.

It's almost like theists aren't a hive mind. Strangely, neither are atheists. Stunning revelation that...

You can send a lot of stuff electronically if you have electronics. And an Internet connection.

The Post Office is not "in business" any more than the US Navy is "in business". It's a Constitutionally authorized function of the Government.

"Even if the Wrights had somehow managed to patent the whole class of powered, fixed-wing aircraft,"

The way their longitudinal control patent was interpreted, that's exactly what they had. Look at the Wrights vs. Glenn Curtiss. Curtiss used a completely different mechanism for roll control, with a different control layout (both of which are basically the industry standard today), but he was not allowed to sell his products because they infringed on the Wrights' patents related to their (inferior) wing-warping roll control mechanism.

Start the clock when the item is available. That was easy.

Sounds like the poster is smart enough to keep doing what works for him, and not care about your aesthetic judgements about Ultimate Truth.

Umm...the tax rates while we had a balanced budget during the Clinton era? Maybe a good starting point?

The reason nobody can give you a number is because it's complicated and dynamic. That's like saying there should only be one throttle position on your car for going "the right speed."

Car analogy. Slashdot. I win.

I'm going to make the wild assumption that you're a dude.

The problem is not "Airplanes are not solar powered!" the problem is "Moving large numbers of people and cargo around at almost Mach 1 is pretty energy intensive".

If you're seriously interested in what engineers are actually doing about this problem, start reading about NASA's SUGAR research:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/future_airplanes.html

I can't help you with your conspiracy theories. Anybody who could make such an airplane as you imagine would become instantly, vastly, wealthy.