Q: Should I be able to go to the supermarket and buy assault rifles and a shitload of ammo?
A: Second amendment! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Q: Should I be allowed to make a shitty plastic gun myself?
A: Al keida terrorist!

Democracy does not work well if the people who vote are complete idiots.

If I remember right, there already is a successor in the pipeline. Anyway, I would be surprised that the end of Kepler would be the end of the exoplanet revolution. It's a very hot field in astronomy. There's a scientific gold vein out there, people will keep digging. Kepler is a significant milestone, and one of my favorite missions, but not a unique instrument. It's the beginning, not the end.

The shuttle was nowhere near capable of flying to Kepler. It's at 40 million miles, while the space shuttle could only fly up a couple hundred miles. Besides, considering the cost of the mission, it would not warrant a complicated repair mission. For that money you could probably send up 10 new telescopes.

- Make better reaction wheels
- Make better valves

Those two things always come back when missions end, or when a rocket launch has to be delayed.

And only persons who WANT to believe in aliens will attribute the unexplained lights in the sky to flying saucers.

What I believe or don't believe has nothing to do with what I want. It would be rather stupid to believe something is true because you want it to be true.

Suppose someone was there to observe it, what problem would then have been solved? We would have a historical claim about the abiogenesis, but that would be it. That's not science, it explains nothing. We could even doubt the veracity of the claim, and there would be no way to settle it.

Adding large amounts of time does not answer any question, indeed. The only thing it does (together with the vast scale of the universe), is that very rare events can not be ruled out. Again, nobody knows how life started and it is quite possible we will never find out, but I have no problem with not knowing. I don't feel a need to invent invisible magical creatures that then magically created life. That would be silly.

quote: "The system is especially suitable for border surveillance missions, firefighting, and anti-drug trafficking operations amongst others."

Why would you disguise a UAV as a bird if you want to use it for firefighting? Also, it's just a press release infomercial, some guys want to put their hand in the military money jar so they put some feathers on a remote controlled airplane. Awesome... not!

That's true. But somehow you don't seem to draw the correct conclusions from that. When confronted with something complex, the theory of evolution tells you it can not have formed instantly, but instead it happened gradually. Therefore, the "starting point" of life is at the molecular level, not at the cell level. And I put the quotes there deliberately, because there won't be a single point, it will be a gradual process. Just like there isn't a point where there is a "first tree" or "first human".

So what? Why should we be able to create life? Why should it be simple? There are an unknown number of possibilities to consider. It might have been a freak accident or rather trivial, nobody knows. Whatever the odds, in a universe this big it is rather a non-issue.

I'm old enough to remember when cellphones first appeared. First when someone pulled a phone out of his pocket, everybody looked, made a joke, laughed, whatever. A few years later, almost everybody had one. Another few years, and the first reports of people whose phone had fused with their hand started to pour in. I doubt that 'not socially acceptable' will be a major issue.

You think I just know how alcohol is decomposed? No, I know that alcohol = simple molecule. Enzyme = protein. That should be more than enough to raise a few red flags.

So basically that's a sort of pulse-width modulation. The same technique used in DC-DC converters to maximize efficiency. Keep the motor running at maximum efficiency. Fine. Now take a look at this again: "alternately slow down and speed up to take advantage of regenerative braking". Can you spot the difference?

Look, the most efficient way to move is at constant speed. There is no way on earth that speeding up/slowing down is going to be more efficient. You need energy to speed up, at less than 100% efficiency, and you recuperate energy from slowing down, at less than 100% efficiency. How can that ever prolong battery life? That's basic highschool stuff. If the reporter has a highschool degree, yet is unaware of that, then that's quite embarrasing for the educational system.

It's true that accusing the reporter to lie is a serious one, but so is accusing the technical support staff of such incompetence. That leaves that there was a misunderstanding between the two: maybe support wanted to explain how to optimally slow down to maximize energy recuperation, and the dumb reporter didn't understand. Or maybe Tesla hired a moron for tech support. All are possible. With all results being possible, that is equivalent to saying that no conclusion can be made. So: do the test again, better this time.

I was also highly confused. Science literacy is important: we live in the 21st century, people. Please don't make basic errors like that! It only feeds misantropy in the rest of us.