Supposedly the success rate for Russian launchs between 1980-1999 is around 94% while the success rate for american launches is around 86%. Russians are more experience having launched 2589 times with 181 losses while Americans launched 1152 times with 164 losses. Now that the shuttles have been retired I'm going to assume the Russians will be really far ahead but maybe it's better that way with globalization right? As much as I like spaceX I find their newer untested technology not really viable for manned flight. They can't be trusted to carry anything other then low cost cargo until they've worked out their problems.

I love this series. Coop will only make it better. (Unless they screw it up, which is not likely)

You know I was going to argue the exact same thing. Except I was going to use facts and figures. However when I looked up US spending it is comparable percentage wise to China and Russian GDP spending. The US spends more money but they get less bang for their buck. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2034rank.html Use google to compare spending. Pretty cool! http://www.google.ca/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ms_mil_xpnd_gd_zs&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=us+military+spending

Shouldn't we be trying to detect life first? I've always wondered why we haven't detected absorption spectra for chlorophyll or a similar material (I read recently about the possibility of grey/black leafed plants) in space around stars. If plants are black then they won't leave much reflected light to detect.

I can understand this. I find it a little repulsive if someone like moore (fat, rich, and intelligent enough to know better) would badger someone who is probably a minimum wage employee at a store. Meanwhile there are bigger fish to fry such as the store owner, the franchise, the lobbyists and the government.

It was designed to be similar to FFXI. The problem is that FFXI had terrible controls back then but people tolerated it more. Now everyone has experience with many different MMO's and even the worst MMO's allow you to pick your preferred control style. The game needed more polish for the game controls and user interface. That's what happens when you focus on cutscenes and graphics and not gameplay and user interface.

SpaceX is trying to make rocket launchs come off an "assembly-line". This alone would be an impressive feat. Comparing this to a 1964 launch would be like comparing the 8086 cpu to modern quad core. My amature opinion on the launch: I don't think spacex has been totally successful as mentioned by quite a few other posts. They keep spiraling out of control, they need better rocket/jet rudders or something to improve their out of atmosphere control.

Mnt St. Helen's has already blown her head off what else is there to do but let off steam and a little magma until she rebuilds her crown up. Now if this was going on at Mt Fuji I would say KABOOM!