"I can't imagine how demoralizing it is to spend years working on a project that would ultimately succeed"

None of NASA's major manned spaced projects are even remotely likely to succeed, they are not intended to do so any more. They are just a place to blow money, create jobs and put money in Lockheed and Boeing pockets. More importantly they buy votes in the critical swing state of Florida.

They are designed to run 4-8 years, produce nothing except votes, paychecks and contractor profits, then they get cancelled and start over. It is way easier and less risk than actually making anything that will fly.

It is not the political process that is broken, it is NASA and the political process.

Get a clue, and spend a few billion on SpaceX to help finish Falcon Heavy. I'm not sure why SLS is even on the table at this point, it isn't remotely competitive.

Lockheed and Boeing also need to be completely removed from the process. They are making a mint milking DOD contracts, they don't need to be in middle of the civilian space program fleecing NASA and taxpayers there too. They do not use money wisely, they devour everything thrown their way and produce as little as possible in return.

And yet we always here how it's women's genitalia that has the power.

I think men's power were in their arms, backs, and their greater aggression.

Dicks really had little to do with it.

Cultures which didn't procreate quickly got wiped out for most of history. If you had 3 baby boys and they had 1 baby boy, then in 20 years, your culture took over (either peacefully or violently).

Any kind of culture that supported a low birth rate wasn't really practical until the invention of guns and machines.

That is exactly how congress works. Except the average IQ of congress is around 85.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...

College gender gap remains stable: 57% women

Just how much longer are we going to keep our foot on the back of young men's necks?

Free money, education, assistance to females even tho they are closing on 60% of the degrees.

Yes- from the beginning of time until about 50 years ago, men were in control of most societies. But things have changed rapidly.

At my last job, the supervisors and managers were 70% female. And they did things which would have resulted in lawsuits if a male did the same thing.

Are you shooting for fairness or retribution?

2 out of 5 people are lower IQ than 95. an IQ of 80 is considered barely functional.

Because animals are TASTY! In fact I'm going to go have some chicken and cow for lunch... If I choose hotdogs, Then I get Chicken,Cow, Pig, Rat, Squirrel, and Mystery animal all on one!

The 1920 pumphouse at the one I worked at was like that.

"You need Air, Fuel and Spark"

You must not work on many engines then....

Diesel does not need spark.

"but more importantly, neatly all the valves in those plants are controlled by electricity. " And they have geared handwheels on them for emergency backup.. Have you ever been in a Water filtration plant? I worked in one for over 7 years, during that time I had to operate the whole place by myself during two extended power outages, one actually blew up the main transformers on the premise and melted the 7200 volt power lines coming in to run our 350hp electric motors. I had a very hectic 30 minutes to run the 1/2 mile to the other end of the facility during a major thunderstorm to start the generators manually as we did not have auto start back then. Then run all the way back and manually close 4 60" gate valves by hand to shut down half of the water plant as water consumption dropped way down as most of the town was out of power. By the time the emergency response guys showed up and I opened the gates I had the 500,000 Gallon per day pumps running and the water towers in the city above a 75% full point.

What is fun is when you are in a pumphouse and the check valve fails and a 350hp motor is running backwards at full speed and someone does not answer the radio up at the control house and hits START on that motor. the smell of vaporized copper and ozone in the air when the breaker arms exploded and vaporized because 7200 volts at insane amps met a motor running backwards and acting like a direct short. My ears were ringing for a week.

Not hard at all. EMP does not blow up starter motors and does not blow up lead acid batteries. Hell all I have to do is connect jumper cables from the battery to the starter lugs to start the generator.

Granted that's far more difficult for the typical person that cant get past the "I pushed the button, it most be broke" thought process, but that is why most places actually hire competent employees to manage that stuff.

Real transformers dont die from EMP unless it is a direct hit by a megatron.

" disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket. Most people wouldn't even be able to flush their toilet because urban water supplies largely rely on electric pumps"

Every single water filtration plant has very large diesel generators that can run the place for months without electrical power. And no, a solar flare can not burn out giant motors and generators, all that can be ran easily without the SCADA system. In fact we used to run drills operating the place by hand, as most of the guys that did it from 1940 until 1990 did it mostly by hand.

It depends on how bad your vision is.

If it is 20/400 as mine was, after 18 years my vision is still clear tho I'm probably down to 20/40 from 20/20. I don't wear glasses or contacts and haven't since the operation.

I was unable to scuba dive, down hill ski, play racquet ball, and playing ultimate frisbee was impossible when the humidity was high.

When I went to the ocean- I had to leave my glasses on the beach so everything was a blur.

I experimented with disposable contacts and they were fair.

Lasik cost me $500 ($250 per eye) and it took 32 seconds and 39 seconds for my left and right eyes.

If it is dry and I don't drink enough water my eyes will turn fuzzy until I rehydrate. Eyedrops usually fix it instantly but sometimes not.

The surgery gave me a tremendous amount of freedom.

We are in trouble when it buys Airborne and Water transport.

And about 1 in 1000 actors succeed and become movie stars.

It takes hard work, connections- and a lot of luck.

Unless you have all three, you lose.

Your story is atypical.

I was not trying to kill him, I was simply sending him a large amount of high speed data.