When it doesn't even burn at arm's length? You're an idiot.

No, it would take evidence that these are actually a problem beyond a few alarmists over-reacting when they see a green light. The optics in a hand-held laser are cheap and even with good optics, no laser beam lacks divergence. The laser I use for pointing out stars to my son spreads about ten centimeters for every 100 meters. By the time such a beam would hit a cockpit, it could easily spread to over a meter across and anyone seeing it would be exposed to 1/1000th the brightness of looking directly into the beam at arm's length.

This is just the latest technophobe scare story. No different than worries about x-rays from color televisions, behavior effects of video games, gangs hanging out at arcades, etc.

Yooo-hooo! Mr. DHS officer? Yeah, I think this guy knows BlueStrat.

Personally, I think I'd prefer to let a few people get fake IDs now and then rather than force all of us who need ID to drive to put up with a facial recognition system. I promise you this will find more and more uses in a "post-9/11 world" where bureaucrats fall over themselves to grab more control.

Okay ... I'm getting up and moving to a seat a little farther away from BlueStrat.

What's that? No, no, I don't know that guy. Never saw him before in my life.

That same article states:

"Yes, 35.8 percent of children in the study have lumps or cysts, but this is not the same as cancer," said Naomi Takagi, an associate professor at Fukushima University Medical School Hospital, which administered the tests.

"We do not know that cause of this, but it is hard to believe that is due to the effects of radiation," she said. "This is an early test and we will only see the effects of radiation exposure after four or five years."

I've already demonstrated elsewhere in this thread that it's not "two cents a month". That's a number you've pulled firmly out your backside. The real number is somewhere between $0.60 and nearly $5 a month, depending on whose numbers you take as gospel. It's also been three days since this happened. I can guarantee you haven't gotten your next bill yet to see whether or not DirecTV *has* cut your billing.

It amazes me how you blame everything here on DirecTV, who is a distributor of goods, and not on the manufacturer of those goods that is demanding an increase in prices. Do you expect the grocery store to eat the cost when the price of milk goes up from the distributor?

You point out that DirecTV wants to make a profit as if that were some horrible thing. Ask yourself how much profit they have to make to pay to launch a $2B satellite so you can watch Sponge Bob? And then you want them to have redundancy, so it's not just one satellite but two or three. And then everyone wants their local channels available, so it's not 200 channels, it's 2000 or more. Each satellite only has so much capacity. And when you reach that limit, it's another $2B to add the next channel. These aren't minor costs, and they can't pass those costs on to the customer. That's *their* cost of doing business. The only cost they can control at all is how much they pay to the suppliers for content to rebroadcast. And you criticize them for doing that.

You expect a company to "absorb the costs". Hey, great idea, let's do that to all companies out there. You know, it costs more to make a car now than in 1903, when cars cost $800. You should go in to your local dealership and tell them they should "absorb the cost" of the increases from their suppliers. It's only fair, right? Heck, when I was a kid in the 70's cars were under $3000, and that's like a promise to me, so they should sell me a car at the cost it was when I was born, right?

Get real, it's not a rental contract. They wrote into the contract that they will pass on substantial cost increases to the consumer. Go get your contract, read it. It's in there. You signed it. Tough luck.

And, yes, if they can't resolve the issue with Viacom, then they should offer a rate reduction of between $1.20 and $10 per month (see calculations in another message) which is the cost of the Viacom channels. I expect if they truly reach an impasse, that's what they'll do.

Fine, let's take the lowball of $144M. DirecTV has a well-known number of customers, namely 20,000,000. Viacom's channels are part of core programming, so everyone gets them. We divide $144M by 20M and we get $7.20 per subscriber per year. Okay, easy enough, that's a $0.60 per month increase, matching Viacom's claim of "pennies" per month. (60 pennies is still less than a dollar.)

DirecTV is putting a dollar figure on all their scrolls, a number I haven't seen Viacom deny. That number is $1,000,000,000 per year. Dividing by number of customers, that's $50 per customer, per year, or about $4.25 per month increase in the bill. Guess what, 425 pennies is still "pennies" per month.

If we go with your estimate of splitting the difference, it's $20 per year, and $1.75 per month. Again, if you want to stretch the term, it's still "pennies per month."

Now, if DirecTV is lying about the $1B number, why is Viacom not shouting "Liar Liar!" from the rooftops and giving out the real number instead? All they give us is "pennies per month" which describes absolutely *nothing* in terms of actual cost, other than greater than $0.01, since it's plural.

Both sides are using semantics. One is using them to defend my wallet, the other to pick my pocket. I know which side I'm naturally going to come down on.

So, you would prefer that DirecTV simply accept any rate increase of the content provider and pass them on to you? So, the $1B increase ($50/year/subscriber) should just be passed on to you? Like Viacom says, "it's only pennies a day."

And once that precedent is set, when Disney want's another $5 a month, and HBO does, and every other network, and your bill goes to $400 a month, will you vent your anger at the content providers or will you scream at DirecTV for not attempting to argue with the content providers to maintain a fair rate?

I'm no fanboi of DirecTV (although I do have it) but I'd rather they fought against a price increase even if it means temporarily losing channels, rather than tagging another $5 a month onto my bill.

Because space is big...

Imagine there were only 19,000 people on Earth, roughly evenly distributed. What's the chance you'd ever run into another person? Now, instead of just the land area, make sure that 3/4ths of those people are on the ocean. What are the odds of running into one of them now?

Now, imagine that, instead of just the surface of the Earth, you stack up about 500 layers, each one of them the surface of a sphere wrapping the entire Earth, each one a mile higher than the last and starting about 160 miles up. Now instead of just the surface of the Earth, spread those 19,000 people across those 500 spheres evenly and evenly spread them around the surface of the sphere they're on. And all of those spheres have more area than the surface of the Earth.

Now, would you consider that area "dangerously heavily populated?" On top of that, you need to shrink the people down for most of the debris.

Now, to be fair, the real test is that many of these "people" are moving really, really fast, although most of them are moving in roughly the same direction. But a few of them are going in different directions. And some of those are jumping between spheres. But it's still areas larger than the whole surface of the Earth. There have been only a tiny number of collisions between these objects. (I think the number is actually -- one.)

Like I said, space is big. Really big. Bigger than the biggest thing you can imagine. You may think it's a long way down to the pharmacy, but that's peanuts compared to space. (With apologies to Douglas Adams)

Sadly, you take the definition of a Progressive think tank (run by ultra-1%'er George Soros) as the source of your definition.

"Gee, Mr. Fox, what's your plan for Hen-House management?"

I doubt that Stalin, or Pol Pot, or Mao defined their socialist/progressivist regimes as, "A long-standing ideology to repress the people, destroy the economy, stifle innovation, and kill millions while insuring the continuation of a decadent, hedonistic lifestyle for a carefully chosen elite."

Funny how you criticize the US educational system, but have clearly never read or understood what the socialist movement (started in the latter half of the 18th century) and the newly re-named Progressive movement of the 20th century (renamed when the muckrakers and guys like Lenin made "communist" and "socialist" into bad words) have done or how they've been implemented. The fact, alone, that you don't see them as the exact same movement, with one version having a "candy-covered coating" is a truly sad commentary on your "critical thinking" skills.

Sadly, you have bought into the redefinition of the language that the Progressive movement thrives on. There is nothing "progressive" about progressivism. The end result of progressivism is a small cadre of "elites" who control the lives of the underclass "for their own good." This is no different then the Feudalism of the middle ages.

Explain to me how the socialist ideal of a society where all people are taxed using a "progressive" scale so that there is no one who is "unfairly" rich, leaving a large group of people who work endlessly to feed a government of cultural elites (bureaucrats) whose job is to dole out largese to the people -- just enough to keep them hooked on the system but not enough for them to escape it -- is any different from the Feudal lords and the idea of Noblese Oblige?

We had that system, we've tried that system for 2000 years or more. Oh, it "works" in it's own way, namely a short, brutish existence for 99% of the population. But for that 1% it's a wonderful system.

And that's the huge irony here. The progressives of the last century have managed to convince "the 99%" that they really want to have the socialist system installed.

The most ironic statement in history: "Workers of the World Unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains." Because when they rose up, all they really did was forge shackles for themselves.

The USSR killed at least 25,000,000 people.
Pol Pot killed 10,000,000
Mao and his Cultural Revolution? Probably in excess of 30,000,000.

And this is the system you want to champion? I bet you think you were taught "critical thinking" as well...

Dose me up with hyronalin and a tri-ox compound, and I'm good to go. And maybe a hit of cordrazine so I'll be sure to take out all you murderers and assassins!

A typical launch carries a 3-5% excess fuel load for safety margin, so there was always some extra fuel aboard at separation. The big factor that changed the game was that the Merlin 1-D engine was suppposed to reach 120,000 lbs of thrust each, but instead is testing at 145,000 lbs of thrust with a higher ISP, which IIRC is about 310 seconds, which is phenomenal for a Kerosene/LOX engine.

With the extra thrust and the better performance, it meant that they could either expand the payload by a few thousand kilos, which would still be an option with a more expensive, expendable flight, or they could have 6-8% fuel reserves at the end of the stage separation.

Without the payload to push, that 6-8% is more than enough to slow down a very light "empty tin can" and get it out of it's sub-orbital trajectory. If you watch the video, they're only burning three engines to deorbit, and one engine to land the first stage. The claim is that the first stage actually has the thrust to return it to the launch site, which might be possible. First stage separation is only a few hundred miles downrange, and you could actually just slow down and let the Earth rotate under you to move back west. In any case, you'd want to bring the speed down to where you are basically in a straight line free-fall back to the launch site, using only maneuvering jets for stability until a few miles above the ground, when you light the center engine and tail land it.

Clearly this isn't something simple, either. They aren't going to be flying this by next week or anything, and the actual fact is that they are likely to be unable to recover some of these first and second stages to bad or uncontrolled landings -- which is exactly the same as what happens now, so this can only be a win scenario for them if they get it working. I'd love to see $10/lb to LEO pricing.

As for the use of parachutes, the first launch of Falcon 9 attempted to parachute the first stage back to the ocean, but from what I heard, the aerodynamic forces on the tumbling, uncontrolled reentry of the stage caused it to break up before the parachutes were deployed. The second stage reentry is under even higher stresses, and I don't think they even tried to recover it before the grasshopper program.