39 days to Mars with ion propulsion? Show me your "calculation." DAWN took 9 months, I want to see how you got a 690% improvement without using a megawatt of power or technology less than TRL 7, and how much delta-v you expect the launch vehicle to contribute.

Ion thrusters don't depend on chemical reactions. Ionization is through colliding a high-energy electron with the propellant, and then the ionized propellant is accelerated.

Using hydrogen is pretty dumb because you're trying to generate thrust. F=ma. Hydrogen has low mass.

They've been testing this for awhile. AFF (Autonomous Formation Flight) from 2001 is the first project I know about. The challenge is in the guidance and control system - it must be able to keep the trailing aircraft within inches of the desired position (12 inches for AFF) and maintain position through maneuvers and disturbances.

One study disagrees: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120429085411.htm Phone up or down made no difference, at least with this sample of teenagers.

Where are you in LA? I've been in LA area the past 5 years. Live in West LA and I've gone to just about everywhere as far east as San Gabriel Valley. The only place I've had terrible T-mobile coverage is Palos Verdes, but my understanding is that all the carriers suck there since no one wants cell towers cheapening their property.

You're forgetting the purpose of a rocket: to put something useful into space. Getting a rocket and a bunch of fuel into space is worthless by itself. More fuel means less payload.

I agree with you about Finder, but for home/end of a line, just press CMD+Left/Right. This just an idiosyncrasy of the OS, like pressing CMD+Down/Up to navigate folders instead of Enter and...is there even a "up one folder level" shortcut in Windows?

Those are patents, not copyright. Copyright is intended to help content creators profit from their work so they can make a living and create more content.

SEP has been in regular use for over a decade now...first EP-powered deep space mission was in 1998 (Deep Space 1), and just about every Earth-orbiting satellite relies on EP.

Anandtech mentions that the 520 went through a year of testing, so it should be much more reliable than other SF-2200 SSDs. Also fixed a BSOD issue in one of their systems, which was also using SF-2281.