Scaled Composites had to develop two separate vehicles... The lift vehicle and the sub-orbital vehicle. There was a substantial amount of testing for the White Knight 2 to complete before they could start testing the sub-orbital vehicle.

Xenon is most efficient because of its mass. you could also use argon, which is plentiful, or even hydrogen, which is the most abundant thing in the universe but a bit harder to ionize.

Now... you know full well they're talking about a solar electric powered improbability drive. All you need is a little sunlight and a nice cup of tea.

Which may all be true... While you and I know what an ion drive is, and you may have even been following along the development news for NSTAR, NEXT, HiPEP, and even the occasional blurb about VASMIR, the average U.S. citizen has no clue what you're talking about. Calling it a solar electric propulsion system helps with public outreach. You want public funding, you have to get public buy-in.

And so, they're on foot or using stolen fuel; and, they manage to hold out for 6 months like they did 60 years ago. The U.S. expends 6 months and thousands of lives getting to this point (in the Korean war the U.S. had 36,000 dead and 92,000 wounded). Then we have to spend a couple of years cleaning up the mess and ferreting out the remaining old guard military units. It took a couple of days to smash the Iraqi military and the Afghan military, true; but, how long was the U.S. really engaged there. If memory serves, we're still in Afghanastan...

China might get a bit miffed when the radioactive fallout drifts into their bread-basket region.

No it won't, for two reasons.

For 60 years they've been instilling in their populous that their Dear Leader is a god (or god-like). While many fear and loath him, any that have shown open dissent have been killed or put in re-education camps. The population will not rise up against the NK leadership.

For 60 years NK has been digging in and building weapons. They may not be as technically sophisticated as their neighbor, they may not have the weapons technology available to the U.S., but they have weapons and personell in quantity. Technically, they have one of the largest armies in the world, with over a million active and eight million reserve. A conflict with NK could drag on for years.

OK, while this may be a cool idea, assuming you could get there... Why build a complete structure of limited size when there are numerous known lava tubes. You just need to seal a large one off and you could have as large a living space as you need.

They'd have to be in attendance for this to be of any use.

I'm not sure what's sadder... That the poster does not understand basics biochemistry; or, that he has been modded insightful by several /. users.

We haven't built any new nuclear weapons in decades. In fact, we've been gradually decomissioning them, in step with Russia, as we reach new treaty agreements.

They were called vacuum tubes in the U.S. and valves in the rest of the English speaking world. British translator perhaps?

I'm sorry; but, you're wrong. Work for a sensor manufacturer that sells to the aerospace industry and I can tell you, commercial aircraft cabling is full of connectors. Same kind of locking connectors found on military aircraft.

I'm somewhat surprised they go to the trouble to resurrect and upgrade Amigas to do this work. There are plenty of recent ColdFire dev boards that could be used, if they can get someone to donate the board. Coworker tells me the default install for some of those boards is dicey and could stand to benefit from some attention.

naw, it just brought out the few sniveling whiners.