Sadly it's being launched to near the equator, not the poles :( The geophysicists won out over the geochemists...

Freedom is great and neglectable, until you very suddenly don't have it.

History has not ended. The world order that makes life nice and comfy for you is not a given into the future.

It's funny how we so strongly disagree further down in the comments, but I 100% agree with you here.

0,38g being largely fine for health is... I mean, if I had to bet, I'd put my money on it probably being true, but it's anything but guaranteed. There was a private project to test this, the Mars Gravity Biosatellite, but it ran out of funding; I'm not aware of any similar experiments that have been conducted. There've been a variety of attempts to simulate various gravity on Earth, such as having people lie on tilted beds or hanging them from cranes at an angle or whatnot, but they all have obvious weaknesses.

There's not just the question of adults who visit from Earth, but also children who grow up on 0,38g, and what impact that would have to their physiology.

Venus is hot, but it's not *that* hot... ;)

NASA is getting there

It most definitely is not. Are you being deliberately obtuse?

one can do for more than a few minutes before shit implodes and burns

You clearly didn't read anything I wrote, so why should I even bother responding? (A) Literally nobody was talking about settling the surface, and (B) It's been repeatedly pointed out that basically indefinite lifespans can be achieved for surface vehicles, as backed up by peer-reviewed research from NASA. And "christoban on Slashdot disagrees with peer-reviewed research from NASA" isn't exactly a compelling argument.

B) building floating cities, which would probably take another century of engineering and investment before we could do so reliably.

We were flying balloons on Venus almost 40 years before we flew a helicopter on Mars. We directly sampled Venus's atmosphere 4 years before we sampled Mars. We successfully landed and transmitted data either 1 or 6 years (depending on your definition) from the surface of Venus vs. Mars.

Your incredulity about levels of difficulty doesn't translate to actual levels of difficulty.

In a red state, the money would just be embezzled and then some semblance of the project is realized, preferably in a way that nobody can or would ever use, so nobody notices it's unusable.

You have to drive them horizontally. Not vertically.

Of course you're breaking ground if you slam a high speed train right into it. Jeesh.

We are talking about an IT person getting fired for being "too old". The athlete is something that was compared to.

What makes you think that someone who is considered "too old" at 35 for an IT job would get some other job?

Do I really have to explain how analogies work?

It's less that, it's more that I can't just tell me to fuck off and leave. That works in an abusive relationship, but what can you do if you notice you share a body with an asshole?

It's harder to exploit older people, that's true.

They have already heard all the bullshit and empty promises and just don't fall for them anymore.

And even if you fire most 35 year olds, there is always a need for someone to train the next generation of layoffs.

But like with coaches and trainers, you need far fewer than you need players.

You think?

Tell me one good reason why I would not put such a clause in a burger flipper job contract to ensure my burger flipper will think twice before bailing from the horrible boss I am, knowing he will never flip a burger again if he does, and he already has a non-compete from his time at Target.

There are only so many no-skill jobs in a town, and once you're barred from all of them by ridiculous non-compete clauses, you have to stay with that last one that gang-pressed you into indentured service, because you have no way out anymore.

What exactly is sensible about that? You're punishing someone for creating a successful business by disallowing him to compete with the company that was stupid enough to buy it from him.

The idea of the EU, and one of the few ideas hatched by politicians that actually worked out 100% perfectly, was to intertwine and mix the economies of European countries so deeply that it would be economic suicide for anyone to go to war with a neighbor.

Germany and France have been at war, on and off, since the partition of the Frankish Empire into an eastern and western part, somewhere in the 9th century. Those (almost) 80 years of peace between these two countries that we had for the past (almost) 80 years are unprecedented in recorded history.

That "dirt cheap medical care" is paid for by about 5-10% of your income.

That's quite a bit of money, but I still think I'm somehow better off losing money in that deal because making a net profit on this would mean my body is really fucked up.