Would you rather deal with 2 systems (variable thrust engine and an air bag deploy system) or just 1 system?

You would need an engine regardless, there is no atmosphere on the moon so you can use the Martian solution. You could use a parachute for the bulk of the descent and then have the air bag.

I wouldn't even dream of using an air bag for manned missions, no control of the impact at all.

With variable thrust you have controls systems to keep things stable and can vector out of the way like Neil did on Apollo 13.

An aircraft is not a spacecraft so "imagine controlling an aircraft without control surfaces" is a non sequitor. In fact, some aircraft can be partially controlled without flight surfaces (vectored thrust fighters that stand on their tails and use engine thrust to spin about, see Cobra maneuver.

No atmosphere, no control surfaces. All you are left with is thrusters and what little gravity there is.

Compare the Lunar Lander from Apollo to the Armadillo craft to the Morpheus project.

There is only so many configurations where you have a centrally mounted engine and a bunch of spherical propellant tanks.

Not so much a knock off as that is what physics and mother nature dictates.

Because you can vary the thrust on a solid rocket booster, not.

The lander probably needs variable thrust. Solids won't be very useful for that.

The Purdue folks just built the engine. They didn't build the lander.

I just dropped the streaming option.

I can't use it because all of but 2 pc's are linux and those aren't anywhere I would comfortably watch a movie.

So, I saved myself $2 and apparently costing Netflix more because DVDs, what made Netflix Netflix, is getting more expense.

Once someone figures out a better streaming option (Linux utility and better title availability) I'll cut them off all together.

Electric vehicles pay very little in a gas tax but still use the roads.

I agree in principle but how would this be enforced with an Orwellian level of surveillance.

Putting a gps on each vehicle and somehow anonimizing the data seems the only realistic way.

That is why we need nuclear power. Unless we create a better distributed system of generation.

I would like a MW nuke in my house. Of course I would hate to think what that would cost. To be safest maybe some kind of RTG system.

Unless we change our distribution system we will always need a baseline power generation system to make sure there is enough power flowing.

If you don't make anything what do you need technicians for?

If you don't make anything what do you need engineers for?

If you don't make anything what do you need scientists for?

No point in getting in debt getting a good engineering/technical degree if you can't find a job doing it. As others have said, better to go from high school to the service industry than "waste" $50,000+ on a degree.

Said to say that..and I work at a university.

Better teachers and better education is a problem that has lots of factors of which I'll only address the ones that I care about. This mostly pertains to elementary education majors.

1. The average education major is less academically capable than your average college student.

    I'm sort of bending the findings of a study from about 15 years ago:

The Academic Quality of Prospective Teachers: The Impact of Admissions and Licensure Testing (warning this is a link to a pdf).

    There are exceptions, those going into to teaching science or math have just as good a scores as math or science major. If you start off with poor talent it won't get much better no matter how good the training.

2. We pay teachers not nearly enough money.

    If we really value education we need to pay them more. We need to be willing to pay the taxes to support the important job they do. Every good engineer, scientist or mathematician probably had a good teacher some time in their life. Too bad there aren't more.

3. We need better metrics to define what a good teacher is.

    Don't get me started with the fiasco that is No Child Left Behind. Poor testing, poor accountability and poor funding.

    How about to test a teacher's effectiveness we compare apples to apples. Let a teacher stay with a group of students for 2 to 3 years. They we can better tell if it's the student or teacher. If that doesn't work how about comparing the student's progress instead of the group's progress (which my wife thinks is a suggested change for NCLB), you will also need to control for similar groups (smart kids vs. smart kids).

4. Get rid of bad people earlier in the cycle (mostly at the college level).

      I think this applies to all majors. Weed-out courses earlier. My major back in school (aero engineering) had to take an electrical engineering weed out course our sophomore year (don't ask me why). It will make you think twice if you want to pursue a major.

      I think for teachers they need to take a public speaking course early on. If you can't talk in front of a class of 20-30 peers you certainly can't do that in front of a bunch of unruly kids. I get this idea mostly from my wife's experience as an instructor in a school of education (teaching teachers how to teach basically). Most of the kids have a horrible time teaching a lesson and this is as juniors/seniors.

      Hell, even better give them a taste of teaching no later than their sophomore year. Most don't get that until their junior year. By then it's too late for them to do anything but finish their degree. This means they either will go into the system as a lousy teacher or flail around with a degree they don't like or can't use.

Extra bonus crazy idea.

      Treat teachers like doctors/trade crafts. Extra training and lots of practical experience before we unleash them by themselves. Basically after they get their initial degree/license they will need to work with another teacher (like a residency/apprenticeship) before they get to pass another examination and get to teach on their own. The downside this would be rather pricey. Depends if you think education is important or not.

Extra bonus rant:

      I think students, college students at least since I work on a university, are less capable than 15-20 years ago. The top 10% are amazing probably better than the top 10% of 15-20 years ago. The bottom 10% are the bottom 10% and it doesn't matter too much if they are better or worse. The middle 80% just seem less able to do the work and understand the content of most college level degrees. I've asked many people about this observation (from professors that have been doing this for decades to students themselves) and their answer has generally been yes. I do submit the caveat that the plural of anecdote is not data. So take all of this with a block of salt.

Are the Democratic and Republican parties the same as they were about 100 years ago?

Are the Democrats the party of racists? Look up Dixiecrats. Are the Republicans really the same party as what Lincoln belonged to?

Hell the Republicans aren't the same party as even 30 years ago, I'm pretty sure that Reagan and Goldwater would be thrown out by the current Republicans.

Then again there isn't much difference between parties now and may there hasn't really ever been much difference.

I own the Series 2 Pioneer Tivo DVR-810H and it has a dvd burner.

You will not get this, even from my cold dead hands. The cable company may drive me away from TV because Comcast's new cable box tags EVERYTHING as copy protected so I can't burn to dvd let on use TivoToGo to watch elsewhere (there goes $20 for Tivo's conversion software).

You don't need to buy the subscription but the convenience of SeasonPass and such is worth the monthly subscription price I paid about 6 years ago.

Any other DVR I've tried does not compare to a Tivo.

It is a shame they are a bit pricey up front.

March 1 should be interesting.

Don't understand guerilla warfare, terrorism or fourth generation warfare do you?

Al Quaeda is mostly a venture capital organization, roughly. They are also small and very decentralized. They only way they are broke and useless if they are all dead or maybe if they lose the support of "the people". That still wouldn't stop the other organizations they've sponsored or assisted from continuing their work.

Asking a conventional army to beat a band of guerillas is damn near impossible. Just ask King George III and the Hessians.

This guy has done some decent research into Facebook privacy in terms of their API and such.

http://use.perl.org/~pjf/journal/39998

good read.

http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/09/teaching-linear-algebra.html