There were many other meaningful things to Apollo than just its newness. You may not believe space exploration to be inherently meaningful, but I for one do.

I agree that doing the same thing would be pointless. Instead of just going, planting a flag and coming back home, we should be building an infrastructure in space that will eventually facilitate staying there.

I'm inclined to agree, but I didn't say anything about further than the moon. There's plenty of infrastructure to build inside the moon's orbit. Like our first space shipyard at a Lagrange Point.

I don't really agree with that. Putting an ISS at a Lagrange Point would be far more stable and a 100x better long-term investment than putting an ISS in LEO.

Since an ISS at LEO will require *constant* re-boosting to keep its altitude (its orbit naturally decays about 20km lower every month and fuel needs to constantly be ferried up to keep it from falling down), but an ISS at a Lagrange Point would require trivial stationkeeping.

Therefore, an LP base makes more sense than a LEO base. Now, one could say that a Moon base makes more sense because it has raw materials available, but that is ignoring all the Near-Earth Asteroids, which could be reached from an LP at trivial fuel amounts. You can mine the NEOs just as well as you can mine the Moon, thus building a nifty base at an LP that would serve as a great staging ground for humans in space. No gravity well to descend into or try to get out of.

The #1 thing humanity should build is a mining/smelting/shipyard at a Lagrange Point. Before a moonbase, before anything else, really.

And Flexible Path accommodates those kinds of goals.

I don't concur with that. The Apollo program was implemented under chemical rockets.

Having said that, I fully agree that billions thrown in research for alternative propulsion methods would be spectacular.

I think he means worship of the almighty dollar.

The reason would be thinking really long term. As in, on a scale of hundreds, maybe thousands of years.

No, of course sending people to the Moon or Mars will not produce "profit" (in the financial sense) on a scale of years or decades. But in the extreme long term, we'll have new worlds to populate, new planets to colonize.

We can't stay solely on Earth forever.

Well, arguably, a nation that doesn't turn a profit will see things like -- well, like last year. Yes, I know that's an oversimplification, but still. If you let the nation's economy go down the tubes, it will have pretty bad effects.

Having said that, I have personally a strong belief in non-profit scientific expenditures. And if the US wants to maintain its role as a superpower, there is really no alternative. It has to produce some results -- not just profit -- if it wants to be seen as the leader of the world.

I think the most important thing can be crystallized:

Without more money, there will be no meaningful human space flight.

As for the details, I agree with the report where it says that Mars is not a good first destination. I concur that the Flexible Path scenario would be pretty smart. There's a wealth of information and experience to be made in exploring the Lagrange Points and Near-Earth Asteroids.

Basically, is the United States willing to cede space to China and Russia?

I think the difference is far from as clear as you make it out to be.

For example, Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of Christ" is not something created out of nothing. It is built directly on top of previous literary inventions, in this case the Bible. Many Disney movies are directly built on fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. Alan Moore's comic book "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is built on many 19th century literary inventions, as is his "Lost Girls". How about "West Side Story"? "Romeo and Juliet".

It's quite easy to show that many creative works are, in fact, derivative from previous creative works, just as many scientific works are, in fact, derivative from previous scientific works.

Now, imagine if we did as you propose, and the rights to creative works were retained "forever". "Passion" couldn't have been made, Disney would have been sued by the heirs of Grimm. And I'm not even going to get into how many times Paramount would have been sued for episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" where they were in violation of Shakespeare's copyrights.

Vast swaths of our cultural landscape would be eliminated if copyrights were forever.

Scientific inventions aren't made in a vacuum, and neither are creative inventions (i.e. they are not "created out of nothing").

Like scientific inventions, literary inventions also need to be freed eventually, so that the society can make derivative works.

Therefore, since there must be a limit of protected years that is between zero and infinity, why should literary inventions merit a greater number than scientific inventions?

Who's fanboying? Oh right, you -- you admitted it even.

I, on the other hand, know full well WinMo is far from perfect and isn't the best choice for some people with different priorities than mine.

So if you want to slam WinMo, feel free, I won't stop you. But if you want to accuse me of being a blind WinMo advocate, you couldn't be more wrong.

I don't really know in what delusional world "because from what I've seen, the iPhone OS seems to be a better OS" amounts to "talking shit about the one you don't have". Just makes it sound like you invented some imaginary post inside your head to rail against.

Well, frankly, Symbian and Android don't come anywhere near the amount of available applications that WinMo has. For me one of the top criteria is whether I can find applications for every need.

I believe that is normal behavior. Everybody makes their own personal judgment on what are important criteria for them and how important they are, and pick a product based on their own priorities.

If I'm not an "average user", I'm thankful for that.

I don't need any Big Brother picking my apps for me. I'm an adult and I take my own risks.

And that's why I don't buy Apple.

I don't make my decisions on what platform I'm going to spend my money on, based on what *other* people want.

What most people are talking about when they talk about these copyright issues are the copyrighting and/or trademarking of artistic creations.

What's rarely brought up is the fact that there's a very analogous system in the world, too. For scientific creations, there's such a thing as patents. Patents are basically copyright for scientific inventions, as opposed to artistic inventions.

Now, if we compare patents to copyright, the vast disparity in protection length becomes obvious. In most countries, patents protect the exclusivity of scientific inventions for 15-25 years.

Artistic inventions are protected for *95* years. That is to say, 4-5 times longer.

Why? What makes them worth so much longer a protection than scientific inventions get?

The purpose of exclusivity expiring eventually (that is, not being forever) is to release the invented concept into the public domain so that the general public can eventually benefit from making use of the invention in whatever way society feels fit.

However, this right of the general public is by and large being denied at present when it comes to artistic inventions. Copyright terms are being extended and extended by Disney and other megacorporations because they don't want their big brands to become public property.

Imagine if Alexander Bell would have retained exclusive rights to the telephone for 95 years. The patent was issued in 1876. That means the telephone would have become public domain in 1971! The steam turbine would have become available to the general public in 1979 and barbed wire in 1982. The roller coaster and the diesel engine would have expired in 1993.

More importantly, what things would still be patented? We'd be waiting for the zipper to expire in 2012. Aerosol cans would become available in 2022, electric shavers in 2023. Radar wouldn't fall out of protection until 2030.

Imagine how much slower technology would have advanced if things like *zippers* would have to be licensed in order to be used in clothes.

Excessively long protection times directly harm the public, whether it be in the field of our scientific development or in the field of our artistic development.

As long as the App Store is being so tightly controlled by Apple, I'm afraid I'm going to have to stick with Windows Mobile. For all its flaws (like insane UI lag at times), it's at least mostly an open development platform, with a C64 emulator, Amiga emulator, DOS emulator and an application for just about anything you could imagine. As long as Apple keeps the App Store locked down, it's never going to be able to match the versatility of the WinMo application spectrum.

It's too bad, because from what I've seen, the iPhone OS seems to be a better OS, but crippling its software development is just a deal breaker for me.

"it may make sense for them to leave the Lithium where it is, collecting interest as an investment of sorts"

What needs to also be remembered is that what is valuable today may not be valuable tomorrow.

Lithium may be valuable today for batteries, but what happens when a new battery technology is invented that is based on something other than lithium?

It would be smart to sell your lithium resources before that happens.

So just waiting and saving your natural resources may not always be the smartest move. Like stocks, you want to sell them at their peak value. Will lithium be more valuable or less valuable in the future? That is the question to ask here.

I guess everybody is having Christmases. It's damn near dead all over the Internet.