Is not intelligent design an oxymoron? My human spine has smaller vertebra at the bottom of my back than it does at the top, my shoulder 'ball and socket' joint design works like the engineer went to Phoenix University, and my freakin' liver can't process ethanol efficiently.

Damn dawg, you're on fire. Two of the hot five! And what they added was a label: same thing kid's get at Abercrombie when they buy a twelve dollar shirt for eighty-nine bucks.

Continuing way the fcuk off topic, I've recently been enticed by the Spice we call the interwebs to read about this civet coffee Jack Nicholson drank in The Bucket List. Evidently, more than half the World's supply is counterfeit. Of the remaining available "genuine" shit, much of it is farmed from caged civets, so the heralded civet-selection-of-the-finest-beans cull is out the window. There are literally PETA-level outcries for the caged stuffing of these poor damn creatures who are being fed beans like a duck bred for foie gras. Do y'all remember "Beans, beans, the magical fruit..."

Nerds live side-by-side persons of merely average intelligence and are equally affected by evil governmental regimes and happenstance. We don't all write code for a living or live in our mother's basement. Hell, I think two or three of us even have women. Sit back, pipe down, and let the number of comments sort this out.

12.6 times more energy.

+1 Insightful. No Mod Points. Apparently riding the troll like a rented mule is frowned upon in this establishment.

Funny. No mod points. Apparently riding the dog like a small horse is frowned upon in this establishment. Since I'm here, I hope you won't take umbrage if I offer a tweak to the new mod. Drunken Rambling should like the Ace of Mods...it could be used as in poker as ace high or ace low. 'Cause you know, sometimes drinking makes you real smart.

Multiple variant linear regression analysis is inclusion-free on the order of flawless a life changing asteroid impact with our rather inhabitable little rock will occur. Whether it is an extinction event or merely teleports us back to the Stone Age is irrelevant with regard to the loss of all human technology and scientific progress. A robotic presence during exploration is invaluable. Robotic slaves at the off-planet human settlement will be handy like a pocket on a shirt. Without a human presence, well, there goes our entire legacy.

Any possible scenario for a lunar (or Martian settlement) involves eminent loss of life and hardship, especially at the outset when our learning curve begins. One of the difficulties an American expedition would encounter is the high price placed on each American life. The Chinese might have an edge here, and could perhaps design equipment and housing without the quintuple safety redundancies that have made NASA projects so time consuming and expensive. Backslash is onto something though...nothing would fire up the US government's interest in off-earth exploration faster than a threat to national security.

Easy there... this is Slashdot and generally folks here who exploit weaknesses in security systems without regard for personal gain are on the white hat side of the field. Here's what should happen: these two will make their 15 minutes complete with a round of guest appearances on the morning show circuit, and if the story really catches on, maybe even culminating with a nighttime appearance on Letterman. If any lesson is to be learned from this breach by security forces, it is probably one they already suspect: their job is a hoax. It is impossible to keep an event like this secure and they are there to perpetrate the illusion of security. The Superbowl sites are picked years in advance. There are years for 'neer-do-wells to access the structures.

Well done.