Also, I clearly meant but completely mistyped that logicians assert, etc. that inductions can "never" be used as logical proof of deductions.

Of course deductions carry scientific weight, but they don't serve as meaningful evidence and instead as the basis of a hypothesis. The very nature of an axiom in science is that of a logically-unproven premise that, itself, can't be used to scientifically "prove" a concept. Therefore, it's necessary that induction be used to justify a deduction, but any logician will assert/concede/stand-completely-baffled-at-any-counter-assertion that inductive evidence could ever be used to logically prove a deduction. Therefore, the level of "proof" for science, which is to say the level at which it becomes warranted to treat a theory as an axiom, is much less rigorous than the level at which it becomes warranted to treat a deduction as a premise. The assertion that you have to meaningfully "trust" evidence runs counter to the foundations of science is a bit of a misnomer, therefore, as one need not assume that a theory is indefatigably true to build off of it, but to assume that the theory has logical conclusions that can be tested.

I'm certainly not pretending that people were suddenly convinced because of Sputnik that the Earth was round. There were myriad reliable indicators to show us that the Earth is round (horizons, sailing in a straight line around it, high-atmosphere observable curvature, shadows on the moon, etc.), but throwing something into space and watching it circle around several times is something like the final nail in a coffin that had been comfortably nailed shut for some time. This, therefore, is why I chose the analogy of Sputnik to illustrate that stronger support for an already completely uncontentious theory is not the "proof" the article is asserting it is, it's just more strong evidence that agrees with the already-existing strong evidence.

Yeah, but we didn't need to detect proton-proton neutrinos to know that fusion powers the sun, because we have myriad other indicators (spectrum, energy output, solar wind) that agree with the current theory. The fact that we have now seen proton-proton neutrinos is cool as hell, but this will never be "proven" significantly more than it currently is, unless science changes drastically to allow for deductive facts. Science allows for an inductive form of "proof" (something being so probable it will likely never be demonstrated wrong) that's less rigorous than the logical kind, and fusion in the Sun has long been under that label. For analogy, we didn't have to wait until Sputnik had orbited Earth to know that Earth was round (since that was known to academics 2000 years earlier), but it certainly made people feel more confident in that fact when it happened.

Solar Cell efficiency is low, and would likely be ineffective given the limited sun-exposed faces of the aircraft. Using a quantum-dot paint for solar could be viable (they're far more efficient). Secondly, batteries are currently very heavy, which would be a problem. Lightweight, structural batteries would help greatly with that issue. Thirdly, batteries don't really store enough energy currently. Next-generation structural batteries potentially could, but those are some years off. Lastly, the anodes and cathodes of current batteries degrade too quickly. There are upcoming technolgies that can withstand tens of thousands of recharge cycles, but they're all very preliminary. Since planes are expected to have very long life spans, that makes electrical planes currently impractical. Given the above technologies, electrical planes will be very practical within probably 20-30 years. Until then, they are impractical because, logistically speaking, you charge up the plane and, while it's flying, let the solar do all it can to keep the batteries up. The distance the plane can travel, then, is a function of its total stored energy and all of the energy collected from the solar.

Assuming you're not worried about backup speed, you could use a four-bay external hard-drive enclosure in combination with RSYNC and LVM on any linux variety. I don't know if they all do, but the MediaSonic HF2-SU3S2 supports 3TB hard drives per bay, which means that two of them could be used in conjunction to provide 24TB of backup storage. Since you can make a large volume out of the full 24TB using LVM, you could even use something like dd to write to the disk (RSYNC with the archive option would be a better choice though, imho).

The issue with this argument is that they aren't rebroadcasting, they're just directing the signal as a slingbox would. There is exactly one end user unit (could be a person or a household) of the information, and it is not being made publicly available. If I set up a slingbox in my livingroom, it is legal to use that slingbox to consume the signal on another of my devices. What if I set up a slingbox on a roof in Brooklyn and streamed the content to my house in Texas? The only difference between these scenarios is geography. What I see here is the case of a company saying, "Instead of having you own the antenna in Brooklyn, we'll set up the antenna and the tunnel for you, and you can consume it how you wish."

Adversely affect the actual output? Sure. The problem isn't the effectiveness of the output, though, it's the output itself. This may sound ridiculous, but we get enough sunlight that most parts of Earth could positively contribute, especially if much of that land is not biome-valuable. In the cases of Alaska, Texas and the Mojave, we have incredible potential for output, with little-to-no biome detriment.