thanks, I didn't know that. Link?

Hmmm... but the Merlin 2 required by the Falcon XX would be flight tested on the Falcon 9 or 9-Heavy -- perhaps that is want Tekfactory meant?

If Mr. Reeves is unable to fulfill his duties, then the Deputy Ambassador, the guy who played Ted in the Bill & Ted movies, would be responsible for talking with the aliens.

If you look at the budget in the TFA, you can see Warner Brothers simply redefined Gross to mean Net. I assume that's what New Line did too.

I used to think it was whining too, until I suddenly became allergic or sensitive to everything I like to eat. I won't deny there are fear-mongers out there, but the fact is that people develop allergies to all sorts of things, and not knowing whether the protein that someone is are allergic to from one nut or grain is present in a completely different food could cost someone their life. Probably already has, but we'll never know. What if the cause of your diabetes is just that sort of a situation?

The solid surface of Titan is made of water ice, far more in quantity than the vast amounts of liquid methane that flows on it in lakes and rivers and rains down from the sky.

Where do you get that crazy idea? $9 billion spent on the Ares 1 and not even a rocket launched, except the Ares 1-X which was just a 4-segment shuttle solid rocket booster from ATK with a fake 5th segment on top and a dummy payload -- a $500 million fraud. For the same amount SpaceX designed, built and tested 2 rocket designs, upgraded a launch pad and is designing building and testing a capsule for cargo and crew. The ignorant will say they did it with government money on the COTS contract, but that money is paid out only on performance, and the COTS launches are yet to happen -- most of the money spent so far by SpaceX is their own money. Furthermore, they have billions in contracts outside of NASA, making NASA's contribution to their revenue less than 50%. Plus NASA's plans is to do R&D on fuel depots and on-orbit assembly, making heavy lift like the proposed Ares V unnecessary.

What Ares V? There is no such vehicle, not even on paper is a design complete.

They prefer to call it piloting thank you very much.

There was not trillions of present day dollars invested in the space race. It was not even one trillion. According to the Office of Management and Budget and the Air Force Almanac, when measured in real terms (Meaning: if the value of $1.00 at today's rate equaled the value of $1.00 in 1958), the figure is $806.7 billion, or an average of $15.818 billion dollars per year over its fifty year history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget

RTFA. It was actually Soviet geologists back in the 80's that made some of the first discoveries. If those stinkin' commies had become stinkin' capatilists just a few years before withdrawing from Afghanistan instead of a few years after, that past 30 years might have been very different. Later, Afghani mining officials hid the maps from the Taliban by moving the maps to there homes. Once the Americans came in, the maps were brought back. They told Americans about it, but no one checked it until the Pentagon took an interest.