Are you sure OWL would have only cost 1 billion? I thought that was the cost of EELT and they had to reduce the aperture from 41 to 39 meters to lower the cost to that amount.

You will need to be about 1000 AU in order to be able to use the sun as a gravity lens so about an order of magnitude farther than Pluto.

The purpose of LOP-G is to give SLS a reason to exist. Remember this is the "rocket to nowhere" we are talking about. In my opinion LOP-G can be built with the Falcon Heavy.

To be fair credit is hard to come by in China so they don't really have a choice but to save. In America credit card companies keep pushing credit on everyone so why not use the credit you are offered?

Was not Steve Jobs salary 1$ a year? No one has ever said he was poor.

That is why I have structured my life to spend as little as possible in order to amass a large rainy day fund. I have accumulated about a year's worth of salary so if the job begins to suck I have the luxury of looking for another job while still being able to pay the bills.

Have you been to a Chase bank lately? All the desk clerks have been replaced with teller machines inside the building. There is just one person supervising in case people are having trouble with the machines.

Hey, it means more jobs right?

My high school English teacher had a saying written on the chalkboard: it is better to aim for the stars and miss, than aim for a pile of manure and hit.

It has been shown that consumers will pay more for domestically manufactured products but their limit is 10 to 20%. When the difference is 2 to 3 times more then of course they will pick the lower price.

You mean like Google?

Weren't there a bunch of shows in the 80's that worshiped the 1%?

So you never update your PC because you want it to be yours?

Car makers love the SUV because they can sell a pickup for the price of a luxury car.

If by foreign aid to the Middle East you mean bombs then yes that clearly works against our interests.