Joshua, actually.

I make a ratatouille that is to die for.

It's the latest SI prefix.

So true. I was very surprised to learn that lithium batteries have an energy density in the same ballpark as gunpowder and dynamite. Small wonder that one of them cutting loose and letting all that power go at once is a big deal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_air_battery

> A lithium-air battery has an energy density (per kilo) comparable to traditional gasoline

It's still got problems to overcome, but the point is, battery storage is only getting better.

If solar energy were dirt cheap but batteries were still for shit, then yeah, using H2 as a storage medium wouldn't be so bad. However, both PVCs and batteries are getting better all the time. The latest lithium-air batteries actually have the same energy density as gasoline. H2's density is still better of course, but has a host of storage problems that make even a lesser storage system more appealing.

On the pads, not phones. Too damned early on a Monday.

At least now the school knows not to include camera-enabled surveillance software on the phones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_activity_suit

Space suits in general and the SAS in particular are why I no longer give a rat's ass what happens to NASA. Cut their funding, Congress orders them to start launching their rockets upside-down, I couldn't care less. NASA had a working prototype of a replacement for those injurious, exhausting, and dangerous inflatable suits 40 goddamn years ago, and they flushed it down the toilet and haven't looked back since.

The future of the human race is in outer space, but NASA will have zero role in it. Giving them money would be no better than throwing it away.

Am I the only one who remembers seeing this sort of 3-d painting reproduction featured on Beyond 2000 a good 20 years ago? They made a rubber mold of the original painting, printed the copy either with special ink or onto a surface that could be flash melted to fit the mold.

Copyrights with a theoretical duration of nearly 2 centuries (max human lifespan plus 70 years) is kinda stretching the definition of the word "temporary".

Not really. The tools are impressive, but mostly in how they try to overcome the crippling need to run remotely from umpteen million miles away.

Let's have a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_(rover)#Instruments

Lists 14 instruments. But 5 of them are just cameras, strategically placed because they can't be moved. My friend the amateur photographer could do much better with her DSLR. The "environmental monitoring station" measures humidity, pressure, temperatures, wind speeds, and ultraviolet radiation; not exactly groundbreaking stuff here. Same with radiation assessment. There's a robotic arm capable of drilling holes a whopping 2" deep and a dust removal tool, commonly known as a 'broom'. The "Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons" sounds sexy as hell, but then you realize a person with a trowel could do the same job.

The other instruments are all spectrometers and a chromatograph. The means by which they work are novel, due to the aforementioned remote requirements, but the end result is not really different from what could be done in any decent lab 50 years ago. Honestly, a decent scientist with a shovel and a few thousand dollars in high school lab gear could do better than all the rovers ever sent. God help us if we ever needed a probe to do something _really_ difficult.

So by all means, send what probes are needed to figure out how to get people there, but anything beyond that will just provide minimal information at enormous cost.

I always was rather impressed with those Quantum drives. I had a Quantum 1.2GB hdd in my computer when we suffered a house fire, and that drive was the only piece of electronics to survive in usable condition. Indeed, it lasted a good 4 or 5 years beyond that.

NASA sure does dream big, considering they can barely even get to LEO these days. Their launch capacity has been diminishing steadily for the past 40 years. Thank goodness it's not entirely up to them anymore.

> Wake me up when every single AI agent is simulated in detail with urges, wants, needs, desires, disgust, hatred, genetics, a simulated lifespan from birth to death....

I did like that part of the Total War series. The lifespan of your family members is a real concern. Train a son up into a terrifyingly competent commander, then he goes dies of old age? Fuck! Definitely a good start, though.

How about a massively multiplayer civ game? Run it at or nearly at realtime, so no tech tree. BUt every city, every army, everyone in any sort of position of power is controlled by a real person, all jockeying for MORE.