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You clearly didn't read the actual challenge.

The Challenge would award prizes for successful demonstration of an end-to-end autonomous operation to sequentially accomplish the following tasks: picking up the sample, inserting the sample into a single stage rocket in a horizontal position, erecting the rocket, launching the rocket to an altitude not less than 800m, deploying a sample container with the cache internally sealed and landing the container at less than 6m/s terminal velocity.

$50,000 will be awarded to the team with the lowest total system mass that completes all tasks.

The goal is not to get someone to build a Mars lander for $250k. The goal is to get get amateurs to think about innovative ideas for how to solve some of the problems in the hope that some of those ideas will be useful when NASA designs a real lander.

NASA says the balloon analogy sucks.

You've got the wrong moon.

Exactly. Why has NASA been dragging their feet? They have been studying this mission for 10 years at least without funding it.

It gets proposed, but every time a proposal takes a serious look at how expensive it would be, the funding isn't there, and they are asked to scale back.

Jupiter is hard. Jupiter is nearly a billion kilometers away-- Mars is hard, but even at its furthest, it's only a quarter billion kilometers distant. Compared to Jupiter, Mars is easy. Jupiter also has a huge gravitational potential (which makes it hard to stop when you get there), and that doesn't even get to the issue of landing on Europa once you get there (no aerobraking nor parachutes for Europa!) and the difficulty of penetrating the ice.

Clearly the first thing needed is just a probe that can take a deep penetrating radar to the system and find out just how thick the ice over the interior ocean of Europa is, and whether there are places that are thinner than others, and whether cracks go down all the way to make an easier route to the interior. That would be a lot easier than actually trying to land, much less access the ocean... but even that is not at all easy. When you're in Jupiter orbit you're having to operate in a ferocious radiation environment.

Huh? The most expensive was $3B?

The James Webb Space Telescope is estimated to be just under $8B to make and launch, then another ~$800M for operations.

An article from 2011 suggested that they had already spent $5B (or maybe it was just that they had only planned on it costing $5B at that point). An FAQ from JPL states that as of 2011, they had spent $3.5B.

If they're smart on this Europa mission, they won't design the mission around low TRL technology.

Huh? The most expensive was $3B?

The James Webb Space Telescope is estimated to be just under $8B to make and launch, then another ~$800M for operations.

An article from 2011 suggested that they had already spent $5B (or maybe it was just that they had only planned on it costing $5B at that point). An FAQ from JPL states that as of 2011, they had spent $3.5B.

If they're smart on this Europa mission, they won't design the mission around low TRL technology.

It is quite the same as gravitational time dilation, though, because the atomic clocks in GPS satellites are affected by the gravitational force they experience. It's discussed a bit here, interestingly in an article written when NIST-F1 was developed.

http://code.nasa.gov/

I gave up on it years ago, when I realized there were only 32 items in it. (2 have been listed as 'coming soon'). You'll find more open source software if you look at the lists that the individual centers maintain :

• 78 : https://sr.grc.nasa.gov/
• 50 : http://opensource.gsfc.nasa.go...
• 27 : http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/opensou...
• 46 : http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jo...

Or see the NASA Github page (34 items, but that includes 'code.nasa.gov') : https://github.com/nasa

The listed 'NASA Official' has changed since it was released ... maybe this one will actually care about maintaining a list, rather than doing the bare minimum to meet some requirement from the White House.

(which was my interepretation of the response I got when I contacted the previous official about http://data.nasa.gov/ ... of course, back then, it actually linked to places, rather than crap like the content-less http://data.nasa.gov/solar-dat... )

http://code.nasa.gov/

I gave up on it years ago, when I realized there were only 32 items in it. (2 have been listed as 'coming soon'). You'll find more open source software if you look at the lists that the individual centers maintain :

• 78 : https://sr.grc.nasa.gov/
• 50 : http://opensource.gsfc.nasa.go...
• 27 : http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/opensou...
• 46 : http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jo...

Or see the NASA Github page (34 items, but that includes 'code.nasa.gov') : https://github.com/nasa

The listed 'NASA Official' has changed since it was released ... maybe this one will actually care about maintaining a list, rather than doing the bare minimum to meet some requirement from the White House.

(which was my interepretation of the response I got when I contacted the previous official about http://data.nasa.gov/ ... of course, back then, it actually linked to places, rather than crap like the content-less http://data.nasa.gov/solar-dat... )

http://code.nasa.gov/

I gave up on it years ago, when I realized there were only 32 items in it. (2 have been listed as 'coming soon'). You'll find more open source software if you look at the lists that the individual centers maintain :

• 78 : https://sr.grc.nasa.gov/
• 50 : http://opensource.gsfc.nasa.go...
• 27 : http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/opensou...
• 46 : http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jo...

Or see the NASA Github page (34 items, but that includes 'code.nasa.gov') : https://github.com/nasa

The listed 'NASA Official' has changed since it was released ... maybe this one will actually care about maintaining a list, rather than doing the bare minimum to meet some requirement from the White House.

(which was my interepretation of the response I got when I contacted the previous official about http://data.nasa.gov/ ... of course, back then, it actually linked to places, rather than crap like the content-less http://data.nasa.gov/solar-dat... )

http://code.nasa.gov/

I gave up on it years ago, when I realized there were only 32 items in it. (2 have been listed as 'coming soon'). You'll find more open source software if you look at the lists that the individual centers maintain :

• 78 : https://sr.grc.nasa.gov/
• 50 : http://opensource.gsfc.nasa.go...
• 27 : http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/opensou...
• 46 : http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jo...

Or see the NASA Github page (34 items, but that includes 'code.nasa.gov') : https://github.com/nasa

The listed 'NASA Official' has changed since it was released ... maybe this one will actually care about maintaining a list, rather than doing the bare minimum to meet some requirement from the White House.

(which was my interepretation of the response I got when I contacted the previous official about http://data.nasa.gov/ ... of course, back then, it actually linked to places, rather than crap like the content-less http://data.nasa.gov/solar-dat... )

http://code.nasa.gov/

I gave up on it years ago, when I realized there were only 32 items in it. (2 have been listed as 'coming soon'). You'll find more open source software if you look at the lists that the individual centers maintain :

• 78 : https://sr.grc.nasa.gov/
• 50 : http://opensource.gsfc.nasa.go...
• 27 : http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/opensou...
• 46 : http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jo...

Or see the NASA Github page (34 items, but that includes 'code.nasa.gov') : https://github.com/nasa

The listed 'NASA Official' has changed since it was released ... maybe this one will actually care about maintaining a list, rather than doing the bare minimum to meet some requirement from the White House.

(which was my interepretation of the response I got when I contacted the previous official about http://data.nasa.gov/ ... of course, back then, it actually linked to places, rather than crap like the content-less http://data.nasa.gov/solar-dat... )

http://code.nasa.gov/

I gave up on it years ago, when I realized there were only 32 items in it. (2 have been listed as 'coming soon'). You'll find more open source software if you look at the lists that the individual centers maintain :

• 78 : https://sr.grc.nasa.gov/
• 50 : http://opensource.gsfc.nasa.go...
• 27 : http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/opensou...
• 46 : http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jo...

Or see the NASA Github page (34 items, but that includes 'code.nasa.gov') : https://github.com/nasa

The listed 'NASA Official' has changed since it was released ... maybe this one will actually care about maintaining a list, rather than doing the bare minimum to meet some requirement from the White House.

(which was my interepretation of the response I got when I contacted the previous official about http://data.nasa.gov/ ... of course, back then, it actually linked to places, rather than crap like the content-less http://data.nasa.gov/solar-dat... )

http://code.nasa.gov/

I gave up on it years ago, when I realized there were only 32 items in it. (2 have been listed as 'coming soon'). You'll find more open source software if you look at the lists that the individual centers maintain :

• 78 : https://sr.grc.nasa.gov/
• 50 : http://opensource.gsfc.nasa.go...
• 27 : http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/opensou...
• 46 : http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jo...

Or see the NASA Github page (34 items, but that includes 'code.nasa.gov') : https://github.com/nasa

The listed 'NASA Official' has changed since it was released ... maybe this one will actually care about maintaining a list, rather than doing the bare minimum to meet some requirement from the White House.

(which was my interepretation of the response I got when I contacted the previous official about http://data.nasa.gov/ ... of course, back then, it actually linked to places, rather than crap like the content-less http://data.nasa.gov/solar-dat... )

"...The stress will be compounded by the fact that the only time the crew will be able to leave their habitat-yurt is when they're wearing puffy, insulated uniforms that simulate space suits..."

Seriously, they're doing this in HAWAII?

More to the point, mars is mostly cold. The HOTTEST it gets, is the temperature it might be in hawaii (ref, accompanying article). So how are they testing the other 90% of the experience?

"...The stress will be compounded by the fact that the only time the crew will be able to leave their habitat-yurt is when they're wearing puffy, insulated uniforms that simulate space suits..."

Seriously, they're doing this in HAWAII?

More to the point, mars is mostly cold. The HOTTEST it gets, is the temperature it might be in hawaii (ref, accompanying article). So how are they testing the other 90% of the experience?

have no problem accepting the validity of an economic theory based on an "Invisible Hand" - yet...

It's not invisible:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/imag...

He let them know what He thinks of Trickle Down theory.

"They make a point now of not sharing the details of the models with people. That would concern you if you had any intellectual curiosity."

Well, that is bullshit of incredible intensity. Just for curiosity, who exactly told you that? You presumably won't have any injection to sharing that data with us.
In return, I will share with you this thing called Google, with which I was able quite rapidly to find:
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/fms
http://mitgcm.org/public/sourc...
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools...
http://www.nemo-ocean.eu/About...
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/re...
http://forge.ipsl.jussieu.fr/i...
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools...
http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/model...
http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/model...
http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/model...
http://edgcm.columbia.edu/
http://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/f...
http://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/H...
There's more but I'm tired of cut and pasting. You would be able to find these also if you have any intellectual curiosity, but them you might have to doubt the sources of your info on how bad the climatology people are, and how they're hiding the code to conceal that out doesn't work, and that maybe the models do run and give outputs, ave before you know it the foundations of you whole world view are shaken.

"They make a point now of not sharing the details of the models with people. That would concern you if you had any intellectual curiosity."

Well, that is bullshit of incredible intensity. Just for curiosity, who exactly told you that? You presumably won't have any injection to sharing that data with us.
In return, I will share with you this thing called Google, with which I was able quite rapidly to find:
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/fms
http://mitgcm.org/public/sourc...
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools...
http://www.nemo-ocean.eu/About...
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/re...
http://forge.ipsl.jussieu.fr/i...
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools...
http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/model...
http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/model...
http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/model...
http://edgcm.columbia.edu/
http://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/f...
http://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/H...
There's more but I'm tired of cut and pasting. You would be able to find these also if you have any intellectual curiosity, but them you might have to doubt the sources of your info on how bad the climatology people are, and how they're hiding the code to conceal that out doesn't work, and that maybe the models do run and give outputs, ave before you know it the foundations of you whole world view are shaken.

And you know this how? It's not like we've ever experimented with living on another planet or anything.

Sure we have (by approximation, anyway):

1. Astronauts living in the Space Station start losing bone and muscle mass after a few weeks.
2. Researchers living in isolated conditions in Antarctica start suffering depression and other mental problems after a few months.
3. Volunteers living in BioSphere 2 found that their biological life support systems failed and they had to 'abandon ship' after 24 months.

Note that all three of the above represent "easy" scenarios, where help and/or an emergency return to Earth is always minutes, hours, or days away. On Mars (or en route to Mars), help from or escape to Earth would not be a likely option.

I understand that the Russians are the only ones that can put people in the space station, and that the US serves as the ground control. If Russia refuses to let Americans on to the space station, what are the chances that the US would not coordinate ground control for an exclusively Russian or non-American crew? I've read from a number of sources speculating on this probability. What kind of ground support and communications structure are needed to keep the station operational? With the addition of the alpha magnetic spectrometer, the ISS has become a lot more interesting. : http://ams.nasa.gov/

Perhaps this is one thing that both countries really care about, it's one thing that could serve as leverage between then; a negotiation point.

It's a shame that the cooperation deminishing. The Russians are doing some really fantastic work. They've put a radio telescope in orbit: They launched a radio telescope (Spektr-R) into space. By synchronizing this telescope with earth based telescopes, it can resolve features that are 1250x times smaller than what Hubble can see (40u-arc-seconds vs 0.05 arc-seconds).. Did you know that by pointing all of the radio dishes on one side of the earth, and that knowing the exact time radio waves hit each receiver with atomic clocks, you can out resolve any optical telescope on earth? We can literally see finer details with a radio telescope than we can with our best optical ones (using "VLBI " interferometry). The more separation between radio dishes, the better the angular resolution; and now we have one in orbit that will give us much much better resolving power. We may be able to "see" planets with radio waves. (I'd love to hear from radio astronomers about the practical limitations of this -- real world vs back-of-the envelope)

They only started recently announcing their achievements on their website. Several of my friends joked that the reason we heard nothing for so long was that it was an expensive and embarrassing dud. It works, but they don't market or advertise themselves well. http://www.asc.rssi.ru/radioas...

http://www.epic.noaa.gov/epic/...
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools...
http://edgcm.columbia.edu/
http://nomads.gfdl.noaa.gov/CM...

Some data: http://www2.cesm.ucar.edu/

Some background info:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/ccmac-cccm...
http://www.climateprediction.n...
http://www.climate.uvic.ca/
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/techni...

This one has videos: http://vimeo.com/user12523377/...

In this age of information, ignorance is a choice.

The UoEA lost their input raw data, because they didn't have enough storage. Once the raw data was gone, they had no way to start again from scratch.

That's just bullshit. The data they deleted was based on temperature records from around the world which is still available from the original sources. Nothing was lost.

Regarding code, the complete code for one of the worlds major climate models, the NASA/GISS Model E is freely available. It's written in Fortran 90 which is a fine language for this type of application. Why don't you apply your code analysis talent to that and see what you come up with.

That is another lie! No matter how often you repeat them, they will remain so. Popular Science, Scientific American and many other periodicals had articles on the subject of an impending Ice age. According to NASA, the first governmental paper that suggested that warming was the likely outcome of man's pollution of the atmosphere was in 1979. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/ear...

We certainly will be observing this comet with our Mars spacecraft. http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/mars/c...

In fact, there was a practice run with ISON last year. I think the goal is to point every telescope in the solar system at this thing during the pass.

mainstream science:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

and even moon had recent cooling:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pa...

its smaller diameter means it loses heat faster anyway, even if it were stone cold in interior would not be valid point to make

While I agree with the sentiment, I'd point out that NASA's will, in theory, be able to lift 70 or 130 tons. So it is a bit better.

By which time SpaceX will have the MCT close to completion. This is a rocket so large that pad 39 at the Cape can't be used because the flame trench is too small. I don't know what 100 tons of payload to the surface of Mars translates in terms of tonnage to LEO, but it is safe to say a little bit more than 130 metric tons.

Besides, the 130 ton version of the SLS will still be a couple of years away even after the first launch happens for the 70 ton version, assuming it flies at all.

According to NASA at http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap08... there were about 19,000 planes in the air over the USA (daily maximum, 2008 statistic).

Worldwide, make that (guesstimate) 60,000 planes.
That's a lot of telemetry.

While I agree with the sentiment, I'd point out that NASA's will, in theory, be able to lift 70 or 130 tons. So it is a bit better.

Here ya go.

The thing cost $150 billion dollars, and in terms of research it's produced... what, exactly?

Here's a bunch, as of 2008. But if you prefer the "Top 10" approach, check here.

The thing is, real science is being done on ISS. But let's be honest--real science is pretty boring except for those people who have the knowledge to understand it ("Dark matter? Salmonella? Who cares?!"). So most poo-poo it (TLDR, etc) while we look at the pretty pictures from Mars and go, "Oooh! Real science!"

Driving around on Mars is cool. Seeing evidence of water on Mars is interesting. But I'm not sure I'd call it "real science." It's more observation than anything else.

The thing cost $150 billion dollars, and in terms of research it's produced... what, exactly?

Here's a bunch, as of 2008. But if you prefer the "Top 10" approach, check here.

The thing is, real science is being done on ISS. But let's be honest--real science is pretty boring except for those people who have the knowledge to understand it ("Dark matter? Salmonella? Who cares?!"). So most poo-poo it (TLDR, etc) while we look at the pretty pictures from Mars and go, "Oooh! Real science!"

Driving around on Mars is cool. Seeing evidence of water on Mars is interesting. But I'm not sure I'd call it "real science." It's more observation than anything else.

The far side of the moon is indeed the dark side. Just not in the visible spectrum.
Earth gives off a fantastic glow in a certain (large) band of frequencies due to our love for omnidirectional RF transmissions. If your eyes could see 3m wavelength, you'd be arguing that it really is the dark side of the moon.

Considering the sun also gives off a large amount of omnidirectional RF transmissions too, the far-side of the moon is not really dark in that part of the spectrum either (except when it's also pointed away from the sun during a full-moon)...

You know just 1% of our military budget diverted to NASA could do amazing things.. imagine if we diverted half of that budget!

To put that in perspective, you're talking about diverting about $5 billion from military spending, which would increase NASA's budget by about a quarter. If they put it all toward space stuff, it's an even larger increase. Check out the NASA 2015 budget request summary. No, seriously, check it out, it's actually a really interesting document with pictures, details, and progress of all of their programs.

Whenever people talk about cutting or diverting budgets, it usually means shaking up and losing jobs, which is bad for productivity all around. But, if you cut the budget for certain military programs and give it to civilian space programs, a lot of the same players, needing a lot of the same engineering talent, are involved. There would still be shake-ups as contracts are lost by one company and picked up by another, but it's a far better situation than simple budget cuts or taking money away from one industry to spend in another.

I figure since we already have them orbiting the sun to tell us about these things, it's probably reasonable to assume that's the most efficient way to do it.

You also need one directly between us and the Sun because we need to know the polarity of the CME. I forgot which way it is but it's either if it's opposite our magnetic field then it's harmless or if it's the same it's harmless. So we need to know that before shutting down the entire power grid...a telescope (light) isn't going to tell you that.

This is a finite resource that we are squandering at a rate that ensures our grandchildren, great or otherwise, will find in short supply. It occurs to me that might create a market beyond our present ken.

The New Horizons mission page states that the probe will fly by Pluto during July 2015. I don't know what the probe's ability to get data from Pluto is, but anything that helps restrict the range of observations is, IMO, a good thing: a month can pass quickly.

and pissed in a number of esoteric theories cheerios

I'm not inclined to think this is the case. I think their result was many orders of magnitude over the previous measurement because there was only one other measurement made in this frequency range. The previous experiment was a torsion bar experiment done in a modest-sized lab. According to the LISA folks:

In general, a ground-based interferometer is limited to frequencies above about 10 Hz because of seismic noise

I didn't read the torsion bar paper to see what they did to eliminate noise sources.

[...] note that it is at a frequency where there are not a lot of expected sources

There are sources in that range, thus LISA. Galactic black holes merging, inspirals of stellar mass objects by galactic black holes.

LISA was a high pick in the DOA Astro2010 Decadal, now sacrificed on the altar of HSF and JWST.

[...] note that it is at a frequency where there are not a lot of expected sources

There are sources in that range, thus LISA. Galactic black holes merging, inspirals of stellar mass objects by galactic black holes.

LISA was a high pick in the DOA Astro2010 Decadal, now sacrificed on the altar of HSF and JWST.

The DSN doesn't appear to be that terribly over-booked.

BTW: we're talking about Opportunity not Curiosity. Either way, I'm sure university students would love a chance at that thing and wouldn't charge a penny. There's still plenty to be learned from Opportunity, and last I knew it hadn't even reached it's last science destination.

Go ahead if you can pay for using Deep Space Network: http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/

When Kennedy made his famous "We choose to go to the moon" speech, the USA had exactly 1 successful manned spaceflight

Still one more than Space X. That and the power to print money without breaking the law.

The only thing keeping SpaceX from sending people up into space on the Dragon is the lack of approval by the U.S. government, specifically the FAA-AST. I believe Elon Musk when he points out that putting seats in the Dragon and launching it with a crew on the next CRS flight (which will be in a couple of weeks) would already be safer than it was for the astronauts traveling on the Space Shuttle.

There is a launch escape system that SpaceX has currently in development, and is going to perform a test of that system later on this year. It is going to happen soon enough that it is reasonable to check regularly with the Patrick AFB website or upcoming NASA flights for more details.

The fuel wasn't surplus. But the problem was altogether different.

An audit was conducted concerning Google's aircraft being stored that the ames facility. It turns out that they lease a hangar from NASA as market rates but also allow their aircraft to be used by NASA for Earth Science projects.

http://oig.nasa.gov/Special-Re...

In the course of this, the supplier of fuel for the site charges a market rate for everyone but NASA who gets charged a cost plus rate. NASA had them fueling the aircraft (which is more then just their jet) on the cost plus rate for the NASA projects but an oversight happened and they ended up being charged cost plus for everything including private non-government flights. The audit doesn't place blame or malice in it and writes it off as a misunderstanding. The letter in the article is confirmation that NASA was doing it, didn't have anything in place to detect it, cannot go back and fix it, but have that all taken care of now and the separate rates will be applied appropriately.

It's deeper then that. The fuel at costs was supposed to be only for fuel used on the NASA missions the planes do. All the fuel for private flights were supposed to be purchased under a different account for market rates.

This letter is in response to an internal audit that disclosed all the fuel was being purchased at costs instead of separating them like they were supposed to be.

http://oig.nasa.gov/Special-Re...

Its a little deeper then this. This letter is confirmation on an audit by some inspector. NASA leases several of the google jets for earth science related tasks and NASA was only allowed to sell them fuel to the extent of covering those missions.

What ended up happening is that H2 11 purchased fuel for private flights under the same account that had nothing to do with NASA or the government so the selling of that fuel was against the contract (possible law too). So the audit came out, someone asked about it, NASA confirmed it and said they didn't have any way to address it previously but do now.

http://oig.nasa.gov/Special-Re...

Now I didn't read the audit enough to see whether or not anyone explicitly made it clear that only fuel used for government services could be purchased under the contract. I'm going to assume it was an oversight or misunderstanding and the proper accounts weren't changed over when fueling. Pilots probably don't give one rats ass about the cost of fuel for someone else's aircraft they have to fly. They certainly wouldn't be privileged to the contracts NASA and H2 11 were part of and likely just gave the account name or number or charge card they were given for the government usages. I used to work for a company that operated heavy equipment and off road use fuel was tax free also. We had two fuel cards for when they were on site, one for the trucks and one for the equipment to keep tax credits separate and drivers often used the same card for everything. When asked why they thought they had a second fuel card for, they said in case they needed to get fuel at a stop the first one wasn't accepted at. Either management lacked something, the drivers and operators lacked something, or the fact that they could fuel the equipment in the yard and rarely needed to get more on site (outside what was brought with them), allowed them to forget what they were told once a long time ago.

No. Glycine -- the simplest amino acid -- and other straight chain amino acids have been detected outside our planet in comets, interstellar dust and martian meteorites. Life on Europa, or anywhere else, that had decomposed into amino acids would leave a mix of complex amino acids. We could even separate a non-life natural source of complex amino acids (even though there hasn't been any found) from a life source. The proportion of left vs right chirality would indicate life vs naturally occurring amino acids. We're planning to have that kind of detection capabilty on the ExoMars Rover. Now, quit being a dumbass.

Hate to break it to you, but while some preconceptions still exist the data shows that South America largely exited the so-called "third world" stage some time ago - there's still problem areas, but for the most part you've pretty much caught up with the developed world by most measures. As a rule you're not yet as rich, but you've managed to harness most of the major benefits of modern technology. Asia and Africa are the remaining problem spots, and much of Asia is currently progressing quite rapidly.

It's important to remember that progress is *extremely* uneven in these places, varying wildly from country to country, and even more wildly between different regions within a country - take China for example: The major cities are among the most technologically advanced in the world, yet much of the population are still basically subsistence farmers without electricity, and who are lucky if their region even gets cell-phone coverage. Most of Africa is in far worse shape. Think of your country 50 years ago, and realize that many places still have a ways to go to catch up to that point.

For a rough estimate of technological penetration, I present this image of the Earth at night. Take a look at your region, and compare it to others. Especially Africa.
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/defa...

Or power beaming. Remember this?

Some NASA astronaut candidates have worked as waitressess too, jackass.. http://women.nasa.gov/maria-no...