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Ah yes, crippling the iPhone further with the removal of the highly standardised headphone jack, requiring a pricey and fragile, easy-to-lose, bulky adapter. They're seemingly trying to make the iPhone as useful as a pet rock, and similarly overpriced.

Why is Apple doing this, really? The reason isn't waterproofing (both Samsung and Sony meet at least IP68 ratings, and for some models, even Milspec 810G) without sacking the headphone jack. It isn't technology-related, since both Sony and Samsung fit far more features into less space - again, without sacking the headphone jack.

It's about having yet another expensive-yet-fragile-and-easy-to-lose mandatory accessory, or to create a sense vendor lock-in (because they'll be telling their gullible customers "by the way we make some premium headphones to match our pet rock") so they can sell more expensive yet inferior and terrible sounding headphones by Beats, which literally include weights to lend the illusion of high quality heavy magnets in the drivers. See:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...

http://bgr.com/2015/06/19/beat...

http://www.popularmechanics.co...

I'm happy with my Samsung S7 Edge, thanks - the iPhone 4 was my last; after seeing the direction it was going with the 4s and 5 I made the switch back to Samsung phones (my phone prior to the iPhone 3GS was a Samsung) and am sticking with them.

if you want to increase the signature of the stealthy aircraft there are lots of easy ways

You missed: open the weapons bay doors, which the F-35 has to do every 10 minutes or so if it wants to avoid cooking it's munitions. Quoting that link:

• The F-35's weapons bay can overheat if if the plane is maintaining high speeds at an altitude of under 25,000 feet and an atmospheric temperature 90 F or greater. The trouble occurs if the plane's weapon day doors are closed for upwards of 10 minutes, and opening the bay doors negates the F-35s stealth capabilities.

No, the great achievement really was putting people on the moon, and the enormous technical, industrial, and organizational effort that took....
At least one major power other tried and failed. It wasn't a given.

Tried and failed ?? Who was that ?

The Soviets once tried to work with the US on manned space missions to the moon but gave up.

A significant difference between the Soviet and the American space programs is that the American program was done in public, with failures as well as successes in the public eye, while the Soviet program was done in secret, with missions not announced until they succeeded.

After the Apollo successes, the Soviets let it be assumed that they didn't have a moon program at all; they never tried to beat the Americans. It was only years later that the Soviet society started to embrace openness ("glasnost", in Russian), and the full history of the Soviet manned moon program was slowly revealed.

They did have a manned moon program, and a big one.

* http://www.wired.com/2010/10/r...

* http://fas.org/spp/eprint/lind...

* http://www.popularmechanics.co...

The Soviets could have sent a man there but they realised it was too expensive for the result

As it turns out, no, they could not. They tried, but failed.
Ultimately, they gave up after their large booster, the N-1, failed for the third time. It was a key element in their lunar program, but they never got it to launch successfully. (By this time the Americans had already landed on the moon, so at best they would have come in second in a race with two competitors.

so they put their money into robotic exploration...

Or, more specifically, they made the announcement that this is what they were after all along. But it wasn't.

According to this article it has to get it right the first time, and will go into a useless solar orbit or smash into Jupiter if the breaking maneuver fails. There's very little margin for error.

It does have restart logic such that if the Jupiter radiation causes the engines to stop or computer to crash, it has auto-restart mechanisms in place to try to finish the job.

That's not the intake (or even inlet) manifold.

Yeah, but do you think he wanted a description of that part? It's remarkably similar to a petrofueld engine.

They make retrofit systems: http://www.popularmechanics.co...

Then after you do that, you drive up to the CNG pump....

3) Spying on people from above or looking in their windows

These are all quite dangerous ways to use drones. Short of banning drones entirely, there's no way to stop this from occurring. Therefore, drones need to be banned.

I recommend a Mossberg 500 with, say... an M choke to give you the best compromise on pellet spread but you might want to experiment with that. According to Popular Mechanics you want number 8 bird shot shells with the largest pellet count you can find No. 10 or even 12 bird shot is even better if you can find it. If you live in an urban area blasting at drones with a shotgun might be a problem so your best urban-legal go-to option might be water based. Perhaps a powerful hose, or the most powerful super-soaker you can find but even that would probably not have the range of the shotgun. A more expensive option would be to build you own hunter-killer drone or a drone that snatches the offending one out of the sky and brings it to the ground so you can hold it to ransom. That last solution appeals to my inner nerd, my inner hill-billy likes the shotgun option best while shooting down drones with a super-soaker makes for a fun activity you can engage in with your kids. I also reserve a certain degree of admiration for this Russian reenactor who shot a drone out of the sky with a hand thrown spear.

Obviously you have never seen a shuttle. It is mostly a 1960's design and looks like a WWII bomber. The computers and systems were ancient, even after the upgrade, only the engines are very impressive. But you're just a fast food worker who likes wings in space. No fooling you.

Outside of pumping water to heights or using conventtional battery storage, there are NEW IDEAS emerging all the time.

Airliners powered by onboard solar panels? No.

Solar-powered drones? Those seem very likely. They work like satellites for some applications, but they're cheaper, and are likely to remain so unless SpaceX makes some incredible breakthroughs.

Battery-powered airliners? Maybe. At the very least we might get battery-assisted airliners.

Electric semi's are already in development and testing. E.G. http://www.popularmechanics.co...

Presumably this concept is aimed more for suburban areas, where hopefully semi's aren't a significant portion of the traffic.

There are already electric trucks and even electric semi trucks out there [...]

Yes. Here's one. There's only one issue, FTA:

The 40-ton truck has a range of about 62 miles per charge [...]

This might be okay for Germany, but it isn't going to work out well in the US.

Backward companies like Mack,GM, Ford,and Freightliner [...]

Well, for the US, Freightliner is going hybrid.

Boston Dynamics is lightyears ahead of this little robot

From what I've read, Boston Dynamics may have been misrepresenting the success of their robots via editing. A bit like someone filming themselves throwing a basketball over their shoulder and then uploading the 1 successful attempt out of 200 attempts. A soon as their bipedal robot was put to a live test at the Darpa competition, it seemed to be falling all over the place even on flat ground. This is sure to have rung alarm bells at google.

This article springs to mind. http://www.popularmechanics.co...

We really need to see long unedited videos of any new robots in action to have any confidence in their reliability.

Some of these attempts sound equally likely.

See this comparison including handy graphic: http://www.popularmechanics.co...

Some analysis says that it would cause less than 40k casualties, potentially as few as 1000. Still lots of human lives lost, but not as bad as NK wants to paint it.

http://www.popularmechanics.co...

https://skeptoid.com/blog/2013...

There are more in-depth articles I'm unable to find at the moment. Gist of it is: Not much of their artillery has the range to would reach Seoul, it's probably in bad maintenance or would break down soon, and NK would not be able to supply it with enough munitions or spare parts for sustained barrage, they would not reach Seoul center but less densely populated northern suburbs, there are plenty of shelters and after initial shock people would take cover. Not to mention counterbattery and airstrikes to take it out which would start immediately. --Coder

Is there anything in the air today that can compare to the X-15 or the Blackbird?

Sure. On what specific basis are you comparing? Speed? Stealth? Utility? Efficiency? Avionics? Reliability? I'd be happy to provide you examples in any specific category you care to mention. We retired the Blackbird because we've exceeded what it could do in most ways. The X15 was an experiment and we've long since had the capability to exceed what it can do in literally every respect. What is the point of duplicating it today? Sure they were cool and cutting edge for their time but that time was a loooong time ago.

Furthermore remember that some of the most advanced stuff is still classified. We didn't know much about the SR71 for much of its early operational history. Stuff like the B2 and F117 were almost complete surprises when they were unveiled. Quite likely there is some pretty nifty classified stuff the US military is working on that we know little/nothing about.

What has the US accomplished in the last 50 years that can even touch those accomplishments?

Plenty! Just off the top of my head: Stealth, hypersonic aircraft, drones, private spacecraft, engine efficiency/power, avionics, GPS, the list goes on and on and on. If you think we haven't exceeded the SR-71 or the X15 then you haven't been paying attention. Just because we aren't making drop-in replacements for vehicles whose service life is complete doesn't mean we aren't progressing.

And when was the last time an astronaut went further into space than anybody with a half-assed camera and a cheap pair of binoculars can photograph?

1972 but you knew that. Unclear what that has to do with experimental aircraft.

What's the difference between a space station and a space ship? The size of the engines.

Generation ships have to work: we're already on one called Spaceship Earth.

If they don't, well as a bonus we solve the Fermi Paradox.

We already have the technology (mylar) to direct Spaceship Earth wherever we want to go: Shadov Thrusters. But deploying something on that scale would require a coordinated effort by more people than we can get to agree on anything at the moment.

All of technology beyond something done in your own backyard boils down to economics, psychology and sociology. I think a lot of the delay today is because nobody wants to lose all the people who will want to leave once it's a cheap ticket off this rock onto a different rock or a life among the stars on a ship.

There is a national grid, or rather two of them, east side and west side. The split is roughly from Montana down to Texas. It's been like that for decades. Are they talking about upgrading it or what exactly do they mean? Power is sold back and forth all over the east and all over the west.

There are 3 continental grids: East, West and Texas.

That's what I thought. Well, given your "sensibilities" ...

Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report

I am not a gamer but I've read people here talking about indies who were still publishing games, commercial games obviously, for the NES and SNES? At least I have a clear recollection of it being discussed and I believe the conclusion was that some of the devs are doing great things still.

Err... So, I checked Google. This news article is 4 hours old:
http://www.popularmechanics.co...

I didn't read it all but I skimmed and it's a new game.

Which leads to my question, my real question, are any of the *new* games pushing that limit? I'm guessing you don't know which is why I asked you. Not because I want to challenge you (I'm not the guy who argues with everyone) but because I think it might be something you're interested in learning about. Alas, I'm not a gamer. I just have some things that stick in my memory, wanted or not, and this is one of those things. I kind of clearly recall a few people pushing memory boundaries and doing great things.

Unfortunately, I know nothing more than that. I am not a gamer and haven't been a gamer for many, many years. If you, fine adventurer, so choose then your quest starts here!

Err... Or something like that. At any rate, I just figured you might find it interesting so I was asking and then I decided to Google and, sure enough, I found a new news story about a new game. (That's an awful sentence and I'm proud of it.)

http://www.popularmechanics.co... The U.S. Navy has a ship-killing problem. The service has, over the past 25 years, neglected the basic mission to sink and destroy enemy ships. Now, with the Russian and Chinese navies on the horizon, the Navy is looking at ways of making its ships more lethal—by repurposing missiles as ship-killers.

That's the whole point, the Merlin engines can't be throttled down to a point where the nearly-empty first stage can hover. They can't even go anywhere near that low. They have to do a "suicide burn" which is precisely calculated to reach zero vertical velocity at zero altitude. At least one of the attempted landings failed because a sticky valve caused lag in the response to a commanded burn to right the rocket just before touch-down.

Here, read this.

NASCAR should embrace the latest tech like NASA does, instead of old tech.

Forgot to mention that NASA never uses the latest tech. Ever. They're always more than a decade behind state of the art (that's what "latest tech" means, after all).

http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a17991/voyager-1-voyager-2-retiring-engineer/

NASA needs people who can write the assembly language of the chips on the Voyager craft...

My car was built properly the first time, it did not need continuous replacement of parts because the original ones had design/manufacturing defects.

Oh look...
http://www.popularmechanics.co...
http://www.bankrate.com/financ...

All planets close enough to be in a white dwarf's "habitable zone" would have been well inside the star during the star's red giant phase.

The planet could be a planet captured from another star.

The capture could be intentional as well. How long is the lifetime of a white dwarf star's habitable zone compared to a different star? Even buying another 10Gry is quite a long time. A very sentimental and advanced civilization could build a shkadov thruster and get their planet captured by a different star before the parent star got too far off the main sequence.

A black hole or active neutron star might not be so kind. A red dwarf is a safer bet with fusion lifetime measured in trillions of years. But a white dwarf might work in a pinch.

Then again the planet may just be re-coalesced dust from the original star or the core of an extinguished close-in gas giant.

This is a nightmare scenario really for VW and anyone else involved in owning/fixing these cars. It's most likely going to cost thousands per car to add the system necessary to clean the NOx gasses out of the exhaust that larger trucks use. And there is a good chance additional modifications will be needed that will likely give a significant hit to fuel mileage. These manufacturers are staring down the barrel of thousands of dollars per car fixes plus class action lawsuits up the wazoo from customers who's cars are suddenly getting double digit worse mileage.

http://www.wired.com/2015/09/v...

http://www.popularmechanics.co...

Seems to me that a retrofix of installing the urea injection system is undoable; instead there will have to be some sort of detuning that will reduce the temperature of the combustion and exhaust (exhaust gas recirculation, for instance). And my feeling is that anything that does that will necessarily reduce the mean effective pressure or whatever they call it on the piston, which will necessarily reduce the torque which will naturally reduce the HP, etc.

This is a nightmare scenario really for VW and anyone else involved in owning/fixing these cars. It's most likely going to cost thousands per car to add the system necessary to clean the NOx gasses out of the exhaust that larger trucks use. And there is a good chance additional modifications will be needed that will likely give a significant hit to fuel mileage. These manufacturers are staring down the barrel of thousands of dollars per car fixes plus class action lawsuits up the wazoo from customers who's cars are suddenly getting double digit worse mileage.

http://www.wired.com/2015/09/v...

http://www.popularmechanics.co...

$35,000 Tesla Model III coming in 2017
Since they've seemed to slip all of their shcedules by 1-2 years, I'm guessing 2019.
This blog post discusses Tesla's top-down strategy where they use luxury cars to fund development of mass-market cars.

Here's hoping something like Tardigrades evolved on Mars too, if so, they'd probably still be revivable today even after a couple billion years.

An opposing opinion: http://www.popularmechanics.co...

"If Mars is equally lifeless, that will make exploring--and later settling--the planet much easier. We can go there and return without this particular worry, and we can introduce Earth life without concerns that we'll damage indigenous creatures. Astronauts won't have to be quarantined, and the environmental impact statement, or its interplanetary equivalent, will be easier to determine. On the other hand, if there is life on Mars, things get a lot tougher."

Nice opinion. Too bad you're wrong: http://www.popularmechanics.co...

What the hell are you on about? All current VW diesel vehicles in the US are using urea exhaust treatment.

Uh, no they weren't. Thus VW's cheating, and this scandal.

As of this week, though, current VW diesel vehicles use urea injection...as the others are have been banned from sales.

We could spend less than 1% of our GDP on defense and still have a larger military than most countries out there.

Thanks for making my point.

Second, what infrastructure? Be specific.

Is "public" a specific enough modifier for you?

I was a truck driver for years, and if you're going to mention highways and bridges - don't bother. You're wrong.

I don't find your personal anecdotal experience very compelling. I find multiple reports from credible sources far more convincing.

We are responsible for quite a few things, military-wise...[blah blah blah]

I asked for accomplishments, not responsibilities. Care to try again?

Did you even read that link?

No. Why would I? All I did was accurately observe that you didn't add anything to the discussion.

I defined "threat" by the only measure it should be defined: based on the actual reality of the situation [...] Is that the reality? Yes.

Uh huh. Another prick on the internet who claims to know the true reality of the situation.

We face a much larger threat from people who can't use their brain properly.

I assume that would that include people who claim that North Korea "shot a missle over Japan", right?

Shipping containers are not structurally sound once you drill a hole in one and need to be framed like a regular house if you don't want to die of suffocation.

Both problems are trivially solved with a bit of reinforcing metal and a welding torch. This has been done countless times already. Twenty seconds on Google would have established that this is not a problem. At all.

Or of boredom of being inside a black box.

You mean black boxes like these? Or these? Or these? Yeah, those are terribly boring places to be be... [/sarcasm]

But a cup of feathers is lighter than a cup of iron.

Whoosh! You missed the joke.

You should learn the difference between kw and kwh and why kwh is used to compare actual electfical production.

You should learn to laugh a little at a joke. Lighten up. A watt is a watt - hence the joke. I'm quite well aware of the difference between a watt and a joule so your response cracks me up.

But since you wanted to be pedantic, saying a "watt of solar" is a meaningless statement unless you clarify it further. Solar is a process that can mean many different things ranging from photovoltaics to photosynthesis. Coal is group of hydrocarbon chemicals with well defined properties but is essentially stored chemical energy viewed abstractly. Ironically coal really is just sunlight turned into hydrocarbons. If you want to talk about electrical power generated from burning coal versus power generated from photovoltaic cells then say so. Clarify what you are comparing or just stand back and laugh at the joke.

If you want to talk about efficiency (the amount of sunlight energy converted into electrical energy vs coal) then you have a discussion but coal does not have a 5X advantage there. If you want to compare energy densities then you probably aren't really comparing sunlight to coal because you are comparing storage mediums. You are probably comparing chemical batteries to coal which is quite different.

Skipping over the fact we have absolutely no technology to extract this He3 at the minute concentrations on the Moon, what, exactly, are we supposed to *DO* with it? Tell me, what 10 billion$ market is there for He3?

Ummm, the impending helium shortage

This is what killed Diesel as a car fuel in the US

That, and how dirty, sooty, and smelly the pre-EPA regulated diesel was. And the higher taxes levied by states in order to tax trucking more than cars due to their higher incidence of damage to the roads. And the tendency for non-treated diesel to gel in the winter time making it unreliable for cold environments until relatively recently.

The failure of diesel to catch on in the USA is hardly mysterious.

Mind Control Rays are Real.
A patent for wireless mind control was filed in 1974
There seems to be a cover up.
Declassified documents in 1996 explained viability of Non-Lethal energy weapons.
Microwave weapons are now viable for crowd control.
The LA County Jail now has microwave guns.

You have been told about this so many times that "conspiracy" actually invokes the use of "tinfoil hats"... and you didn't ever wonder why that is?

I haven't personally verified the claim, but some theorists speculate that some contrails are "Chem Trails" could be caused by airplanes dumping chemicals to change reflectance of the atmosphere and combat global warming, or dose cities with traces of chemicals; Some say nano metalic particles are spread this way to increase the effectiveness of the aforementioned Nonlethal Energy Weaponry upon those who ingest the particles.

My pet theory is that if the widespread use of such secret weaponry made their exposure inevitable that their existence would be quietly unveiled outside the mainstream media bit by bit so that the general public would begin to see things like "trans-cranial stimulation", "crowd control rays", and "nano particles for mind manipulation". So far this seems correct. According to the declassified documentation, the next things you'll see are EM fields and low frequency sonic waves that have mood and emotion altering properties.

In other words: Fool, they are already abusing the tech. The stories you hear now are just whitewashing the tech's existence by allowing the average citizen to think that it was just now discovered.

P.S. Flying Saucers are real too. They're just top-secret aircraft. Oh, and the government is spying on everyone! Oh, wait, slashplebs finally accepted that fact after Snowden's leaks, as if we didn't know about Room 641A, Five-Eyes, Omnivore / Carnivore, ECHELON, etc. prior to that.

FYI: You should probably reconsider the quality of the news you've been getting.

LEDs require a specific type of dimmer. Older dimmers don't work with them. In fact, X10 and other types of automation can actually make them flicker.

http://www.popularmechanics.co...
https://www.earthled.com/colle...

I liked the popular mechanics analogy:

Legacy dimmers were designed to work with incandescents, and CFL and LED bulbs bear no electrical resemblance to these types of bulbs. Comparing them is like equating an electric heating element and a television set. Both use electricity and both give off light, but that's where the similarity ends.

Your dimmers aren't dimming the right way for LED. You also need dimmable LEDs, which are different than non dimmable ones.

meerling was describing the implications of the system setup, as any engineer should, and used the term "Death squad" to describe the predicted outcome. It doesn't seem to be far off, as shooting people seems to be a startle reflex for US police. It's not like this in my country, and it doesn't need to be in yours either. The first two of the following links describe a baby and a toddler being shot by police. The third makes the point that when police are given military gear, they start behaving like soldiers, instead of the civilians that they are. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/he... http://www.salon.com/2014/06/2... http://www.popularmechanics.co...

Actually, auto makers are tending to do the opposite, actually using speakers and installing other systems to make the engine noises LOUDER. ;)

My understanding is that the Volt also shifts into the mechanical connection at very high speeds (in the area of 70mph / 110 KmPh) even when it has power in the battery. The ability to couple the engine to the drive wheels adds a lot of mechanical complexity to the transmission, which both adds weight to the car and creates a possible maintenance problem; I wouldn't be surprised if the next generation Volt does away with that and becomes a pure series hybrid.

If you are in charge deplete mode (i.e. running off the battery), the Volt will not turn on the ICE nor engage it to the wheels regardless of speed. It is the sources that led to that misunderstanding that I am trying to get to stop spreading false information =/ Sources: a) I own a Volt; b) GM's head of electric propulsion; c) Popular Mechanics; I could keep digging up more if you'd like.

If you watch the "Deep Dive" videos on YouTube, you'll see that the system is actually not that complicated: a fixed planetary gear set with three clutches that only mate when speed-matched. This is much simpler than the transmission in most vehicles, including automatics, standards, and CVTs, so it is disingenuous to say that it could be a maintenance problem. Is it more complicated than a single electrical motor connected only to the wheels? Yes. On the scale of possible automobile complexity is it really that complex? No, not really. Have a look inside a dual-clutch automated manual transmission.

Lastly, I would be very surprised if GM moved away from the Voltec drivetrain. They have invested a lot of money in designing it, and these very aspects that we're talking about are what make it stand apart from other parallel, series, and parallel+series hybrids out there. The fundamental decision is if you're committed to lugging around an ICE to drive a generator, how do you make the most efficient use of it across the full range of driving scenarios? The Cadillac ELR is based on the Voltec drivetrain (slightly different ICE, possibly slightly different motors, and certainly different software) and operates in the same fundamental way.

p.s. The next-generation Volt has already been unveiled, and the new generation of Voltec drive-train appears to operate in much the same manner; they even indicate that a key development is to couple the two motors together in even more driving scenarios

"It's why a ~$350 million test stand was built"

I think you forgot your sarcasm tag, the test stand in Mississippi is widely believed to be an egregious example of runaway federal government pork spending. Built for a rocket engine being designed for a launch system that no longer exists. The rocket motor itself was idled long before the test stand was completed but politically connected individuals continued to get money funneled to it even after it exceeded its original estimates by a factor of three.
http://www.popularmechanics.co...

Lets be real. Seoul has more conventional weaponry pointed at it than any city in the world. DPRK doesn't need nukes to turn their southern neighbor's most famous and most important city into a crater.

While not quite a scientific article, I think they get the idea better than you do.

Realistically, no US President will overtly do a thing about North Korea. It has served China as a distraction and a buffer zone, and China ultimately will step in and claim NK as under their protection, sending in PLA troops like the USSR sent in Russian tanks if one of their puppets ran into trouble.

DPRK is as much a headache for China as they are useful; they are as apt to embarrass China as to be their puppet to tweak the RoK and the US.

However, this doesn't mean surrender to them. Let them make all the threats they want to, and ignore them, just like you do the Goatse troll on Slashdot.

Ignore them if you want, cave to them when you get tired of their bluster, but understand that they are actively trying to subvert and attack the US. Just because they are incompetent now, I for one, do not suppose that they will always remain so. Just as Bin Laden got a lucky shot in, so too might the DPRK

North Korea has thousands of guns pointed at Seoul, within 5 minutes of a true engagement, they would let loose and while it won't level the city, it would still be a major disaster. http://skeptoid.com/blog/2013/... http://www.popularmechanics.co...

It varies by state. In oregon, you must technically stop at the yellow and then may proceed if it is safe. In texas, you may proceed thru the yellow but have been warned that a red is coming.

If your rear wheels cross the line before the light turns red, then you did not run the light. If your rear or front wheels cross the line after the light turns red, you ran it. My experience as a juror in a red light case also backs this up.

If you have a trailer, it's wheels also count.

Here is a big one that I wish more people knew...

In most states, when desiring to turn and facing a green light, the first car should proceed into the intersection. Then it may turn when safe or the light turns red.

Note-- this guarantees at least one car gets to turn per signal change!

---
Interesting bits here:
http://www.popularmechanics.co...

Red light camera contracts are very expensive to exit early.
Red light cameras are inaccurate even when the city's not cheating (ticketing a parked car shown to be parked).
Red light cameras trade T-Bone collisions for increased rear end collisions.
Red light cameras generate a lot of false positives from legal right turns on red. This overloads the court system or creates the need for employees to pre-check each ticket before it is sent out. Which wipes out the income or creates losses.

Finally, if you google "red light camera fast yellow", you'll find numerous examples of cities that cheated by making yellow lights shorter (in some cases too short to humanly react before it turned red). Apparently florida has had a lot of problems lately.

let me ask you a serious question: do you believe it's possible for a a building to collapse (without any sort of controlled demolition taking place) at free-fall speed - despite being full of 'stuff' and floors' to slow down the descent?

Yes.

if you aren't sure, i invite you to ask any engineer -

Hey, why don't I do exactly that?

http://www.popularmechanics.co...

You are correct that there is no easy way. That's why the Republicans in 1996 ordered the US to destroy its helium reserves by 2015. The Republicans were right in that no private company would take over production thus creating a huge shortage that corporations could take advantage of. That's why this usage of helium is so noteworthy. It hands control of all large hard drive production over to the Republicans. The biggest worry now wrt the situation created by the Republicans is with MRI machines. They are destroying the world's ability to make new machines and to service existing ones. Popular Mechanics wrote an article that talks about this Republican-created problem:

http://www.popularmechanics.co...

A single MRI machine needs 10,000 liters of helium. The Republicans again are trying to destroy health care.

Get bad results.

Agriculture has been advancing as fast as any other technology field.

Here are some recent developments: http://www.popularmechanics.co...
and GPS is becoming important to farm competitiveness: https://www.bae.ncsu.edu/topic...

None of this depending on massive fixed installations, so it can be used cost effectively over thousands of acres of fields.

That seems to validate the parents point of, "Panama didn't have the benefit of the massive machines available now. It will likely be much cheaper compartitively."

Ex: http://www.geekologie.com/2008...
311ft tall, 705ft long, 45,000 tons (versus panamas digger at 105 tons), and moves 2,700,000 cubic ft of day!

Ex. http://justpaste.it/largest-co...
A bunch of various big machines...

Ex. http://www.popularmechanics.co...
Hydraulic Shovel (possibly the best comparison/evolution of the steam shovel you shared). It's shovel holds 57 cubic yards (versus the measly 2.5 - 5 of that steam shovel).

I'd say that's quite an improvement and should make the job faster and cheaper than panama.