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The GSLV MK-III costs approximately $60 million, which ISRO intends to further lower to garner the lucrative heavy satellite launch contracts. While a satellite launch on Arianespace's rocket costs about $100 million after subsidies, SpaceX charges approximately $62 million.

And how do things get to GSO?

Hint: they don't just shoot them straight up from where they want it "parked."

Every single thing we've put in space gets there the same way: you start straight up in order to clear any launch infrastructure. Usually in less than a minute from liftoff, the rocket will perform a "pitchover maneuver" or "gravity turn" to take advantage of the fact that gravity is always pulling the rocket back down, and use that energy for guidance rather than drag. This results in the vehicle pitching from vertical to horizontal in a natural ascent profile that allows it to continue climbing in altitude, while gaining the horizontal velocity to remain in orbit.

Only once in orbit, does it continue to expend fuel to increase it's orbital altitude to where it's horizontal velocity would be synchronous with a particular point on Earth's surface.

The Chinese were likely the first to observe the sun and space in a rational manner. As for current sun observatories, they're working on it.

They also landed on the moon a couple of years ago. We haven't been able to go there for over forty years.

Largest telescope in the world? The Chinese FAST single aperture radio telescope is more than 200,000 square meters, around three times as much as the second largest (Arecibo in Puerto Rico).

I think it would be wise to not rest on our laurels and dismiss the Chinese space program. It's rapidly overtaking NASA in more and more areas.

Th US Air Force has just given SpaceX a $33m contract to develop the Raptor Engine. Raptor is the first member of a family of cryogenic methane-fueled rocket engines under development by SpaceX. It is specifically intended to power high performance lower and upper stages for SpaceX super-heavy launch vehicles. The engine will be powered by liquid methane and liquid oxygen (LOX), rather than the RP-1 kerosene and LOX used in all previous Falcon 9 rockets, which use Merlin 1C & D engines. Methane rocket engines have higher performance than kerosene/RP-1 and lower than hydrogen, with significantly fewer problems for long-term, multi-start engine designs than kerosene—methane is cleaner burning—and significantly lower cost than hydrogen, coupled with the ability to "live off land" and produce methane directly from extraterrestrial sources such as the surface of Mars.

The Raptor engine will have over six times the thrust of the Merlin 1D vacuum engine that powers the second stage of the current Falcon 9, the Falcon 9 v1.1.

The broader Raptor concept is a highly reusable methane staged-combustion engine that will power the next generation of SpaceX launch vehicles designed for the exploration and colonization of Mars." According to Elon Musk, this design will be able to achieve full reusability (all rocket stages), and as a result, "a two order of magnitude reduction in the cost of spaceflight.

http://online.wsj.com/articles...

A few companies, such as Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, have formed with the goal of mining asteroids. Why asteroids? Because it currently costs several thousand dollars per pound to put anything from Earth into low-earth orbit. Asteroids are probably made of all the ingredients necessary to live in space, including water. These companies intend to supply the raw materials to support an entirely new space economy.

Water will be particularly important. Beyond sustaining human life, water can shield people from harmful radiation and serve as fuel for spacecraft. It can be separated into its two components to generate energy or be heated with focused energy from the sun.

These infant asteroid-mining companies and their investors are taking on enormous risks to develop technologies to extract usable resources in space. The hitch? There is currently no legal guarantee they will be able to profit from the resources they mine. The ownership of resources mined in space is legally murky.

http://www.spacedaily.com/repo...

You seem to have forgotten the acts of war under Saddam's government.

UAVs Snap Iraqi Anti Aircraft Artillery

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Air Force Gen. Richard Myers added that over the past three years, Iraqi air-defense artillery has fired at coalition aircraft more than 1,000 times, launched 600 rockets, and fired nearly 60 surface- to-air missiles.

The spacecraft wasn't designed to operate that far out in space and it wasn't designed to handle the comet it's chasing. That anything about the mission is going well at all since they blew their initial launch window and had to retarget is a miracle.

This isn't the first U.S. Army laser system that can shoot down mortar rounds. The Tactical High Energy Laser, in test since 2000, could do it. Here it is in action. That took three semitrailers of equipment and tanks for the chemical laser. Each shot cost $3000 in chemicals. Israel wanted to deploy the thing, even though it was expensive to operate, couldn't run for long, and not very portable. It was just too clunky for combat.

The Army wanted a solid-state laser with that kind of punch, and now they have one. This new truck-mounted system uses a 10KW solid-state laser array. Probably a lot of small solid-state lasers. It might just be an array of 1000 standard 10-watt laser diodes. That's enough to take out artillery shells and small rockets. The only consumable is electricity.

Beam weapons are about to become real. The most likely initial user is, again, Israel, which has to deal with small rocket attacks in known areas. Israel's Iron Dome system works reasonably well but uses a pair of $50,000 guided missiles to take out each $800 attacking rocket.

It is a feasable theory to say that our planetary system is unusually loose, however, until we have more data on more systems, its impossible to say.

Actually, the Kepler mission has collected quite a bit of data. Even though Kepler is more likely to detect planets closer in to their star and larger in size, the probability of detection can be estimated. We can then divide the observed planet frequency by the probability of detection and estimate the actual statistics of planetary occurrence. I tried to find a good paper or article on this. Here is one from 2012. According to this, the solar system is indeed very loose compared to most.

"However, the actual cost to put a capsule into space is much more than a satellite.": Not really.

Russians are selling Soyuz seats at $60 million per seat, this gives the entire Soyuz mission price at $180 million, including the launcher.
Compare that to the $50 million to $250 million price tag of a communication satellite, the crewed spacecraft is not at all expensive.

It would be helpful to actually read the article I referenced when doing discussions like this, otherwise we're just talking over each other.

I've been entertained by how wrong your predictions were in the past.

Please give an example. I'll note in my Fukushima predictions that I was correct way back at the end of March, 2011, that the worst of the disaster was over (and yet you still tried to contest it). In the thread to that second link, I also predicted that eventual human exposure would be at least two orders of magnitude less than it was for Chernobyl. Given that 20-50 times less radiation was actually released onto land than was the case for Chernobyl (combination of 4-10 times less overall radiation released and 80% of that radiation ending up in the sea) and the population around Fukushima was evacuated at least a day earlier than was the case for people living around Chernobyl, I think that prediction will succeed easily.

I also predicted that there would be witch hunts for TEPCO executives. There is a criminal investigation underway. We'll see if there is any actual criminal negligence out there with respect to the Fukushima accident or if my prediction there gets borne out.

I will note that there has been at least a couple local government actions that have been shifty (for example, a local government study that claimed hundreds of deaths due to the stress of evacuation for the Fukushima accident and subsequent months long displacement from home and business).

So sure, I've made a bunch of predictions, but my record there looks pretty good.

Throttleable solid rockets tend to work by opening a valve to lower the operating pressure and decrease burn rate, or closing it partially to increase pressure, burn rate, and therefore thrust. These are used in some air-to-air missiles, and while you can't shut it down and restarts are out of the question, they offer surprisingly deep throttling. I can't find a Wikipedia reference on short notice, but here's a press release.

Lego's already been to Mars: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mers-04b.html

But the asteroid will always be rotating a bit so painting won't help

Yes, it will. The details of course depend on the particular asteroid, but even painting the entire surface white will alter its trajectory.

Also, really, pretty much any method proposed for spacecraft acceleration would work for asteroids as well. Laser-pumped? Check. Solar sail? Check. Even some of the less commonly known ones like a magnetic field generator to repel the solar wind would work. It all depends on how big you're willing to go and how quickly you need to move the thing.

The great thing about VOIP is it doesn't matter. You can install and run both clients at the same time and then just make sure you are visible in Jitsi as much as possible whilst being visible very rarely in Skype, and then only when you want something (sit there invisible, but turn on notifications so you see when friends without Jitsi come on line). From time to time suggest to people that it would be easier to get you if they had Jitsi. When you meet people show them how to set up Jitsi (or whichever other client you prefer) to work better than Skype.

No need to get political. The simple phrase "I want to have something I can rely on; I don't trust Microsoft not to mess me about later; remember how they killed off KIN / Windows Mobile 6 / Windows Mobile 7 / the desktop PC / efficient working in Office / flight simulator / plays for sure / etc. etc.". Preferably choose a Microsoft betrayal that cost you personally There are so many simple technical betrayals by Microsoft that you can start with those before going into the political. Even there, you should start with things like "because Microsoft chooses to support Chinese censorship" which are simple and clear to understand.

There is no proof that there is any life at all. The paper(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103510001053- login needed) that interpreted the data from the Cassini mission has been questioned by Chris McKay (NASA http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Have_We_Discovered_Evidence_For_Life_On_Titan_999.html). The possibilities do NOT rule out life but comes out with other explanations that are more plausible.
1. The determination that there is a strong flux of hydrogen into the surface is mistaken. It will be interesting to see if other researchers, in trying to duplicate Strobel's results, reach the same conclusion.
2. There is a physical process that is transporting H2 from the upper atmosphere into the lower atmosphere. One possibility is adsorption onto the solid organic atmospheric haze particles which eventually fall to the ground. However this would be a flux of H2, and not a net loss of H2.
3. If the loss of hydrogen at the surface is correct, the non-biological explanation requires that there be some sort of surface catalyst, presently unknown, that can mediate the hydrogenation reaction at 95 K, the temperature of the Titan surface. That would be quite interesting and a startling find although not as startling as the presence of life.
4. The depletion of hydrogen, acetylene, and ethane, is due to a new type of liquid-methane based life form as predicted (Benner et al. 2004, McKay and Smith 2005, and Schulze-Makuch and Grinspoon 2005).

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Pulsar_Causes_Mysterious_Collision_With_Stellar_Winds.html

http://scienceray.com/astronomy/22-pulsars-found-in-the-star-cluster-in-our-galaxy/ (read where it says some of them may have collided with a red giant)

http://www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine/1/46/giant-energy-burst-reveals-new-cosmic-horizons/

Satisfied or want more?

They should have used that : http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Unmanned_version_of_A-10_on_way_999.html Much more robust, and the GAU-8 would come in handy if the hunters start shooting...

Warsaw University of Science and Technology has already launched an experimental satellite to check for feasibility of faster debris deorbiting. It has a deployable tail that significantly reduces (via drag) orbiting time.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/PW_Sat_Poland_first_satellite_launched_into_orbit_999.html

You can imagine this technology used for cleaning space, either by using such mechanisms on new satellites to burn them faster when no longer needed, or attach them (tbd how) to existing debris.

"Think of the early Earth as having been like a spherical steel hearth. A hot ball of liquid elements freshly formed out of the primordial disc surrounding our sun. The densest metals sinking down by force of gravity while lighter materials "floated" outwards. Uranium is very dense. At about 19 grams per cubic centimeter, it is 1.6 times more dense than lead at the Earth's surface. But deep within our planet density depends only on atomic number and atomic mass. Uranium, having the greatest atomic number and atomic mass, would be the most dense substance in our planet and will ultimately end up at the center of the Earth."

Gamma ray bursts could ruin our collective day by sterilizing the planet in minutes if one were to happen nearby. Thankfully, that appears to be unlikely.

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/gammaray.htm
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Earth_Deemed_Safe_From_Gamma_Ray_Bursts.html

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-04y.html

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/06/the_economics_o.html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_9_115/ai_n27050480/?tag=content;col1

http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/space-power/

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/episode/2011/01/08/january-8-2011/#Voyager+Launches+the+Third+Age+of+Discovery

http://www.economist.com/node/18897425

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high-frontier-redux.html

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/

Space Nutters generally also have an overabundance of blind, naive enthusiasm for almost anything vaguely sci-fi sounding, the limitless growth of the human species, that there will even BE a human species 100000 years from now, etc... But mention life extension research and all of a sudden they turn into the most rabid anti-technological, skeptical "don't mess with Nature" types.

We'll never understand biological processes that occur all over the planet and require little energy, but we'll have Martian colonies (entire COLONIES) and all the other space garbage that require stupendous resource-inputs for zero return, no problem.

Oh, and the absolute Bible for Space Nutters:

http://www.amazon.com/Millennial-Project-Colonizing-Galaxy-Eight/dp/0316771635/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323225862&sr=8-1

The amount of delusion and flat-out denial needed to believe in the claptrap that Space Nutters do makes it a religion to me.

Thing is, he said "do the math" but he hardly did any math.

Plus he seems to assume that colonizing space is the same thing as going to Mars. You don't have to go to Mars to colonize space. And in my opinion going to Mars is a stupid idea as the "next step".

In fact what NASA should do instead of being so obsessed with Mars is to learn how to build practical space stations with artificial gravity - possible methods are spinning space stations using tethers and counterweights (which don't have to be deadweight); and radiation shielding - this could be done with lots of water (you'd probably want to bring lots of water anyway). It costs a lot to send tons of water up, but the space shuttle has cost many billions. For a billion USD you can send up 100 tons of stuff.

Once you've built a space station where humans can survive as long as you keep sending them supplies, rather than till their bones, muscles and other stuff rot away ( http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Astronauts_reporting_vision_problems_999.html ), then going to Mars (but not landing there) just becomes a matter of time, supplies and not too bad luck. Without the artificial gravity the people in space will rot away pretty quickly.

Once you have a decent space station, it will be more hospitable than Mars. The asteroid belt would be a more practical destination than Mars - you don't have to fight gravity as much to get resources. What you need for the next step are space stations which can convert stuff like asteroids and sunlight into resources you can use.

Once you have practical space factories, mining systems and power supplies (in addition to the first bit - artificial gravity and shielding), you can have a sustainable space colony. You don't have to keep sending them water - there are asteroids with lots of water ( http://www.space.com/1526-largest-asteroid-fresh-water-earth.html ).

Yes there are lots of other details to get right and it will cost a lot of money. But for perspective the Federal Reserve has created more than 9 trillion US dollars since 2008.

OMG! How on earth did the human race survive for millenia before patents? You're so right, without patents nobody would ever invent anything

This is really disingenuous. The issue of what we call now intelectual property is not new, and has existed long before patents and copyrights were introduced. Because there was no good mechanism for establishing and enforcing ownership of new inventions and discoveries, many creators refused to make them public, to the disadvantage of everybody else. Many skills and processes were passed only within a family, or a guild, or from master to apprentice, and their secret was jealously guarded. Look at the Venetian Republic, which ensured the monopoly of Murano glass for centuries, by forbidding glassmakers to leave the city; look at many scientists, like Galileo: in order to claim priority for his discoveries, he used to send encrypted descriptions to other scientists (see here for details), and only make the discoveries public later. It's possible he had even discovered Neptune, back in 1613 (see here for details) but he did not disclose it, fearing somebody else may claim it. As a result, the existence of Neptune remained unknown until 1846, that is more than two hundred years later.

Or check the thoughts of actual writers living in a period of weak or inexistent copyrights; look at Dickens here or Twain here.

Inaccurately worded, but true none-the-less.

The solar wind isn't used in place of traditional thrusters, but as a complement to them, allowing the spacecraft to save precious fuel.

Google yields a good explanation of this from an old article at http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/MESSENGER_Sails_On_Sun_Fire_For_Second_Flyby_Of_Mercury_999.html discussing the cancellation of several TCMs due to the successful usage of solar sailing.

but now James Mason at NASA Ames Research Center has come up with the much cheaper option of zapping individual pieces of junk with a ground-based laser

Pfah, this is an old idea: it's called a laser broom.

NASA was even talking about this a decade ago, though it had a $200M price tag at the time: SpaceDaily article from 2000.

NASA Hopes Laser Broom Will Help Clean Up Space Debris
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/debris-00a.html

The Soviets copied our space shuttle, and put it into orbit. But Buran sucked, the Soviet space program is dog-slow, and the fall of the Soviet Union intervened, so they mothballed it after the one (unmanned) flight and fell back on Soyuz.

That's the only reason the manned space program is still based on capsules. If the Buran program had a clue nobody would know what a Soyuz was today. And the Russians are thinking of redoing Buran from scratch.

If they do, in a few years you may be back here wondering why we didn't just keep using our shuttles, which at this point are marginal cost to fly.

Speaking of windows, look out yours. What do you see? The same houses, roads, cars, planes, clothes, food and oil-powered agriculture that was there since WWII.

There is simply no way, ever, that space is going to pay off. It's OVER. FINISHED.

Space Nutters have had DECADES to show us something, anything. End result? Sweet. Fuck. All.

But hey, don't listen to me. Listen to Dr Stephen Pyne.

CBC Quirks and Quarks

Listen to the "January 8 — Homage to Voyager." episode when it's out. I remember something like "the ISS is not exploring space, it's not even science." when I heard it on the radio today.

But hey, there's more!

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-04y.html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_9_115/ai_n27050480/?tag=content;col1

Or my favorite:

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/episode/2009/09/19/tiny-trex-curing-colour-blind-monkeys-walking-on-our-own-two-feet-space-based-solar-power/

Where the scientist is barely holding back from laughing out loud at the outlandish "space-based solar power" projects. Hey, wasn't there one just last year? Where is it now? Oh yeah, oblivion.

We've hit limits in energy sources and propulsion technologies. Rockets take our technology to the outer limits of what's possible with materials. Unless you find new elements in the table of elements, what we have is *it*.

That 747 you saw when you looked out the window? Maiden flight was 1969. Hasn't changed in over four decades. Why? The technology and basic physical reality hasn't changed. It can't. But you think we'll be doing space? Ridiculous.

The fact we have fast computers today on a square inch of silicon doesn't help you move mass around. It's that basic. The fact you don't get that is both sad and terrifying.

I'm no expert, but since the atmospheric pressure on Mars is so low propellers/balloons etc probably won't work very well.

This guy, Dr. Alexey Pankine, a project scientist at the Global Aerospace Corporation, disagrees. http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-balloon-04a.html

According to an article someone else posted above - http://www.spacedaily.com/news/buran-00a.html - you may be referring to a theme park company selling their prototype-Buran-turned-ride. They say it was a publicity stunt and that they don't have the legal right to sell it, even though they own it and operate it as a ride.

They might have rebuilt it after it was destroyed. I vividly remember seeing it with my own eyes in Gorky park in Moscow.

I think it's pretty certain that there is life on Mars now, as NASA didn't take any extraordinary measures to eradicate all possible forms of life from the probes until 1995 and the Mars Orbiter. Earlier, a memo was issued, but not much was done. Up to 10^5 possibly surviving microbes were permissible on the earlier crafts, if I remember correctly.

It's a shame, as the planet can never be uncontaminated and studied as a truly lifeless planet.

>>>This planet has an expiration date.

Yeah 5 billion years into the future.

Actually it's going to be around 1 Million years. We're slowing moving out of the "Habitable Zone", which we're already on the inner edge of to begin with, and that will happen much sooner than when the Sun begins to expand during it's Red Dwarf stage. http://www.spacedaily.com/news/extrasolar-99m.html
Also the Moon is moving away from us and in about 1-2 Billion years our axis wont be stable which will cause profound weather changes. http://www.seti.org/Page.aspx?pid=769

Contaminating celestial bodies with terrestrial microorganisms, is against international law.
NASA tries to avoid it

Conveniently skipping over radar absorption.

This article was about a 32kwatt laser.

Here's info about a megawatt laser weapon:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/laser-04v.html

So a 1000 time jump for next generation laser seems quite plausible to me.

the space program

Oh yes. That immediately led to all sorts of space activities by us citizens,

Seriously? I'm just as pissed as the next grounded cowboy, we were promised rocket-ships after all. But the space program has affected us citizens directly and indirectly in profound ways. Here are just a few hits from a quick google search. Enjoy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Race#Legacy

http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/10-tech-breakthroughs-to-thank-the-space-race-for-617847

http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/apollo.htm

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/pdf/80660main_ApolloFS.pdf

http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/NASA_Derived_Technology_Captures_Unique_Inaugural_Image_999.html

http://space-exploration.suite101.com/article.cfm/nasa-space-technology-inventions-and-products

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/industry-02f.html

So... who's spending more than NASA?

According to this the Chinese were spending about 1/10th of NASA in 2007. Does that make them the Royals?

JAXA comes in at around 2 billion dollars as well.

ISRO spends about half that ($1.23 billion).

Oh, who could forget about Russia? The FRO has a declared budget of about $2.4 billion.

Puny old NASA with it's $17.6 billion budget. The Mets indeed.

but NASA has a pretty darn good track record of performance to back up their expenditures.

Huh ? Need Another Seven Astronauts ? Need Another Shuttle Also ?

What about this:
"NASA's unbroken string of cancelled vehicle programs stretches back to the Reagan Administration's X-30 NASP, and continued with the X-33, X-34, X-38, 2GRLV and, most recently, the Space Launch Initiative or SLI. The two remaining "X-vehicle" programs – the X-37 and X-43 – are both well behind schedule and over budget, making their cancellation likely."

Add Constellation Ares I / V Fiasco to that list.

You're full of shit. If that were true the DoD wouldn't have to sign multi-million dollar contracts with Iridium for upkeep and airtime. See http://www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=2769, http://www.spacedaily.com/news/iridium-03a.html, http://investor.iridium.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=412313, http://www.defense.gov/contracts/contract.aspx?contractid=3235, etc.

Also, I did a bit of searching, and it turns out that basic robots already exist for underground mining:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12637032
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/robot-00g.html

"1. We do not live in a world of abundance, fusion and self replicating machines do not exist."

Corn, dogs, and trees are self-replicating machines. Taken as a whole, most cities are self-replicating machines. So, we have long had that technology, even as better technology might make things easier. We do have fusion energy, it's called the sun. :-)

Well, unless you believe in the alternative plausible theory that the Sun is essentially a lump of iron (or neutronium) and the energy is produced by gravitational forces an other things: :-)
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/iron-02b.html

In any case, objectively, the Earth receives 10,000 times as much solar energy each day as our civilization uses, and we have more geothermal resources, and there is lots more energy and matter in space.

"2. The solution you propose (neo-Marxism) idealizes man, it ignores the fact that man is selfish, greedy, and competitive."

First, why do you call it neo-Marxism? Is anything involving cooperation Marxist?

Second, while it is true that some people are sometimes selfish, greedy, and competitive, that is not the sum total of all human behavior. One big change with advancing technology is it is ever easier for a very few altruistic people to take care of the rest of the people who are lazy unless they get direct material rewards. So, for example, it only takes 1% of the US workforce to grow all the food the US needs. It really only takes a few percent of the workforce right not to produce most of the goods people really need (granted some people want more). And most services are optional or probably not needed as they are just related to guarding. So, we already live in a world of abundance where maybe an altruistic 5% could produce everything everyone needed. But our economy is not organized that way overall, even if you may see it in spots here and there like Wikipedia or Debian GNU/Linux.

"3. Marxism has had 150 years to prove itself and has failed at each and every implementation."

I don't know; Cuba weathered it's Peak Oil crisis pretty well, all things considered.
"Can the West cultivate ideas from Cuba's 'Special Period'?"
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/03/29/eco.cubaagriculture/index.html

It depends what you consider a failure. I consider being rated as second from bottom of industrialized countries for child well-being a massive failure, and that's where the USA is. I consider massive brainwashing by compulsory education dumbing people down as Gatto suggests due to an attempt to realize a 19th century vision of a captalistic factory-based utopia a massive failure, but that's what the USA has. By what right do you call that a success? Likewise, even if we have not blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons, or killed ourselves off with weaponized plagues, the fact that the USA has chosen to run that risk shows a failure of the imagination. Now the USA is building lots of military robots to enforce a social order built around forcing people to work, instead of building robots to do the work. How is that a success? The USSR may have lost the Cold War, but IMHO so did the USA.

So, what countries would you hold up as a success for individual success? Until about a year ago, Iceland was touted as the success model of meritocracy and independent initiative. Now the entire country is bankrupt (or whatever is the right term for that). Conservatives aren't so busy touting Icelandic model anymore.

This is more what I see:
"A Just Cause A Just War"
http://www.progressive.org/zinnjuly09.html
"In Search of Morale: Are Americans Too Broken for the Truth to Set Us Free?"

Exactly right. This is one of the main reasons the space program went down the toilet in the early 1970s and has stayed there. As Martin Luther King, Jr said: "If our nation can spend twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God's children on their own two feet right here on earth." http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-04b.html

The US threatened to launch against Galileo satellites if they didn't change frequencies.

No.

The frequency overlap was a separate issue, and it was an issue that had other NATO members concerned as well, not just the US: NATO relies on GPS as well.

The US threatened to shoot down Galileo satellites if that system was used by, for example, China for precision-guided attacks against US forces in some hypothetical future conflict. Since China is, or was, a participant in the Galileo project, that hypothetical scenario was not an academic one.

And the only reason that 'threat' was ever made was because of the initial stance of the Galileo people that they would never turn off the Galileo system even if it was being used for weapons targeting by someone in a war with the US.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milspace-04zc.html

The European delegates reportedly said they would not turn off or jam signals from their satellites, even if they were used in a war with the United States.

A senior European delegate at the London conference said his US counterparts reacted to the EU position "calmly".

"They made it clear that they would attempt what they called reversible action, but, if necessary, they would use irreversible action," the official was quoted as saying.

Seriously, what did you expect us to say? If the tables were turned, what would you do?

Whatever was actually said, the US and Europe came to an agreement over Galileo way back in 2004, so this is all old (and misleading) news...

Come to think of it, whatever happened to that Europa lander they were planning which was supposed to bore through the ice?

As soon as you do this you risk contaminating what is underneath so you have to do this incredibly carefully. Last I heard it was on hold until they had figured out how to do it such a way that they did not introduce any contaminants in the process. They are looking to use a lake under the south pole for practice:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-driller-02b.html
http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/earth_sciences/report-11000.html

... we're missing critical information in the report. The keep mentioning "levels of methane" but they don't tell us what these levels are

The usual sources quote about 10 parts per billion of Methane in the atmosphere. Michael Mumma of Goddard Space Flight Center, with earthbound telescopes, says he's detected up to 200 parts per billion near the equator. Recent observations suggest that the methane is released in plumes, one of which released about 19,000 metric tons of methane [space.com].

that so many idiots want to Kill NASA and America's space program when China just announced that they are going to militarize Space. I mean I can understand if Chinese are hoping that America will kill its program. BUT, there are appears to be Americans that want this.

Who's going to fly in a spacecraft built by the country that gave us Chernobyl? I'm just sayin....

Well, the USA for one, plus just about every other nation on earth that wants a satellite in orbit these days.

Much is made of the possibility of obtaining He3, but 1) we have no earthly use for it, and 2) there's really not that much of it on the Moon either.

A potential gas source found on the moon's surface could hold the key to meeting future energy demands as the earth's fossil fuels dry up in the coming decades, scientists said

Yes, it still requires research and engineering. However, that is a far cry from "no earthly use for it".As for your second point, the article also covers that: "The moon contains 10 times more energy in the form of Helium 3 than all the fossil fuels on the earth," So you are right, it is a limited resource.

Well, that would explain why the Australians are so interested.