Here is why the State needs to be involved in doing something about these sort of death threats -- this time Wu is offering a cash reward to whoever helps get her attacker put in jail -- OK, then her attacker will get some modicum of legal due process. If people feel threatened and don't feel the State can protect them then the next time this happens a "victim" will offer a cash reward to whoever helps to assault or kill their perceived attacker -- there will be no due process involved under those rules. Is that the way you want it to be? Historically that is a major reason why judicial systems came into place, to keep everyone from having to take justice and protection into their own hands.
Actually, von Braun's team (brought over in Paperclip) was very conservative in their rocket engineering. They preferred incremental improvements over big leaps in technology. Thus the V-2 begat the Redstone, which begat the Jupiter, which together begat the Saturn I which begat the Saturn IB which (and this was a pretty good sized leap) begat the Saturn V. Two explicit examples -- notice that the Saturn IB and Saturn V both had fins on the first stage -- what other space boosters had or have fins? Also, the Huntsville team flew the Saturn I four times with a dummy second stage before they tried it in the two stage orbital configuration. As a result no missions launched with any Saturn booster failed due to launch vehicle problems (though the second [unmanned] launch of the Saturn V was close). Some other engineering teams in the US were pushing the state of the art harder -- such as the Atlas missile which relied on constant pressurization of the fuel tanks to maintain structural rigidity.
Well, let's consider actual space missions in flight right now. Just next year, in 2015, the American Dawn spacecraft will enter orbit around the asteroid Ceres, after leaving orbit around asteroid Vesta in 2012. And in July 2015, the American New Horizons spacecraft will fly by Pluto. And there is the American Juno mission to Jupiter, launched in 2011 due for arrival in orbit around Jupiter in 2016. Plus the ongoing flotilla of orbiters around Mars, including Maven which just entered Martian orbit less than two months ago and the two functioning rovers on Mars. Oh, and the functioning American orbiters at Saturn and Mercury. Closer to home, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is still in orbit around the Moon taking pictures with half meter resolution. I'm sure I left some out -- so which of those interplanetary and lunar missions doesn't count as exploration for exploration's sake? The American space program has a PR problem -- they have so many space missions going on at once that no one pays any attention any more -- come on -- we're flying past PLUTO next year! The Europeans are landing a probe on a COMET this year! I'm happy to see the Chinese successes, but the Americans and Europeans are doing more space exploration than anyone right now and can do things there that no one else can.
Thank-you for posting this. Usually I feel the responsibility to point out details like this about the early missions, but you saved me the trouble. There are many other examples such as the thousands of pictures returned by the Lunar Orbiters and Surveyor missions to the moon in the mid-60s. By the early 70's the US had missions on the way to Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury, places no one else has even attempted yet (the Europeans are planning to go to Jupiter and Mercury soon but haven't launched the spacecraft yet, and they did hitch a ride to Saturn on the US Cassini mission with their Huygens lander.)
I would guess that the difference in reporting is that the Palin family has been far more entertaining over the years than the Biden family, and that is what the media is in the business of now -- entertainment to draw in those ratings. The Biden cocaine case raises far more useful questions about the drug laws in this country and how the upper 1% are treated by the justice system -- but that's not going to bring in the ratings. This is the free market at work -- isn't that how the (L)s want it?
As an example that worked out -- the neutrino was originally proposed as an unobserved, mysterious matter particle to avoid having to modify the laws of conservation of momentum and energy when applied to nuclear beta decays.
I guess you weren't around during the Great Depression. There is a reason so much of the country became solidly Democratic for a generation after that -- the people who were in it credited FDR for saving their butts when no one else cared. They certainly didn't see the invisible hand of "economic growth" putting food on the table anytime soon back then. You have to live through the hard times in order to be around when things get better through growth. So where are these places on the planet of fantastic prosperity where the government is less intrusive than in the USA now ('less intrusive' includes 'no government provided health care')?
I think the engines at least are not just based on Soviet designs but are actual Soviet hardware from the 60's and 70s. Leftover KN-33 engines reconditioned in the US by Aerojet and redesignated as AJ26-62. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... I can't say anything about whether that is good or bad for reliability.
Smart kids do need to socialize with kids their own age for a lot of reasons. But two groups of other kids their age they especially need to socialize with are other smart kids (to learn early on that they aren't the only or the smartest kid around) and other kids with talents which the smart kid doesn't have (to learn that there are other valuable talents besides being "smart"). Perhaps the best thing about "gifted programs" is it gets the smart kids together to hopefully push and reinforce each other. However a real shortcoming there is getting the smart kids to appreciate other types of talents in others.
Actually the main reason muon catalyzed fusion doesn't produce positive energy is that with each fusion event the muon involved has a 1% chance of being captured by the helium nucleus fusion product and is no longer available to bring more hydrogen nuclei together. At least according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion). For some reason I just looked that up today. Impressively, this pathway which quenches the fusion reaction was figured out theoretically in 1957, just one year after muon catalyzed fusion was first experimentally observed (though it had been predicted earlier). That's one reason why I am dubious of any of these cold-fusion claims without any nuclear theory behind them -- those 20th century nuclear scientist were good! If these later cold fusion advocates have to deny the existing theory of atomic nuclei to make their devices work then they had better bring some theory of their own, rather than just waving their hands and saying, "new physics".
If you have someone running in front, cutting the wind, (called "drafting" in car and bicycle races) then you aren't really running a fair course. Might as well run it all downhill or with a wind at your back.
Actually I don't see any problem in the OPs statistics as stated. If you combine the 1951-1975 entries and the 1976-2000 entries you get a 50 year period, just like the two periods before. And its total number of cat 4 hurricanes is 46, well over the totals for the 50 year periods before, which perfectly fits his narrative. It isn't uncommon to reduce the intervals in statistical aggregations when things start changing more rapidly. In this case the OP did it such that we can easily recreate equal sized bins. By the way, those periods he used are 1851 to 1900 = 50 years, 1901 to 1950 = 50 years, 1951 to 1975 = 25 years, 1976 to 2000 = 25 years, not 49, 49, 25, 24 as you stated. The statistics here are pretty simple, not much room to manipulate or complain about them. Looks like a trend to me.
At the risk of proposing simplistic answers to these technical questions (as per/. standard), I don't know why NASA isn't considering nuclear propulsion as their first choice for crewed missions to Mars. The nuclear thermal engines were investigated intensively and test articles tested and built in the 60's and were ostensibly cancelled only because there was no mission for them, not due to technical show-stoppers. Once you have a nuclear capability, trips around the Solar System become nearly routine. NASA should let Musk work on chemical rockets for his Mars trips and spend tax money on nuclear which the private guys can't do.
Albert Einstein, for one example, is not known for acquiring any of the raw physical data from which he did his work on the Photoelectric Effect, Special Relativity, or General Relativity. All he did was sit at his desk and write equations based on data acquired by others.
You aren't quite right that the satellite gravity scientists are just using climate as a "hook" to display their techniques. A major reason for the launch of these very precise gravity satellites is to use gravity to monitor the movement of water (not just ice) in and around the Earth. Hence the name of the GRACE satellite -- Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment. The NASA GRACE fact sheet is at -- http://earthobservatory.nasa.g... with more details.
"is it possible that the ice has actually thickened and displaced more of the denser sea water?" -- not in this case. The geographic precision of these satellite gravity surveys and complementary ground and airborne surveys in the area constrain the loss of mass to ice over the land. In addition it is possible to estimate the change in ice mass on the land by other techniques and they are in agreement with the gravity. There is a good (but long) discussion of the recent observational techniques and results for the ice sheet mass balances in Greenland and Antarctica here: http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/so...
I haven't had any trouble finding incandescent light bulbs for sale lately, but I haven't been looking very hard. The local Home Depot has a whole pallet of the super cheapo 60 watters for the hoarders to buy. The high quality halogen incandescents are available and nice choices for those last niches where you have to have incandescents before LEDs completely obsolete them for general lighting.
I did the math on our porch light (it's pretty easy easy math) and it saves me money to put in a CFL and just leave it on 24/7 over buying incandescents and turning them off during the day. And the bulbs last forever -- a couple of years each -- what is that about 16,000 hours? My security floodlights outside are CFL floods on a photocell switch ($10 from Home Depot, marked suitable for CFLs). Those bulbs also are lasting a couple of years each. But this is all water under the bridge because the LEDs are obsoleting the CFLs.
Just put up some of the latest pictures from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which is still up there snapping away at 1 meter resolution. The following is from http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/mro/bo... "The track left by an oblong boulder as it tumbled down a slope on Mars runs from upper left to right center of this image. The boulder came to rest in an upright attitude at the downhill end of the track. The HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded this view on July 3, 2014."
Everyone is getting all excited about India/ISRO and ESA making it to Mars on their first attempt -- great, good job, those are achievements, no question. Here is the Wikipedia description of the USA's first attempt at Mars in 1964:, "Mariner 3 was launched on November 5, 1964 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 13, but the shroud encasing the spacecraft atop its rocket failed to open properly, and Mariner 3 did not get to Mars. Unable to collect the Sun's energy for power from its solar panels, the probe soon died when its batteries ran out and is now derelict in a solar orbit. THREE WEEKS LATER (emphasis mine), on November 28, 1964, the identical Mariner 4 was launched successfully on a 7½-month voyage to the red planet." So the second spacecraft of a two spacecraft attempt was successful, in 1964. By the way, the first US attempt at Venus, the Mariner 1 mission, failed on launch, but, ONE MONTH LATER, the identical Mariner 2 spacecraft was launched and had a successful mission to Venus, in 1962. So, yes, these were not successful on the "first attempt" but about as close as you can get without technically achieving it, and done in a hurry, only 4 and 6 years after the US first put a satellite into orbit.
Congrats to ISRO and India as you say, and I don't know how to put this without it sounding like I am try to downplay their achievement, which I'm not, but it's worth reminding everyone who never knew or forgot: the USA only got its first satellite launch capability in 1958, and by 1964, only SIX YEARS LATER with 1960's tech, NASA flew Mariner 4 on a successful flyby mission to Mars on their second attempt. In 1962, only four years after the first USA satellite launch, NASA flew Mariner 2 on a successful flyby of Venus. And as someone else pointed out, I have to disagree with your statement, " and it has been a couple of decades now, hardly anyone is doing anything worthwhile as far as space exploration is concerned". Right now we have (functioning), an orbiter around Saturn, an orbiter around the asteroid Vesta (or it may be on the way to Ceres now), two rovers on Mars, an orbiter around Mercury which just finished its mission, a flyby mission on the way to Pluto, a new orbiter on the way to Jupiter, the Europeans have an orbiter around a comet, and the international community has more orbiters around Mars than I can name. Congrats again to ISRO and the Indians for adding one more, there's plenty of room for everybody, and each new one is a great human achievement.
Don't know about Vostok, and don't want to look up the other Mercury missions, but on the second manned orbital Mercury flight, Mercury-Atlas 7, the astronaut on board manually controlled the reentry due to equipment malfunction in the spacecraft. "At the retrofire event, the pitch horizon scanner malfunctioned once more, forcing Carpenter to manually control his reentry, which caused him to overshoot the planned splashdown point by 250 mi (400 km). ("The malfunction of the pitch horizon scanner circuit [a component of the automatic control system] dictated that the pilot manually control the spacecraft attitudes during this event."[8])" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Two issues with this: TFA (one of them) states that the destination for these tourists will be the ISS -- the US taxpayers have already paid north of $70 billion for that plus the ongoing logistics -- maybe Boeing has worked out a compensation for that, but I doubt it. And 2) It isn't a given that Boeing can just use the result of government paid NRE for their own commercial uses; certainly when there is NRE on a product developed by one commercial company for another there can be severe restrictions on the use of the intellectual property developed via NRE; that's all defined in the contract. So the US taxpayer has already paid for the initial destination and will be paying the cost of development of the CST-100 -- I agree with the OP, Joe Taxpayer should get a cut of those seats which Boeing intends to sell.
If you feel that way then when your country is involved in a war which you don't approve of it is your moral duty to quit paying taxes (and take the consequences). You said, "no exceptions" and in moral involvement there isn't that much difference between funding a war and fighting in it directly.
And an interesting point about your 1st order explanation of AGW science is that it is the simplest and most straightforward explanation of the situation. The skeptics have to go to another level of effects to explain away why the climate should not be warming -- they have to find carbon sinks, or negative temperature feedbacks, etc. which make the model more complicated. So the persons who are demanding a simple explanation (and don't like the answer) actually want a more complicated explanation, but only to the point it supports their view. I don't have a problem with skeptics to a point but in the case of AGW, the burden is on them to explain why this 1st order description fails if they are complaining about the models getting too complicated.
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Here is why the State needs to be involved in doing something about these sort of death threats -- this time Wu is offering a cash reward to whoever helps get her attacker put in jail -- OK, then her attacker will get some modicum of legal due process. If people feel threatened and don't feel the State can protect them then the next time this happens a "victim" will offer a cash reward to whoever helps to assault or kill their perceived attacker -- there will be no due process involved under those rules. Is that the way you want it to be? Historically that is a major reason why judicial systems came into place, to keep everyone from having to take justice and protection into their own hands.
Actually, von Braun's team (brought over in Paperclip) was very conservative in their rocket engineering. They preferred incremental improvements over big leaps in technology. Thus the V-2 begat the Redstone, which begat the Jupiter, which together begat the Saturn I which begat the Saturn IB which (and this was a pretty good sized leap) begat the Saturn V. Two explicit examples -- notice that the Saturn IB and Saturn V both had fins on the first stage -- what other space boosters had or have fins? Also, the Huntsville team flew the Saturn I four times with a dummy second stage before they tried it in the two stage orbital configuration. As a result no missions launched with any Saturn booster failed due to launch vehicle problems (though the second [unmanned] launch of the Saturn V was close). Some other engineering teams in the US were pushing the state of the art harder -- such as the Atlas missile which relied on constant pressurization of the fuel tanks to maintain structural rigidity.
Well, let's consider actual space missions in flight right now. Just next year, in 2015, the American Dawn spacecraft will enter orbit around the asteroid Ceres, after leaving orbit around asteroid Vesta in 2012. And in July 2015, the American New Horizons spacecraft will fly by Pluto. And there is the American Juno mission to Jupiter, launched in 2011 due for arrival in orbit around Jupiter in 2016. Plus the ongoing flotilla of orbiters around Mars, including Maven which just entered Martian orbit less than two months ago and the two functioning rovers on Mars. Oh, and the functioning American orbiters at Saturn and Mercury. Closer to home, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is still in orbit around the Moon taking pictures with half meter resolution. I'm sure I left some out -- so which of those interplanetary and lunar missions doesn't count as exploration for exploration's sake? The American space program has a PR problem -- they have so many space missions going on at once that no one pays any attention any more -- come on -- we're flying past PLUTO next year! The Europeans are landing a probe on a COMET this year! I'm happy to see the Chinese successes, but the Americans and Europeans are doing more space exploration than anyone right now and can do things there that no one else can.
Thank-you for posting this. Usually I feel the responsibility to point out details like this about the early missions, but you saved me the trouble. There are many other examples such as the thousands of pictures returned by the Lunar Orbiters and Surveyor missions to the moon in the mid-60s. By the early 70's the US had missions on the way to Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury, places no one else has even attempted yet (the Europeans are planning to go to Jupiter and Mercury soon but haven't launched the spacecraft yet, and they did hitch a ride to Saturn on the US Cassini mission with their Huygens lander.)
I would guess that the difference in reporting is that the Palin family has been far more entertaining over the years than the Biden family, and that is what the media is in the business of now -- entertainment to draw in those ratings. The Biden cocaine case raises far more useful questions about the drug laws in this country and how the upper 1% are treated by the justice system -- but that's not going to bring in the ratings. This is the free market at work -- isn't that how the (L)s want it?
As an example that worked out -- the neutrino was originally proposed as an unobserved, mysterious matter particle to avoid having to modify the laws of conservation of momentum and energy when applied to nuclear beta decays.
I guess you weren't around during the Great Depression. There is a reason so much of the country became solidly Democratic for a generation after that -- the people who were in it credited FDR for saving their butts when no one else cared. They certainly didn't see the invisible hand of "economic growth" putting food on the table anytime soon back then. You have to live through the hard times in order to be around when things get better through growth. So where are these places on the planet of fantastic prosperity where the government is less intrusive than in the USA now ('less intrusive' includes 'no government provided health care')?
I think the engines at least are not just based on Soviet designs but are actual Soviet hardware from the 60's and 70s. Leftover KN-33 engines reconditioned in the US by Aerojet and redesignated as AJ26-62. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... I can't say anything about whether that is good or bad for reliability.
Smart kids do need to socialize with kids their own age for a lot of reasons. But two groups of other kids their age they especially need to socialize with are other smart kids (to learn early on that they aren't the only or the smartest kid around) and other kids with talents which the smart kid doesn't have (to learn that there are other valuable talents besides being "smart"). Perhaps the best thing about "gifted programs" is it gets the smart kids together to hopefully push and reinforce each other. However a real shortcoming there is getting the smart kids to appreciate other types of talents in others.
Actually the main reason muon catalyzed fusion doesn't produce positive energy is that with each fusion event the muon involved has a 1% chance of being captured by the helium nucleus fusion product and is no longer available to bring more hydrogen nuclei together. At least according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion). For some reason I just looked that up today. Impressively, this pathway which quenches the fusion reaction was figured out theoretically in 1957, just one year after muon catalyzed fusion was first experimentally observed (though it had been predicted earlier). That's one reason why I am dubious of any of these cold-fusion claims without any nuclear theory behind them -- those 20th century nuclear scientist were good! If these later cold fusion advocates have to deny the existing theory of atomic nuclei to make their devices work then they had better bring some theory of their own, rather than just waving their hands and saying, "new physics".
If you have someone running in front, cutting the wind, (called "drafting" in car and bicycle races) then you aren't really running a fair course. Might as well run it all downhill or with a wind at your back.
Actually I don't see any problem in the OPs statistics as stated. If you combine the 1951-1975 entries and the 1976-2000 entries you get a 50 year period, just like the two periods before. And its total number of cat 4 hurricanes is 46, well over the totals for the 50 year periods before, which perfectly fits his narrative. It isn't uncommon to reduce the intervals in statistical aggregations when things start changing more rapidly. In this case the OP did it such that we can easily recreate equal sized bins. By the way, those periods he used are 1851 to 1900 = 50 years, 1901 to 1950 = 50 years, 1951 to 1975 = 25 years, 1976 to 2000 = 25 years, not 49, 49, 25, 24 as you stated. The statistics here are pretty simple, not much room to manipulate or complain about them. Looks like a trend to me.
At the risk of proposing simplistic answers to these technical questions (as per /. standard), I don't know why NASA isn't considering nuclear propulsion as their first choice for crewed missions to Mars. The nuclear thermal engines were investigated intensively and test articles tested and built in the 60's and were ostensibly cancelled only because there was no mission for them, not due to technical show-stoppers. Once you have a nuclear capability, trips around the Solar System become nearly routine. NASA should let Musk work on chemical rockets for his Mars trips and spend tax money on nuclear which the private guys can't do.
Albert Einstein, for one example, is not known for acquiring any of the raw physical data from which he did his work on the Photoelectric Effect, Special Relativity, or General Relativity. All he did was sit at his desk and write equations based on data acquired by others.
You aren't quite right that the satellite gravity scientists are just using climate as a "hook" to display their techniques. A major reason for the launch of these very precise gravity satellites is to use gravity to monitor the movement of water (not just ice) in and around the Earth. Hence the name of the GRACE satellite -- Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment. The NASA GRACE fact sheet is at -- http://earthobservatory.nasa.g... with more details.
"is it possible that the ice has actually thickened and displaced more of the denser sea water?" -- not in this case. The geographic precision of these satellite gravity surveys and complementary ground and airborne surveys in the area constrain the loss of mass to ice over the land. In addition it is possible to estimate the change in ice mass on the land by other techniques and they are in agreement with the gravity. There is a good (but long) discussion of the recent observational techniques and results for the ice sheet mass balances in Greenland and Antarctica here: http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/so...
I haven't had any trouble finding incandescent light bulbs for sale lately, but I haven't been looking very hard. The local Home Depot has a whole pallet of the super cheapo 60 watters for the hoarders to buy. The high quality halogen incandescents are available and nice choices for those last niches where you have to have incandescents before LEDs completely obsolete them for general lighting.
I did the math on our porch light (it's pretty easy easy math) and it saves me money to put in a CFL and just leave it on 24/7 over buying incandescents and turning them off during the day. And the bulbs last forever -- a couple of years each -- what is that about 16,000 hours? My security floodlights outside are CFL floods on a photocell switch ($10 from Home Depot, marked suitable for CFLs). Those bulbs also are lasting a couple of years each. But this is all water under the bridge because the LEDs are obsoleting the CFLs.
Just put up some of the latest pictures from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which is still up there snapping away at 1 meter resolution. The following is from http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/mro/bo...
"The track left by an oblong boulder as it tumbled down a slope on Mars runs from upper left to right center of this image. The boulder came to rest in an upright attitude at the downhill end of the track. The HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded this view on July 3, 2014."
Everyone is getting all excited about India/ISRO and ESA making it to Mars on their first attempt -- great, good job, those are achievements, no question. Here is the Wikipedia description of the USA's first attempt at Mars in 1964:, "Mariner 3 was launched on November 5, 1964 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 13, but the shroud encasing the spacecraft atop its rocket failed to open properly, and Mariner 3 did not get to Mars. Unable to collect the Sun's energy for power from its solar panels, the probe soon died when its batteries ran out and is now derelict in a solar orbit. THREE WEEKS LATER (emphasis mine), on November 28, 1964, the identical Mariner 4 was launched successfully on a 7½-month voyage to the red planet." So the second spacecraft of a two spacecraft attempt was successful, in 1964.
By the way, the first US attempt at Venus, the Mariner 1 mission, failed on launch, but, ONE MONTH LATER, the identical Mariner 2 spacecraft was launched and had a successful mission to Venus, in 1962. So, yes, these were not successful on the "first attempt" but about as close as you can get without technically achieving it, and done in a hurry, only 4 and 6 years after the US first put a satellite into orbit.
Congrats to ISRO and India as you say, and I don't know how to put this without it sounding like I am try to downplay their achievement, which I'm not, but it's worth reminding everyone who never knew or forgot: the USA only got its first satellite launch capability in 1958, and by 1964, only SIX YEARS LATER with 1960's tech, NASA flew Mariner 4 on a successful flyby mission to Mars on their second attempt. In 1962, only four years after the first USA satellite launch, NASA flew Mariner 2 on a successful flyby of Venus.
And as someone else pointed out, I have to disagree with your statement, " and it has been a couple of decades now, hardly anyone is doing anything worthwhile as far as space exploration is concerned". Right now we have (functioning), an orbiter around Saturn, an orbiter around the asteroid Vesta (or it may be on the way to Ceres now), two rovers on Mars, an orbiter around Mercury which just finished its mission, a flyby mission on the way to Pluto, a new orbiter on the way to Jupiter, the Europeans have an orbiter around a comet, and the international community has more orbiters around Mars than I can name. Congrats again to ISRO and the Indians for adding one more, there's plenty of room for everybody, and each new one is a great human achievement.
Don't know about Vostok, and don't want to look up the other Mercury missions, but on the second manned orbital Mercury flight, Mercury-Atlas 7, the astronaut on board manually controlled the reentry due to equipment malfunction in the spacecraft. "At the retrofire event, the pitch horizon scanner malfunctioned once more, forcing Carpenter to manually control his reentry, which caused him to overshoot the planned splashdown point by 250 mi (400 km). ("The malfunction of the pitch horizon scanner circuit [a component of the automatic control system] dictated that the pilot manually control the spacecraft attitudes during this event."[8])" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Two issues with this: TFA (one of them) states that the destination for these tourists will be the ISS -- the US taxpayers have already paid north of $70 billion for that plus the ongoing logistics -- maybe Boeing has worked out a compensation for that, but I doubt it. And 2) It isn't a given that Boeing can just use the result of government paid NRE for their own commercial uses; certainly when there is NRE on a product developed by one commercial company for another there can be severe restrictions on the use of the intellectual property developed via NRE; that's all defined in the contract. So the US taxpayer has already paid for the initial destination and will be paying the cost of development of the CST-100 -- I agree with the OP, Joe Taxpayer should get a cut of those seats which Boeing intends to sell.
If you feel that way then when your country is involved in a war which you don't approve of it is your moral duty to quit paying taxes (and take the consequences). You said, "no exceptions" and in moral involvement there isn't that much difference between funding a war and fighting in it directly.
And an interesting point about your 1st order explanation of AGW science is that it is the simplest and most straightforward explanation of the situation. The skeptics have to go to another level of effects to explain away why the climate should not be warming -- they have to find carbon sinks, or negative temperature feedbacks, etc. which make the model more complicated. So the persons who are demanding a simple explanation (and don't like the answer) actually want a more complicated explanation, but only to the point it supports their view. I don't have a problem with skeptics to a point but in the case of AGW, the burden is on them to explain why this 1st order description fails if they are complaining about the models getting too complicated.