You're mistaken about the dearth of comets. We observe well over 50 new comets each YEAR since the era of modern astronomy.
But the vast majority of those are short period comets originating in the Kuiper Belt - not the long period comets that would be knocked out of the Oort Cloud.
We have very good limits on the Oort cloud density
Really? By very good you mean within multiple orders of magnitude - with lots of hand waving. No one can even agree on the method used to perturb comets from the Oort Cloud into visible orbits, so the statistics are more like guesses. We're only working with a sample space of ~50 comets that have been observed and quantified in all of human history, hardly something that you can base sound stats on. As far as I'm aware the current estimates for Oort Cloud densities vary from 10 earth masses to 1000's of earth masses. And with no hope of being able to observe the Oort Cloud any time in the near future, I'd say the estimates are far from very good.
The Oort Cloud itself is far from a certainty - the theory relies on the existence of another unobservable Inner Oort Cloud which periodically replenishes the Outer Oort Cloud. The density of this inner cloud can only be estimated based on our very poor knowledge of the outer cloud.
I'd say we're a long way from a very good understanding just yet.
Free trade means that that we trade only with other nations who support free trade.
America has far from a free market. Subsidises given to farmers, tariffs on steel imports amounts - the list of uncompetitive behaviours by the US is large, and a great show of hypocrisy. Great effort is spent convincing foreign countries to open their markets to US companies but attempts to gain the same rights in the US are laughed at.
While I'm not familiar with the demographics of the trial area in the States, the Japanese has three major points which allow them to utilize high-cost public transport effectively.
1) V. High Population Density. This allows you build public transportation routes at a low distance (cost) per passenger.
2) Public Transport Culture. They are used to public transport as a reliable, effective and convenient method of travel. As in Australia, the US still relies a personal cars as the most convenient method of travel.
3) There's already huge overhead on materials and other expenses in Japan, such that the cost of additional technology becomes less significant. This is the same reason why your mobile phone has so many features, while you're lucky if your landline phone has caller id.
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You're mistaken about the dearth of comets. We observe well over 50 new comets each YEAR since the era of modern astronomy. But the vast majority of those are short period comets originating in the Kuiper Belt - not the long period comets that would be knocked out of the Oort Cloud.
We have very good limits on the Oort cloud density
Really? By very good you mean within multiple orders of magnitude - with lots of hand waving. No one can even agree on the method used to perturb comets from the Oort Cloud into visible orbits, so the statistics are more like guesses. We're only working with a sample space of ~50 comets that have been observed and quantified in all of human history, hardly something that you can base sound stats on. As far as I'm aware the current estimates for Oort Cloud densities vary from 10 earth masses to 1000's of earth masses. And with no hope of being able to observe the Oort Cloud any time in the near future, I'd say the estimates are far from very good.
The Oort Cloud itself is far from a certainty - the theory relies on the existence of another unobservable Inner Oort Cloud which periodically replenishes the Outer Oort Cloud. The density of this inner cloud can only be estimated based on our very poor knowledge of the outer cloud.
I'd say we're a long way from a very good understanding just yet.
Actually the current systems in place on commercial planes already allow them to be landed on auto-pilot.
Can't imagine they'd run Red Hat seeing as they don't make a PPC version.
While I'm not familiar with the demographics of the trial area in the States, the Japanese has three major points which allow them to utilize high-cost public transport effectively.
1) V. High Population Density. This allows you build public transportation routes at a low distance (cost) per passenger.
2) Public Transport Culture. They are used to public transport as a reliable, effective and convenient method of travel. As in Australia, the US still relies a personal cars as the most convenient method of travel.
3) There's already huge overhead on materials and other expenses in Japan, such that the cost of additional technology becomes less significant. This is the same reason why your mobile phone has so many features, while you're lucky if your landline phone has caller id.
Obviously, that's why he leaked it. . . that'll teach them for firing me.