While true, I'm kinda wondering if that's even possible ...

Hiding from surveillance is not the same as planning to do something illegal.

... but it benefits the state if people think it's the same ...

I expect the company sees them as private, so that they'll only share capacity with competitors when they want to and for the right price, untilllllll ....

Some other country decides to pull shenanigans and cut / hack the cable, in which case the company will insist the U.S. gov't get involved, maybe pay for the repair. Saying it's crucial for national security.

See also this image from the article. The design of the Aldebaran is a giant flying boat, with air intakes in the wings to help create the nuclear exhaust exiting the reaction chamber nozzle.

https://up-ship.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/image25....

Gorgeous. Maybe there is a universe...

Here's the famous XKCD radiation dosage chart for scale: https://xkcd.com/radiation/ . The highest scale in the chart, the yellow boxes, represents 50 Sieverts, of the dosage received from standing next to the Chernobyl core for ten minutes just after meltdown. A conservative estimate is that one launch on this thing would expose the crew to 5000 Sieverts, or 100 Chernobyls worth. Furthermore, we've sen how simple atmospheric nuclear testing irradiated the entire planet for half a century (see the Kodak film story and low-background steel), any prolonged use of this thing would have caused cancer rates to (ahem) skyrocket worldwide due to distribution of nuclear fallout into the atmosphere.

Let's not romanticize stupid ideas. Leave this one in the dustbin of history.

Very cool, but you seem to be confused. I’ve not endorsed or romanticized any specific idea.

Who made the estimate?

I believe that was the commenter's point - that the designers described patronizingly virtue signal about their accessibility priorities, while their other decisions are troublesome.

Sounds like the asylum process is an alternative stream, and the entire border has become a "port of entry."

When asylum is the low-friction way to enter the country and acquire a legal status, economics suggests fewer people will use the traditional immigration process.

Unless I'm missing something that does sound rather HCOL ...

I assume the 900°F part had a lot to do with making this a viable consideration.

Of course, I'm with you - wouldn't want to be behind it either. That said, in the 1970s cars left a cloud enriched with lead so ...

Consider also how common leaded gasoline was in the 1970s.

When former students need the federal government to bail them out of their debt, it's clear the value of higher ed has plummeted.

It's incredible that they're bailing out loans but not stopping anybody from going down the exact same path. Who exactly wins here?

The universities and loan compaines win. Who loses? The chump who gets left holding the bag ... taxpayers. As usual.

I guess the political party who is doling out the money? They get more votes because they get to be the saviors.

Not sure, but it does seem like a way to make people reliant on your political party.

When tuition was $1000 (which it used to be in 1970) no one was talking about how getting an English degree could be a catastrophic financial decision. At worst it was a waste of time.

Instead of funding universities and managing them like we should be, we handed them over to MBAs who seem to charge more and more every year for the same degree.

Obviously federally-guaranteed loans are an idiotic solution to a self-inflicted problem.