Incursus

Neil, what are your thoughts on the private space flight industry, such as Space X, seeming to be taking over manned space flight while NASA focuses more on research? Do you think this is a good approach and will further technology and innovation as NASA continues to get its budget cut? I'm currently an Aerospace Engineering student and hope to work for one of these companies one day and would love to hear what you think.

There's now a service at one of my local grocery stores that lets me order everything online and all I have to do is pull into a parking spot and they bring me all of my groceries and load them into my car. They keep everything at the proper temperature too so you aren't getting any melted ice cream or meat that was left out. It's awesome and as a result I don't go around buying a bunch of shit I don't need because I walked past it. I won't go back to regular grocery shopping.

I recently visited the Titan II Missile Museum down in Tuscon, AZ. The technology is older than what the OP is probably working with, but the gist of it was this: (keep in mind that this is Cold War technology and has probably advanced significantly)

• An alarm sounds and a code is read over a loudspeaker into the control room

• A safe is unlocked using two combinations, each one only known to one of the two officers in the control room

• From the safe comes a launch code that matches the code read off the speaker, but has six or so more characters to complete the code

• The full code is entered onto a panel, unlocking the launch mechanism (in the case of the Titan II, a butterfly valve that controls the flow of oxidizer into the rocket motor)

• A target is selected

• Both officers in the control room must turn a key at the same time, authorizing the launch

• You push the launch button and that rocket is now going no matter what

• Upon launching of the rocket, the silo seals itself from the outside world. Food is stocked for about a month inside and the entire structure floats on giant springs to minimize damage in case the silo is struck with a missile. You can manually open up an escape shaft to leave or allow fresh air into the facility. At this point you're essentially waiting out a nuclear war.

That's all I've ever used Best Buy for. Check a product out in person, buy from Amazon.

I was about to buy a MINT '91 240SX but had the deal fall through at the last minute sometime last year. Instead I bought a BRZ because it was pretty similar but more modern. If Nissan had a true successor to the 240SX or 240Z that wasn't bordering on Mustang weight with much less power, I would have given them a look. From what I've seen though, the current lineup of Nissans is absolutely awful and plagued by extremely cheap, unergonomic interiors and unjustifiably high prices for what you're getting. There is nothing that would make me consider a Nissan over a Toyota at the moment.