Funny

In spain, it is explicitly unlawful to use confidential data in test, development, etc. And it also a nobrainer.

Machinehead, you are wrong.

Wind energy, is 5% of being competitive with the cheapest ways of electricity: coal and nuclear. It is less expensive than gas and oil.

As for "wind stops", it is just an externality, the cost includes that.

Solar thermoelectric is geting competitive.

PV panels go from 12% to 35% in efficiency, and most are more than 20%. Plants are stuck in 2% efficiency....

As for batteries, you can build an electric car that travels way more than 40 miles.. even using gel battteries.. but you need a place to charge these cars. And they only travel something like 60-80 miles per charge, at most, and then 3-6 hours charging.

As for "limitless", it is also limited.. but the fly ash of coal contains lots of fissible material, as does the "nuclear waste".

I am sorry to inform you, that safe nuclear power is not cheap.. it is expensive. We have cheap nuclear energy because it is almost safe.. and before that we had incredibly cheap nuclear energy because it wasn't safe.

Virtual flying

Virtual flying is VERY difficult.. at least it is very difficult to do coordinated turns.. you have no "included" accel indicator (senses).. and you just have a puny screen. With 3 displays (3 huge TFTs), it gets "acceptable" for non combat.. buy you would need some 12 displays for a combat plane: you need to move the head, and be able to "look around" (virtual goggles are a plus!!). Even so, you don't "feel" the plane. And when i fly, an important part is sensation: you know when you are going to lose sustentation because of the tremors.. with no small tremors, you don't know it, or can't decide the solution...

All this is mostly unimportant on route.. but very important if you want to land... landing and taking off are the two most dangerous parts of the flight: if you lose the engines in mid-flight, it is dangerous, but you have height and can glide.. if your engine fails while taking off you are dead.