All aspects of the phenomenon described are adequately explained by ball ligtning.

My wife and I had a home computer (a PDP-8i) in 1971. She built a consulting business around it that evolved into a successful corporation that's still doing business today.

It was done 50 years ago - a programming language called AMBIT/G. - Dennis

If your kid's been out, how did he get the homework? Did he download it from a webpage or some such? If so, it might be a font mismatch between the teacher's computer and yours.

Not a surprise at all - I'm well aware of the pathetically low Isp (dang - need real subscripts - I mean Specific Impulse) of chemical propellants. I'm always intrigued by reports of propulsion schemes with dramatically higher Isp - Project Orion (atomic bombs out the butt) and nuclear rockets using monatomic hydrogen as reaction mass come to mind.

I once calculated that if you accelerate halfway at one G, flip, and decelerate at one G, the moon is about three hours away. I've since seen an article saying that using that strategy, the moon is (as I calculated) three hours away; Mars is three days away (at opposition, I guess); and Pluto is three weeks away.

Would you believe a DEC PDP-8/I, in 1971? I/O was a 10 CPS ASR-33 Teletype with paper tape. Life got a lot better when I managed to score a 300 CPS tape reader.

Maximilien wrote:

I don't see the point of HP continuing manufacturing them; phones and tables are a lot more efficient at doing that kind of job.
 
HP should create "apps" for those devices.

They have. They've written a Saturn emulator for IOS, and produced (IIRC) HP-12C and -15C calculators for iPhone. These calcs use the Saturn code from the actual HP calculators. My personal favorite is a HP-42S emulator developed by a third party.