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Interesting (I know I read at least one of his books, many years ago). Regarding movies and accuracy/realism (both scientific and historical in the case of historical stories), We frequently see people saying that the story MUST be unrealistic to be interesting, and those of us who cannot suspend disbelief need to realize that. The reality is that the authors/producers of the movies in fact lack the imagination to make the story work without breaking physics or history in many (most?) cases. Babylon 5, filmed engagements at huge ranges, for example. Narn ship showing firing, cut to the Centauri ship in orbit (1000s of km away) being cut in half. Later they dumbed it down and had the Star Trek style of huge ships engaging at a range where current small arms would be effective (ugh). This is SF that's fully in the "fantasy" side of SF, but harder than SW, for example. I pointed out that Interstellar could have dumped the black hole, and used the artifact (stargate thing near saturn) and a binary system and still had the whole "time limit" thing (regarding leaving his daughter) as a device if they wanted. The craft could have not been SSTOs, making their use more limited as well (they only have 2, or whatever). You could avoid, many of the obvious problems that I could not ignore. The same is true for many films. History is usually filled with real stories that seem fake they are so bizarre, it's not like you need to alter history to make a movie interesting about virtually any period (a pet peeve of mine is round shot exploding on impact in most all movies, grrr). A space example that was pointless, and stupid. The countdown in Apollo 13. I watched every Apollo flight, live. My mom pointed me at every Gemini flight I was alive for as well. They altered the Apollo countdown. They have ignition at 0 (stated, out loud, too), instead of the engines spooling up from ignition sequence start... Howard stated it was because it would "confuse people." Confuse who, exactly? An idiotic choice on his part to alter history/reality because he _thinks_ people are too stupid to deal with the real countdown. Grrrr.

You should read up on the differences between refractor and reflector telescopes. Generally speaking, I'd suggest a dobsonian, though it lacks the tracking functionality, and requires you to just point and look. You can get pretty good at this after a while. I of course really see the value in a clock drive with the computer control, though. A lot depends on how you see yourself using it.

The pad abort test was for commercial crew... unsure about the tourist capsule.

It lands the same way Soyuz does. Chutes and retros since the dirt is a little harder than water.

Not that I could find. Maybe they are waiting for this booster to be near end of life before wasting it?

The usual number is the objective diameter. This is the size of the front lens on a refractor, or the primary mirror on a reflector. This determines both the angular resolution of the telescope, and the amount of light it gathers. The smaller mm numbers are generally for the eyepieces, larger is wider field for eyepieces. Resolution is how fine you can see details, say 2 stars VERY close together, with the naked eye they might appear as a single star, and with a telescope 2 are clearly visible. This eventually becomes limited by the atmosphere, though, without advanced systems like adaptive optics to mitigate it somewhat (something you see on research telescopes in observatories). Light gathering is how dim you can see... a telescope is a bucket to collect photons, a wider bucket will catch more. Generally speaking, bigger is better. Tracking is certainly a nice feature, and some can be controlled via bluetooth now from apps as well, but it comes at some cost. Some people chose simpler mounts like dobsonians to spend more money on the glass (bigger scope, but it's less complicated). You can get a fairly big dobsonian (8" (~200mm) for under $500. For planetary viewing, refractors are actually better. Look for a 3-4 inch (75-100mm) achromatic refractor in that sort of $500 price range if that's what you want. Still, a big reflector will do OK as well. Where do you live? Not specifically, more like, is it suburban/rural with dark skies, or is it near a city with a lot of light pollution, etc?

Yeah, a manned failure would be terrible for a business that relies on good press. I'm not pushing for sooner, I'm just saying they've already done pretty well. Perhaps they'll test the first booster to destruction or end of life?

BO was all up, all 3 flights I think. They've done launch abort as well (from the ground, anyway).

Yes, but again, their concept of rating acceptable requires what, exactly? This flight-article bird has flown 3 times now, perfectly. The capsule is really the least troublesome part (it has chutes, after all). How many flights did the Shuttle have before being man rated? 0. Saturn V flew 2 unmanned flights, and the 3d was manned (and Apollo 6, right before 7 had issues and was only partially successful). Gemini flew twice unmanned, then the 3d was manned. How many more unmanned before they're confident?

Nice. Wonder when they test with a person...

"Broad public" means "dumb people." I think we al understand that they aim for the lowest common denominator. I don't try to be picky, I cannot help but notice certain things. Watching 2010 in the theater, I counted the rate of the spun section of the Leanov, guesstimated the radius to see what kind of false g it was making. While I watched, I couldn't help it. If the movie is fantasy (trek or Star Wars) I don't bother... But if they use their fantasy tech inconsistently, then I have issues---that's just bad story telling, and would be in a non-SF context.

It's generally true that if you have a small understanding of a given subject area, it's hard to watch mass media about that subject (or the news, for that matter). The people who make that sort of media generally know little about what they are filming, or worse, they know a lot, but it's wrong, lol, so they tend to make a mess of it.

To be clear, it's not like the Clarke ending would not have filmed well. The monolith full of stars, a bustling nexus of spacecraft on the other side... it clear that aliens are trying to make him feel at ease with the hotel room, etc. It could all be done visually (no words at all, other than "my god, it's full of stars!"), using just the time to took for the acid trip, lol.

I saw 2001 for the first time... as a rental, VHS, I was alive when it was in the theater, but too young to take myself to the movies. I've read pretty much all of Arthur Clarke, unless I missed something somewhere. I certainly read the short story before I ever saw the movie, and I might have read the book first, as well, it was a long time ago). It's not generational, it's bad storytelling, at least the ending. The first part makes it clear what the monolith is, and that it beamed a signal to Jupiter (really Saturn in the original short story). Everything up until the ending is fine by me. The ending is too much of an acid trip, and it's tedious, bad storytelling, IMO. Yeah, I remember people liking House, we watched it once, and my wife was immediately wondering why some medicine doc was in the OR in a real hospital. ER was a joke, they show them doing more than getting on the phone and calling in a consult, lol. They treat very little, they just call the people who know what to do. Gunshot? Call the trauma surgeon, etc.

That's the thing about movies that act like they're "hard" SF, if you make that claim, I'm going to nitpick, well, everything. If people reviewing it say it's accurate... I'm gonna nitpick. I don't even think about the science of Star Trek or Star Wars, they are fantasy, and I just watch them---then point out only internal inconsistencies, which they are full of.

Yeah, my wife can't watch most anything medical for the same reason (she's a surgeon).

Yeah, Grissom was the major negative in that film, which was otherwise pretty good, and is why the phrase "screwed the pooch" is something I still use, lol.

Yeah, I recently watched it in fact. I'm fine with many of the long takes, honestly the only part I really hate is the entire ending sequence.

The robots were OK. Anne Hathaway... is relevant to my interests. So my heart is not entirely cold and black. PH was irredeemably awful. Watch Tora, Tora, Tora, instead.

My reaction to Interstellar was the same as my reaction to Pearl Harbor. Someone gave me a (used) copy of Pearl Harbor since they knew I was a WW2 buff. I thanked them, and threw it in the trash. I could have traded it in someplace, but them some poor soul would have watched it.

Maybe it's a steam issue... I just checked, and I have 6 copies of KSP 1.05 installed right now. 1 is vanilla, the rest are modded. So if I am testing a mod, I use my test copy, and only install that mod. I have a 365, and a 365 with various parts mods added until it got flaky. I have SSTU in testing now, plus an SSTU with Sigma (6.4X), etc. I don't have 1.1 because I didn't buy with steam. If steam would require me to have only 1 copy of KSP... I'd not want it anyway.

I remember seeing a quote that said 2001 was a Great movie, but not a good movie. I tend to agree. It was great in the sense it was important, but it is hard to watch, and utterly fails at telling a story, IMO. If you haven't read the book, you have no real idea what happened.

https://www.blueorigin.com/gallery

Aside from just "bad plot" in general (which is enough), let's see. SSTO Ranger needs SLS (?) to get to orbit. Ranger and cargo ships are SSTOs in the first place. The black hole stuff... hitting the event horizon dilates time infinitely, which sort of makes any time lost on that water planet noise. The water planet? Should be bathed in lethal radiation from the BH, so they'd not bother checking it out in the first place. The energy to get to the water planet would be... excessive. The dilation effects are somehow made out to be only at the planet, but it would be a gradient... if they lost years on the surface, they also lost a lot just getting there. The whole plot around the possible habitable worlds would have worked just as well with no black hole, using a distant binary system with 1 world around 1 star, and the others around the 2d star. Travel times and propellant mass alone could do what they needed without the nuttiness of the BH they introduced. An alien star gate is just something you have to suspend disbelief on... going into a black hole is NOT something I suspend disbelief on.

Watching Interstellar makes Interstellar an awful experience.