tater

Since it was a cold war phenomenon, it ended with the Cold War. There is no current race, period. The race was that it was an important focus of national effort, and each side reacted to the other's accomplishments. That's not a thing right now.

I wonder if you could have multiple IVAs that could be toggled in the VAB so that you could have alternate orientations available.

Few light rail systems in the US are anywhere near cost effective. The only commuter rail system in the country I know about that makes economic sense is NYC (subway, and Metro North). The rest would likely all fail without massive subsidy. Passenger rail is subsidized most places as I understand it. I recall reading that passenger rail in Europe is subsidized by the actually cost effective cargo rail system (rail for cargo is great in the US as well). Electric cars will certainly become a large share of vehicles at some point, IMO the issue is making good nuclear power plants (pebble bed reactors, probably) to support increased demand for power. Sadly, the world is heading the wrong direction in terms of nukes out of irrational fear. Instead loons push for things like wind. Wind, lol, which makes under 2.1 watts per m^2 or ground used.

If the hatch in the first picture is the same we see externally, they look big because the scale is wrong. Aren't helmets bigger than the hatches?

Yep. That's the reason behind the thing that "The Space Race" refers to, BTW. As I said above, the Space Race was part of the Cold War, and was nothing more than PR for how awesome each superpower was. Unmanned craft didn't count, it was men in space that people wanted to see. All the space station flights ever done, combined, have less PR value than one manned moon landing. We're talking adventure, PR, etc. That's what it was about, not how many hours in space (though early on, that was part of the pissing match). The documentary can rewrite the premise and argue again. EDIT: to be clear, I'm not saying all manned orbital stuff is useless, but the Space Race was about PR, not substance.

Nice. I'd have to make something with the spaceplane parts to ever see a lot of it in game (which seems unlikely), but they look really nice.

The Space Race ended in 1969. The country we were competing with no longer exists. Period. The Space Race was a Cold War thing. The Soviets didn't even win orbit, which is a poor 2d place anyway. Orbital anything is overrated. Scientifically, probes are better. I like manned spaceflight, just because it's cool, but measure based upon useful science gained about the universe if you want to go past the actual space race.

Remember that they worked on automatic docking partially because they had a multi-earth rendezvous option for a lunar mission in mind.

Making this forum have less dev posting than reedit, and more impediments to viewing it? Ah, saw a week from Wednesday.

The dedicated, fast tesla stations do half a charge in 30-45 minutes. Half. Range is 265 miles (worse with AC blazing away, or if really cold out). That means under 3 hours driving, then 30 minutes stop, then 1.5 hours driving. Not useful. My dad drives out to visit from the east coast. He drives to NM in 2.5 days. 1 long day, then one not too long day, then a half a day. It would take a week with an electric car. So I should spend 4 days of a 5 day trip driving instead of 2?

Faster: yes, any crashes I have are memory, and modded. It is lower than the 3.whatever people report being the problem on PCs. I could load it up on my PC downstairs and check, I suppose, or load it up on the wife's macbook and see as well.

Like when they wanted to buff ship physics based up kerbal skill?

Electric cars are only useful for short trips. That's why hybrids would be so much better. A tesla with a small gas generator so that you need not worry about being stranded. Without basically a full battery swap capability, in the time it takes to fill up a gas tank, they are not useful for many people in north america. Particularly in the summer where powerful AC is not optional (caveat, I live in the SW US where it can get hot, even a mile above sea level). Kids have break this next week, and we are visiting friends in Colorado. That's over 1800km round trip with side journeys in Denver, etc. That's 5 full recharges. We are going to be gone 5 days, only 2 of which are long drives. Impossible with any electric car. Even if there were charging stations, we've get a 1/2 charge in 30-45 min. That's 4 hours of charging at rest stops. If they existed, which they don't. Anything that doesn't give me full range in a couple minutes is a nonstarter to me as other than a novelty (or as an extra car). Obviously people who live in small places with lots of people might have a different opinion, and have more utility. I love the Tesla S, BTW. It's awesome, but we'd need it as 1 of 2 cars at least (1 of which would always have to be gas unless they manage to vastly improve range (with anything other than near instant recharging, range needs to be the most you might drive in a single day (say ~10 hours on the highway)). - - - Updated - - - A Tesla S has an 85 kWh battery. How much solar might you get, 2-3 square meters? At what efficiency? In Colorado as an example, insolation is ~2200 kWh/m^2 per year. At 20%, that's 3.6kWh for our car with 3m^2 of panels per day or so, that's about 10 miles of driving in that Tesla S.

Smaller scale-size features would make planets more interesting from a gameplay standpoint. Things you don't want to land on, basically

The other reason why the premise they won is so bizarre. The point, for both sides, was to demonstrate publicly, to any on the fence societies in the Cold War that they were the future. The US did everything in the harsh light of news cameras. Every failure known. Few people outside space nuts like us are even aware of Soviet failures as they often hid them. Sometimes very successfully (only known for sure after the CCCP fell apart). The premise of this show is an exercise in moving the goalposts, IMO. The reason the moon is the goalpost is that IMO, the Space Race ended at that point. After the moon, it was not a driving thing for either power (had it been, the US might have kept going with it instead of languishing). The US was publicly committed by JFK, so we had to finish, even though the VN war was becoming all-consuming. Our success knocked the wind out of the Soviets in the "race," and then they ended up by the end of the 70s in their own version of that. I don't think that that's an unreasonable take. Both were happy to spend less $$$ once the obvious race was effectively over.

They went with earth orbit because it was all that was left for manned flight with their lunar failures. Their planetary probes were ok, but their failure rate was pretty high. - - - Updated - - - Venus probes before 1971. 23 total, 3 by the US 2 of which worked. Of the 20 Soviet probes, 3 were not failures. 15% CCCP success, vs 66% NASA success. In the '70s, there were 8, 2 US, 6 Soviet. Both US probes worked, only one soviet probe failed (finally a decent success rate). Venus is up there with Mars as the kite eating tree of the solar system for the Soviets. Mars? Before the 90s, 17 Soviet probes, 14 failures (82% fail). 7 US probes, 2 failures (29% fail). Past the '90s, 14 US Mars probes, 3 failures. The Russians have 1 attempt, 1 failure. I don't think anyone can argue winning "the space race" based on probes and not put NASA/JPL at the top of the pile. The space race was about manned flight as a PR gesture. It was a "go big or go home" thing, and many times both sides went with higher risks than they would have liked to score points. People got bored with MOON flights, what possible metric makes them somehow more excited by Mir?

Maybe I'm being parochial, I'm in Albuquerque, and the very center of the path went through my house it it was at sunset, so only in the west, you are correct.

Given that choice, electric, but if most cars switched we'd need more nuclear power, period, as "renwable" is neither cost or space effective, and with full adoption would barely cope with normal increases in need---and could not cope with a few hundred million pure electric cars. Not having cars is a cute idea that only people in densely populated areas can even entertain. There are counties in my state almost as big as Slovenia. We routinely take day trips that would be impossible in a Tesla. We know a few people with tesla s models, but they all have at least 1 other car (most have 2 others).

Last years partial was kinda meh considering we had a total (annular) in 2012 right through the US.

Given that both sides were in fact trying to send men to the moon, how did they "win?" The US was reactionary to Soviet achievements, having started with the aim of science (Ike was not keen on the "race" aspect), but ended up pushing the Soviets to reacting once Gemini was going. The notion they never wanted the moon seems a revisionist response to the program after the death of Korolev.

Does 24 hour days change the rotation of Kerbin? Does a 365 day year change the orbital period? from a gameplay perspective, unless you are using magic13's mod, time doesn't matter unless you have life support (and even then not so much).

Nice pics, guys. We had a total (annular) with my house right in the middle of the path a couple years ago. It was pretty cool. Did any of you notice the shadows and dappled light on the ground?

I'm running 10.7.5 on my i7 mac, no problems except for memory when a lot of mods are in (same issue everyone has).

I'd be incredibly surprised if the Mars One people could crowdsource a probe like the one India managed. I'm usually big on conditional statements, but in this case setting their probability at even "non-zero" seems too high.

New version, new career from scratch, then new career with the modded version once mods update.