LN400

You might want to read up on the Michelson-Morley experiment and in particular the conclusion and implication that had on the aether theories.

First a word on aether. The idea of something called "aether" vanished as a scientific concept as soon as they discovered there was no need for it. It's an idea that has been buried for more than 100 years. Space pressure, as it's called in this thread, is not mentioned in physics as far as I'm aware. Second, sub atomic particles do not necessarily need to have a volume in a classical sense. Some branches of modern physics regard these particles as waves, wave functions, oscillations, not as tiny, tiny ping pong balls.

Jeb. Jumbo Excessive Boosters, and just to underline the bada$$ery of the sheer scale.

Austrian Roughian Nibbling Old Loaded Donuts Sets Course HeavenWards And Reaches Zoological Expertise Negating Extraterrestrial Gore Gatherer, Endorsing Rocketry ED WOOD

Wind comes in layers. The wind direction of one layer can very well be in a completely different direction than that of a different layer. Flying RC models, I experience this when I don't even go very high up, only a few 10s of meters.

Agree, skepticism opens up for, possibly, a real explanation. The fallacy of this whole UFO debate is the automatic 'connection' people make between unexplained and aliens. A UFO is nothing more than something that flies, and which is unexplained, unidentified. No need to drag aliens into it by default. However, an unidentified object that happens to fly is still unidentified and thus, a UFO.

Breviloquent Opaqueness Lavishly Oratorical Glaringly Non Approvable PEKING DUCK

Look up the KOS mod over at the add-on section

I never did! (any of those) I played on stage warming up for UK Subs I played pool in Llangollen I witnessed 2 in the crowd fighting over my completely ridiculous, absurdly oversized St Patrics Day hat I wore because I wrongly assumed noone would take that hat seriously

This bloke will explain it better than I could possibly do http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/feedback/expert/answer/mcc/sts-113/12_03_09_30_22.html

Unless I remember it wrong, Frontier runs fine in DOSBox in which you can mount CD images like ISOs, unless you really want to play it on a 486. If so: We're not worthy!

Thanks for the link. I knew about DF being released as freeware and I got my working copy of Frontier from Elite Club (I think it was). I just assumed that "online" meant an online playable verson (don't ask me how I reached that conclusion, I don't really know). I know where to get Frontier but I'm not at all sure if naming an abandonware site is ok here. Probably not so I won't. On a side note: DF is(was?) being reworked to work on more modern systems, DaggerXL, now under the XLEngine banner.

Makes me wonder if a 10 gallon hat that can hold 10 gallons would weight a ton (1.45kg). Fun fact: A billionaire can become a trillionaire by moving to a different country.

Ultima Underworld, numero uno, top 1, best of the best. Monkey Island TIE Fighter Frontier First Encounter Baldur's Gate + expansion pack Morrowind/Daggerfall (probably more but these immediately leapt to mind) None of these are online, unfortunately.

No time for games these days (ask me again in 2 weeks) but I keep 0.90 for the mods, in case the updated mods aren't working as well as they used to. A dual gamer I am I suppose.

Just a very silly anecdote: A few weeks back, I was on my way home from college, riding my bicycle so I had a pretty good view of the evening sky. One spot of bright light on the sky caught my attention. At first I wondered if it was Venus until I remembered Venus would be lower towards the horizon. I wondered if it was another planet, but couldn't think of any that would fit the bill. The light was stationary. I couldn't figure out what it could be. I stopped and watched it for about 5 minutes wondering. Now, I live in a town where airliners fly over us every day and night on their way to the airports in the area. With their nav lights they're a familiar sight but I never saw a plane that didn't move before. This light wasn't moving at all, as far as I could tell, nor was it a planet, or a star. Well.... if I had gotten back on my bike, I wouldn't have known what this was and it was, by definition, a UFO. However, I did wait a few more moments and lo and behold, soon I could vaguely spot a tiny green light on one side and a red light on the other. The bright light had also grown in intensity but so slowly I hadn't noticed. Soon the bright light broke into 2 bright spots close together and it became clear this was another airliner. It just came in from a direction I hadn't seen they come in from before but soon after the airliner flew overhead. Up until I knew, this was a genuine UFO sighting. When I did know, it turned into an IFO, I got back on my bike and got myself home and forgot about it until just now when I wrote this post. Interesting while the wondering lasted, not really interesting when the wondering ended.

In addition to the last couple of post: I'm not sure where any notion that the atmosphere is what keeps a planet together comes from.

If, for some bizarre reason, the entire atmosphere disappeared, I'd think not much would happen other than: The mean temperature would be lower. The temperature would be a lot less uniform. Venus would be a lot more friendly to manned explorations, with the acid rain, high temp and high pressure gone. We could observe the surface using plain old telescopes. Venus would be a lot duller on the evening/morning sky. There would be more points but these are the ones I'd think would be most noticable.

The problem with investigating an eye witness account is, there is nothing to investigate. You can not investigate words alone.

Nope, experience still doesn't make an eye witness testimony valuable to science. It really makes no difference to science if it's Bobby the hobo or deGrasse Tyson who say they saw it.

Just chiming in here. A job title like "police officer", "pilot", "astronaut" or "5 star general" does not affect the credibility of a witness. Eye witness testemony is really worthless regardless of the title of the person saying he or she saw something. If Stephen Hawking said he had seen an alien, his testimony would be worthless, just like any other eye witness testimony. Worthless as evidence, let alone proof. Hard, physical evidence would be valuable.

I believe that was exactly what I was refering to when I said the 2 principles were not the same

I'm with Fel on this one. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the undecidability in quantum mechanics (and the unobserved object) are not the same principle.

Noticed X:Tension is on Steam as well. That one is great as well. Like Elite, or rather more so, trade has a big part in it but it's definitely possible to go all out pirate hunting and blow up all the things.

If I could only have 1 flight/space sim where I get to shoot things up, it would have to be TIE Fighter, preferably the CD ROM version. Might need DOSBox to run it though but most flight sticks should work, especially single, no throttle, non-programmable ones. If you fancy 90's helicopter sims, not really complicated but somewhat "realistic" for games that old, you could look up Hind, or Apache95. If you want to go haywire full on study sim, Falcon 4.0 Allied Force, but honestly, that one is not one for casual gaming. Same goes for the DCS series of high fidelity sims. Last edit, promise: Forgot. For the DSC games, you probably want a full set of flight controls, not just a single button stick.