XB-70A

That was something for sure! Such a beautiful sight with a thunderous melody that kept on for about a minute. Alas, there was a cloud cell right above the pad at the time of the launch, and it quickly became impossible to see it. Anyway, this spotting site is incredible, and if it is possible I will go back there for the next Atlas launch with AFSPC-11.

Well, I cannot regret it now: She’s simply beautiful.

The problem is that if I got enough in my wallet for buying a ticket, I can't afford the penalty they will charge me for going here with a boat... plus the fact that I will never go in Banana river, even with a large boat, due to these guys:

Arrrg... now Salma Hayek is haunting my minds once again.

Today's started well with the maiden flight of our most expendable high speed airplane ever built. Valentina being the best of all, she was selected and accepted the honor to realize such a first! Still, the engineers just warned her a bit about the lack of separation between the turbofan nozzles and the surface during the flare... Pretty confident in herself she didn't listen at them and decided to do it on her own... Anyway, she survived to her mistake mischance, and had to offer her services to fly another prototype, for expectation damages. New craft, new mission! The target now was to achieve a flight as fast as possible and at the lowest altitude, in order to better understand the planet's so particular atmosphere. The prototype using a pure delta configuration appeared to be efficient enough in its task, I mean 2626 km/h at 13 m! Take that in your teeth Jeb! 3 meters, even faster! 1 meter control! I'm currently at 1 meter only over the... Aww no... not again! At least it made me discover even more deeply how incredible the KSP's aerodynamics are. No really, just look at that. DON'T SINK!.. DON'T SINK!.. OH S... "Well, that escalated quickly." At least I did not lost my dear and loved one. However I decided to leave her alone a bit; a great occasion for her to philosophize a bit about her own mistakes. HEEEEEEELLLP!!!

I know it's stupid, but I discovered this picture about 15 minutes ago and it made me laugh until it became hard to breath... I guess I was in lack of a good relaxation time.

Alas, it's only for the place at the observation gantry (plus the transportation from the Visitor Complex to the site). Hopefully, I bought an annual pass in last October, so at least I will not have to pay the $50 admission which is mandatory otherwise... sometime when I'm seeing some family of five to seven members coming here, and just for the day, I can see the credit cards fuming in their wallets. I guess the worst was with Falcon Heavy, as they sold the seats at nearly $200, a new record here, and still it was to look at it from the Saturn V building.

52 dollars, but for being at 3.7 km only from the pad I could not regret such an investment. I will try to do my best for the pictures.

According to Spaceflightnow.com Cape Canaveral could see two launches in one day Thursday Two others websites I'm looking at are even more optimistic as they already have put the 30W-6 launch as confirmed for March 1st.

Don't worry, it was much more some kind of a stupid expression to describe my mad choice to always launch without looking even at the current situation in the control station... I got disgusted by my own calculations failures, and the ones of the transfer window program. The "best" being that one day I chose to go (once again) to Duna, and the calculator gave me a waiting time of 364 days before the opening of the most economic window. I just put an alarm and warp to five hours before the announced time, then I finally launched the lander, and once in orbit (at the same altitude than 364 days before), then the calculator announced that the best economical window now will be in a year and some hundreds of days Funnily, one of the sole launches I ever made at the perfect time was for the second Ascension flight, with the window opening one day after reaching the parking orbit.

Today was a bit special as I finally launched my first 100% stock flight to Duna. All the precedent ones were made with adjusted engine files for the fun, but now I just wanted to try it without these doped Mk-55 Thud: Here it is, the Mercury Mk. IV, currently the tallest and one of the heaviest craft I ever built in stock. Nearly touching the roof of the VAB, it is, however, pretty simple with only two stages, all of them recoverable for economical reasons according to Mortimer. Powered by 15 Vector engines, the whole system is easily kicked out of the atmosphere with an initial TWR of 2.14. However, it did not carry enough fuel to realize the circularization, and had to be released after having placed the apogee to 120 km, the spacecraft being left alone to carry on the mission. The circularization was a bit perspiring as its initial TWR was awful at the best, requiring more than two minutes of burn for 1.3 km/s. Then the main stage realized its reenter decently, needing a short burn of five seconds with only six engines to help it a bit around 17 km of altitude, then it descended smoothly through the sky until the final burn starting at 700 m with around 900 m/s still available. ARRRRRGGGgggg... my poor keyboard arrows are still crying of pain two hours after it, Hopefully, everything went well as the touching speed was around 1 m/s and the RCS helped me to make it fall smoother, ensuring a good return of 272 666 funds. Then it was finally the time for the crew of Mercury to leave for Minmus, the next checkpoint and resting place. More than 2.4 km/s having to be recovered. Descending and landing on the mint ball. Everything went erh... nominally, or simply it was boring. Now it was the time to play a bit of Russian roulette... really! To be honest, it was my first operational use of drills and a converter since I discovered this game more than 3 years ago now... I simply didn't know how to use them at all, so I just placed them a bit "like this, we'll see", and it worked! Three days were sufficient to fulfill the tanks and to be ready for the next step. A step which was not as joyful as I expected it to be, as the best transfer window I found was requesting more than a year and half of waiting. Funnily, I'm always unlucky with launch Duna, every time I'm getting some terrible waiting time, while everything is always perfect for Eve and Moho... Well, now we'll see. I guess that 3.1 km/s of impulsion should be enough to take care of the braking, circularization, and landing maneuvers on the red dot. After a second refueling I guest the best will be to go to Ike to refuel once again and to take some science points, before leaving back definitely to Kerbin.

I know the thread has not been alive for three months now, but to start a new one would not allow to observe the older pictures that were put here. Here are some I've taken between the last December and the beginning of February. Cathartes Aura patrolling over the pond of my residence. Adult and young Apalone Ferox taking a sun bath. A Pandion Haliaetus overflying the Banana River for some fishes. I took it while waiting for the launch of Dragon CRS-13 in last December. Anas Fulvigula staring at some kids playing close to the pond. An Ardea Alba surprised by a car passing in front. Okay, it's not a falcon, but still! We got two birds on one shot! Tursiops Truncatus hunting in the Banana River. Took on the afternoon of February 6th while I was literally burning under the sun waiting for the launch of Falcon Heavy. I'm not really sure about these two which were fighting and pursuing each others for a minute, they remind me the Great Blue Herons. Took at the same place some minutes after the dolphin.

The Mir Diamond Mine in Mirny, Russian Federation 62°31′45.92″N 113°59′36.74″E Typical scenario of miners being killed by something they discover and coming from the bottom of the mine.

Indeed, it was! Actually, Puerto Rico is a bit an exception today, as even on the U.S. mainland the pressure now is given in hPa (excepted the military of course). About the distance it is still a bit "floating", despite all the forms and declarations made by the guys at Cologne. There is still some exceptions a bit everywhere, sometime I was wondering if it was not like some kind of a small revenge against the use of the imperial system units, while most of the European countries were using the metric system in aviation before the Second World War. As an example, when I was flying in the Brest area, the distance were given in Km, and the speed sometime in km/h instead of the NM/KTS, but the altitude/height has to be declared in feet at all time. Here are some creepy pictures took by my father at this time: But honestly, I remember when I started to fly at 14 I was so proud of using the imperial system. As a kid who grew up in a total metric system I felt like it was making you different... and now, more than ten years later I don't know what I would give for them to stop using this system in aviation and switch to the metric one... Please dear controllers and traffic agents, no more in-flight conversion! Sometimes I was feeling like the guys from the ATC were just some torturers who liked to ask us for wacky information requesting miles-to nm conversion for the DME, or mph to knots while we were flying in aircraft with old ASI, or the best: what is the time you are expecting to reach this point at this altitude while you're descending at this number of feet-per-minute, while travelling in mph, and the distance you are covering is in nm...

- Congested areas (walking as well as driving) - Old timers on the road. - Peoples honking their horns. - The ones placing special exhaust tubes on their vehicles to make them scream uselessly while we are trying to sleep. - City Halls. - City Halls employees. - City Halls employees office hours. - Civil servants from my country. - Bankers, a.k.a. smile-til-they-sign-the-agreement. - Over regulation. - Gangstas wannabe passing slowly with their ears-raping "music" at the max volume. - Water and food wasting (I know, totally different from the rest) - Today's commercial aviation... no really, it's always the same everywhere now.

Indeed, like a lot in aviation, it is dependent from the local regulation. I remember how messy it could be when we were flying in the Windward Islands: TJSJ still using the inHg, while nearly all the others were in hPa, controls on the islands still part of the Commonwealth were giving distance in NM while the others were in Km, and the best, all of these were using actual pressure for the altitude... excepted TAPA (Antigua) which was using a constant pressure of 1013 to work in flight levels, whatever your altitude was. At least we didn't have to scroll the wheel here...

I did not really had the time to play recently, so this morning I just took the decision to sent an inaugural exploration flight to Dres, a place I never went before. The spacecraft consists in three different stage; the lander with 3.3 km/s and equipped with two different instruments, a boosting stage to kick the upper stage out of Dres' gravity with 1.4 km/s, and the scientific module with more than 5 km/s to return to Kerbin safely. Being pretty weighty for a small/medium probe, I didn't have the choice but to to select the old Gamma IV Heavy for the job. It's more than common, it's usual, but for a reason I can't understand I still enjoy all the Kerbol-Mun eclipses! Alas, the launch window was opening 30 minutes later, preventing to take more screenshots in this condition. Scrambling under her 415 t Gamma IV H proved to be reliable and easy to use, once again. 1 minute 57 seconds later the side boosters where considered as useless and ejected, at an altitude of around 38 km and a speed of 1.3 km/s. The burn was stopped around 68 km with the apogee placed at 200, only to restart at this altitude for an immediate transfer to Dres. Finally, the system now is on its way to the small ball with what appeared to be a descent trajectory... which was without counting the standard MechJeb error of messing up everything. The trajectory appeared to be terrible once out of Kerbin SoI, and necessitating a correction maneuver of around 120 m/s. It also gave me the opportunity to correct a bit more the trajectory. This way should help to save a bit more fuel for the circularization and the landing following. I will probably lower the altitude once on mid-course for a better deceleration.

Today, 30 years later... The Blue and the Red are still fighting!

This is only the beginning, nothing will prevent SectX to take over the World and BEYOND*! Glory to the Great Guru Musk! * and your taxes incomes.

In memory of Delmare.

Realistic Time Warp: the greatest occasion for you to enjoy the real life of flights controllers, by eliminating the warp option from your game AND by ensuring that your flights will continue to move even if the computer is turned off. Guarantying stress and sleep!