Godot

The chances are 0 IMHO. The only thing with enough prestige to be part of a new space race would be a manned landing on Mars. And I am sure that neither Russia nor the USA would want to spend the money that such a mission would cost (surely several multiples of the Moon mission).

2000 stars definitely are much more than one would imagine. During my time in Beta 3 I wandered eastwards into the direction of Sol (after I got a Hauler ... and later a Cobra Mk 3). After earning a little bit of money there I wanted to slowly return to the staring terrorities by slowly wandering westwards along the lower rim of the Pill (and doing misisons on the way). Well, as I thought I had wandered westwards enough and would be directly below the starting territories I had to discover that I had missed the starting terrotiries and was already 100 ly too much to the west Oh btw. the update to 3.9 should go onlin eevery hour now

Anomalocaris

Can´t say for sure ... I like my dentist as he has a sense of humor that resembles House M.D. ... I also like the cute medical assistants that work for him ... on the other hand I hate waiting in the waiting room ... so very mixed feelings for me ... I guess I am rather glad when I don´t have anything else than the routine checks twice a year

And even aliens which possess eyes and use a writing system may not understand that we use circles to depict electron orbitals and letters combined with lines in order to depict atoms and their connections within molecules, not to forget the depiction of the DNA strand with single letters standing for the nucleobases. I also don´t think that aliens who don´t have a reproduction system which resembles that of mammals might understand our pics of human reproduction organs and brest feeding women (and I guess the mammal reproduction system isn´t necessary the best reproduction system that is thinkable ... and therefore not necessarily one that might come up on top in an alien evolution)

The Cobra is a little bit harder to find now, however. None of the traditional shipyards (like Aulin or I Bootis) has it anymore ... had to do a little voyage searching for a Cobra dealer in order to replace my exploration and trade Hauler with a Cobra. btw. if someone wants to make nice money by exploration ... Meliae is a nice lucrative system ... lots of planets ... first pass with planet discovery gae me ~14k, second pass with detail scan of the planets and moons gave me an additional 18k. But it is also a dangerous system ... had to evade numerous interdictions

I´d assume that aliens might be confused by the pictures. But I definitely like that they included a picture of Jane Goodall and her chimpanzees in their picture collection

Sleep is totally different from death. In sleep your brain still works, but in a diffferent mode ... your neurons still fire in a regulated pattern (and not only those that are needed f0or the body to function) and after a certain while your brain switches from sleep to awake mode. You merely are in an altered state of consciousness. You actually can see this for yourself when you are in REM sleep (i.e. the sleep porton where we dream) ... you are conscious in your dream world and even can make conscious decisions (I for my part, for example, have often turned nightmares with zombie like settings into rather nice dreams by recognizing that they are dreams and giving myself the ability to fly [flying over your neighborhood with no artificial help ... and not having to worry about the monsters on the ground]). Totally different from death where no neuronal activity takes place anymore.

Well, if we are able to make a copy without destroying the original brain and then are able to observe original and copy independent of each other, we have the proof that both are independant entities (and the destruction of the original would kill the original consciousness)

For me this would be a reason not to do this. Or rather only do it if death is imminent (like due to some form of disease that reduces my remaining lifetime to just a few months)

The ships prices aren´t ridiculous but rather prices that fit to the release. The prices that we had before Beta 2 were ridiculous (i.e. ridiculously low). Also Beta 3 didn´t result in a complete wipe ... instead just your ships and equipment from Beta 2 were converted into money so that you would have been able to immerdiately repurchase Ships in Beta 3, with the money you made in Beta 2 (with other word, the time to get money and buy bigger ships and/or more equipment is the time of Beta 2 and Beta 3 taken together ... much more than 2-3 weeks)

Not to forget that it is especially the population of the industrialized countries (<= 20% or the worlds population) which are responsible for 80% of the resource consumption on earth. If the remaining 80% of people on earth would rise to the standard of living in the industrialized countries, earth would be doomed.

I am rather surprised that Duxwing left one important step out: Instead of eating normal meals (with their variable amount of nutrients) each person would get a chemical mixture (either administered orally or intravenously) with exact the amount of nutrients, that according to calculations a person of the age, gender and body measurements would need. Definitely a necessary step if you want to maximize age and, after all, Duxwing wants to take "whatever means necessary" to accomplish this But nope, I wouldn´t be pro such measures. Already now mankind has a population growth that can be considered to be above levels healthy for earth. With rising life expectancies this would become even more extreme. Likewise every person should have the right to determine its lifestyle for his/herself. The only good thing on this list are mandatory vaccinations IMHO. Aside from this every person should get all informations about the impact of his/her lifestyle on his/her ife expectancy (so s/he cannot say s/he didn´t know what this lifestyle would cause to her/his health) and s/he should be given every help posible if s/he wants to quit with the unhealthy lifestyle, but not be forced to quit the lifestyle if s/he doens´t want to do it (after all, some persons prefer to live fast and die young )

Ah, you mean the "Game does not load"-Bug I remember this from the first few versions of Beta 2 ... in Beta 3 this Bug fortunately has evaded me

Well, obviously because it is a computerized telescope: http://www.celestron.com/browse-shop/astronomy/telescopes/nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope Which IMHO, especially for a beginner, may be of great help ... as it seems like, after initial calibration and entering location and time, you just have to tell the telescope which star/planet you want to look at and it then aligns itself to the position. No spending time in order to align one axis to Polaris (as you have with the german parallax mount) and no endless searching for the stars/planets you want to look at, via the finder telescope (and then constantly having to manually readjust yout telescope in order to keep the star/planet in focus of the main telescope because it travels so fast across the nightsky, that is is out of your main telescopes field of view within seconds)

A spining whip? Never heard of such a thing. Is this the bug (I also encountered 1-2 months ago) that some spinning space station are dangerous to start in, because their spin can push your spacecraft out of control upon start?

Ah O.K. ... well, glad I have the backer package that gives you all future DLCs free of charge

Never heard something else than that EVA would be part of coming DLCs. Landing on planets however may very well be part of updates (after all this was included in previous Elite-titles as well ... you were able to land on planetary spaceports and also were able to land on unowned planets/moons in order to plant/retrieve mining devices there)

Well, a Schmidt-Cassegrain is better than a Newton for planetary observation. And 11" are larger than 8". Therefore the Celestron CPC 1100 StarBright XLT GPS would be the best choice I guess

This sounds great

Sims 3 and all of its EPs is available from Steam, so, no, you don´t need Origin if you buy everything from Steam. If, however, you buy Sims 3 or any Sims 3 Expansion Pack from Origin (or from a Brick & Mortar Store with only Origin Codes) then you cannot transfer these things to Steam.

It will also depend on the preferences the Reps have with regards to their spending policy. Which is why IMHO it is difficult to keep politics out of the discussion. IMHO NASAs budget will either stay the same or (if the Reps need more funds in other regions, for example the military) shrink. I don´t think that NASA (or Research at all) ranks high on the Reps priority list.

Well, if the wheel design is the one that works best for Mars, there doesn´t seem to be a reason to change it. (at least it is a design proven to work well on Mars, as Curiosity shows)

Same here ... I thought this would be either about the irish leader, or Ireland starting its own space program and naming their first spaceship this way

Done / doing progamming in Java/C++/VB(A) as well as putting together/upgrading my own PCs and helping friends and parents with their PC problems