Rickenbacker

Nope. I start over every major patch anyway, I don't mind.

The Mercury Seven were indeed put through some pretty bizarre, and unnecessary tests. Later astronauts went though a much improved testing regime.

Am I the only one thinking "Great place for a miner, right on the equator!" when I see this? - - - Updated - - - Are we looking at the same thing? The dark parts look like shadows, but the possible wind streaks are the lighter smudges. Looks quite likely to me.

I got to Jupiter, then cheated my way to Pluto .

As others have said, the game doesn't really access the HD much. I put it on an SSD, and noticed that the initial loading time went down a little, though not very much. That's it.

No. They don't need the money, and even if they did, it'd make them feel obliged to listen to what the players wanted instead of sticking with their own plan. Which is almost always a huge mistake in game development.

So did I, until I found out that backspace focuses on your ship .

Rimmer, is that you?

Maybe not, but now they work quite well!

THe heat shields have to be able to take interplanetary reentries, so it makes sense that they wouldn't take much of a hit from a slower reentry. That said, if you do a high-ish reentry from Minmus (35K periapsis), you'll burn away almost 40% of the ablator!

That big cloud around the front of the vehicle appears so fast, and changes shape so rapidly that it looks like condensation to me. So perhaps something broke loose, or started to, and this caused the entire vehicle to break up very quickly. Anyway, it's sad, but I'm sure SpaceX will keep trying and succeed.

I generally name stuff with some kind of description before launch, like "Mun base 1" or "Duna lander 1". Then, if they make it to orbit and work as expected, I'll change it to something a bit more poetic .

I turn over a few degrees right off the pad, then leave it. It usually ends up pretty flat by 45K on its own, if it's got a few fins at the back and isn't too bottom-heavy.

They were both great ways to waste huge amounts of money while accomplishing very little. But at least the Shuttle WORKED, and had a budget, so that it did manage to put some stuff in orbit. But just imagine where we'd be if we'd spent the same money on going to other planets and so on. That said, the Buran is a little prettier .

Slightly more to GET to Minmus, but a lot less to land and take off again. So yeah, you'll need less Delta-V overall if you head for Minmus.