NovaSilisko

A Brief Telling of the Brief History of West Alabama On January 17th, 1896, Henry Kissenger was elected governor of the western half of Alabama. This move came as a surprise to many, who had never heard of the man - but he later went on to propel West Alabama into a new age of prosperity, seceding very quickly from the Union, with Kissenger becoming its president.. By 1909, it had the second highest GDP of any nation besides the United States which surrounded it. Kissinger grew ill, however, and rumors of a replacement quickly spread around the nation's capitol before it was announced that his son, John Henry Kissenger would follow in his place - and indeed he did upon Kissenger's death in 1932. By World War II, West Alabama was being pressured heavily by the US into joining its military endeavors in Europe and the Pacific, but it repeatedly refused. The US mostly ignored the small country until July 5th, 1946, when a minor incident at the northern border looked as though it was about to escalate to a full-blown conflict. The Soviet Union, however, announced it was forming a defense agreement with the small nation in exchange for unlimited access to its scientific and technological knowledge. With this, the US reluctantly backed off and the Soviets enjoyed many advances as a result of West Alabamanian technology, while the West Alabamanians were allowed to govern themselves as they wished (as opposed to the requirement of adopting communist policies, as Australia and Liberia had been forced to do for their defense agreements) However, this agreement was not without its problems. In 1961 when a West Alabamanian rocket slated to launch the first man into space exploded on the launch pad, killing the cosmonaut Vladislav Aleksander and several ground crew. The Soviets placed the blame solely on West Alabama - and, although relations between the two improved in the years after this, two more accidents in 1989 tested relationships once more. First was the complete loss of the Mir space station after a West Alabamanian-manufactured resupply spacecraft impacted the station at a high velocity, killing all on board. A month later, an oil drilling rig off the Soviets' eastern shore exploded, killing 40 of its 57 crew, with the cause traced to an entire line of West Alabamanian fire suppression systems which had apparently not undergone any testing whatsoever in an effort to cut manufacturing costs. As before, the Soviets placed the blame completely on West Alabama. This time, however, relationships broke down and ended with a complete severing of diplomatic relations in 1991, shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union. The US saw this as a prime opportunity to resume its attempts at re-acquiring West Alabama and all its technology, and eventually launched an occupation force in December of 1999. On January 1st, 2000, West Alabama announced its complete and total surrender to the United States, ending the short and strange history of this tiny nation. - Excerpt from "Bite-Sized History, vol. 3" by Jameson Hodgekins, Random House books, 2007, all rights reserved.

, and had exploded

True, quite often :c The user below me has looked directly into the sun without any apparent ill effects

Both map and tracking.

It won't be coming on any weekend, or a friday for that matter, I can tell you that. That always ends bad because nobody's around on the weekends except under special circumstances.

I had the same reaction...

Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had the same idea, and they turned out great...

Mike did some tweaks to the texture in his spare time, hopefully over the next couple updates we can give normal maps to the rest of the system.

Yes. Water hasn't been touched, it's just the seabed texture being slightly different near KSC (some rocky surfaces near the steep parts). Not sure how you can get "water physics implemented" out of "extremely minor texture change"

Here are a couple of the strange happenings on the Apollo missions Apollo 10: Apollo 11: Apollo 16: Source http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/mission_trans/apollo11.htm There's a "select a mission" thingy at the bottom, and you can grab PDF transcripts of all pre-shuttle missions. As you may expect, there can be some sailor speak in there, so keep that in mind.

It happened a lot, but usually when the astronauts weren't in direct contact with the ground (or at least thought they werent, John Young's "farting on the moon" incident, as an example) Also, there are transcripts of all Shuttle and Apollo missions, based on recorders in the spacecraft (I think?), and there is a LOT of weird stuff on there, as well as... colorful language. I'll have to dig them up again sometime and post some of the stranger tidbits. As for cosmonauts, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_T-10-1

Jeb's on his way to the stars.

That looks nice, but it seems really low-poly. I count 12 sides on that, while usually for things that size, 24 sides are used.

It's best if you just don't pay attention to the physics in the half-life universe - they're not really intending it to be realistic, as most of HL1 shows

I like to imagine that whole scene took place during the few minutes before they fell back down, the moon just wasn't in frame.

Just a heads up - you should look up info on "smoothing groups". Right now, all of your models are using one smoothing group, which accounts for their strange "soft" appearance.

That was mostly a design decision, to give some easier places to land since they're completely flat.

This is incorrect. The wiki is 99% fan-driven. My general idea for laythe's atmosphere is about 15% oxygen (kerbal equivalent of course), the remainder being some form of strong greenhouse gas produced by volcanoes, which in turn are produced by the same mechanisms that produce Io's volcanos (to be added) As for the temperature, as has been said, the temperature model isn't done yet. The temperatures for planets are currently set in a curve based on altitude (if they have an atmosphere), but aren't in any real-world unit. Kerbin has a similar problem, the temperature is the same at the equator as at the poles.

Notice that it's not actually his account, though. The real one is @Cmdr_Hadfield

There is already a thread on this exact subject http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/28451-Could-Laythe-actually-exist-with-real-physics , let's just keep it to that one for the sake of tidiness.

These are amazing, I especially like the Ike probe (http://imageshack.us/a/img707/3137/ikeq.jpg) Lava (dwarf) planet won't be happening for .20 by the way, no new planets are coming soon - it's gonna wait until we have discovery mechanics so you have to look around for new things (other than the biggest and brightest planets)

I prefer to change it up every so often. Today it's Hank Hill.

It's orbiting the sun on its own path, so even if the shuttles were still flying a crewed repair is a non-option. It wasn't designed to be serviceable, anyway. (Old image so launch date is outdated, but the orbit is the same)