Cydonian Monk

Ultimately all 8 of the finalist sites are worthwhile and interesting targets, but personally I'd like to see them go for one of the Nili Fossae sites. Really rugged terrain with known mineral deposits and likely well exposed strata. We almost sent Curiosity there, and instead sent it to a boring area with nothing but boring rocks for it to be sarcastic about. Jerezo and Syrtis Major are also interesting targets, and all four of those sites are in one of the younger areas of the planet. As an aside, it irks me somewhat that none of the official maps I've seen for these "finalist" landing sites include locations of the Soviet Mars landers. Instead they only show those from the U.S. and occasionally Beagle 2 (which is on the eastern side of Isidis Planitia, near the cluster of 4 sites).

My first experience? It works perfectly. For me, for my VP at work, and for three other people I know that are using it. The only thing I've found that doesn't work is the config screen to change the background image of the lock screen. And that's a big "who cares" for me since I only see that screen once in the two seconds between boot-up and when I log in. If you like to waste electricity and leave your PC on all the time you may have a problem with that. (Boot times for Win10 are in the 2-3 second range for me, and most of that is in the EFI startup.) Offline single-player Solitaire is still free, and doesn't have ads (none that I've seen, though I only played five or six games). What has ads is the online multiplayer Solitaire, and you can get rid of the ads for $10/yr. Personally I think my XBox Live subscription should cover that, but as I don't see the point in Online Multiplayer SOLITAIRE I'm not really going to complain. That said, I'm lucky my Nvidia card uses a slightly older chipset, as it seems the newer chipsets had some problems on release day. Those issues appear to have since been fixed. MultiDisplay support was also strangely broken for one person I know, but Windows Update downloaded a new driver that fixed it shortly after reboot. YMMV.

Remarkably there are still RF (split and coax) to RCA, Component and/or HDMI adapters available. Check Amazon or your local Wal*Mart (or equivalent). WallyWorld always has decades old RF tuners whenever I dig through their electronics/tv gear section. Probably a little bit cheaper than a used VCR. You'll also find that RCA-out on lots of older VCRs may not work thanks to dead or dying capacitors. (Both of the audio-outs on my VCR are dead, and I'm too lazy/busy to crack it open to replace the dead caps. I also haven't watched a VHS tape in more than a decade....) You really might have trouble finding a new TV that will decode analog signals. The latest Samsung I bought (a small 27" that I use for X-Box LAN parties) will only tune to digital stations (3.1, 4.1, etc), and won't go to their analog equivalents. The tuner is probably still physically there but the TV's software won't let me get to it. That TV was only $100 though, so ya gets what ya pays for. If your TV is more than a couple years old you'll be fine. Obviously if your TV doesn't even have a coax in then that whole last paragraph is irrelevant.

There's a part of me that says Verhoeven's works are satirical masterpieces, and then there's a part of me that says he was just clueless. I can go either way on his other big sci-fi films (Robocop and Total Recall), but Doogie Howzer: Space "1940s-German-Bad-Guy" was so far from the book Starship Troopers that it completely flew around the point and made its own, new point. If anything it was satire on Heinlein's peculiar worldview. For that reason I can look at it as its own work. (Unlike Ender's Game, which just completely missed all the important points of the book and didn't try in the least to be original.) That said, Starship Troopers is a fun flick. I'm going to disagree here. While Clarke was focused more on the technical aspects of science fiction, Lem and Nolan are or were both heavy into the psychological nature of their works. If anything I think Nolan is very much like Lem (though he obviously works with a different medium), yet perhaps even more like a certain famous sci-fi author who's name rhymes with Phillip K. "Rick". That said, my reading of Lem is limited to what had been translated into English and was legal for import to the US in the mid-late 1990s. I've not read any of his works in the native tongue nor have I "made the rounds" through any of his works translated in this millennium. I'll get back to him once I'm done rereading the Mars Trilogy and enjoying modern Chinese sci-fi.

This is an interesting thought experiment. The theatre and film kid in me wants to rate things based on techincal and artistic aspects, ie: best overall film, whereas the person in me wants to play favorites. My favorite is simple. Worst is simple, with a catch that I'll explain below. Best? That's hard. I'll limit this to films I've seen 100% of. Favorite: Bridge on the River Kwai. Just a fantastic movie by one of the best in the industry, deliberate historical innacuracies aside. Well made, it was well paced before they cut out the intermission when they "restored" it, and really does well to capture all sides of the situation (more than I can say for the book). Best: I have to agree with IMDB here. The Shawshank Redemption is one of the best films, both in production and artistic quality, that I've ever seen. Middle: Groundhog Day. Probably the most average film of all time, but one I could still watch over and over and over. They say we're young and we don't know.... Worst: A student film I watched at an unnamed school in an unnoted year. I don't want to make the kid feel bad, so anonymity is preserved here to protect the hopefully unemployed (as a director). Worst: Transformers: Age of Extinction. This has bumped Battlefield Earth off my list as Worst of All Time. There are probably lots of mediocre and throughly terrible films that I've not seen that would replace some of the above, but it is what it is.

There's an option to use a "Full Screen Start Menu" in Windows 10. I forget which setting screen it's on, but I stumbled on it this past weekend. (That seems to behave identically to the Win8.1 slap screen, or whatever it was called.) And there's an option to change the background... that I think also includes the Start Menu? (there's certainly a registry setting for it).... But that settings screen is broken. Changing the desktop background works, but the screen to change the logon/lock screen background freezes up on me. Prolly be patched soon.

Ah yes, I knew I was forgetting one. They patched that mess in a hurry, but the whole mystique and crazy story behind how Paul Reiche and Fred Ford disappeared from society and completely dropped off the radar to finish the game and wouldn't ship it was so very interesting. Involved some yarn about Alaska and a private detective. So very good but so very, very buggy at first. The later CD version that shipped in a combo set with the original Star Control was much better in terms of glitchiness.

Today? Today I posted the second update from Year 4 for my Kanawha Space Program. Explosions! Crashes! Triumph! Jeb looking forlornly at the Mün and his rather disconnected and useless airplane wing! Very nice. Especially like the synchronized flying gif.

Kanawha Space Program Year 4 Update 2 - Slight Flight Anomalies Ok, so I was wrong. Year 4 will have 4 updates. Some more flying this time, a bit of rovering, and another trip to Minmus. Still in KSP v1.0.2 with these particular missions, which might explain the extreme range of the little R-1 jet. Enjoy! Feather 08 - Flying Mr. Bobak Another peculiar survey contract appeared in the inbox, this one to fly to "Bobak's Plain" and gather some surface samples. Also to fly above "Kerbonaut's Resignation" and take some pictures from the cockpit. (Gene couldn't recall any kerbonaut ever resigning, and was very curious as to the name.) A third stop on the trip included the ancient ruins at Kiza, which were situated along the flight path for the return trip (not really, but it made a good excuse). So the old R-1 test jet was fueled up, stocked with a day's supply of snacks and drinks, and Svetlana set out on Feather 08 to inspect TweetsOutLoud's Plain. In a plane. (Somewhere I have heard this before....) As it turns out, Bobak's Plain was actually a ridge splitting two lakes in the deep southern hemisphere. The Forgotten Islands, oft referred to as Kerbin's own New Zealand, are one of the least explored places on the planet on account of their remote location and general lack of interesting things. (What's there to see? Sheep? Grass? Lakes?) On account of the distance and direction, nearly the entire flight to the Forgotten Islands was over open water. More than long enough for Svetlana to listen to "I'm on a Plain" a few times. The site itself was generally unremarkable. Kerbonaut's Resignation turned out to be a small harbor at the far western end of the Forgotten Islands, while Bobak's Plain was just a short distance inland between East Bobak Lake and West Bobak Lake, jutting up a bit like a mohawk. Svetlana performed the survey of Resignation Harbor before bringing the R-1 in for a soft landing near the plain. (I can't complain.) She finished the survey work, left a flag, and spent some time relaxing in the serene and peaceful countryside near the Bobak Lakes before heading back North. The next stop was a visit to the Pyramids of Kiza, one of the few (only) anyiquity sites found on Kerbin. There was some debate as to the wisdom of having a jet land near such an important site, but it was quickly drowned out by the sound of a rocket launching and no one could remember what they decided. (I know it's wrong, but what should I do?) This was mostly a sight-seeing trip, and only scheduled so a flag could be left near the statue of Tut-un-Ker-Man. Following the flag planting Svetlana flew back to KSC. One contract complete, one more easter egg scratched off the list. Feather 09 - Jeb's Return to Flight It was the opinion of the flight surgeon and the other medical staff employed by the agency that Jebediah was fit to return to flight. He might still be a bit on the insane side, but then again so were the rest of the test pilots. To prepare him for his next planned spaceflight (Tokebeloke 2), and to allow him to refamiliarize himself with flight procedures, Gene assigned him to the Feather 09 flight to the old space center. The R-1 was cleaned out, fueled up, a new atmospheric scanner was strapped to it and Jeb was on his way West. The flight wasn't just to be an out and back. Instead the science team, and Bob specifically, was having Jeb complete a few tasks along the way. For starters, he was to stop at every new biome he crossed and test the new atmosphere fluid gizmo to take samples. Simple enough task. Jeb even managed to find a Mountains biome he could land in without destroying the plane. The old launch site at Sky's Reach, oft referred to as KSC2, had been abandoned for several generations now. Originally the lab of the reclusive Pedro Paulet Kerman, the site was later converted to be one of the earliest space launch platforms on the planet. (Rumors that it once been situated at the site of the present-day KSC were shouted down as madness.) A simple site with little more than a vertical assembly building, a launch pad and tower and a tracking station, it also was home to one of the better known monoliths on Kerbin. A monolith which Bob needed to ensure was undisturbed. Jeb approached the site from the east, circling around it once to get his bearings. The tracking station was separated from the launch facility by a small ridge, nothing he couldn't fly over easily enough. Jeb came in low and slow and coasted around the launch facility before he rolled over to the monolith. Undisturbed, same as the others had been. Jeb planted a flag to mark the spot and then set up camp. The trip had taken long enough that it was now dark at Cape Kerbal, and Jeb didn't see the sense in flying through the K2 mountain range at night in a jet that couldn't fly above 7km. So he spent the night until the glittering stars, much brighter out here in the cool mountain air, far from the lights of the cities. (Those oh so vast cities of Kerbin....) He blasted off and headed back East at first light. In all a very successful flight. Aside from the copious amounts of science gathered from the new atmospheric whizbang thing, Jeb was able to scratch two more easter eggs from the list. Feather 10 - Jeb's Folly There remained only one more known Monolith on Kerbin, and it wasn't in the friendliest of places. Though not quite as inaccessible as the one on the western slope of K2, the monolith on the continent to the SouthEast of KSC was still high up in the mountains. Up at the very top of the envelope for the R-1. And there was only one pilot who could be expected to make the landing. And so the R-1 was refueled, the atmospheric liquid gizmo was removed to reduce mass, Jeb ate a few snacks and then he was off. Officially this was a mission to inspect the badlands of Kerbin. Unofficially.... This monolith was the last possible explanation Bob had for the anomalous appearances of kerbals in orbit. (Which even he later admitted was a bit of a stretch.) Another dull flight across the open ocean. Thankfully this one was a bit shorter to cross, and the mountain range of interest soon appeared on the horizon. Jeb circled around the target site for a few minutes before he spotted the best approach. A nice, almost flat bit there near the top of the highest peak. One last pass showed some large boulders and gave the small jet a bit of turbulence, but that was nothing new. Still, the landing spot wasn't much, and the plane would be fighting against updrafts and the thin air. Jeb still thought it would be enough to drop his plane on to safely. It wasn't. So much for the third R-1. The crash had knocked out the radio and most of the other aircraft systems. (Jeb had discovered that tends to happen when the bulk of the aircraft is destroyed.) So he packed up what he needed from the cockpit, took as much of a supply of snacks as he could carry, grabbed a flag and set off to find this monolith. Jeb was found seven days later relaxing by a small lake some distance down the Eastern slope of the mountain. He was still a bit bruised from the crash, and though he wouldn't admit it more than a bit dehydrated, but he was otherwise ok. He thanked the rescue team profusely, and would eventually give them a signed print of one of the many photos he had taken while atop the mountain. A peak which is still to this day known as Jeb's Folly. Dogwood 5 - Driving and Deriving The Dogwood 5 was the first rovers from the Scratch program to go into full production. Having been miniaturized and tested as well ad they could, Wernher and the engineering team decided it was time for field trials. And what better place than on a low-gravity body where a wipeout or rover faceplant was less likely to be fatal? As with nearly everything these days, the Dogwood 5 had an ulterior motive. Intended to be used by the Tokebeloke 2 crew, the two crew members would be off driving while the third, ostensibly either Jeb or Bob, would walk to a nearby anomaly site to inspect it. The ore scanners had identified a dense object resting on the surface that greatly resembled the monoliths Jeb had been flagging on Kerbin. Closer inspection was necessary. The Dogwood 5 itself was an easy delivery. Launched atop a Bluejay booster, the Dogwood 5 was a two part ship: Traditional lander with a service bay, and a rover hidden inside. The transfer out to Minmus was absolutely perfect. With the landing site known, the flight plan and orbital insertion were planed out before time. (As opposed to the "let's wing it" method the agency usually employed.) There were a few nervous moments immediately following touchdown when crews were uncertain whether or not the rover could make it out of the service bay. And there were more than a few screams when the rover shot out of the bay like a greased pig at the slaughterhouse. Squeeeeaaaaa! they could here it scream, all the way from Kerbin. (Or maybe that was Gene making the horrid noise.) Wernher had his hands over his eyes. Linus had his over his ears. Mortimer had his over his mouth, covering the huge smile. (He was the only one in the office pool that bet the rover would explode.) Eventually it came to a rest, upright, and in once piece. Everyone in mission control breathed a huge sigh of relief, except Mortimer. Mortimer instead sighed in resignation and went back to his ledgers. Curses, foiled again. All was in place for the Tokebeloke 2! Tokebeloke 2 - It's Jeb's Fault The Tokebeloke 2 was a special launch for Jebediah as it represented his official return to spaceflight. The accident review board that convened following the crash of the Feather 10 found it to be an unavoidable circumstance brought about by a sudden updraft while Jeb was on final approach to the mountain top. As a bonus Jeb had yet to mention spotting any black blobs or other mysterious hallucinations, so the flight surgeon was quick to clear him for the trip to Minmus. (And the extra $20 Bob had slipped the surgeon had nothing at all to do with his decision.) The crew for this launch included Jebediah Kerman as pilot, Rama Kerman as mission commander and Engineer, and Grazy Kerman as the tag-along Scientist. Launched atop the Robin booster just like the Tokebeloke 1, the T-2 was enjoying a picture perfect ascent... ... until suddenly it wasn't. A fault developed at some point following the first stage burnout and jettisoning, and before any of the crew were aware of what was going on the launch escape system had wrenched them away from the rapidly disintegrating spacecraft. The crew was recovered from the waters a few kilometers out from the abandoned island runway, shaken but uninjured. Jebediah Kerman was now 0 for his last 2 flights. vicious rumours were forming about how he was a bad luck charm, and that any mission he was on was doomed to failure. Crews were starting to openly question whether they wanted to fly with the dangerous and cursed kerbal. Tokebeloke 3 - It's Still Jeb's Fault So naturally Jeb was assigned to the Tokebeloke 3, along with Rama and Grazy. Gene and the administration were adamant - there was no such thing as "cursed" kerbals, at least provided the Tokebeloke 3 safely reached orbit. Which it did. Orbit of Kerbin. Orbit of Minmus. All exactly according to plan. The landing site for the Tokebeloke 3 was of course the same as the landing site for the Dogwood 5 and its rover. Jeb pulled the lander up on his targeting computer and worked up the numbers for the descent burn, making sure to run them by Rama first. This was the moment of truth for Jeb - could he still land a craft? Or would the second trip to the little green mystery end in a fiery explosion? Grazy was oblivious to the danger, but Rama would later admit to being as scared as she had ever been. So scared she didn't notice when Jeb turned off the engines, pushed through the two of them sitting in the upper seats, and made his way gleefully out of the hatch. To Grazy it was still too good to be true. A simple scientist? Who used to be a tourist? On another world? Euphoria! There was a short ceremony after landing, but no official flag planting (for some reason no one at Mission Control could adequately explain). Unbeknownst to the crew, the general public had decided the mission was cursed. No one wanted to watch the most veteran of kerbonauts die in a horrible accident seven days away from home, so everyone opted to watch the landing highlights once the mission was over. Never one to follow orders, Jeb had managed to sneak an extra flag along for the trip to plant at the landing site. So once the cameras were off and the real mission was set to begin, the three kerbonauts gathered to plant their secret flag and conduct their secret little landing ceremony. All was right with the universe. Meanwhile the official flag and landing plaque was to be placed near the Dogwood 5 lander. It was the opinion of the mission planners that future generations would be more likely to find the lander than they would a lone flag atop a hill of ice cream, and they wanted the plaque to be seen by tourists hundreds of years from now. So, a Jeb jetted off to the rover, he carried with him he had the mission flag and landing plaque, ready to place it near the Dogwood 5 lander. He had something else in mind. One more easter egg down. Jeb spent the better part of half an hour inspecting the strange monolith, but as far as he could tell there was no difference between it and the nes on Kerbin. He set up a few cameras around the site for Bob's team and made his way back to the rover. Mission complete. Rama and Grazy had finished the science tasks by the time he was back at the lander, and they were ready to take the small rover out for a test drive. Mission planners had decided to limit the range for this drive to 5 kilometers from the landing site, in case Jeb would need to fly out in the Tokebeloke 3 to pick them up. Rama gleefully ignored the plan. Driving around Minmus was just too much fun! And the little trip was over faster than anyone would have liked. Much like the previous crew, Rama, Jeb and Grazy spent the night on the surface of Minmus. Grazy made sure to take another surface sample at night, just to compare to the sample from when they had landed. Liftoff took place just as the first rays of light from Kerbol glistened over the dark green ridges of Minmus. Jeb nudged the throttle up slowly, being careful to not damage the rover or knock over their secret flag. So far everything had gone exactly according to... no, not to plan. In fact Jeb and Rama had chucked the mission checklist out once they were in Kerbin orbit. So far everything had gone exactly according to their dreams, which is all a kerbal could ask for. Eight days later and they were back at Kerbin. With the Tokebeloke 1 having failed to aerocapture on its first attempt, Jeb brought them in at 32km, hopefully targeting a landing at Kerbal Space Center. As it so happens, a periapsis of 32km is sufficient to capture at Kerbin, but not to bring the craft down where Jeb wanted. They skipped once, glided back up to 60km, and then came down again on the Southern Continent. Without their service module their landing was now up to fate. And then something exploded. Jeb tried desperately to divine their location, but the flight computer had gone dark when the mystery component exploded. He watched the terrain through the small periscope next to his seat, hoping to see a landmark. A tree. A forest. A lake. Anything that looked familiar, but all he could see was smoke and hot plasma. And then suddenly he started laughing like a madkerb. "Folly!" he screamed. "Folly! A ha ha ha ha!!" Rama and Grazy, both convinced Jeb had finally cracked, struggled forward in their cushions to look out their windows. They were near a mountain. A mountain with a flag atop it. A mountain Jeb was rather familiar with. The landing was rough, and the capsule was dragged slowly down the side of the mountain by the three heavy chutes. Rama was quick to cut them free, and they settled into the loose snow and rubble. Jeb again was wasting no time, and was quickly through the hatch, his pressure suit long forgotten. He crawled atop the precariously perched capsule to take in their surroundings. Yes, that was most definitely Jeb's Folly. He might even know the whereabouts of a small lake where they could wait for the arrival of the recovery team. Fate, it would seem, is not without a sense of humour.

Well, I never said SpacePort wasn't deserving of being brutally murdered, just that such was the final outcome.

Fallout: New Vegas takes the cake. EVERY SINGLE THING was glitched out when that game first shipped, and it hasn't gotten much better afterwards. Quest items glitching through the ground? Check. Main story quests that were impossible to complete because the player would glitch through the ground in front of the quest point? Check. Or a bomb that wasn't there yet blew up anyway? Check. Or every deathclaw in the game suddenly teleporting to the top of Black Mountain just after the player finished an epic fight with a bunch of super mutants? Double Check. Skyrim comes a close second, but only because of the first patch. Orbital dragons? Check. Dragons flying backwards and breathing fire out of their arse? Check. Quests that (are still today, four years later) glitched out and impossible to complete because you picked up the quest item before you had the quest? Check. I'm sure I'm forgetting something from my youth, but the code quality of shipped games from twenty years ago was generally far better. In part because games were considerably less complex, but also because distributors were quicker to reject horridly broken games. (I do recall some pretty badly broken fan imports/subs of japanese games, but I can't blame the devs for that.)

I think perhaps it's less that people want it and more that it was promissed on Day 1, back when SpacePort was brutally murdered? While I've found ckan to be very useful for RSS/RO (aside from some horribly failed updates; there's also the mob mentality of ckan that quite frankly turns me off.... but this isn't a ckan rant thread), I'm doubtful CurseClient could replicate that due to so few core mods using Curse. Yet I can still see the benefit of it - it's a huge time saver and really bloody simple. And options and competition are always good. Keeps people from becoming complacent.

Every time I unlock Drama and Poetry in Civilization V and the narrator starts into the Hitchcock quote, I'm reminded of my time as a mod on a MUSH. "What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out." There are so few dull bits on RP forums (and the like) that it eventually overwhelms you, and the entirety of it becomes dull. Too much Drama. I agree with Sampa. Thanks mucho, mods.

Note: Going forward I'm going to make smaller yet more frequent and more focused posts. Year 4 will be split into at least three parts, this first part covering the program's first landings on Minmus. After Year 4 the focus will shift from farming science points to one of exploration and infrastructure building, so there will be some extremely busy years and some years in which nothing happens. This slight format tweak should make posts easier to follow and easier for me to write up. Kanawha Space Program Year 4 Update 1 - The Minmus Landing Proof of Ore It was hypothesized by Wernher and the science team that considerable insight into the very nature of existence could be gained by visiting Minmus. Discussion was also taking place aa to what to do with the mineral resources of the small mint green world. The initial orbital scans had shown trace amounts of refine-able ore, so proofing missions were needed to confirm. Thus were born Dogwoods 3 and 4. Officially sanctioned by the Mineral Reclamation Division of the Space Agency (also known as Eagle Corp), the two Dogwood landers were in reality operated by the Science Division. Most of the hardware on the landers was technically science equipment, even the ore proofers. The Mineral Division would have plenty of chances to fly their flag in the future. Launched atop the venerable Tanager launch vehicle, the two tiny new Dogwood probes had zero issues in their transit to Minmus. Dogwood 3 landed in the high Midlands above the Great Flats while Dogwood 4 landed in the Lesser Flats. Both helped refine the science team's understanding of the ore situation on Minmus. It also made it clear that returning surface samples from Minmus was now a top priority. Scratching at Roving While the Minmus landers were under construction, the Research and Development crews were busy testing new toys for future exploration: Rovers. Officially named the Scratch project, these rovers would see eventual use on Minmus and the Mün. Several different designs were under consideration, along with a few methods for deploying the rovers to their targets. Yet first they would need to prove themselves on Kerbin. Scratch 01 was assigned to Jebediah, who was temporarily grounded on account of the mysterious black spots he was describing. (And for crashing planes repeatedly.) So it seemed a harmless thing to allow his to test the XR-01-A large rover, and to have him visit the monolith at Kerbal Space Center. Following this brief visit (and inspection of the monolith) he drove out to the flag at Grazy's Vista. Having finished his tests he then returned to the hanger, parking the to rover without damage. First roving complete. Next came tests of a smaller rover design, the XR-02. Intended to be deployed inside a 2.5m service bay, the XR-02 was small by necessity. Initial tests with the XR-02 during Scratch 02 showed serious clipping issues, which made extraction from the service bay difficult. The liberal application of elbow grease and jetpack propellent allowed Mind and Jermin to eventually free the rover, though they soon discovered a new defect: front heaviness. It would seem kerbals have some serious mass. A few small revisions were made, and Bill and Rama had complete success with the Scratch 03. Complete success aside from a slight case of continued front heaviness. It was decided following these tests to disable the motors and brakes on the front wheels. (A decision which would prove problematic in the future.) Plans were made to prepare a rover for both the Mün and Minmus. Tokebeloke 1 - The Minmus Landing Plans were still being drawn up for a direct-ascent Type-B mission to the Mün, the trouble being the beast needed to place such a large craft into low-Kerbin orbit. On the other hand the hardware for three-kerbal spacecraft that would be used for the landing was mostly ready. After reviewing the numbers for Minmus, it was decided to press ahead with the Tokebeloke Program and use the direct ascent spacecraft launched atop a smaller rocket: the Robin. The Minmus landings would also help them prove once and for all whether it was actually made out of mint ice cream. (Wernher and Linus say yes, Gene and Bob say no. Bill was drawing up a list of best toppings for if it turned out to be yes, but is hungry either way. Jeb says it must be, why else go? Val thinks the men are all idiots. Grazy just shook her head and went back to the science lab.) While the Tokebeloke payload was pushing the Robin launch vehicle to its limits, it was still a relatively lightweight craft. The entire package, launcher, lander and return capsule included, was a mere 147 tonnes. Valentina, Bill and Bob were selected for the first flight, conveniently excluding the most vocal members of the "pro ice cream" camp. They had been hoping for the next Mün landing, but none could say no to the opportunity of being the first kerbals on Minmus. (Jebediah was still grounded pending final review of his psychiatric evaluation, and at the time of the launch was recovering from Feather 10. Though to the end he blamed the anti ice cream administration for excluding him.) The launch was a shining example of success. The fiddly bits around the legs were enclosed in a fairing which was jettisoned along with the launch escape cap shortly after the first stage was dropped. The second stage carried them to orbit where it was left as a monument for future generations to worry about. The third stage served as both the transfer stage and the descent stage, eventually crashing into the soft surface of Minmus. Finally, the landing was conducted by the return vehicle's main engine. The crew spent several orbits with their science experiments and observing the surface before they set up the landing. The observations, which as always had to be conducted while on EVA, were shared among the three crew members. On the other hand the science experiments were positioned along the ladder from the capsule, well within reach of a kerbal on EVA. Unfortunately for Bob this meant quite a bit of EVA time. The site selected for this first historic Minmus landing was along the shores of the Lesser Flats. "The Minmus Landing" was the winner of a contest amongst schoolchildren for naming the site. Or at least it was once the administration removed "Ice Cream Flats", "Minty Smooth", and "Moldy Teddy Bear" from the votes. The flag planting ceremony was televised and watched by nearly every kerbal alive. The site's proximity to the nearby slopes and midlands allowed the mission's science officer to collect samples and reports from three different biomes. The first biome wasn't as close as Bob would've liked - though he later admitted the jetpacking was fun. Val decided to exercise her option as mission commander and took the second biome run. (She missed the landing on her return.) Not wanting to miss out on the fun Bill decided to take a quick trip to the top of a nearby plateau, only to discover it was the same midlands biome Bob had visited on his first flight. Nice views though. The team spent several hours on the surface, long enough for Bill to taste the surface samples (they were decidedly NOT ice cream of any flavour) and for all to take a short nap. The long duration stay also allowed them to observe a full solar cycle, trying to determine if the flats became somewhat less solid during the day. (Answer: also no.) Still no explanation for why the little green ball appeared to be something which should melt and yet was completely solid. With their science tasks and taste testing complete, Val and the crew packed up the ship and set off towards Kerbin. ETA: 7 days. This was where the first and only problem with the mission occurred. A miscalculation on the reentry trajectory meant their capsule skipped off the atmosphere. (39km is insufficient for a return from Minmus.) And with the service module having already been jettisoned the three kerbals were stuck in orbit with only the supplies they had on hand and no way to control where they might land on the second pass. Luck was with them, and the second interface with Kerbin's atmosphere was enough to bring them down safely in the ocean. There were a few nervous minutes as the entirety of the ablator on the heatshield was stripped away, but no burn-throughs occurred. The crew of three landed safely 17 days after their launch, though they were quite some distance from the recovery teams. Val and Bob graduated to Level 2 following the flight (Bill had yet to land on the Mün and failed to plant a flag on Minmus), and the entire mission returned 1279 science points. Overall a huge success. A second visit to the little green ball of not ice cream was already being planned.

Out of curiosity which Nvidia card do you have? It was ok with mine, but I also downloaded new Nvidia software right before the upgrade.

My 'net's been down most of the last few days, but it sprang back to life sometime after 11PM last night. So I decided to fire up my Win8.1 box and see about this Win-Ten-Ten thing. Registered to reserve my copy. No tricks, no force update. Ten minutes later it had downloaded and was ready. Twenty minutes later it was up and running. Only issue was when my Razer Chroma keyboard tried to install its drivers to the Win10 install session... which freaked the keyboard out but didn't affect Win10. Thankfully it rebooted again before I needed to type anything. No video driver issues, though I updated right before Win10 (I'm using a GTX-770 if that helps anybody). KSP runs great. KSP RSS/RO using opengl mode runs great. It probably still crashes every two hours as KSP is wont to do, but it ran well for the fifteen sleepy minutes I tried each install. This is probably the most responsive Windows OS I've used since Win95+Plus, and it's still got all the good bits of Win7. Not enough to bring me back from UNIXland (where it's always sunny and the command prompt smiles err'day), but it feels like a nice OS. No Cortana for me though, since I opted out of all the data harvesting stuff - this is just a gaming system. Oh, one last thing: Solitaire has an online multiplayer mode that (apparently) costs $9.99/year or is ad supported. No, that's not an April Fool's Day joke. Multiplayer Solitaire. O.o The offline game didn't hurl any full-screen video ads at me, so no pitchfork just yet.

Thanks! I was originally thinking I might have the first half of Year 4 up tonight, but my home internet has been acting up making it tough to work on the images (which I sync from my Windows PC via Dropbox), let alone upload them. So it's looking like sometime this weekend. Edit: 'net came back shortly after I posted that, still haven't started image editing though. (I've at least got part 1 mostly typed up.) Unless Comcast goes south again today, then maybe tonight? At some point we'll get all this flood damage from May fixed and then we'll have a hurricane.

Today? Today I fixed most of the issues in my Saturn 5 Apollo RSS/RO ascent profile and got my Trans-Lunar Injection burn shortfall down to within 120m/s. That's enough that I could complete the burn with the primary lunar equipment (ie, the command module) and successfully enter lunar orbit. Which means I was able to (finally) put a "kerbal" on the Moon in RSS/RO. (At least using the RSS/RO FASA Apollo 11 craft file. I'll build my own later.) Woot! We're on the Moon!

At present I prefer my customized Windows 8, but I'll keep an eye out for what works and what doesn't. If all the games I play on my Win8 box still work for most folks on Win10, I'll probably upgrade. Might wait until a month or two before the free upgrade period closes. (It's not like I use that box for anything except games.) My Win7 machines are staying on 7, and I doubt we'll ever use Win10 at work.

Fine by me, share it however you like. Since we seem to be sharing RSS launch sites, here's a configuration for Brazil's Alcântara launch facility, situated a couple degrees South of the equator. (It still needs rotated so 90° is East, which I might do tonight. I'll edit this post when I fix it. It could also use a less-lazy description.) Feel free to drop this into your RSS configs or module manager it in as you see fit. Site { name = br_alcantara displayName = BR - Alcantara description = Brazil. PQSCity { KEYname = KSC latitude = -2.373056 longitude = -44.396389 repositionRadiusOffset = 98 repositionToSphereSurface = false lodvisibleRangeMult = 6 } PQSMod_MapDecalTangent { radius = 20000 heightMapDeformity = 80 absoluteOffset = 45 absolute = true latitude = -2.373056 longitude = -44.396389 } }

Today? Today I killed Jeb, Bill and Bob in my RSS/RO Test save. I've been in a bit of a funk and didn't feel much like building anything, so I just loaded up the default RSS-ified FASA Saturn 5 and hurled the big three at the Moon. They might have had the chance to land had I not been ~400m/s short on the ascent and TLI (I blame Jeb). Given their severe lack of ability to complete the Lunar capture burn (to an altitude that would result in a safe landing) I decided to instead skip the Moon and return to Earth... but only after grazing the surface of the Moon at an altitude of 17km. (Only 2.4km from the surface at closest approach! Eeek!!) Happy ending, right? Nope. (Pretty sure I gave that away in the first sentence.) Capsule overheated to 100% immediately at atmospheric interface and then exploded somewhere around 90km. And then my game crashed, but only after it had autosaved. Yay. No worries though - plenty more JB&B Clones to go around. We think.

That's not how it works. The precision of your variables doesn't automatically increase because you're targeting a platform with a 64-bit address range instead of a 32-bit address range. If you're specifically using a 64-bit or 32-bit int, it'll still have the same level of precision on a 64-bit or a 32-bit compile.

Kerbals originally came from Laythe. Their entire civilization was wiped out as their cities sank beneath the waves following some unknown catastrophe. Kerbin, a planet they had once visited and attempted to colonize (as evidenced by the desert ruins) became their only point of refuge.

Now this bit from the Wikipedia article on Point Hope is interesting: It's like they couldn't take no for an answer so went ahead with it anyway. The specifics of Point Hope are a bit different than I had remembered. It seems all of their detonations were to have been at a shallow depth.... Which is obviously a very bad idea. I'm still not convinced a deeper blast without significant outgassing would produce more radiation and/or pollution than the supposed coal operations would have, especially since the details of the devices in question aren't available. (Coal is really dirty stuff.) Chagan and Sedan are proof enough that a shallow blast would not work for the intended purpose: A radioactive harbor is useless..... Harbors need stevedores and crews for the ships and squishy humans types don't agree so much with radiation. Then again the Soviet Kraton-3 and Globus-1 tests aren't shining examples of such an approach working well. I've not seen any data on the Soviet's other hundred+ exploratory detonations though - it'd be interesting to see numbers on radioactivity levels three decades removed.

Given all the variables I don't particularly see the issue with it. Provided the bombs are buried deeply enough the negligible amounts of radiation released would be contained, though admittedly there would be some seepage into nearby groundwater. Assuming the harbor was indeed being developed for coal and oil export, the town would have seen several orders of magnitude more pollution, even radioactive pollution, from the coal alone. In this scenario the coal is much, much worse for the nearby inhabitants than the five small bombs would have been. That isn't to say I'd like to see this done, but if using cleaner low-yield devices it might even be a cleaner alternative than using oil or coal-powered cranes to excavate the harbour. Certainly cheaper.