A sad fact of society today. It's one of the main reasons I've become a shut-in; there are no people (I've starting calling them sheep of late) left worth talking to. Thank goodness for places like O-F where the world's semi-intelligent folk can talk.

well, if the Italian space plane is nice, maybe I will add it in the flight schedule to the station. We'll see

Sounds like a pretty nice name. Will think about it

Too bad about Buran, are you still looking for a winged spaceplane? The Italian team have what looks to be a doozy coming soon.

Phantom Mfg is looking forward to the spaceplane Loru has been working on, it's a pretty bird, but not very big. We will continue to use conventional rockets to put cargo/station modules into place, with a winged craft to be added later.
We are seriously looking at the DGEX, very nice to fly.

Good luck in your sample return missions!

Horizon? Sounds like a pretty descent name. Picture talking about a space station named Horizon, it is rather catchy, no?

Hark! A new procedural texture generator, I hear?

Thank Probe and the Holy Tuesday! I only have a few days left on my Lunarcell free trial.

This is the type of students our so-called colleges and universities are producing? That's a pretty sad state of affairs for the United States and humanity in general.

Oftentimes I have to be careful to *NOT* talk about Orbiter or I get labeled as 'strange' and 'un-normal' .. or 'unsociable' .. !

The root cause seems to be a laziness toward learning. Or immediate dismissal based on lack of serious or integrity of personality. Some such stuff.

The same thing is also happening here in Asia, people are more likely to abide to the "pop culture", the "stupid is the new smart" etc... And as Moach has said, it's mostly the education system's fault, since these systems actually discouraged learning, where people are getting the A++ marks by copying or parroting the teachers and lecturers, and worse yet, I have to learn medicine, where the oral examiners have a check list on what the students must talk about to pass (and to be careful to not explain it deeply), therefore, the tests is never about how deep a student understand the subject (never ever present your train of thoughts before an examiner) but rather, how much a student can follow and parrot his teachers.

i usually just sigh, with that famous "Picard and Riker double-Facepalm" in mind, then proceed to scratching such a person from my list of peers with whom i may have a real conversation

MTV has probably rotten his mind to a sludge years ago, back when it was "cool" to be stupid...

there's relief in knowing the fact that such person will probably wither in the looming poverty that will befall him in the wake of his inaptness to properly discern reality from, ehrm... stupid...

or worse yet - he'll end up in a purpose-ridden job doing something he mostly dislikes to no long-term avail of any kind...
most likely in something marketing-related, pretty much my idea of what hell must be like

in the most allarming cases, there's a good chance a Darwin Award may be amongst the highest glories such a person might come to achieve over his promisingly meaningless existance


yet i'm usually not bothered by people who speak or do things that are wrong in some way... as long as they are capable of understanding their mistake and learning from it - or at least prove sufficiently intelligent to take up an interested conversation over the matter....
i actually enjoy meeting such types - it's very satisfying to realize you've added something to a person's life

now, i find it grueling to live with people who are set off to live in alienation and frown upon the thought of learning something new - those deserve and get no patience whatsoever from me....


i blame schools in many ways (although not exclusively by a longshot) - the way things are thaught in classes appears to be devised with the sole purpose of making learning seem like the very opposite of fun - a purpose in which they unquestionably succeed....


perhaps in my misadventures over the course of school (having flunked thrice) i somehow managed to drag myself away from that whole "learning is bad" nonsense.... once i got into college - things were VERY, VERY different....

but i consider myself lucky... the example above of a person plummeting vertiginously towards the nadir of civilization is just an unfortunate example of the vast majority of folks....

that's how the general Brazillian population has finally managed to LITERALLY elect a CLOWN into congress.... his campaign was based on something like "i have no idea what a congressman does, but vote for me and i'll let 'ya know"

i guess people thoght that was "funny"

I just smile, shrug at them and leave them in their own world of idiocy.

i have yet to try that sometime! - nice flying, btw!

Congratz. Whenever I go to the moon, the furthest I can get is Lunar orbit, because I still haven't learned how to de-orbit.

Awesome Isaac, just awesome.

yes. I think we are

I think we're close and things are looking good!

Roger understand, while you are building your station, perhaps I'll plan where to land on the lunar surface.

No. Only the missions to the lunar surface. As soon as my missions to the MSSEU are done, I will start with the building of the new space station

Thanks ^^

Does this mean that the MSSEU is being cancelled, or postponed as well?