nudge

Probably the most complex structure ever built by humans which is slowly approaching its retirement... I wonder if we'll replace it with another constantly manned outpost in space. Bigelow Commercial Space Station seems to be the closest replacement for ISS; after all they have been testing an experimental module for over two years now and it's expected to stay attached to ISS for two more years at least. Axiom Space are also working on a similar autonomous space station. Once viable and affordable launch vehicles are readily available (SpaceX and Blue Origin are developing reusable rocket ships), there will be a big breakthrough especially when it comes to commercial space flight and commercial space stations. However, there are by far more interesting concepts and ideas being developed as the potential "next step". There are plans for a Deep Space Gateway, a lunar orbit space station which is intended to be used a jumping point to the exploration of the solar system. Going to the Moon itself is another big one, with various governments and private agencies and corporations planning to do that in the near future, and it's possible that we'll have a permanent Moon base relatively soon. Asteroid mining. Manned missions to Mars. I think we're entering the new golden age of Space Exploration at last; along with the usual suspects (i.e. USA, Europe, Russia), other countries have high ambitions and plans in development too, especially China and India. So exciting.

Ticktum is a twat; that doesn't need further proof. I didn't know that it essentially ruined Collard's F1 career before it had a chance to properly start though... I've seen the name occasionally in GT and touring car racing; but never connected it with that complete mad move by Ticktum.

Glück im Unglück...

What a weird shape that thing has! It's like the spaceship from Arthur Clarke's Rendezvouz with Rama

Hope you enjoy it as much as I do, let me know what you think! Also, not sure if you started the game already, but if not, you might want to set the difficulty a bit higher... I selected the easiest option as I thought I'd be too overwhelmed, but I find myself well ahead of the AI players.

Well apparently the interest in Colombia Hills lies particularly in the hot spring deposits there, but I'm surprised by its inclusion simply because other areas have been evaluated by the scientists themselves as having more potential. That said, it's not surprising considering how conservative and risk-averse NASA are (the area is already surveyed by Spirit; one of the previous rover on Mars) and they probably believe it would be useful to make a follow up on Spirit's collected data there previously and examine the site more thoroughly. Definitely makes sense from a geologist's point of view. Scientists might be extremely capable in their area of expertise, but they are also human... And sadly, politics play a big role in science; particularly in academia and research institutes; the bigger the institution, the more political it gets... At any rate, this is going to be exciting!

Definitely very lucky to still be alive, but it truly is a credit to the engineers of the car as well. She went airborne under speed of almost 280 km/h, backwards, after already being involved in another crash, went through the catch fence and barriers, hit the photographers' bunker HEAD ON and then landed on the ground again. That somebody would somehow survive it seems unbelievable. A lot of luck and great engineering.

Jezero and NE Syrtis are two primary targets at any rate; they ranked 1st and 2nd in the landing sites assessment workshop when those potential options (and six others) were evaluated. It's a tough choice for sure, as Jezero crater being a former river delta is assumed to have better chance of preserved traces of ancient life, while NE Syrtis has better accessibility. I'm not sure why they put Columbia Hills on the final list instead of Eberswalde crater and Mawrth Wallis though, considering that the latter two got much better evaluation in all criteria.

There are actually four options to choose from; not three as the article claims... They are missing Midway, the last candidate to be added to the list of potential landing sites and it's situated roughly between Jezero crater and NE Syrtis, making it a very interesting choice as it would allow to explore two landing sites instead of one. It's not an easy travel from one to the other though, so I think NASA will choose Jezero crater instead. Live press conference is scheduled for 17:00 GMT tomorrow when the official announcement will be made.

Yes Civ IV and Beyond the Sword expansion is necessary!

No, it's been first announced 10 years ago and is still being updated, last update was released in June this year and it's still in active development (fully playable though!) It's seriously class, I've never seen or played anything like this before. The level of detail is unbelievable; you literally start as a band of hominids and have to research pretty much everything from scratch, even things like gathering wild berries or developing a language. I'm currently in year 58000 BC (i.e. almost 150000 years have passed from where I started), and I just invented the plough and the pulley and learned to do irrigation... It truly feels like an anthropological study of humanity dressed as a game; I wish we had something like that in history classes haha. It's overwhelming, but in a good sense. Seriously, I can't recommend it highly enough! Here's a link to the mod page: https://www.moddb.com/mods/caveman2cosmos

Update on others injured in the accident: Thankfully it seems to be better than first feared!

Undergoing surgery tomorrow; posted an update on her Twitter:

The droid wars incoming.

Yes "only" back pain apparently, so that's definitely a good sign! She's also very young, so a full recovery is much more likely either way. Gute Besserung!

Nothing official yet, only that she is conscious and has been hospitalised for further examination. Same about the other driver (Tsuboi) involved in the crash that sent her flying, and a marshall and two photographers all appear to have survived the accident. There might be serious injuries (in fact I'd be surprised if there aren't), but the fact that all five are alive and conscious is a good sign for sure... Big props for the car engineers; to keep the driver alive in a huge crash like that is a big feat. The roll hoop seem intact and the whole cockpit looks better than one would expect, and it's not really design to survive an impact like that... EDIT: spinal fracture officially confirmed just as I was typing this. this is awful hope she makes a full recovery. This and Wickens' crash are easily the worst in recent years.

Another angle, even worse. Look at that speed before she hits the barrier mid air

My god what a horrible crash in the main race. It's Sophia Floersch going airborne and landing into the barriers/photographers hut. This is awful Early reports say she's ok but at least two people critically injured. @Tommy

Goal of the year material

It did provide a huge amount of new data; over 2600+ exoplanets found during its time of operation I believe... Kepler's follow up mission called TESS has already been launched though, it will explore and analyse an area almost 400 times larger than the one covered by Keppler, and will identify primary targets for James Webb Space Telescope which will hopefully launch in two years. I wish stuff like this was given more attention by media...

Rollercoaster Tycoon was class! As for SimCity, I generally love city building and simulation, but never got into it for some reason... It was all about Civ, Age of Empires, Pharaoh, Caesar (and the rest of Sierra series) and Tropico for me. Funnily enough I didn't even have a PC until I started uni, used to play at a friend's and later at my boyfriend's where I learnt to enjoy watching other people play ... Good times.

seriously? I'm not much of a gamer but I quite enjoy it every once in a while (mostly city/empire building and strategy) and Civilization is definitely one of the best games ever for me... Spent hours on Civ II years ago haha.

So I have a short break from work and haven't got any plans, and thought I'll play some Civ IV. To make things interesting, I decided to download a mod that I've heard a lot about in the past but never got around to actually trying it out. Well... Damn, my mind is blown; the scope of the mod is absolutely insane! It's called Caveman2Cosmos and the name says it all - it covers over 200000 years of history where you start as a prehistoric tribe of wandering homo-sapiens and strive to develop it into an intergalactic empire throughout the eras of history. It has over 1000+ technologies, an unknown number of new units, buildings, religions, nations, civics, traits and completely new game feature called "properties" which brings crime, diseases, tourism, education into play. It's going to take me forever, but it's amazing... Just look at those technology trees for each era (and that's not a recent pic so the mod has even more of them now): Prehistoric 200 000 BCE - 6000 BCE Ancient 6000 BCE - 2000 BCE Classical 2000 BCE - 600 CE Medieval 600 CE - 1300 CE Renaissance 1300 CE - 1700 CE Industrial 1700 CE - 1900 CE Modern 1900 CE - 1990 CE Information 1990 CE - 2050 CE Nanotech 2050 CE - 2150 CE Transhuman 2150 CE - 2300 CE Galactic 2300 CE - 3000 CE Cosmic 3000 CE - 4000 CE Transcendent 4000 CE - 6000 CE

So the results of the qualifying race see Ticktum in P1 for the main race tomorrow, with Eriksson and Ilott behind him. Mick managed to climb to P6. Let's see what the race brings tomorrow; it's always good for some drama. At any case, it looks like Motopark look good on the track with Prema being slightly disappointing. The best part of the quali race was how they sent the safety car because there was a dog on track