Eleven years ago on Christmas the British Mars lander Beagle II disappeared after detaching from its "mother ship" to enter Mars' atmosphere.  This prompted a lot of comment, speculation and humor -- does anyone else remember "All these worlds are yours except for Mars -- attempt no landings there"?
Anyway, the Beagle's fate has been a mystery for more than a decade.  But it's a mystery no longer -- a NASA orbiter has spotted it on Mars' surface.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/16/world/mar ... index.html]More info here.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

http://www.youtube.com/v/MZoO8QVMxkk&ve ... tube_gdata
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

This fellow is mentioned as the first mutant and one of the founding members of the EEC super-team, but no other mention is made of him. Was he involved in the war effort in France? Were there any other details about him?
M
Michael R. Smith (lastfreehuman@gmail.com)
GURPS IST Aleph Wordpress (http://istaleph.wordpress.com/)
GURPS IST Aleph Twitter (http://twitter.com/IstAleph/)
Trek This! Wordpress (http://dthiller.wordpress.com/)
My Blog (http://lastfreehuman.wordpress.com/)

I'll be using this one for a while...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

... A LOT. 
As in - if you're wondering why you haven't seen me very much lately in any of the MMOs many of us frequent - THAT'S why. 
And - I'm proud to say - I've been doing some pretty cool shit. ^_^
Check out some of this: 
Thunderbirds are GO! ^_^
(Well at least TB-1 is.)

If you're wondering where in the heck this is, don't worry. You're not missing anything in the stock game. This Tracy Island-Esque launching site is part of a mod called "Kerbinside" that adds about 3 dozen extra launch sites, runways and helicopter pads all around Kerbin in interesting places. 








I've even managed to give my version proper VTOL jets like the original. Though admittedly, mine works more like the early Harriers. I can not lift off vertically or land with a full load of fuel, but once about half the fuel load is expended I can. ^_^










Bird GO! 
(It even flies without cheats - not very WELL - but it flies! ^_^;; )



Speaking of interesting places to land from the Kerbinside mod. Check out these two. 
This one's way up in the mountains. 


And this one's called the "North Pole Bio Dome". Just what you see on the tin. 

Wow! Awesome! I always wondered why we didn't reproduce the mighty F1 Engines from the first stage of the Saturn V all these years. Even bought some of the urban myths that NASA had lost or thrown out all the plans/blueprints. 

Nope! Turns out they had them properly archived all along, and a group of engineers finally got around to getting the ball rolling by asking the simple question: "What can we learn from these old engines and can we make modern versions?" 

The answers according to this article is - "More than you'd think possible" and "YES!" 

Looks like NASA's SLS launch system has a good chance of having some modernized F1 Saturn Engines lifting Orion and other payloads to orbit! ^_^
How NASA brought the monstrous F1 Moon Rocket back to life.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

And anyone else in NJ, too...

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=131725]Meet Steve Jackson! Elite Battlegrounds Green Brook, NJ Thursday February 12th 4:00PM - 5:30PM

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=131726]Meet Steve Jackson! The Only Game In Town Somerville, NJ Thursday February 12th 6:00PM - 7:30PM

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=131727]Meet Steve Jackson! The Fallout Shelter Highland Park, NJ Thursday February 12th 8:00PM - 9:30PM
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Decided to start this thread after seeing this:
http://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic ... 27740.html
Anybody got anything else either advanced, clever, or amusing?

... And for once, it's a good thing.
http://www.bladebunny.com/2014/12/21/it ... rs-wanted/http://www.bladebunny.com/2014/12/21/it ... ment-11481
And this was the response I got back...

Quote:Drowemos wrote:

---

Not
bad.  Not bad at all. I just gave it a quick read over, not an in-depth
look but it looks pretty good. It doesn't help that I no clue who these
characters are but the writing is crisp and entertaining and fun to
read. 

How
would you feel about writing something small for the Blade Bunny
"Universe"?... Can I call this a "universe"? Any way how would you feel
like writing something inspired by the comic to see how you would handle
that?

Quote:Drowemos wrote:

---

Well
don't break out the Charlie Brown Christmas music yet.  There are other
writers that are in contention for this job, it is still a one out of
ten shot that you will be selected at best.  But silll you are better
than the 40+ people I rejected outright for the job so its still saying
something.  

I
just want to see how you would handle character I am more familiar
with.  I am frighteningly ignorant with most manga and anime despite
making a comic like Blade Bunny.  As so where to start that is up to
you, I'm not looking for anything in particular just how you write
characters, humor and action with in the context of writing something
specifically for the comic. It can be prose or script.  It cab be the
beginning middle or end of a story or a complete short on it's own.  The
whole point of this exercise is for you to hook me and get me to want
to read more.  I can't tell you how to do that.