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NASA Launches Moonbase Alpha
Several readers have sent word that today NASA launched Moonbase Alpha, an online game with single- and multi-player capability that "allows participants to step into the role of an exploration team member in a futuristic 3-D lunar settlement." The game is available now through Steam for free. Moonbase Alpha was built as a precursor to an upcoming NASA MMO called Astronaut: Moon, Mars & Beyond, and they hope it will be "a proof of concept to show how NASA content can be combined with a cutting-edge game engine to inspire, engage and educate students about agency technologies, job opportunities and the future of space exploration."
When you're a teenager typing in modem commands by hand to call local numbers, yes :-)
Is this how screwed up NASA is, reduced to releasing video games as opposed to sending people into space?
content 2 (kn-tnt)
adj.
1. Desiring no more than what one has; satisfied.
Sounds like a pretty good life to me.
That show is *nightmarishly bad*. In one episode, some alien planet sends probes that create an atmosphere (to keep the Alpha crew happy until they passed out of range so they didn't have Martin Landau and Barbara Bain descend up them). That's when I found out that *the windows on Moonbase Alpha were designed to be opened* so they could get a nice breeze. And that the intrepid space voyagers brought *bikinis* so they could frolic on the regolith.
Does anyone remember a time when NASA astronauts actually WENT to the Moon?
Can you get it from NASA directly? I don't allow steam on any of my machines.
That show is *nightmarishly bad*.
Nah, it's all about perspective!
I was five or six when that show was airing, and through the eyes of a little kid, it was the coolest and most astonishing sci-fi epic series EVER!
(Special effects made everything look real, and since I was too young to know that adults weren't flawed, I also assumed that everything made sense but that I was just too young to get it. Everything seemed wonderful and exciting on the moon!)
Oh, but it was a dark, dark day when I hunted down a couple of episodes of the program and watched them in my quality-discerning adulthood. Hit like a brick in the gut. Not a good memory. No sir.
It's true, what they say. You can never go home.
-FL
nice.
Help! I am a self-aware entity trapped in an abstract function!
In all seriousness, I think the really far out there geeks (not your average, run of the mill slashdotter, but maybe close!) would make EXCELLENT space travelers. The only real downside is that after years of increasingly disturbing porn, a COMPLETE lack of social interaction (and this is coming from someone who once thought "dressing up" was putting on pants so the drive-through people won't freak out), and the subsequent lack of feedback about their behavior and thoughts, they'll leave a very rough impression on the first person they run into afterward. Alien or cosmonaut.
"Greetings people of earth! We have met with your represenative and found him wholly agreeable with our culture! Where's the women at, bitches?"
Oh, shi---
Obviously the Moon is a Muslim world.
There's craters everywhere and everything's dead.
(.sig doesn't apply in this case...)
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It's fun for the first few months, then you start wishing some of those desires would return, just to alleviate the boredom.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.