Don't you own it now? SimHQ's IP address seems to emanate from Miami which is all the evidence I need.

I really don't know why I still visit here. It's certainly not for the sims. But I joined over 20 years ago, so probably a mixture of nostalgia and not enough work to do.

Reddit is so two years ago old man, it's all about Discord these days.

Well, there you go! Just goes to show how one trend replaces another trend eventually.

SimHQ will come back in to vogue like white wall tires....

Bad example?

Yeah. I'd say a better comparison is it will come back like vinyl records!

Makin' it great like 78s!

There are people trying to make them come back. All they need is some rapper to have a car with them on (insert whatever social media platform is in at the time), and they'll be back.

I'm hoping for a Red Line tire resurgence myself

Stick shifts

Drove a stick shift from 16 years old until I blew my left knee out at age 40 playing drop in hockey. After the surgery, working a clutch, even a smooth one on a Toyota, was too much for me. To this day whenever I get in the driver seat my left foot instinctively looks for the clutch and my right hand looks for the gear knob.

Back in the day took the brothers Vette out for a run, with his permission. It was an auto. I almost wrecked it when I stepped on the brake and grabbed the lever to shift down. I was driving a standard trany vehicle at the time. I didn't tell him for many years.

What's with all the hating on NASA in this thread? They've (as far as I'm aware) have had far, far more successes than failures over their history. True it almost always ended up costing more than projected, but to me that's kind of like how moving to another house is almost always more of a hassle than you expect - even if you've done it a lot of times and you get really generous about time estimation in advance.

And on the money - NASA's budget is spare pocket change compared to what America spends on everything else - there are a lot of WAY "bigger fish to fry" if you want to complain about government spending...

Anyone seen some of the latest photos where they used both James Webb and Hubble in tandem? Incredible!

I don't hate NASA, and I doubt anybody else posting in this thread does either.

I despise wasteful government spending / ridiculous cost overruns that were entirely predictable. The contract system and the politics behind it, is severely broken. It's one thing for government to do important things that private enterprise can not. Once it becomes apparent that a private enterprise can get the important task done more efficiently, it's time to switch horses and be better stewards of the taxpayer's money.

To its credit, NASA has made a major shift in partnering with private enterprise which has restored American lift capability to the I.S.S.. Nonetheless, the runaway costs on the Artemis program is a major black eye, and a waste of funds that could have been better utilized. NASA has been in this game for decades... they should be better at it by now, but they may be handcuffed by political considerations (ie. spreading the Congressional lard to the proper districts/ states).

As for taking issue with bigger budget items outside of NASA, I do that too. Bigger wastes do not preclude, nor excuse the smaller wastes. This thread however, is dealing with getting to the moon / Artemis / NASA. Let's not drive this into PWEC.

All the good people left NASA when they ended the shuttle program. The organization is an incompetent mess now and they need to do a top to bottom firing of management. Boeing is also a disaster. They are a company made half of contractors which doesn't help things, either.

This is a valid point. NASA's budget is roughly about 1 percent of the total Federal budget.

Hope everything goes well on September 3.

https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2022...t-artemis-i-moon-mission-launch-attempt/

Irrelevant.

$25 billion is $25 billion. It should be spent responsibly if it is spent at all.

It's pretty clear that SLS has survived by being mainly a 'jobs program', but out of that you've got an awesome rocket that has a fair chance of working as designed.
Maybe that's the best compromise that could be achieved in this particular society at this particular time.

When the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids, it was largely a 'jobs program' during the times of year that people weren't working the fields or fighting the neighbours.

Can you really compare SLS with a pyramid? I think so, as both endeavours are expensive for the society, produce an awesome result but give little direct benefit to the average citizen. Somehow, society as a whole is enriched by these achievements though.

Hmmn, I think I've been playing too many Civ type games...

The Romans thought that the Egyptian pyramids were a massive waste of time and impractical. I tend to agree.