Celebrating America's Return to Space

On Saturday May 30 was a momentous day for America's space program. The SpaceX Falcon rocket carrying two US astronauts, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, launched from the Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral.

The last such launch was the final mission of the Space Shuttle program, the Atlantis going up on July 8 2011, and landing two weeks later on July 21. That would be the end of the American manned space program for nine years, NASA having to pay Russia to send US astronauts in it's rockets. NASA decided to partner with private companies to get men into space again.

In Second Life, a group had gathered at the National Space Society sim, numbering over thirty at some points. People cheered as they saw the rocket lift off, both on the inworld screen and online in places like Youtube and broadcasts in Space.com and other websites. They saw the rocket go up, separate, and the Dragon capsule go up into orbit as the reusable first stage touched down.

"When I was a child I watched rockets launch in Florida with my grandparents." one woman spoke, "this is amazing to relive that feeling." "It looks so high tech compared to the Mercury Capsules," commented another. A third remarked, "Wow, my stomach had butterflies, I can only imagine what they're feeling!" A fourth felt mixed feelings due to what she felt were lost opportunities, "I resent certain political and corporate forces leeching onto the space program, and the timing, in these dark hours is not ideal, but when I see the Earth like this, the 'Overview Effect' is impossible to resist." Another joked, "I can fly in space just fine. I played Elite Dangerous."

There was also some technical talk about details, and invitations for people to see the exhibits at the International Space Museum in Second Life. For the crowd, it was a proud moment for America and the world, and a welcome change from less pleasant news such as the Coronavirus pandemic and shutdowns, and the rioting going on across many cities in the United States. While the country may be going through troubled times for now, it's future was in space.

To see a video of some of the highlights of the launch, Click Here. To see a longer video from NASA, Click Here (launch at 4:23).

Source: BBC News , NASA 

Correction: I originally thought the event was at Spaceport Bravo. It turned out to be at the National Space Society sim.

Bixyl Shuftan

A Busy Weekend

The weekend offered a number of things to see and do. Among them were the Relay for Life's Ten Days of Relay, in which numerous DJs played to crows, such as Team Sunbeamer's Matt Carlton and Cynthia Farshore. But this wasn't all. On Saturday, a crowd gathered at Spaceport Bravo to watch the Space-X launch at the Kennedy Space Center, America's first launch in nine years. On Saturday, the monthly Homes For Our Troops benefit concert took place, raising over 184,000 Linden Dollars.

Stand by for more news on these events.

More New Year's Eve Parties

New Years Eve Rocket Launching Party!

Join the International Spaceflight Museum to welcome in the New Year with a bang! 
Time:  The model rocket launch is at 0000 hours GMT (4:00 pm SLT/Pacific Time) Saturday, Dec 31, but we will gather 30-60 minutes early to set up and start the festivities. 
Place:  Between the landing point and the ISM Planetarium, on the seashore, at about (20, 67, 22).
Music courtesy of Ari Vita.
Goodie bags, free food & drinks, and fun for all!  Please join us.
Happy New Year from all of us at ISM!!

International Spaceflight Museum, Spaceport Alpha (50, 79, 24)

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Ring in 2017 at Second Life's Longest Running New Years Eve Tradition
~ T1Radio's 12th Rockin' New Years Eve ~

     Dec 31, 2016     7pm until...
Ball Drop Countdowns From Atlantic to Pacific
Fireworks Party Favors and More
Music by T1's Trader, Nuala and Friends
Arinultra Pier
Formal Attire Preferred

T1Radio's LEGENDS Classic Rock Club (Established 2005), Arinultra Cay (198, 41, 27)

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Furry Fashion Lounge's New Years Eve -

DJ: Moff (MoffettMephit), Host Len and Em

9-12PM

Furry (159, 200, 113)

Firestorm and Madpea to Launch Community Gateway, Launch Party Today

Besides Welcome Island, over Second Life's history some locations have had their own welcome areas for newcomers to provide some basic information and maybe a gift or two. Indeed for the first several years of the Grid, this was encouraged by Linden Lab under a program "enabling them to steer incoming users directly to their own orientation / support environment, and thus provide them with assistance and hands-on support in getting started in SL." But it was discontinued in August 2010.

In September, Inara Pey reported that Linden Lab was planning to bring back the Community Gateway program. "The idea is that the new registrant would begin their time in SL in the experience that matches their interest," Patch Linden was quoted as saying. Among the groups involved with the testing was Firestorm. Recently it was announced that Madpea was joining up with them, " we’re delighted to be teaming up with Jessica Lyon and the Firestorm team on their project to produce a Community Gateway for new residents to Second Life. Community Gateways will provide a rich, learning environment for new residents. Showing them how to use their viewers, how to interact, how to develop as an avatar and, with MadPea’s help…how to play games and have an amazing SL experience."

To celebrate, Team Firestorm is combining their Halloween celebrations with a "Gateway Launch Party," "The biggest Firestorm Halloween celebration to date will be this Saturday Oct 31st with live performances from Seth Regan (Mankind Tracer) @ 1PM, Nance Brody @ 2PM and Changhigh Trinity Sisters Fireshow @ 3PM. Then at 4pm DJQuad spins tunes and we open the massive month-long Halloween hunt with amazing content from over 150 well-known Second Life merchants."

The event will also be the kickoff for their "Spooky Nights Hunt organized by the Huntress Spooky Mistwallow purposed to create awareness of the gateway regions and what they offer by encouraging existing users to explore."

The locations for the party are Firestorm Showcase (239/17/26), Firestorm SB (18/17/26), /Firestorm HS1 (240/242/26) and Firestorm HS2 (20/240/26).

Bixyl Shuftan

"Bright Canopy," Sucessor to SL GO, "Go For Launch" on August 29

By Bixyl Shuftan

Second Life users with tablets remember SL GO, the application made by Onlive in cooperation with Linden Lab that allowed them to access Second Life and go about inworld normally without the need for a computer. But in April this year, Onlive announced the end of the service following Sony purchasing their company. It was the end of what one Second Life newsletter writer called, "one of the best things to happen to Second Life in a long time."Later this month, a successor to SL GO will finally be ready for people to download and use: "Bright Canopy."

Bill Glover, the founder of Bright Canopy, credited Inara Pey's post on her blog, about SL GO's shutdown and suggestion that someone else could provide it's service, for his decision to post a survey asking if anyone would be interested in helping him start such a streaming service. The response was the founder of a company handling streaming for some of the largest companies in the world, Nikola Bozinovic, offering to help him out, and "over one hundred SL and OpenSim residents ... offering to help with testing, docomentation, bug tracking, and even development. ... With a team like that, it's no wonder we had the core features, working in beta in less than seven days."

The monthly fee, at least for the first 90 days, will be $17 a month, "Our early bird price is going to be an experiment for 90 days. If you’ve been following the blog, you know we’ve seen price fluctuations on the back end, and we still need to watch actual usage of the service. $17 is a sustainable price if the instance costs return to their typical, historical values. It is not a sustainable price with the current spike in instance price. We may need to get creative with how we split instances, or we may need to raise prices. We intend to remain transparent as always and will keep you posted. Our goal is to continue to maintain a sustainable, affordable service."

While $17 a month is a little more expensive than the $9.95 a month SL GO was at for most of it's history, it is much cheaper than the $3 an hour it was when first released. 

The company plans to soon have an "East Coast Cloud" for faster ping rates for users on the eastern time zone of the US, and is offering free time for those whom have friends sign up. They are also planning a release party.

Like SL GO, the company says Bright Canopy will improve the Second Life experience on older computers.

For more information, check their website: http://www.brightcanopy.com/ or their blog:  http://www.brightcanopy.com/blog/

 Hat tip: Daniel Voyager

Bixyl Shuftan

Blizzard Apologizes For "Warlords of Draenor" Launch Problems, Gives Free Time to Subscribers

By Bixyl Shuftan

When Blizzard released "World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor,"the latest expansion for the worlds most popular Multiplayer Online RolePlaying game, about a week ago on Thursday November 13, they ran into trouble. Besides so many players trying to get on at once, they were hit with a huge Denial of Service attack. The result was players often having to wait in long queues to play.

It was yesterday November 18 in which Executive Producer Allen Brack offered an official statement about the troubles.

I know how much everyone was looking forward to this expansion ... all the comments I've seen indicate that this is one of our best yet. But the quality of the content does not excuse the subpar launch experience we delivered, and I apologize for that. The first two days of the expansion were not a great experience, with many of you facing high queues or significant gameplay problems. We worked around the clock to tackle the demand issues and technical challenges, and fortunately things started looking better on Saturday. While millions of you were able to get in and play over the weekend ... others still ran into very lengthy queues, particularly on the highest-population realms.

Brack stated Blizzard was expanding server capacity, "which should greatly reduce queue times for most realms if not eliminate queues altogether." They were also giving it's players some additional time free of charge.

In recognition of the difficulties so many of you ran into when trying to play over the first few days, we're adding five days’ worth of extra time to every subscription in the Americas, Oceania, and Europe that was active as of Friday, November 14.

Brack also offered his thanks to the devoted core of Warcraft fans whom have stuck with the game.

I also hope you'll accept my apology and keep your faith in us. The support voiced by many of you as we worked through the challenges was immensely appreciated. We're extremely grateful to be part of such a passionate community. We love World of Warcraft, and we're very proud of this expansion, so stumbling out of the gates like this was very disappointing for all of us.

Over fifty pages of replies followed the announcement in the thread, the peaks at a random few showing some players not having received their free time yet, but mostly people saying "Thank you."

Sources: battle.net, PC Gamer 

Bixyl Shuftan

Press Release: The Freedom Project Thank You Ceremony and Exhibition Launch

Location: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/UWA/40/107/248

Date: 23rd March, Sunday
Time: 5PM SLT

The Freedom Project which had been receiving creations for the past many months, will see a THANK YOU Ceremony and Exhibition Launch at 5PM SLT Sunday, the 23rd of March.

The Freedom Project is a 2D/3D Art & Film Event organized jointly by the University of Western Australia, along with members of the Virtual Ability Group, and the Centre for ME/CFS and Other Invisible Illnesses Group in Second created an artwork or a film/machinima or in fact a personal story on the theme of ‘Freedom’, showing how virtual worlds have in some way helped them or those around them.

This event is to thank all the artists, filmmakers, and writers for contributing their works and of themselves, as well as to thank the many individuals, groups and organisations who made this possible, including Eliza Wierwight, who created the poster for this event,  David Doyle & Simone Flavelle of DADAA's stARTSPEAK Project, Tom Papas & Screen My Shorts Inc. (Sydney), West Australian artist, Len Zuks,  Beverley Hill of UWA's Equity & Diversity Office, Craig MacKenzie and Deborah Bolton of UniPrint,  TheDove Rhode of Peace is A Choice Gallery, Taralyn Gravois, AviewTV and LaPiscean Liberty, Eleanor Medeir and The Sim Street Journal as well as Kit Guardian and Guardian 11:11 for their multifaceted commitment towards the event as well, also iMoogi TV (imoogi.tv) and Nu Vibez Magazine (nuvibezmag.com) led by Filipa Thespian

Feel free to come visit and take in all the wonderful creations anytime at the UWA Virtual Gallery.

UWA (40, 107, 247)

Battlebeasts' Release Party

Recently, BattleBeast Breedables held a party to celebrate the release of their pet dragons for sale to the public. Xymbers Slade, whom reported before on the breedable, ridable, fighting pets dropped in to see what was going on.

Read more in Design.

3, 2, 1, Liftoff!

Yesterday on Friday July 8th, at the Avatrian Central sim, people began to recreate in Second Life the launch of the final flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis.

Hi folks! Just a quick update. People are slowly arriving here now :) The chosen Flight Commander and Pilot are already here, and we already briefed them and gave a short orientation. They are very excited and eager for launch! :) We're going to draw two names off the raffle at around 10AM EST, for the Mission Specialist 1 and 2 positions. Furthermore, 4 other names will be drawn and serve as backup or alternate shuttle astronauts :) See you down here in a few hours! :)

The final two team members were chosen, Fritzfranz Fride and Douglas Dragonash, who joined Phelpsa Resident and Walt Faulds whom were selected Wednesday.


The crew was soon taken to the shuttle, where it's launch was timed to go at the same time as the Shuttle Atlantis in real life.

How did it go? Just check the Youtube below.



And so, Avatrian's salute to the Space Shuttle program is done. No doubt we'll hear from them again soon.

The real Shuttle is scheduled to spend almost 2 weeks in space. It is scheduled to return July 20th. If you're around inworld at the time, be sure to watch the landing at the International Space Museum, the Star Trek Museum, or other places showing footage of the landing.

Pictures from Chris Welles of the Boy Scouts of Second Life.

*Addition* Check out this Youtube of the whole event, link sent by Fritzfranz Fride: Click Here