Topic: =/\= STO goes FTP in january, spirit of apollo, x-rays study earth core

[stoneyface]

it has been announced that STO will go free to play in january. most players knew it was coming months and months ago but the date has just been announced. i have a lifetime membership so... nothing changes for me read the dev log here: http://startrekonline.com/node/2683

a book by andrew chaikin is considered the definitive history of the apollo missions at NASA. it turns out that the author's beliefs about NASA mirror my own. in the book he states that the "spirit of apollo" is no longer at NASA but has moved to commercial space enterprises. this is something that i have thought for several years now. the spirit of exploration is gone. the passion is gone and the government's continued dwindling funding has just exasperated the issue.  read more here: http://news.yahoo.com/commercial-space-spirit-apollo-spirit-solyndra-000800801.html

a new x-ray study is going to study the earth's core. in a rather ingenious methodology, this study could yield some surprising results. read here for details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15691038

finally, it doesn't look good for the russian "phobos-grunt" craft. with the batteries draining rapidly, scientists can only guess how long they have before the craft is "dead" in space. the russians have been unable to establish contact with the craft to fix it and continue the mission to the mars moon phobos. this is really a sad day for them and i feel for them. this was a very important mission to learn more about mars and it's moons before an actual manned mission heads to mars. continued coverage can be read here: http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00003254/

[[UFP]Exeter]

I certainly hope they do something besides the 400 free cryptic store points a month to distinguish paid vs free.  Maybe they should check out Lord of the Rings Online, the have the same thing and there are numerous benefits to paid membership vs free, but they still keep the F2P very appealing.