Greetings all!
I am also a new user and I am looking forward to trying this puppy out!
I became interested in the exploration of space somewhere around Gemini 7. All I really remember was coming in from playing ball and my dad was watching the news. I hear "3... 2... 1... ignition!" and turned around to watch a sleek and beautiful silver and black machine spew fire as it rose towards the heavens!
From that moment, I was hooked.
Then I met my friend Gary in 6th grade whose uncle worked in the space program. He advised us to write to any one of NASA's locations to request further information (now you have to buy the stuff from the US Superintendant of Documents
) and WOW; we got huge packages chock full of technical documents, posters, mission briefings... you name it! All free!
Back then anyway...
I even developed a sort of relationship with Walter Cronkite because you could tell he was not only reporting an event, he himself was very much in to the whole thing!
One of my greatest memories was when my dad got me out of bed to watch Niel and Buzz walk on the moon. Occurred around midnight EST if memory serves.
What a time to be a kid!!!!
As for the games, well, I've pretty much played them all from the old Atari cartridge shuttle porogram where you launched to see how many times and how quickly you could dock with satellites, to MS Space Sim, Buzz Aldrin's Race in to Space, A-Ok Wings of Mercury... and yes... that "other" sim.
Ok, well, I'm downloaded and patched... got the docs and checklists... se ya around the flight school campus!