Now available in the Marketplace. I desktop PC fly the sim. VERY realistic controls and flight characteristics and an abundance of features and functional switches and gizmos. It IS kinda spendy at $42 but I'm glad I didn't wait for MSFS 2024 to buy this neat 2 seater. Looks like JustFlight did their homework. Kudos to them.

There are two sides to this, yes one is that there are people that wealthy, but without their interest the space program would be DOA  in the US. I also believe that it took several other counties launching their own space initiatives to "almost" get the US program off of the coroners table.

Nope... Oleg's content is all in Russian. My favorite Video of his (turn on Subtitles)...    

My wife and I enjoy watching All Creatures Great and Small, which is filmed in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales National Park in central England. Designated in 1954, the park is 95 percent privately owned, and 23,000 people live and farm 1,000 independent farms. Actors and crew rave about how much they love working there, and tourism has increased due to the TV show.   Source: Yorkshire Dales National Park   The real scenery is nostalgic and tranquil from every viewpoint. So I “flew” over to enjoy it from within Microsoft Flight Simulator ™ 2020. I departed Teesside International Airport (EGNV) in the Tees Valley about 10 miles east of Middlesborough and headed 240 degrees.   SkyVector   Teesside provides services from east-central England to Greece, Netherlands, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, and Turkey in addition to England. It is also the general-aviation airport for the region.   MSFS 2020   A Cessna 172 reaches Yorkshire Dales in less than 15 minutes. After passing over lowland Yorkshire farmland at 4,500 feet altitude, the route traverses rugged hills, heaths, and valleys in central Yorkshire. Not much grows on these hills due to rocky and acidic soils. Their characteristic scrubs, grasses, and stones appear brown from aloft.   MSFS 2020   Then the lush Yorkshire Dales National Park appears. It can seem ordinary from aloft, but it is very beautiful indeed when considering how nostalgic and sanguine it is from the ground where All Creatures Great and Small is filmed.   MSFS 2020   The return flight is as interesting. Yorkshire’s rural terrain and rugged topography morph into low rolling farmlands followed by the urban area of Middlesborough and its suburbs.   MSFS 2020   The trick is to find Teesside Airport among the rural and urban terrain, which is always challenging for visual navigation. My C172 was not receiving Teesside NDB (TD), which made things more difficult. If you get lost, ask Teesside’s tower for directions, or use Direct-To in your GPS to plot a course from your current position. MSFS 2020 Teesside is a controlled airport, so communication with its tower is required. Watch out for commercial and private traffic flying to, from, and around this busy regional airport.   MSFS 2020   A short and easy visual flight over beautiful terrain is always rewarding on any lovely day.   MSFS 2020   Bill Stack is author of books and videos for flight simmers who want truly realist simulations.    

A weekday in May, 1961.  Miss Hill's second grade class in South Pittsburg TN.  We all come in to find one of those 23" B/W metal case TV sets on a 4ft tall roll-around AV stand in the corner  ....we're going to watch TV in school!    Didn't matter what, we were excited.    Mid afternoon Miss Hill rolls the TV to the front of the room, pulls up the rabbit ears and, as the set warms up, tells us briefly of the space program.  And we watch Alan Shepard's sub-orbital flight, from preflight coverage to splashdown and recovery.  For most of the class it was an interesting diversion, but I was fascinated.  From then til I graduated high school nine years later I kept stacks of magazines and scrapbooks of everything I found about NASA;  built detailed models of all the launch vehicles and capsules;  could quote from memory all the missions from Mercury through Apollo, names of the astronauts, the vehicles, the dates, flight data, mission goals.  A major disappointment was finding I could never be an astronaut (because I wear glasses), so I became an engineer.   Public support decreased long before the Columbia incident.  Space flight had become mundane; initially there was the "us against them" challenge of getting to the moon before the Soviets, but once that was done most people lost interest.  The last three moon landings were canceled for budget reasons, subsequent flights were so highly technical and scientific that the average person wasn't interested.  And the original allure of the space program, and the vision of the future we had developed, never materialized.  The pushbutton world of the Jetsons never arrived;  the space station, rather than the majestic rotating wheel of science fiction (epitomized in the movie 2001), turned out to be an uninspiring tinkertoy contraption in low orbit.  The expected moon colony wasn't forthcoming, an expedition to Mars would not occur in our lifetime.  For the foreseeable future spaceflight was something reserved for a few dozen highly trained specialists, not for the common man.  There was no exploration involved, which would certainly have stirred interest;  and unlike the past, where any able-bodied man could go to a port city and sign on for an ocean voyage to see new parts of the world, we would never experience more than TV coverage of space walks to repair the Hubble.  For most people the entire space program after the moon landing (and even before for some) was a waste of tax money that could be better spent elsewhere (does no good to point out virtually every major technological advance in the past half century was a direct result of the space program).    I find it a sad commentary that today we have individuals so wealthy they can afford their own private space programs.

Those broadcasts were also a wonderful recruiting tool for the armed forces and also for kids who were tempted to enter math and/or science fields.     IMO anything we can do to wean kids and in fact most of their parents, from TIK TOK and other phone apps is a good thing!!  There are millions of interesting things going on in our world and in other worlds if people would just put their phones down and look around a few minutes every day! 

I miss the days when schools would either let you stay home to watch a launch or they would project the TV in the auditorium for all to watch (yes TV, no computers or internet at that time). I watched every launch from Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the early shuttles. Unfortunately the Columbia incident, the over televised shots of the explosion and the shocked families at Canaveral, accelerated the already decreasing public support for these missions. That was seen by many as the same type of event as the Hindenburg and the Concord crashes. I hope that the the new budding interest in space continues to grow and people can share the joy and wonder I did during those early years.

Looks like this problem has been resolved as MSFS downloads from Flightsim.com no longer trigger an "Unsafe download" warning.

If you're interested in in space missions, you could join Kayamone Sutton's Virtual United States Space Program. The original VUSSP  had 150 members, conducted over 100 unmanned missions and over 20 manned missions. Highly recommended. http://www.vussp.org  

Bombardier Challenger 650 (HB-JWB) Swiss Air Ambulance  landing (jumpy), taxi  (close up) and takeoff at Manises Valencia Airport (VLC) with ATC audio included runway 12  

Hi VP2, the European Space Agency (ESA) is a good site https://www.esa.int I just had a look at YouTube and the handover ceremony featuring Oleg. I couldn't find an English version for his channel, is there one? This vid has English subtitles, which is good (I actually like to hear people speaking in their own language, including Russian) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ0vf0qfHfE

Lufthansa Regional, CRJ-700 beeing pushed back from its Gate in Marseille  ready for its Departure to Munich, Germany.