27 November 1971, the Soviet spacecraft was the first to reach the surface of Mars. Automatic interplanetary station “Mars-2” was developed especially to study directly the planet and circumplanetary space. She was launched from the Baikonur space center in may 1971 and some time spent in orbit of an artificial satellite of the Earth, therefrom to go to Mars.
Automatic interplanetary station “Mars-2”
“Mars-2” was to study the temperature, topography, availability of water, the percentage of carbon dioxide and radiation, and also to transmit photographs to Earth. Until the convergence with Mars measurements were carried out on the space station, however, the lander failed to land successfully because of an error in the trip computer — after a hard landing on the planet’s surface he has failed. However, even with these circumstances, the spacecraft became the first object of earthly origin on Mars, and on December 2, 1971 surface flying after station “Mars-3” (double station “Mars-2” in case of failure) without any problems, made the first-ever soft landing on the surface of the planet, and then start to broadcast a panorama of the surrounding countryside.
Unfortunately, stable data transmission between Earth and Mars in 1971 turned out to be a trivial task, so the “Mars-3” was held in touch only fifteen minutes, which, however, had not without benefit to humanity. Interplanetary station has calculated the temperature and pressure of the planet, and their relationship across the surface, analyzed the soil, showed the temperature at the North pole of Mars (down to -110 degrees Celsius) and determined the proportion of water vapor (which turned out to be 5 thousand times less than on Earth).
Automatic interplanetary station “Mars-3”
The next step in the study of the red planet, the Soviet Union was 1973, when just four interplanetary station (“Mars-4 and Mars-5” and “Mars-6 and Mars-7”) both reached Mars, gave high-quality colour images of the surface, detailed data about the atmosphere, oxygen concentration, and measured the radiation from the Sun.
November 27, 1951 the U.S. Armed forces conducted a test first functioning anti-aircraft missile system. The company Western Electric, which developed the complex, the task was to create a weapon capable on the basis of the testimony of radars and computer systems to launch a guided missile and hit an airplane flying at high altitude with high speed. First and foremost, the military command sought to protect the USA from threats of attack by Soviet bombers on the American continent, and after successful testing of the complex MIM-3 Nike Ajax, it quickly began to establish to protect key urban, military and industrial facilities.
Development of complex began in 1945, when the U.S. Armed forces on the example of the German and Soviet aviation was convinced that the American anti-aircraft artillery is unable to withstand an air attack with modern bombers and in urgent need of modernization.
Anti-aircraft missile system, Nike Ajax
The development of Nike Ajax has cost the United States $165,9 million, and each launch was estimated at $19300, but the weapon was advanced by the standards of the 1950-ies. Warhead weighing 140 kg can hit a target at an altitude of 40 km above the earth and developed peak rate of 2260 km/h.
Strictly speaking, the system of target acquisition, flight controls, missiles and even radar was not written from scratch — for was based on technology tested in a self-propelled howitzer M-52 — the first postwar American ACS.
This complex, however, was not able to protect the target from massive attack — at a certain point in time Nike Ajax was able to track and fire at only one plane. In addition, the first audit MIM-3 SAM on a single object do not exchange information with each other and could simultaneously attack the same bomber, losing focus of other goals.
The first aircraft-a target for new anti-aircraft missile complex became an American four-engine bomber B-17 at the landfill White Sands, which after over 13 thousand samples promising weapons entered the US military bases and allies around the world. MIM-3 Nike Ajax was discontinued only in the 1970-ies, although in 1958 for service in the United States adopted the SAM MIM-14 Nike-Hercules — the world’s first anti-aircraft missile system with nuclear warheads.
Note that already in 1955 in service in the USSR was far more effective s-25 “Berkut”, is able to reflect a massive attack up to 1,200 aircraft. However, the practical implementation of such a project was so expensive that to develop a complex of fully managed only around Moscow (along the ring roads of the capital is 56 launch missiles, now equipped with s-300), and the first mass Union SAM became the s-75 “Dvina” in 1957.
November 27, 1998 released game console Sega Dreamcast. It was the first 128-bit console on the market and marked the collapse of Sega as a developer of gaming equipment.
After the release of disastrous and awkward to develop games Sega Saturn the company tried to catch up and create a truly promising competitor for the increasingly popular Sony PlayStation. In principle, the company had every opportunity for it — the graphics and processing power from the Dreamcast is impressive, the architecture was handy for writing games third party developers to support online games were available and on key gaming market in the United States only for the first month sold over half a million copies consoles.
Game console Sega Dreamcast
In the hardware development of the new console was also attended by a famous conglomerate companies: NEC (128-bit GPU), Hitachi (CPU CPU SH-4 RISC), Yamaha (sound chip), and Microsoft (modified the Windows CE operating system and compatibility with DirectX).
Even CD-ROMs for the console was special — specific standard GD-ROM drive with increased recording density supported disk drives with a capacity up to 1.2 GB (and it’s a few years until the DVD release to the masses!), although a standard CD-ROM is also read without problems. And memory cards are familiar to customers in the consoles of the same Sony’s PlayStation was not just drives, and auxiliary control with display and mounted inside the controller.
Memory card for Sega Dreamcast was not just a drive, as a full gadget in a gamepad
Unfortunately, as a result of major investments in advanced hardware, Sega began to feel not too confident in the financial plan, in addition, the choice of the two versions of the prefix “losing” the team at once retired, and 3Dfx was not slow trolling Japanese patents after information was received that the graphics card in the console has developed a competing NEC.
At first games on the new console was not a problem: action Unreal Tournament, Resident Evil, the fighting game Dead or Alive 2 and the acclaimed online RPG Phantasy Star appeared on the Dreamcast in no time, and next year the console came out a legendary exclusive — adventure game in an open world Shemnue.
But then the Japanese company has ceased to control the situation around their offspring: first came the buggy Ready 2 Rumble Boxing (it is now a miserable unstable game receive patch on the day of release, and in the absence of mass Internet access that is not forgiven), in addition, Sega did not have time to produce fancy memory card in time, and widely publicized in the online games business was slow.
Sony at this time also did not sit idly by and quickly flipped to his side, Electronic Arts and the developers of the famous fighting game Tekken — Namco. In October 1999, when he released the PlayStation 2, among the partners of Sony miraculously, most were previously loyal to the Dreamcast game developers. It should also be noted that the PlayStation 2 won the hearts of customers, not just games — this console was one of the first and the cheapest DVD players on the market. And after the mass, as usual, and the cashier, along with the games tightened.
After all these troubles of a once promising Dreamcast for some time existed as a residual platform for porting games from the PlayStation 2, and then the project was scrapped and Sega turned into a game publisher.
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