Month: October 2021

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  Far Cry 6 is a typical Ubisoft chaos simulator.

Less than five minutes into Far Cry 6, I was iffy about it.

It opens on dictatorial President Antón Castillo delivering a televised address to Yara, a faux-Cuban paradise saddled with a history of political dissent. Castillo has reinstated a citizen draft for the ongoing cultivation of Viviro, a homegrown wonder drug that cures cancer. Made by fertilizing Yara's tobacco crops with a chemical gas, this magic medicine is the key, the president declares, to raising his broken-down island to the upper echelons of the world economic stage.

But this is Far Cry, well-worn in its love of open-world war games, destabilized nation-states, and crackpot despots. And Castillo, played with overblown heel gusto by Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad), is certainly a tyrant. The truth we're shown during his address—citizens shipped off to the fields as forced slave labor or gunned down for resisting—is a non-revelation given the series' touchstones.

Enlarge / NASA's SLS rocket has passed its design certification review. (credit: NASA)

Welcome to Edition 4.19 of the Rocket Report! If all goes well during the course of the next week, Capt. James T. Kirk will become a real-life star trekker. There's plenty of other news this week as well, including some words on how SpaceX managed to snag an Italian government satellite launch.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Blue Origin announces full manifest for next flight. The company said Star Trek actor William Shatner and Blue Origin's VP of mission of flight operations, Audrey Powers, will round out the passenger manifest for the second human flight on board New Shepard. They will join paying customers Chris Boshuizen and Glen de Vries for the flight, which is scheduled to launch from West Texas at 8 am CT (13:00 UTC) on October 12.