"Nigh to this place"

 

Perhaps I should Get a Smaller Car?

 

 

 

Baumgartner's About to Jump...

Live Video.

 I'm watching the live broadcast from Felix Baumgartners ascent toward the edge of space. 

He's going the (moderately) slow way, at least compared to a rocket, his helium balloon is rising at almost a thousand feet per minute.

94,460 feet. 

18 miles up.

102,000 feet now, the point at which Joe Kittinger jumped to make the highest ever parachute jump.  Ascent slowing...........

He's going to jump.
128,000 feet
"popping the canopy....."

This is Felix Baumgartner's latest attempt to go beyond the furthest barriers set to man. 

Sadly submerged in corporate sponsor branding. You'd be forgiven for thinking this is Red-Bull's idea, as you hear "Red Bull/Stratos being name-checked every few moments. But it's not. It's Baumgartner's mission. 

Red Bull/Stratos are just the corporate sponsors, they're the moneybags, the facilitators, not the drivers. Just a necessary evil. 

The highest any man has been in a balloon, is likely to be exceeded. 

No sustained flight powered airplane is capable of this altitude. Oh yes, the X-15 rocketplane, launched from beneath the wing of a bomber in the stratosphere, has achieved a higher peak, 325,000ft.

 Alexandr Fedotov, a Russian pilot holds the world altitude record, set on August 31, 1977, when his MiG E-266M reached 123,523 feet. That's still the limit for any plane that took off and landed itself.

And that again was an artificial lunge into the void, not something that could be sustained. Just an upward blip. 

The highest sustained altitude flight for any plane is 85,000ft, held by the Lockheed SR71 Blackbird. He's currently 35,000 feet above that. Amazing. Incredible.

http://www.redbullstratos.com/live/

Unofficial Notices on the Tube

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That Fokker's a Babe-Magnet!

This one isn't a Fokker. See how glum and un-animated those girls are?

This one, though? 

Fokker.

Which reminds me, of the old World War II pilot, invited into a girls' school, to talk about  his experiences.

 He's waving his arms around, his hands depicting dogfight duels, he says, " All of a sudden, Blam! holes in my wing, I look over my shoulder and there's this fucker on my tail!" 

"Girls", the head-teacher breaks in, "Stop your sniggering, a Focke is a type of german fighter plane..."

The old man pauses. "That's very true, Miss. Only this fucker was a Messerschmitt!"

A 'B' in Art

 

I know you've probably seen this already, all over the internet. But take a moment to think about the beauty here, accidentally created by bees. Once you've thought about that, ponder on their cell-ordering. I wonder, does one bee work on one cell? how do they choose which cell to fill. Why the random spacings? Any Apiarists out there to enlighten me?

Oh. Yes, the obligatory bit. Beekeepers in France found their bees making rainbow honey, and eventually tracked the source to a recycling plant a few miles away which had drums of brightly coloured M&Ms outside. The bees, finding this an easier source of nectar than sucking it out of individual flowers, told the rest of the hive, who made a bee-line for the brightly coloured sweetness.

The processing plant has now made the M&Ms off-limits to the bees.

Polish Your Stylus,

 And spin the disc, for T-Rex's NEW single.

(Marc Bolan, who died in a car crash in 1977, would have been 65 this year)

Adventures in Retail

Customer Service, according to my undercover-agent in the retail world, is all-important. Beware the 'mystery-shopper'.  He/she is paid to report back to headquarters how attentive you were, how long it took before you offered your help.
Here, the Apple Sisters show how it's done.