Altogether more significant viewing yesterday than either the tennis or soccer finals in London was the livestream from New Mexico, from whence Richard Branson and three company employees were lofted into space... as a result of which I shall never now be the first Colin in space.
Coming to my aid Jeff Bezos claims they never got there because despite making what Karman himself and the FAA view as space, it wasn't the internationally-recognised 100 kilometres. Though the metric system itself was the first not to relate to anything practical at all beside what was going on in Napoleon's head, so that it's really just people feeling more comfortable with round numbers that meant the bar would be raised to 100 kilometres at all.
Meanwhile Jeff Bezos could better employ his time in the run-up soiling his pants, as anyone else would contemplating seeing Earth from inside a can. And whichever way you look at it, Branson is a pioneer across countless endeavours and can do no wrong in my book seeing as I sent him one of mine and got a nice letter back.
Plus living on Necker Island and flitting between there and Mosquito Island next door, he is the ideal candidate for the type of air vehicle that I'll be proposing tomorrow. He has spent seventeen years and a billion dollars ~ much of it his own ~ getting into space. The message being, don't give up on what you set out to do even when wishing you'd never started.
And why this picture captured from the TV screen in place of any other? As a pilot, I like the fact that this one has brought the spacecraft to a halt with its nose-skid on the centreline and barely an inch off cue. Or should that be 2.54 centimetres?
