From over 25 miles in the air

to the Earth, via a parachute.  That's the ride that Alan Eustace, a Google senior VP, took this past Friday, October 24.  For more details, check out this New York Times article or watch this video.



As the article notes, this was not a Google project; Eustace worked with others to make this happen.  Though I'm sure he's enjoying the publicity, and the ride had to be amazing, it seems clear that he did it because somehow he had to, that the idea infected him and he couldn't get rid of it.

That's awesome.  As a lifelong SF fan, I find these sorts of grand gestures and strange actions both beautiful and admirable. 

I've long wanted to take an orbit around the Earth from space.  I would have cashed in a lot of savings to try to buy a seat on Virgin Galactic were it planning to do an orbit, but it's not--and now it's not at all clear that the Richard Branson enterprise will even make anything near its original height goal.  Still, I wish them luck. 

I doubt I'll ever have a chance to go into orbit, but if I did and could at all reasonably afford it, I'd sure try. 

In the meantime, I'll admire the exploits of Eustace and others as they explore the upper reaches of our atmosphere--and beyond.

Planets from space

I've discovered that I love writing short descriptions of the views of planets from space. I just completed one in Slanted Jack, and seeing the images in my mind's eye made me happy. I'm afraid of heights, but watching from planes doesn't bother me at all. I assume staring down from a spacecraft wouldn't bug me either. Something about hovering in space and looking at a world turning slowly below strikes me as a perfectly beautiful moment, an act of bearing witness to art of the greatest kind, all courtesy of nature.

I applied to the mission specialist program in the late 70s when NASA announced it, but the damage I did to my right arm when I was six kept me from making it far into the process.

Maybe Richard Branson will make it possible for me to visit space one day.

Which thought, of course, inevitably leads me to Heinlein and The Man Who Sold the Moon, an old but great book, at least to me. I don't expect I'll ever write anything that touches as many people as that story, but I'm going to keep trying until I'm dead.

Speaking of which, it's time I roll my chair to the left and return to Slanted Jack.