And so it begins: Virgins new Spacecraft part 1.

So most people dont know that Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites is my very own personal hero.  He is an aviation pioneer and one of the coolest aerospace engineers I have ever seen.  Just to met him would be an honor I can’t even explain.

Now he has done it again.

Rutan teamed up with Vrigin Atlantic Owner and Adventure guru  Richard Branson to create the very first private space spacecraft, Spaceship one.  Slung beneath the ultra-futuristic White Knight airplane, it can sling 2 people into sub-orbital space.  They have now gone one larger and unveiled the first privately funded and built, commercial passenger-carrying spacecraft.  Holy Crap.

Space Ship 2 can sling 6 people into a ballistic arc that allows for many minutes of weightlesness.  At a cost of a quarter-million dollars a flight (for now), this is cost prohibitive for most people on the planet, but it is low enough to guarantee  hundreds of flights in the coming years.

There are going to be arguments against spending money on something so frivilous as this, but I counter them all.  Or, at least I will, when I finish writing this tomorrow.

The cold. Dear god the Cold.

I will be writing part two of “Adventure,” but it is a work in progress, so sit tight.  On with the blogging.

—————–

Something happened today that doesn’t often happen here: it never got warmer than the temperature necessary for a water, normally a liquid, to become can’t-open-my-car-door, hurts-when-you-fall-on-it solid.  It would be one thing if it was all cloudy and snowy or rainy, but the sun is shining as brightly as ever… or at least it seems like it since I haven’t seen much of the sun in the last couple of months.  Anyway, it is really disconcerting to see the sun blazing in the sky while shivering into my shirt, hoody and fur lined coat.

The worst part of the cold, though, is that people around here make it sooooooooooo much worse.  You all know who I am talking about.  The old lady wrapped in successive layers of seal-skin and NASA-certified thermal protection tiles who is still griping about the “infernal cold.”

The fat guy who sits in his car for a half hour, pumping pound after pound of CO2 into the atmosphere because for some reason it is impossible for him to drive to the store to buy his Twinkies without the inside of the car feeling like Sub-Saharan Africa.

The person who finds it impossible to refrain from telling everyone around them that the next few days are going to be cold in a tone that makes one think it is the end of days.

I hate these people.  They have no frame of refrence for what it is like to be really cold; none whatsoever.  Tell the people in Barrow Alaska (the ones who haven’t been eaten by vampires) how miserable it is to be existing in temperatures above 0 in January; see what they do.

Now, it is cold outside, don’t get me wrong.  But the fact that, with wind chill, it is roughly 5 degrees outside in good-ol’ Vancouver Washington can be put into perspective.  The Packers and the Giants played football at Lambeau field (a place called “The Tundra” by its fans) in weather that was 5 below zero without wind chill.  As far as I am concerned that kind of cold is an end of days scenario, at least for whoever it was that coerced me into being in that cold.   Heed this warning, I will kill that person if presented with the possibility.  Maybe with an ice-cicle.  Yeah; that would be poetic.

As I said, it is cold here. I hate the cold. My car really hates the cold.  People around here fear the cold as much as they fear anything else (like snow, for instance).  Unfortunately it is not as cold as the ninnies in this area think it is.  A national weather service warning because it is just slightly below freezing?

Come on.