Post #2 of my 12th Anniversary Blogging Marathon, post #4,259 of my dozen years of daily blogging.

Well I’ve given away the theme. But rather than one of my now-&-then, watch me fly a hang glider, I have three interesting instances to cover.

Let’s get the hang-gliding out of the way, first. Saw it this morning. Guy on a rigid-wing Atos in Montecucco, Italy, having a blast flying backwards in the strong laminar ridge life and probably, Venturi effect. Unfortunately, it seems to only be on Facebook.

This might seem scary to you but in fact, laminar flow on a ridge from either prevailing winds or a pre-frontal condition is probably the most safe, predictable flying. Nothing like “bullet thermals” in high-summer desert conditions, landing just as a dust devil is kicking off.

Here’s me flying the exact same rigid wing (#53 off the German assembly line) some years back in pre-frontal storm conditions here in San Jose, off the peak at Ed Levin park, near Mission. In case you think you might not want to watch this 1:30m, know that I bonk the landing and everyone laughs at me, as they should. Justice!

This blew my mind. I mean, it’s so “holy shit” on so many levels it would be both ridiculous and presumptuous of me to attempt some pathetic description or naration. This one should imbed, hopefully. If not, here’s one source and here’s another.

I’m asking you. Have you ever seen anything like that, ever?

Here’s something you’ve never seen the likes of, NASA, Apollo, and Tom Hanks, eat your heart out.

I give you real, no shit space tourism. Proof just 3 days ago.

It’s not going to put theme parks out of business anytime soon, but it’s quite damn cool and what’s really interesting to me is actually the tech that goes into re-firing the main rocket in order to salvage the booster, and how fucking cool that looks.

I guess they don’t have taxpayers to force, to pay for whatever they want at will—including throwing away multi-mill-dollar rocket stage boosters by the hundreds over decades—so in order to keep ticket prices as “low” as possible for their future customers, they had to design a way to get it back down for re-use.

For more entertainment, read how Bezos and Musk are duking it out in the free-enterprise space race, where you don’t have to pay for it if you don’t want to.

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