Good Landing

There is an aircrew out there that needs some recognition: the crew of Air France Flight 358. Their Airbus 340 did not land so well, but all 309 people aboard were safe... and, there were no ground casualties! Kudos, guys and gals!
You can read bout the details here and here.

This is the first time that an A340 has crashed.

In other aviation news, the astronauts on the Discovery are effecting repairs to their craft's belly. We have never tried that before, but terra incognita is nothing new to the men and women of NASA, either. The mood up there seems to be upbeat, even if a a lot of peole down here are worried sick. Never to make light of the hazards of manned space flight, some of you may be surprised to know that orbiters are usually damged on every flight... this problem that Discovery is having with the fabric insulation is nothing new at all. In previous flights, though, it has not been as severe. The prayers and wishes of the world are certainly with those up there.

For what it's worth, I think they will make it back just fine.

The comically named Virgin Galactic (comical because they do sub-orbital space tourism) is gearing up. Sir Richard Branson and Burt Rutan have teamed up to form The Spaceship Company. They are working on a bigger version of the Scaled Composites Spaceshipone, a typical Rutan creation that won the Ansari X-Prize last year (hey, remember that?). The SS2 will be bigger and will require a bigger mothership, being designed from the get go to ferry passengers up to black sky and back. Naysayers beware: Burt Rutan is unstopable!

Now, for that ski vacation on Mars... damn, they don't have those... yet...