Those good old Bell 47's roaming above Palmira

It was the homecoming of a true hero every evening my dad came back from work. He would whistle as soon as he entered the house and then my two sisters and I would run towards him. I remember his big smile, his skin darkened by long hours working at the helipad, under the sun. I remember his cap: he loves caps with aviation logos! I remember his uniform, and his big watch! Aviation men love big watches! I remember Dad’s small metal ruler kept in his left shirt pocket, and his weary hands carrying those aviation manuals I would learn to love as if they were masterpieces of literature. I remember the way he smelled: after a long work journey, Dad would smell like aircraft! I guess I shouldn’t wonder why I love the way aircraft smell! I just grew up surrounded by it! And my biggest hero often smells a lot like it!

My sisters and I would hug my dad in cherish and he would hug us back and laugh, while asking us how we were and what we had done in the afternoon. He would spend some minutes asking us about school. Mom then would reach us all as well, and would kiss dad and ask him about his journey. Those were such beautiful moments, such tender ones, and they repeated themselves day after day for years, before we left Palmira, in the south of Colombia, and moved to Bogotá. We were such a poor family back then while living in Palmira, but we were so incredibly happy. We didn’t have much in our little house in Palmira… and yet, we had it all.

Back then in those years in Palmira, my dad used to work full time with helicopters for the very first time. After finishing his technical high school studies he worked here and there, some months in aviation and later on doing different odd things such as driving taxis. But aviation was his life long dream and finally he was reaching for it, under the sun in Palmira. He always wanted to be a helicopter pilot, but studying to become a pilot is a very expensive thing and he couldn’t make it. Luckily, he managed to apply to one of the few high schools in Colombia where you could get aviation education and then he became one tough technician. You should see his old notebooks! Everything is beautifully written, with so much care, and there are pictures here and there, pictures by his own hand, of course! I would stare for hours at his notes and his books!

When I was a little kid in Palmira, I would spend my afternoons among my dad’s notebooks, his manuals, and his beloved aviation encyclopaedia. I would also play (and argue!) with my sisters and nothing would be better than our dad’s welcoming every evening. Mom remembers those days with so much joy and thinks of them as the best time ever in our lives. They definitively were. Life was just too easy. It was all about dreaming, playing, and watching my dad soar above the sky onboard good old Bell 47's helicopters. That was fantastic: as soon as mum heard the helicopter roaming approaching home she would rush to the front door and call us! “Come here, hurry! Your dad is coming!”. We would gaze at the sky and enjoy the view of our dad flying above the house. I remember seeing him pretty well through the big open canopy of the Bell 47’s he used to test fly with his friends at work. His big smile full of joy would shine more than the sun itself. And we, mom, my sisters and I, would all cherish at that, would love it all!

Movies I like: "I am Legend"

So there's this movie which is meant to be "serious" but happens to be based on the funny idea that some cure for cancer ends up turning human beings into some sort of violent zombies eager to dine your flesh and blood... Well, I guess you might not expect that much from such a movie, but I have to say that it was worth watching it. My girlfriend fell completely asleep in a matter of minutes (all right, it was too late at night when I decided to watch it!) but I watched and enjoyed the whole movie.

Seems I'm talking about a sequel to "Resident Evil" but I'm not. It's "I am Legend". It's a nice movie if you manage to focus your attention on Will Smith's acting and in a desperately act of self control decide to completely forget about the poor special effects of these “zombies” wandering everywhere. Smith’s acting in this movie is fantastic and you do feel his anxiety, his solitude, his despair, his deep sadness. It’s the story of a warrior, someone who has lost everything in the fight and yet is strong enough to keep fighting. Yeah, typical “American superhero” movie, but it’s fun!

The depiction of a world almost emptied of human beings is astonishing: it’s made pretty well because it doesn’t look like a typical apocalyptic movie with dark skies and little sunlight, it all takes place in beautiful sunny days, and seeing no one around NY in such “perfect” days is just amazing! In these days in which scientists grow more and more sceptical about the future of mankind, well, having such a good “closer look “ at what might be those empty streets of future Earth is quite touching.

Back there at home in Colombia my family and I used to love Will Smith’s “The Fresh Prince Of Bell-Air”. It was just too funny! My mum is someone who hardly watches TV, she’d rather spend her free time reading a book or knitting, or simply cooking something special. That’s my mom. And yet, when it comes to Will Smith she would find the time to watch him! I have hardly seen my mum laugh so much with a TV program! Time has gone by and Will Smith has turned to more serious stuff, and he’s doing well. If you enjoy his acting you’d better watch this movie.

Holly Cow! I desperately need 200.000 Euros!

On top: my "Mojave Dreamer", something that I just drew someday
Below from left to right: Burt Rutan and Sir Branson with SpaceShipTwo,
next a previously released version of the launch system, and far on the right there's Rutan's "Boomerang".

Think about it: what would you do if woke up one day and found some 200.000 Euros in your pocket? You may think that I’m nuts but, right after taking a cold shower (in order to make sure that I’m not dreaming!) I would immediately call Virgin Galactic in the UK! I’d phone them the soonest possible! I would buy myself a ticket for my own suborbital flight! All right, maybe my mum and dad would convince me to save some of that money… but most of it would be just for that flight… and they would understand it! They just know me too well! Forget about buying a home in Bologna: I would book my flight! No questions about it!

To anyone in love with air and space, and eager to take part of amazing adventures, a “ride up there” would be worth spending all that money and even more. Ask Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Anousheh Ansari and Charles Simonyi: they all have spent more than 20 million dollars in their own dream spaceflight… and I’m sure if they could come back in time… they would simply do it again! No regrets. At all!

On January 23rd 2008 Burt Rutan and Sir Richard Branson unveiled White Knight Two and SpaceShipTwo, and by doing so a moment we space geeks have been waiting for so long finally came true: for the first time since Sputnik, “Space Tourism” truly seems to be on the way of becoming a reality in the near future, and a new revolution in spaceflight might take place sooner than you think…

White Knight Two and SpaceShipTwo are together a revolutionary launch system that will carry six paying passengers into a suborbital flight. Up there, at some 110 km above Earth, passengers will have a few minutes of low gravity (they will “float” for some 5 minutes…) and will also have a breath taking view of the Earth from the windows of SpaceShipTwo... a view so far enjoyed just by tough professional astronauts and very few space tourists who have spend millions of dollars for a ride onboard Russian spacecrafts.

View from SpaceShipOne. Photo by pilot Brian Binnie.

SpaceShipTwo is the evolution of SpaceShipOne, which is a vehicle designed by Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites. SpaceShipOne won the X-Prize in 2004. The X-Prize was an inspiring competition in which many teams were tasked to reach space with a vehicle capable of carrying two paying passengers and a pilot, twice in a two-week period. The winning team, Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites, got a 10 million-dollar prize for doing so, in the same very spirit that many decades ago moved Charles Lindberg to fly solo across the Atlantic from New York to Paris in 1927 (for a 25000-dollar prize!), an act of bravery that pushed the limits of aviation of its time and helped grow interest in intercontinental flight. Back then they had “The Lone Eagle” (that is Lindberg), a mighty small airplane named “The Spirit of St. Louis”, a courageous engineer named Donald Hall and aircraft builder "Ryan Aeronautical Company" of San Diego, California. In 2004 we had two great pilots, Brian Binie and Mike Melvill, great entrepreneurs such as Sir Richard Branson and Paul Allen supporting them, and visionary designer Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites in Mojave, California.

If you think the launch system looks weird… have a look at the picture far on the right: that’s “Boomerang”, another one of Rutan’s designs! Now that’s weird! And yet they say it flies smoothly, just like the wind itself! Do you wanna get even more scared? SpaceShipTwo is not even made of metal: just “fabric and glue”, some materials known as “composites”! Something closer to fibreglass rather than to metal… It has work in Burt Rutan’s flying inventions for decades, it has work perfectly with SpaceShipOne and I’m sure it’s gonna work even better in this new vehicle! Just fabric and glue… This is just too exciting, isn’t it?

Many people would ban the whole thing by saying that it’s just another rich people’s leisure (“expect to see Paris Hilton or Lindsey Lohan up there soon…” Holly Shi@#!!!!), and that the whole thing is just too expensive for ordinary guys (like me). Well, it is, but if you read a little bit of history you’ll see that so many things we have for granted nowadays and can buy without that much of an effort, from cool bicycles, cellphones, TVs, stereos, and Laptop PCs to a car or even an ultralight airplane, were all things that once were reachable just by the richest people. Some of these inventions became reachable in just a few decades to most of us and currently many more companies prepare to enter the spacetourism business, so we can expect prices to go downwards… in time. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to save that much money in my lifetime but I’m sure the whole thing will be reachable to many more people, maybe even my children and grandchildren someday. The whole thing, in the words of Sir Branson “can lead to orbital travel, it can lead to the most incredible kinds of hotels in space, it can lead to small little spaceships going around the moon and being able to view the moon from a 100 or 200 foot above the surface”. The whole thing can lead to amazing things…

Thank God, while there are so many people trying to ruin the world (e.g. Bush, Mastela, Berlusconi, among others…) there are some others who try to make it a better place. In a time when youngsters are getting more and more lazy, in which interest in science and technology drops, in which just too many entrepreneurs prefer to complain rather than to improve and compete, in which everything is either too difficult or even impossible to accomplish… there come people like Burt Rutan, his team at Scaled Composites and entrepreneurs like Sir Branson who show us that it is possible to dream, that there’s a price in blood, sweat and tears to pay, and even the risk of not accomplishing it at all… but that you‘ve got to try! Whatever it is that make us a different species in this planet, it’s sure about our capability to risk, try new things, invent. Let’s pay attention to the future events at Virgin Galactic and that dusty place called Mojave, in California. Let’s take those events as an inspiration to our own lives. Good people have already sacrificed their lives fighting for this space dream, and I’m sure they would say “Let’s risk, let’s risk it all, because live is more than just living it!”