Wednesday 25 February 2009

Tuesday 29 July 2008

Reuters on Rocket Man Richard Branson

By Fred Prouser Reuters - Monday, July 28 09:46 pm

MOJAVE, California (Reuters) - Entrepreneur Richard Branson on Monday unveiled the plane intended as the launch aircraft for a Virgin Galactic spaceship full of paying passengers.

The WhiteKnightTwo was displayed for a small group of reporters and invited guests at the California desert headquarters of Scaled Composites, the aerospace firm where it was built.

WhiteKnightTwo, nicknamed "Eve" after Branson's mother, was designed as a high-altitude aircraft that will launch SpaceShipTwo from midair.

It sports twin fuselages and a 140-foot (43-metre) wingspan and will carry SpaceShipTwo under the centre of its wing, between the two hulls. The plan is for the aircraft to free the spacecraft at about 50,000 feet (15,240 metres), from where it will rocket into space.

Virgin Galactic, part of Branson's airline, vacation and retail company Virgin Group, hopes to send its first paying customers into space for $200,000 (100,300 pounds) each within two years.

Branson said 200 people signed up for the ultimate sightseeing trip and that he expected the ticket price to drop significantly over the next five years.

Among the passengers expected to make the first trip are physicist Stephen Hawking, actress Victoria Principal and designer Philippe Starck.

Virgin Galactic is one of several contenders in the new commercial space race.

Others include Europe's EADS Astrium; Blue Origin, started by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos; Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), created by PayPal founder Elon Musk; Rocketplane Kistler; and Bigelow Aerospace, a venture aimed at creating space hotels, started by hotelier Robert Bigelow.

The leader in the budding sector is Space Adventures of Vienna, Virginia, which started the space tourism phenomenon in 2001 when it put U.S. businessman Dennis Tito on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft headed for the International Space Station for a reported $20 million.

(Additional reporting Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Monday 25 February 2008

"SPACECHIMP"

In January 1961, NASA launched its first "manned" flight, but the sole passenger wasn't human : he was a four-year-old ape named Ham, who became the first chimpanzee to survive space travel. Using dramatic reconstruction and archive footage, this BBC2"Natural World" documentary tells the unlikely astronaut's story.

For someone who was born in the jungle and died of old age, Ham had a very exciting life, and this is one fantastic little film....by any standards ! Truly Awesome !

Thursday 21 February 2008

Star People or Star Seeds

Crystal Links has the following entry for "Star Seeds ~ Star People"

"We are all 'star seeds', or 'star people' as we all have lived in many realities in many planetary systems and in higher realms as other life forms. So here we are, star seeds, souls sparks on a mission, trapped for NOW in a physical experience. Starseeds allegedly seed planets with information and spiritual frequency when one cycle of time is about to end and another begin.

As planetary frequency increases, so too does their levels of awareness, and need to help others, and return to their natural state of being, a soul spark of light.

There is little connection to the mainstream systems of society, religious, political or economic. Creativity is the key to spiritual fulfillment and mission. Many prefer to work only in the esoteric fields - healing, searching for their own truths and their soul mission through studying systems of higher wisdom, writing their biographies as a means of clearing issues and understanding their work here and now.

They await a great awakening the evolution of consciousness through the alchemy of time. They know that no one has the date for us to move into levels of higher frequency but their souls tell them that it is on the horizon. They are programmed to find others like themselves, as based on similar frequencies and predestined agendas.

Sometimes these souls are labelled 'walk-ins' or 'wanderers'. It is all the same as it really one soul having multidimensional experiences.

Some starseeds can overcome feelings of longing because they remember how to manifest realities that help them function in physical bodies while doing their work, holding their frequency here, at the same time.

Others feel lost and alone, become depressive and withdraw from society feeling that no one understands them.

Some die young from illnesses, accidents, suicides as the pain of remaining here becomes too great. Most are hampered by the limitations of the third dimension. Most do not want children.
Some trigger soul memory gradually as their conscious awareness evolves.

Others chose to attract an event, such as a near death experience, in which they detach from the physical grid returning in higher frequency. By creating a physical event of this kind, they are often left with a the finances so they no longer have to work in the physical and can spend their time searching for the truth about their purpose here. A functional soul will never take this route of sabotage."

Horizon Scanning

The British Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) defines Horizon Scanning as :

“The systematic examination of potential threats, opportunities and likely future developments which are at the margins of current thinking and planning. Horizon scanning may explore novel and unexpected issues, as well as persistent problems or trends. Overall, horizon scanning is intended to improve the robustness of Defra’s policies and evidence base.” - Defra, 2002.

"Horizon scanning is a distinct futures methodology that researches and draws out key trends which are on the margins of our current thinking, but which will impact on our lives in the future. These trends and drivers interact with each other and with the policies and strategies we put in place to create new conditions and new futures. By analysing trends and drivers, threats and opportunities to the department can be discovered and explored strategically. This will help to improve the evidence which underpins policy making."

Remote Viewing

According to the Wikipedia :

"Remote viewing (RV) is the purported ability of a person to gather information on a remote target that is hidden from the physical perception of the viewer and typically separated from the viewer at some distance, a form of extra-sensory perception.[1][2]

The term was introduced by Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff in 1974.[3]

As with other forms of extra-sensory perception, the objective validity of remote viewing has not been proved, and critics such as Randi and Clarke in An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural explain RV by normal means.[4]"