Book Your Space Flight Soon!

Seems that there are nearly 350 eager passengers lined up to fly into space with Virgin Galactic, and the $50million from their advance booking fees has helped with the research and development. You can see here the 4 minute video from 3 days ago --- the successful first release and glide landing of the craft SpaceShipTwo ("VSS Enterprise"). Enthusiastic spectators were Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides, and Virgin founder and a backer of the project Sir Richard Branson. The home website with that video (and more about the intriguing story) is, again,
  http://www.virgingalactic.com/

Further landmarks in the project to put paying passengers into orbit will follow on October 18 and 22. The new runway will be commissioned at the Mojave Air and Space Port in New Mexico (that's a State in the USA, not in Mexico. Non-Americans all knew that, didn't we?)

P.S. The iconography is classic. As if to prove the heritage of Best of Boys' Toys, we have the nice lady painted on the bow of the craft (virginally white), the blokey hugs and dunking of the pilots with buckets of water (possibly that is for technical aerodynamic reasons); other stuff. Hey, I like it all. Now, what was that fare in Aussie dollars?

P.P.S.  For those who are steadfastly uninterested* in spacey stuff, but have for some reason read this far (well done!) here's a curious piece about The Three Hares. Thanks to B.B.'s blog. Note that the hares appear to share only three ears.  Sort of optical illusion. But the Wikipedia article about them explains that this is an ancient emblem of religious and artistic (and mathematical) implications. Hooray. The Three Hares.

*Have you ever heard the word "disinterested" used as if it meant NOT INTERESTED?? Disinterested correctly means unbiased, neutral, unprejudiced. I am biased. I hate and loathe the incorrect usage, even while knowing that the battle is already lost. The word for uninterested is uninterested. I just thought you should know this. Because in the event that you ever were present when somebody used "disinterested" wrongly in my hearing (not you, of course) it would help to explain why I fell to the floor frothing at the mouth. It's O.K., this is meant as a joke. Mostly.