h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

i normally go to www.space.com which links to X Prize info, plus the Perseids and other stargazing, along with linking to www.spaceflight.nasa.gov which is solely for established U.S. and international space adventures.
i am sadly deficient in parrot-ology but can count a pair-of-keets as acquaintances.

Space.com is a great site. I'll be spending more time there as we get closer to the X Prize launches next month...

Parakeets are feisty little guys. If you cage them together with cockatiels, you have to watch out for the 'keets bullying the 'tiels, even though 'tiels are the bigger birds. And my cockatiels bully me...

My cocketiel friend died last year... and me still misses him... ~sad sigh~

Greebs..xx

Aw... ~sighs in sympathy~ Cockatiels are wonderful little birds, aren't they?

My oldest one turned 25 in May, so I figure one of these days... I've been thinking that for several years now, though, and here he is, alert, active and ready to let me know when things are not to his liking. He's survived school work, boy friends, first apartment, awful jobs, and my lousy cooking (he likes pasta). I can't imagine life without him.

~sigh~

funny we're discussing flying suborbital, plus the personal side of our flying friends.
the local airport hosted a rally of the four-foot, radio-controlled planes over the weekend, plus we spotted three of the 'ultralight' one-man craft later, over the lake. the pair-of-keets weren't interested.

One of my cockatiels always lets me know when he spots hawks or small aircraft flying by. He'll make little chirping noises and then say either 'hello' or 'bird'. I bet he'd love a radio-controlled plane of his very own.

you'd best have a 'bird room' or wear a helmet to minimize damage---the pair of keets are bad enough when we let them loose to scrub the cage out, let alone a 'tiel or two.
don't wanna contemplate if they'd control remote aircraft.
'revenge of the birds' coming soon to a theatre near you.

How 'bout a remake of the Alfred Hitchcock classic 'The Birds':

~ominous music~ 'The crows are in the cockpits, and they're gunning for you.' ~sounds of screaming in the background~

A) i've been toying with the concept of cats in zero-gee. i believe they could adapt to weightlessness. (greebs, i KNOW you could.) birds i'm not sure about.
B) decades ago, i met a macaw that thought it was a crow, and had crows thinking it was one, too. they made one llehuva racket, inside and out. (oh jeeze, that was like 40 years ago....gawd !)

hey quiz, i just noticed (off msnbc.com) a proposed new competition.
www.spaceward.org
www.elevator2010.org
have some details about making asimov and heinlein's ideas a reality.

I saw that! Very cool. It's exciting to actually live the stuff we've read about.

There was also a space elevator on Mars in Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy 'Red Mars', 'Green Mars', and 'Blue Mars'. (At one point terrorists cut the cable up near its orbiting terminus and the cable fell, wrapping itself around the planet and creating a huge trench where it landed.) Excellent set of books, I thought.

I

i saw 'blue' in the local library; now that the county libraries are linked online, i think i'll check for the trilogy. thanks for the author name, i had forgotten.
heinlein called it 'the beanstalk' and in a couple novel/ books he had it collapsing, but it WOULD tend to wrap itself around, wouldn't it ? the earth is rotating, it would stream out....
(i can barely understand orbit. who am i kidding? nmad birds know more about flying than i, and they ain't telling.)