The Daily Dose/December 15, 2018
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
In The News
Man’s quest to explore added another stone to the foundation of private sector space travel when Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo made it to 51 miles above sea level this week. This is, depending on your definition, either space or pretty close to it.
It was Virgin’s fourth test flight, and owner Sir Richard Branson is in a race with fellow billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to be the first to send paying tourists into space. Their quests began around 2004 and have been marred with the usual failures and tragedies that have attended space travel since the 1950’s and, indeed, all human exploration since time immemorial.
Almost interesting is the fact the FAA will issue the two pilots commercial astronaut wings, as the United States Air Force considers 50 miles to be the boundary of space. America, though, is the only jurisdiction that uses that definition. The exact boundary is unclear because our atmosphere doesn’t have a had and fast end, it merely fades away, but most use 62 miles as the boundary, a figure arrived at by someone smarter than us that incorporates a lot of dry, technical matter, including speed and altitude.
We don’t issue astronaut wings here at In The News, but our own view is 76 miles, the distance, more or less, when the earth’s atmosphere begins to exert influence on incoming spacecraft, is a pretty good practical definition of where space begins.
We quibble: kudos to everyone trying to make private space flight a go. It’s too bad that on the cusp of the third decade of the 21st century the private sector is still achieving states of arousal over sub-orbital flights that barely make it into space, but America’s government can’t even send anyone into space anymore, so they have hardly been either a shining example or much help.
Today At The Site
The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow is obliged to fill out onboarding paperwork for a job he’s had for two years and is leaving in a week, while at the retailer, Sparrow congratulates both the premium and the cheap bird seed customer on their purchase.
For the premium purchaser I confided The Wife and I both enjoy the higher class of bird the premium cseed attracts, while for the cheapo seed customer I confided The Wife and I appreciate the fact that birds are birds and they can’t tell the goddamned difference anyway, so why blow good money on the premium stuff???
On This Date
In 1970 – Man reaches another planet for the first time when the Soviet Union’s Venera 7 lands on Venus. It also marked the first time data was transmitted to Earth from another planet as Venera 7 reported, among other things, that Venus’ atmosphere was 97 percent carbon dioxide and its surface temperature was 887 degrees F. Venera 7 transmitted for 53 minutes, 20 of those from the surface, and hasn’t been heard from since.
In 1982 – Paul “Bear” Bryant retires as the head football coach at Alabama. His final game would come two weeks later, a 21-15 win over Illinois in the Liberty Bowl. Bryant retired with six national championships and 323 career victories, both records at the time. His six national championship mark has been tied by Nick Saban and his 323 wins is now good for fourth amongst major division coaches and seventh overall. An avid smoker and drinker and in ill health for several years, Bryant died of a massive heart attack several weeks later.
In 1984 – No One Loves Me Like You Do by Anne Murray and Dave Loggins, is at #1 on Billboard’s country chart – then known as the Hot Country Singles chart – for its only week. For Murray, it was her seventh and penultimate #1 US country hit. For Loggins, long an accomplished songwriter, it was his third and final appearance as a performer on an American chart: In 1974 Please Come To Boston went to #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and its followup Someday peaked at #57.
Quotebook
Love is a perpetual act of selfless devotion.
Jim Bishop
The Day Christ Died
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
The Charlotte Hornets were the other NBA team that began play in 1988. They moved to New Orleans in 2002 and a new team began play in Charlotte in 2004.
Today’s Stumper
How many #1 country hits as Anne Murray had in her native Canada? –Answer next time!
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