Today I got my Space Adventure. IT WAS WORTH EVERY PENNY AND I'D DO IT AGAIN!! Wow. WOW. I got to fly in a Mig-25, flown by a famous Russian pilot named Alexander Pavlov, to 25,000 meters, about 82,000 feet high, ( 25 kilometers, or about 15 miles high... woohoo!) to the top speed of about Mach 2.8 (2,131.4 miles per hour, 3,430.1 kilometers per hour... yeehaw!)... When I post the pictures on my Smugmug page, you'll notice that I took a picture of the Altimeter and Speedometer every so often, but at the peak of speed and hight I didn't snap one, because that was the purest moment of euphoria I've ever experienced and there was no room for thought... I was weightless for several seconds, I have no idea how long, really. The weightlessness was caused by the altitude and the arc of the Mig-25 going over it's peak, which also caused me to have a slight buzz...Looking down at the Earth and up at the Great Black. I was in Jerusalem five days ago, but this was, BY FAR, a much Holier experience.
I also flew in a second plane as part of the package, the L-39, which is a subsonic acrobatic training plane. When I say I flew it, I mean that literally! When we got to a certain hight, the pilot handed me control of the stick... I was a bit of a wuss with it, I must say, but then he hadn't yet shown me what the plane could do... side rolls, loop rolls, straight vertical dives, vertical ascents, combinations... the best one was this one where he went straight up, then stopped the plane... we hovered, fell straight down tail-first, and then did this sort of figure 8 roll where the nose came backwards over the tail and partway through combined it with a barrel... I felt like a pretzel. It was pretty incredible, and I must say that it turned out to be %95 as cool as the Mig-25... especially when he handed over the control to me again at the end of his acrobatics. I was much braver this time... don't get me wrong, I wasn't up to doing any rolls myself, but I did a pretty steep ascent and then dive, and made some pretty sharp turns... That thing is a big toy! Aside from all of the more extreme forces involved, it was like drving a motorcycle in the sky! I never before realized how truly maneuverable jets could be... I want to buy one!
That South African TV crew was there, and they did do a quick interview with me after the flight... They say they'll send me a copy, but we'll see. I was the first to fly, because I was the only one doing a second flight that day, and while the 2nd guy was up, I was in the L-39. When I got back from that, I got to watch the one News Guy take off in the Mig... I think that If I hadn't been the first one to go, that would have scared me a little bit. It was like watching a rocket take off... which, actually, is what it basically is. LOUD and HEAVY and FAST! I didn't feel it from inside the Mig as much as I felt it from watching it take off... I keep thinking about something my friend Jeff Nimmer wrote to me when he heard I was going up in one: "Freaking Mig 25...you realize that when we were growing up...the military would have killed to get info on the Mig 25... [and they probably DID kill to get information on it...] and you're going to be riding one to sub-space...freaking sweet..."
So all in all, I can pretty much die happy any time now... I'll never top that one. (Unless someone wants to lend me $20,000,000 bucks for the International Space Station trip...? Or the $100,000,000 bucks for the moon ride that they're planning! Hey Jen, can you spare me a few Mil?) (4! Sorry I missed you on that last post... the title of it is all the excuse I can offer...)
Anyway, I am unbelievably exhausted... I'm still a tad light headed and my body feels like it's been put through a sandwich maker... all them crazy G-Forces, dontcha know.
Cappucino Points!
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