A Bit of History by ©2020 Sarah Becker From The Wright Brothers to Space X In 1901 American scientist, astronomer, and mathematician Simon Newcomb [1835-1909] “predicted that man would never fly.” Said Newcomb in 1903: “The desire to fly like a bird is inborn in our race, and we can no more be expected to abandon the idea than the ancient mathematician could have been expected to give up the problem of squaring the circle…The example of the bird does not prove that man can fly.” Two years later the Wright brothers, Orville [1871-1948] and Wilbur especially [1867-1912] flew a gasoline-powered heavier-than-air machine over Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Successfully for 59 seconds. The brothers’ 1903 ascent marked the beginning of aerial navigation. In May 2020 Space X, entrepreneur Elon Musk’s private venture sent two veteran NASA astronauts—Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley—to the International Space Station [ISS] aboard its “gum-dropped shaped” Crew Dragon spaceship. Space-X’s 29-story, reusable launch rocket is affectionately known as Falcon-9. NASA’s program goal: to restore American access to space using commercial partners. NASA astronauts Behnken and Hurley remained aboard the ISS for 65 days; until their August 2, 19-hour journey home. The Crew Dragon’s splash down in the Gulf of Mexico was NASA’s first splash down landing in 45 years. “Since before the space shuttle was retired, NASA has been contracting with private companies to develop spacecraft capable of supplying the station with cargo and, at some point in the future, new crews,” former NASA-ISS astronaut Scott Kelly wrote in 2017. “The most successful private company so far has been Space Exploration Technologies, better known as Space X, which produces the Dragon spacecraft.” Musk’s “bird” indeed can fly! Like the Wright brothers’ airplanes before. The related principles of space flight and atmospheric flight “are not…
Intrigue and Enchantment By Miriam R. Kramer What’s next, a plague of locusts? Following a record rainfall and flash floods in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, temperatures and high humidity recently combined to create a heat wave up the East Coast with a real feel of about 110°F in DC and Old Town Alexandria. If the weather keeps you from sunbathing or sitting on a beach, keep blasting that air conditioner while a clutch of novels entertains and relaxes you during your vacation days. You can try an airport read, The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian; a tell-all about sisters and family, Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner; or a majestic piece of historical fiction, The Lost Queen by Signe Pike. The Flight Attendant is a fun airplane diversion: a thriller that I gulped on a recent flight along with my complimentary ginger ale and Cheez-Its. Cassie Boyden, a flight attendant with a layover in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, wakes up with a horrible hangover next to her previous night’s fling, a first-class passenger whose throat has been slit open. Scrambling to remove all traces of herself and make it to her flight to Paris, she tries to piece together a previous evening featuring copious alcohol and several blackout periods. As she flies first to Paris and then JFK in New York, Cassie attempts to reconstruct her night with Alex, a hedge fund manager with a flair for number crunching and an unusual penchant for Russian novels. She vaguely remembers that a so-called female business colleague of his had stopped by the room with a bottle of Stoli, after which she can recall nothing until the moment she woke up with a first-class headache in Alex’s first-class hotel. The Flight Attendant is an enjoyable thriller in which Russian spies, the FBI,…