Now that fall is kicking into high gear, that means football is back—and we're as excited as you are. Game day parties have been a long-standing tradition full of fun with friends and family, and of course, the yummy snacks.
21.08.2023 - 11:55 / theunconventionalgardener.com / guest
Header image: Blue Origin
Chris James, The University of Queensland
Over the next fortnight, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos and Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson will take off into space, because they can, on spaceships designed by their respective companies.
It’s a big moment for the private space industry. But the question comes to mind: who has the smarter plan?
On May 5 Blue Origin, owned by former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, announced it would fly its first crew of astronauts into space on July 20 — the Apollo 11 Moon landing’s 52nd anniversary.
After 15 successful test flights, this will be the first crewed flight for Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship. One seat will be occupied by an undisclosed winner of a charity auction, who reportedly paid US$28 million for the privilege. Two more seats will be taken up by Bezos and his brother Mark.
A fourth seat will go to Wally Funk. The 82-year-old pilot was a promising candidate in the 1960s Mercury 13 women’s astronaut training programme, but wasn’t able to go to space because of her gender.
It wasn’t long after Bezos announced his plans that Sir Richard Branson also joined in, setting a launch date of July 11 — nine days before Bezos’s departure.
Branson will travel as part of a six person crew on Virgin Galactic spaceplane VSS Unity. It will be the fourth time the VSS Unity, the specific SpaceShipTwo spacecraft, has been flown to space, but the first with a full crew.
Read more: Want to become a space tourist? You finally can — if you have $250,000 and a will to sign your life away
Both flights will be short, and based on different definitions of where “space” begins.
Bezos’s Blue Origin has chosen to define this as the internationally recognised Kármán line at 100
Now that fall is kicking into high gear, that means football is back—and we're as excited as you are. Game day parties have been a long-standing tradition full of fun with friends and family, and of course, the yummy snacks.
Header image: Lupinus albus (altramuces o chochitos), by Calapito via Wikimedia Commons.
A couple of weeks ago my mother asked me if I was putting the garden to bed for the winter. It’s a common gardening phrase, and yet I have very little understanding of what it means. It implies the garden is going to be hibernating all winter, which isn’t true for a well-designed ornamental garden, and certainly isn’t true for a kitchen garden. Perhaps it means the gardener is going to be hibernating all winter, and the garden needs to be prepared for a long, untended stint? It can’t be about getting the kitchen garden ready for winter, I have been doing that all year.
We finally have a date for the paving – 22nd June, weather permitting. It has taken a long time to get one, and I have been going a bit crazy without a proper garden. In the meantime, we have been doing a lot of work in preparation for the paving, including taking out the shrubs along the fence. Getting their roots out was fun, they’d lived here longer than we have! And that has given us the opportunity to start painting the fence. The lefthand side of the garden now looks quite different.
When Virgin Galactic’s Unity 22 flew into space on Sunday, it carried one billionaire passenger and three tubes filled with plants.
Header image: Chimpanzee Ham with Trainers. Image credit: NASA
Today Blue Origin today successfully launched the New Shepard space vehicle’s Mission 9. The spacecraft is carrying payloads from private companies, universities and space agencies- including the world’s smelliest fruit.
Header image: Richard Bord/Getty Images
The role downunder played in helping track the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon.
Header image: Virgin Galactic’s Carrier Aircraft VMS Eve and VSS Unity Take to the Skies (Virgin Galactic)
Header image: One of the Vanguard satellites being checked out at Cape Canaveral, Florida in 1958. NASA
Header image: Glenn, in the NASA mailroom, received letters from fans of all ages. John Glenn Archives, The Ohio State University, CC BY-ND