This is new space.

The Man Who Would Fall to Earth by Luke Dittrich

Esquire, August 2010

This month, Esquire's theme is The Impossible. The issue features a series of articles that investigate and prove that what may have previously been considered impossible, is actually very possible--and happening. Some examples include leaving Iraq, living with 50 million ants and skydiving from space. I haven't yet read the articles about the first two, but the one about skydiving from space was really fascinating. I've always always loved the concept of space. When I was younger, I wanted to be an astronomer and spend my life studying the universe. And I've always dreamed of going, though never actually wanted to become the astronaut for the privilege. Now, among many other really cool things, "The Man Who Would Fall to Earth," informs that some organizations are now designing the necessary machinery and experimenting with the necessary science to create programs that will eventually take TOURISTS to space. In my lifetime!!

"The first thing they did, right there at Ellington Airport was separate Iain from Clark. A CACO drove away with Iain, and Clark learned later that they had gone on an outing to the Kemah Boardwalk. Another CACO took Clark home and helped guide him through the first steps of the grieving process. The CACO got him drunk. Very, very drunk. He stayed drunk for a solid day and a half." (p. 88)

"That same slogan is embroidered onto a predistressed baseball cap available for sale on Felix's Web site, but Felix himself is not wearing any sort of hat today. A hat might have messed up his hair, which early on this Thursday morning, in this hot drop zone, was spiked to perfection with gel. The gel was a problem. The gel could kill him. In the pure-oxygen environment that exists in a pressure suit, a petroleum-based product like hair gel becomes as volatile as napalm. Even the tiniest spark--the merest crackle of static electricity, say--could ignite it, setting his handsome head ablaze." (p. 91)

"He has sat down with Felix and patiently explained some of the things that could go wrong during this sort of jump, many of which he experienced himself. On that day in 1960, for example, the glove of his pressure suit experienced a small leak, and although a wrist seal prevented any other part of his body from taking a hit, his hand underwent partial ebullism, swelling quickly to at least double its size, the limits of the glove the only thing that prevented his hand from ballooning even further." (p. 91)

"To understand what happens next, it helps to first understand that we humans, in our normal earthbound lives, live at the bottom of an extremely deep ocean of air. The air at the bottom of this ocean, at sea level, sags under the weight of the seventy-five miles of air above it, and the oxygen molecules at lower altitudes are consequently squashed together much more densely than those at higher altitudes. This is why a person accustomed to breathing the rich, thickly oxygenated soup that exists at sea level will very quickly become hypoxic, or oxygen deficient, if he tries to subsist for long on the thin gruel doled out at twenty-five thousand feet." (p. 136)

"There's still a long way to go for Stratos. The plan is to make two preliminary jumps, one at 60,000 feet and one at 90,000, before making the final one at 120,000. That jump is currently slated for August, but who knows. Delays are inevitable with these sorts of things. Regardless, Clark is already looking beyond that third jump, above 120,000 feet, faster than Mach 1. There's another company he's involved with, something called Excalibur Almaz, and in the next decade it plans to send tourists up past the stratosphere, into true space, into orbit." (p. 136) !!

"This is new space. This is passion and capitalism stoking the same grand ambitions that fear and nationalism once did. This is corporations picking up the reins of manned spaceflight at the moment when the government's will is at its lowest ebb. This is realizing that before spaceflight can ever become routine, before the ultimate human diaspora can truly begin, spaceflight will first have to be safer, right from the start. This is taking a simple statement about what is possible--the vehicle broke up at an altitude that was not survivable--and working as hard as you can so that someday, next time, it won't be true." (p. 137)

I still have a very clear picture of the inside of that hut and of the bearded man with the bright fiery eyes who kept talking to me in riddles.

While Roald Dahl was in Palestine...

"I still have a very clear picture of the inside of that hut and of the bearded man with the bright fiery eyes who kept talking to me in riddles. 'We need a homeland,' the man was saying. ' We need a country of our own. Even the Zulus have Zululand. But we have nothing.'

'You mean the Jews have no country?'

'That's exactly what I mean,' he said. 'It's time we had one.'

'But how in the world are you going to get yourselves a country?' I asked him. 'They are all occupied. Norway belongs to the Norwegians and Nicaragua belongs to the Nicaraguans. It's the same all over.'

'We shall see,' the man said, sipping his coffee. The dark-haired woman was washing up some plates in a basin of water on another small table and she had her back to us.

'You could have Germany,' I said brightly. 'When we have beaten Hitler then perhaps England would give you Germany.'

'We don't want Germany,' the man said.

'Then which country did you have in mind?' I asked him, displaying more ignorance than ever." (p. 198)

Soon after, Roald Dahl finally made it home, being sent home due to blackouts probably the effects of his previous crash. It's unbelievable to me that he had such an unbelievable life pre children's books. A part of me really wishes that I could adventure in the same way that he did but back then he was more free to do so in a world that was still vastly unexplored. There were many dangers, of course, but he was so unaware of them that it led him to live freely in a way that I could never do today. I'm a little envious. Everything is planned (if even loosely), safety measures and precautions always in the back of my mind. I could never have that uninhibited careless adventure because there are too many risks and it's better to be safe than sorry. But look at him, he lived by instinct--some quick impromptu decisions literally saving his life--and in the end he died an old man with great memories and stories to tell (both fiction and nonfiction).

His memoirs are entertaining, nostalgic and insightful. I recommend Boy and Going Solo to everyone.

I had actually shot down a German bomber

"I watched spellbound. I couldn't believe that I had actually shot down a German bomber. But I was immensely relieved to see the parachutes." (p. 138)

I was young enough and starry-eyed enough to look upon this Grecian escapade as nothing more than a grand adventure.

"One morning I saw a medical orderly coming down this corridor carrying a very large tray with a white cloth over it. Walking in the opposite direction towards the orderly, was a middle-aged woman, probably somebody from the hospital clerical staff. When the orderly came level with the woman, he suddenly whipped away the cloth from the tray and pushed the tray towards the woman's face. On the tray there lay the entire quite naked amputated leg of a soldier. I saw the poor woman reel backwards. I saw the foul orderly roar with laughter and replace the cloth and walk on. I saw the woman stagger to the window-sill and lean forward with her head in her hands, then she pulled herself together and went on her way. I have never forgotten that little illustration of man's repulsive behaviour towards woman." (p. 117)

"I was young enough and starry-eyed enough to look upon this Grecian escapade as nothing more than a grand adventure. The thought that I might never get out of the country alive didn't occur to me. It should have done, and looking back on it now I am surprised that it didn't. Had I paused for a moment and calculated the odds against survival, I would have found that they were about fifty to one and that's enough to give anyone the shakes." (p. 126)

"I was to share a tent with another pilot and when I ducked my head low and went in, my companion was sitting on his camp-bed and threading a piece of string into one of his shoes because the shoe-lace had broken. He had a long but friendly face and he introduced himself as David Coke, pronounced Cook. I learnt much later that David Coke came from a very noble family, and today, had he not been killed in his Hurricane later on, he would have been none other than the Earl of Leicester owning one of the most enormous and beautiful stately homes in England, although anyone acting less like a future Earl I have never met." (p. 127-8)

I often amazed myself by the way I behaved when I was certain there were no other human beings within fifty miles.

"When one is quite alone on a lengthy and slightly hazardous journey like this, every sensation of pleasure and fear is enormously intensified, and several incidents from that strange two-day safari up through central Africa in my little black Ford have remained clear in my memory. A frequent and always wonderful sight was the astonishing number of giraffe that I passed on the first day. They were usually in groups of three or four, often with a baby alongside, and they never ceased to enthrall me. They were surprisingly tame. I would see them ahead of me nibbling green leaves from the tops of acacia trees by the side of the road, and whenever I came upon them I would stop the car and get out and walk slowly towards them, shouting inane but cheery greetings up into the sky where their small heads were waving about on their long long necks. I often amazed myself by the way I behaved when I was certain there were no other human beings within fifty miles. All my inhibitions would disappear and I would shout, 'Hello, giraffes! Hello! Hello! Hello! How are you today?"And the giraffes would incline their heads very slightly and stare down at me with languorous demure expressions, but they never ran away." (p. 78-9)

"In retrospect, one gasps at the waste of life." (p. 83)

The croaking of frogs is the night music of the East African coast.

Going Solo, Roald Dahl

"Suddenly the voice of a man yelling in Swahili exploded into the quiet of the evening. It was my boy, Mdisho. 'Bwana! Bwana! Bwana!' he was yelling from somewhere behind the house. 'Simba, bwana! Simba! Simba!' Simba is Swahili for lion. All three of us leapt to our feet, and the next moment Mdisho came tearing round the corner of the house yelling at us in Swahili, 'Come quick, bwana! Come quick! Come quick! A huge lion is eating the wife of the cook!' (p. 35)

I had an epiphany here... Lion King. Simba. It all made sense. This excerpt leads to a really fascinating story which spans a couple of pages so I won't post it. But essentially, the lion literally carried the woman in his mouth, slowly leading her into the forest. As soon as they scared him off with a gunshot he dropped her, not having hurt her in any way, and seemingly never intended to.

"All around us in the forest the frogs were croaking incessantly. African frogs have an unusually loud rasping croak and however far away from you they are, the sound always seems to be coming from somewhere near your feet. The croaking of frogs is the night music of the East African coast. The actual croak is made only by the bullfrog and he does it by blowing out his dewlap and letting it go with a burp. This is his mating call and when the female hears it she hops smartly over to the side of her prospective mate. But when she arrives a curious thing happens and it is not quite what you are thinking. The bullfrog does not turn and greet the female. Far from it. He ignores her totally and continues to sit there singing his song to the stars while the female waits patiently beside him. She waits and she waits and she waits. The male sings and he sings and he sings, often for several hours, and what has actually happened is this. The bullfrog has fallen so much in love with the sound of his own voice that he has completely forgotten why he started croaking in the first place. We know that he started because he was feeling sexy. But now he has become mesmerized by the lovely music he is making so that for him nothing else exists, not even the panting female at his side. There comes a time, though, when she loses all patience and starts nudging him hard with a foreleg, and only then does the bullfrog come out of his trance and turn to embrace her. Ah well. The bullfrog, I told myself as I sat there in the dark forest, is not after all so very different from a lot of human males that I could think of." (p. 61-2)

I was off to the land of palm-trees and coconuts and coral reefs and lions

"It was a tremendous thing in those days for a young man to be going off to Africa to work. The journey alone would take two weeks, sailing through the Bay of Biscay, past Gibraltar, across the Mediterranean, through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, calling in at Aden and arriving finally at Mombasa. What a prospect that was! I was off to the land of palm-trees and coconuts and coral reefs and lions and elephants and deadly snakes, and a white hunter who had lived ten years in Mwanza had told me that if a black mamba bit you, you died within the hour writhing in agony and foaming at the mouth. I couldn't wait." (p. 174-5)

I loved this book. Going Solo is next.