Boats, Planes and Spaceships

Big excitement waiting for the train on the daily commute - I saw a plane! Yup, the first contrail above the skies of London since the volcanic ash descended from Iceland. Not sure if it was an overflight or test flight measuring ash densities, but definitely a plane.

Probably the first of many, as the wind is a changing, and by the weekend normal service will be resumed with south-westerlies to enjoy. It might even be sooner than that as BA has some jumbos in the air heading for Heathrow as we speak.

You can watch the skies over Europe in the comfort of you own home using this nice real time flight viewer (though it does seem rather busy at the moment).

So hopefully, fingers crossed etc, soon this little hiccup will be over, and my poor brother and family will finally make their way home.

And then it will be time for the next group writing project - sailing in the year 2020 - 2030 time frame. Well Bonnie got there first with solar sailing, but maybe she wasn't aware there were plans to race three of these around the Moon (see pic above).

While sounding exciting these things alas have very, very low accelerations, so most useful for station keeping or holding statite style quasi - orbits (yup, real space cadet here).

A good topic, but will have to put on back burner for a day or two.

Update: and just hearing that the UK's airspace is going to open again. Fingers crossed my brother and family get one of the earlier flights in.

Updated update: and with a Roooooaaaarrrr!!! they're back, or at least one airplane has just flown into Heathrow...... and then another.......