The race to get into space is definitely on, with various billionaires playing their hands and splashing the cash to see who can get there first. Richard Branson in his Virgin Galactic VSS Unity spaceplane recently pipped Jeff Bezos in his Blue Origin Rocket.
Branson got there first flying to 282,000 feet, surpassing NASA’s designated Earth-space boundary of 50 miles, but Bezos flew higher in his rocket to an altitude of more than 62 miles above the Earth. The FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale) define this as the Karman line – ‘Space Beginning’ – 330,000 feet above Earth’s mean sea level.
As you can see it’s all a matter of perspective and ego!
Back on Friday 16th August 2002, Freddie our youngest son, was just four months old… Chris and I had an agonising decision to make – a leap of faith. Due to the amount of airmiles that Chris had accrued flying to South America with work over the prior three/four years, we had amassed 90,000 miles.‘Airmiles’ offered us a unique opportunity – fly with Air France on Concorde from Paris to New York for 120,000 miles.
We hummed and harred for a few hours, possibly even a day. Then came to our senses, bought the extra miles and left Freddie with Grandma and enough ‘expressed’ frozen breast milk to last the weekend. We were off on a trip of a lifetime…
We boarded Concorde at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and we were star struck by the grandeur of the aircraft. The pulse quickened as we were escorted through the streamlined cabin, designed by Raymond Loery – designer of: the Lucky Strike cigarette packet, the Greyhound bus, the blue nose of Air Force One and logos for Exxon, Shell and BP to name a few – to our allotted seats.
We were airborne within minutes and the plane strained as we made it across the land mass of France towards the edge of the Atlantic. Once there, over open water, the pilot pushed up the throttle and the supersonic beast was unleashed! We watched the ‘Mach Meter’ at the end of the cabin slowly climb to 2.00+ and at 60,000 feet – ‘our edge of space’ – we looked out of the tiny porthole windows to gasp at the curvature of the Earth below us. An awe inspiring sight indeed.
Our seat back table was then dressed with the finest, crisp, white French linen and adorned with our ‘Déjeuner’. Hors D’oeuvres of lobster and sliced smoked breast of duck to start followed by an assorted choice of hot dishes – roasted veal with morel mushrooms in a Madera wine sauce or scallop casserole with saffron to indulge ourselves on. There was an oddity about the layout – a pair of solid silver forks the type you’d see in an Agatha Christie movie and two plastic knives! We figured that these were the new safety measures, in light of the 911 attacks on America some eleven months before.
Interestingly, as we finished off our sumptuous meal with coffee and petits fours, we considered why the cockpit door was left wide open, contrary to post 911 protocols, as we could see the three bald headed crew and the nose cone of our transatlantic craft as we hurtled towards New York.
No matter… within four hours we had sped across ‘The Pond’ and landed at JFK International Airport, met by the sweltering heat of an American Summer. A fairy tale flight and the closest we’ve been to ‘space’ for now.
So if you’re looking to be one of the elite, ahead of the curve, a disruptor with your brand and require some fresh thinking/creative ideas to launch you on a new quest for your ‘desired space’ in the marketplace, then why not activate your phone and let’s have a conversation.
Enjoy your weekend.
