Not the band!
http://www.wimp.com/breathtakingfootage/
I copied this description from another site.
Props 1970ls
http://www.wimp.com/breathtakingfootage/
I copied this description from another site.
Props 1970ls
Cool U2 footage
- Thread starter JOHNBOY
- Start date
Thanks for the link to that footage it is just breathtaking.
Also That is James May from Top Gear.
This is what The Sun had on the vid.
FORTY years ago this July, a record 500 million people watched transfixed as Neil Armstrong made history, becoming the first man to set foot on the moon.
One of those watching the extraordinary events on that fateful night was a six-year-old James May.
Like millions of other six-year-olds, he was inspired by the moment, and a lifelong fascination with travel in spaceships, aeroplanes, and cars was born.
To celebrate the anniversary of the moon landings, Top Gear presenter James fulfilled a childhood ambition by travelling on the edge of space in a U2 spy plane - which took him as far from Earth as it is possible to go without being a trained astronaut.
From the plane James was in the perfect position to look down at the curve of Earth - and up at the blackness of Space.
He tells why the experience - filmed for BBC2 documentary James May On The Moon on Sunday, June 21 at 9pm followed by longer BBC4 documentary James May At The Edge Of Space - moved him so much.
He says: "At the age of 46 I am too old, too unfit and frankly too long-haired to ever become an astronaut.
"But I wanted to revisit a time when anything seemed possible and see for myself why going to space changed the way we look at the Earth. And by flying in a U2 spy plane, which goes to what is considered the 'edge of space', the American Air Force could take me to a sort of first base of space flight - the closest a normal mortal like me could come to knowing what it would be like to be a cosmonaut.
"That flight would be the realisation of a childhood dream that's been with me for 40 years."
But James couldn't just walk in off the street and into the cockpit of a U2.
Any failure of the aircraft's pressurised system would require more than the plastic oxygen masks found in passenger jets - he would need a space suit.
The space suits first worn by Nasa were actually based on the ones worn by U2 pilots in the 1950s.
With less than five per cent air pressure, one tear in James's suit would mean curtains for him - so he had to spend three days learning how to wear it, how to cope with zero gravity and the G-force, and how to survive if it all went wrong.
James says: "I needed a space suit that is actually necessary to keep me alive, not just a comedic outfit for television.
Suffocate
"I had to prove I was made of the right stuff, and I hoped I wasn't entirely made of the wrong stuff. I hoped for a taste of what it feels like to be an astronaut - to be higher than anyone else."
The $250,000 space suit James wore is made of breathable gautex, air tight rubber, a restraining wire mesh and a yellow protective layer which all combine to create a completely airtight bubble.
This suit was my life support system - and I had to learn how not to suffocate inside it.
"I struggled a bit at first. I found it very claustrophobic and restrictive, which surprised me a bit because I didn't think I was claustrophobic. I've never had a problem crawling down tunnels or getting into small cupboards or anything like that.
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"But there's something about sticking your head in something - you can rotate your head around side to side, but not up and down, and you've got air hissing in, and it feels like you're drowning.
"The pilots said it's not unusual. Most of them took a while to get used to it. Some people join the U2 programme and then drop out because they can't cope with the suits, so that made me a bit uneasy.
"I also discovered that the instant I brought my visor down, I got an itch on the end of my nose."
The U2 flies so high, that if you have to bail out at 70,000 feet, you could land in the Pacific or the desert - and he had to learn survival techniques in case that happened.
He says: "Bailing out at 70,000ft would be no charity parachute jump. Blasted into thin air inside a sealed suit, I'd have 13 miles to fall - most of it strapped to my seat.
"So I had to learn a bit about water survival, how to put up a shelter in the desert, they take you through all this Ray Mears-type stuff.
"Then they wanted to look at my entire medical history from birth and my dental records, which is presumably so they can identify me from my jaw bone when they find it in the desert in three years' time."
Finally, James was ready to go.
He was taken up to 70,000ft, or 13 miles, which is technically much lower than the official start of Space at 60 miles altitude.
But James says: "The beginning of Space used to be 50,000 ft and that's because physiologically, ie in terms of the effect it has on your body, 50,000ft IS space. If you stepped outside into 50,000ft wearing normal clothes you'd be dead in five seconds."
Certainly the view James had was every bit as good as it would have been from 'official Space'.
He could make out the curvature of the Earth from his position in the upper five per cent of the Earth's mass.
Above him was black Space - below him, the Earth and its atmosphere.
He says: "The atmosphere is so very thin, in terms of its depth over the surface of the earth. We were floating through a skin on the top, a mist, nothing more than that. And that atmosphere is all that makes the difference between the world being a 'beautiful, brightly-coloured pea', as Armstrong put it, and the grey and completely barren moon. It's incredible to see it, and see that it really is just a little mist over the surface, that's all.
"There were no other U2s up that day, so we were the second highest pair of blokes in the Universe after the people in the international space station.
"It was perfect, lovely. It looked fantastic. I knew what I would see, but it was still amazing when I saw it.
"It made me feel slightly emotional. The sky was breathtaking. I saw the view of Eternity. It was a fantastic privilege, being able to see that. I was slightly lost for words. It's almost impossible to articulate what it feels like to see the shape of the good Earth - it was rather humbling.
"It's not like you'd imagine. It's not like being twice as high as in a passenger jet. It's like being in a different sphere of humanity."
And the experience had a profound effect on James.
He says: "You forget about the helmet and the oxygen and everything. If everybody could do that once, it would completely change the face of local politics, religion, everything. It's going to take a while for it to sink in.
"It seems trite, because you'd expect people to say 'Oh, that really changed my life', but I think it did a little bit. The thing that's so amazing about the Apollo VIII mission was that it was the first time that anybody took a picture of the whole Earth - we'd never seen that before.
"There is a massive difference between going into Earth orbit and actually going out to the moon, which is the beginnings of deep space. I think all space travel is going to seem slightly second division as long as we have in our memory pictures of the Earth as a relatively small dot as seen from the moon.
"The Mars mission, if it ever happens, will be the one that blows people away again. A manned mission to another true planet will be the thing that next really grabs the world.
"But even from 70,000ft, you do get the impression that the world is just a globe floating in eternity and nothingness.
"When you're on the surface of the Earth, to all intents and purposes it's flat. But when you're up there, you really do see it as a globe, and then you look up and you think 'Well that just goes on for ever, and we are just a speck of dust in it, that's all it is'."
Also That is James May from Top Gear.
This is what The Sun had on the vid.
FORTY years ago this July, a record 500 million people watched transfixed as Neil Armstrong made history, becoming the first man to set foot on the moon.
One of those watching the extraordinary events on that fateful night was a six-year-old James May.
Like millions of other six-year-olds, he was inspired by the moment, and a lifelong fascination with travel in spaceships, aeroplanes, and cars was born.
To celebrate the anniversary of the moon landings, Top Gear presenter James fulfilled a childhood ambition by travelling on the edge of space in a U2 spy plane - which took him as far from Earth as it is possible to go without being a trained astronaut.
From the plane James was in the perfect position to look down at the curve of Earth - and up at the blackness of Space.
He tells why the experience - filmed for BBC2 documentary James May On The Moon on Sunday, June 21 at 9pm followed by longer BBC4 documentary James May At The Edge Of Space - moved him so much.
He says: "At the age of 46 I am too old, too unfit and frankly too long-haired to ever become an astronaut.
"But I wanted to revisit a time when anything seemed possible and see for myself why going to space changed the way we look at the Earth. And by flying in a U2 spy plane, which goes to what is considered the 'edge of space', the American Air Force could take me to a sort of first base of space flight - the closest a normal mortal like me could come to knowing what it would be like to be a cosmonaut.
"That flight would be the realisation of a childhood dream that's been with me for 40 years."
But James couldn't just walk in off the street and into the cockpit of a U2.
Any failure of the aircraft's pressurised system would require more than the plastic oxygen masks found in passenger jets - he would need a space suit.
The space suits first worn by Nasa were actually based on the ones worn by U2 pilots in the 1950s.
With less than five per cent air pressure, one tear in James's suit would mean curtains for him - so he had to spend three days learning how to wear it, how to cope with zero gravity and the G-force, and how to survive if it all went wrong.
James says: "I needed a space suit that is actually necessary to keep me alive, not just a comedic outfit for television.
Suffocate
"I had to prove I was made of the right stuff, and I hoped I wasn't entirely made of the wrong stuff. I hoped for a taste of what it feels like to be an astronaut - to be higher than anyone else."
The $250,000 space suit James wore is made of breathable gautex, air tight rubber, a restraining wire mesh and a yellow protective layer which all combine to create a completely airtight bubble.
This suit was my life support system - and I had to learn how not to suffocate inside it.
"I struggled a bit at first. I found it very claustrophobic and restrictive, which surprised me a bit because I didn't think I was claustrophobic. I've never had a problem crawling down tunnels or getting into small cupboards or anything like that.
Advertisement
"But there's something about sticking your head in something - you can rotate your head around side to side, but not up and down, and you've got air hissing in, and it feels like you're drowning.
"The pilots said it's not unusual. Most of them took a while to get used to it. Some people join the U2 programme and then drop out because they can't cope with the suits, so that made me a bit uneasy.
"I also discovered that the instant I brought my visor down, I got an itch on the end of my nose."
The U2 flies so high, that if you have to bail out at 70,000 feet, you could land in the Pacific or the desert - and he had to learn survival techniques in case that happened.
He says: "Bailing out at 70,000ft would be no charity parachute jump. Blasted into thin air inside a sealed suit, I'd have 13 miles to fall - most of it strapped to my seat.
"So I had to learn a bit about water survival, how to put up a shelter in the desert, they take you through all this Ray Mears-type stuff.
"Then they wanted to look at my entire medical history from birth and my dental records, which is presumably so they can identify me from my jaw bone when they find it in the desert in three years' time."
Finally, James was ready to go.
He was taken up to 70,000ft, or 13 miles, which is technically much lower than the official start of Space at 60 miles altitude.
But James says: "The beginning of Space used to be 50,000 ft and that's because physiologically, ie in terms of the effect it has on your body, 50,000ft IS space. If you stepped outside into 50,000ft wearing normal clothes you'd be dead in five seconds."
Certainly the view James had was every bit as good as it would have been from 'official Space'.
He could make out the curvature of the Earth from his position in the upper five per cent of the Earth's mass.
Above him was black Space - below him, the Earth and its atmosphere.
He says: "The atmosphere is so very thin, in terms of its depth over the surface of the earth. We were floating through a skin on the top, a mist, nothing more than that. And that atmosphere is all that makes the difference between the world being a 'beautiful, brightly-coloured pea', as Armstrong put it, and the grey and completely barren moon. It's incredible to see it, and see that it really is just a little mist over the surface, that's all.
"There were no other U2s up that day, so we were the second highest pair of blokes in the Universe after the people in the international space station.
"It was perfect, lovely. It looked fantastic. I knew what I would see, but it was still amazing when I saw it.
"It made me feel slightly emotional. The sky was breathtaking. I saw the view of Eternity. It was a fantastic privilege, being able to see that. I was slightly lost for words. It's almost impossible to articulate what it feels like to see the shape of the good Earth - it was rather humbling.
"It's not like you'd imagine. It's not like being twice as high as in a passenger jet. It's like being in a different sphere of humanity."
And the experience had a profound effect on James.
He says: "You forget about the helmet and the oxygen and everything. If everybody could do that once, it would completely change the face of local politics, religion, everything. It's going to take a while for it to sink in.
"It seems trite, because you'd expect people to say 'Oh, that really changed my life', but I think it did a little bit. The thing that's so amazing about the Apollo VIII mission was that it was the first time that anybody took a picture of the whole Earth - we'd never seen that before.
"There is a massive difference between going into Earth orbit and actually going out to the moon, which is the beginnings of deep space. I think all space travel is going to seem slightly second division as long as we have in our memory pictures of the Earth as a relatively small dot as seen from the moon.
"The Mars mission, if it ever happens, will be the one that blows people away again. A manned mission to another true planet will be the thing that next really grabs the world.
"But even from 70,000ft, you do get the impression that the world is just a globe floating in eternity and nothingness.
"When you're on the surface of the Earth, to all intents and purposes it's flat. But when you're up there, you really do see it as a globe, and then you look up and you think 'Well that just goes on for ever, and we are just a speck of dust in it, that's all it is'."
