Billionaire Dick Branson to co-pilot first crewed space balloon flight
"Space" surely is thousands of miles up, at least.
The lights are out in Cuba (the whole country). The Turpan kids are being molested in foster care after being molested and tortured by their biological parents. Homelessness in California (or is it just L.A.) can be cured for just $100 billion (180,000 unhoused individuals). Los Angeles is broke (thanks, Mayor Karen), and what do we want?
Cake and circuses, spectacles and space! What counts as "space"? Anything 20 miles up will do, but maybe science tries to say 50 miles more officially. Ask the person on the street, who'll probably answer thousands of miles. The moon and sun are in "space." And there a few thousand miles up, according to Eric Dubay, though science would have us believe they are a quarter million miles and 400 times that (100 million miles). Malarkey.
But to dare to question Science today is tantamount to the audacity to tell the Church that they're wrong. Remember Galileo? He was likely wrong but should have had the right to speculate and present his evidence rather than facing a Spanish Inquisition, Vatican investigation, or Catholic excommunication.
Space hotel to open soon?
Galactic Federations Councils & Secret Space
An astronomical new hotel courtesy of Orbital Assembly? Never mind flying to distant shores for an exciting trip. How about catapulting into space? While it might sound far-fetched, it could soon be a reality. A new space hotel, designed by space construction company Orbital Assembly Corporation, is currently being built and could soon be available for an out-of-this-world vacation. Discover what it’ll look like and when the first guests will be able to check-in: The countdown is on for the galaxy's first space hotel
We'll eventually be enforcing special no man's land laws in the international waters of space.
A flood? Why didn't you fly? - I lost the balloon.
"Oh, how sad, Chicken Bob, to see you try.
They call you Fryer, but you're meant to fly."
He muttered, I thought, asked, "Hey, what the cluck?"
I sat and I pondered: What could be up?
My eyes lifted as thought-balloon drifted.
Wide pupils shifted, reading, it's scripted:
How bright the idea that balloon brought!
Better the bulb than the darkness of thought.
Now what if he rows as I provide lift?
I get him to float, won't he flap his wings?
Now "what if" is no way to live a life.
For what if I ask, and he but denies?
So sinched at the waist, a string through his strut,
Seatbelt fitted in haste, he levitates up!
The helium balloon wafted him high.
I said, "Daft bird, see, it's better to try!"
Analysis
What is at the very heart of wisdom?
-So, Seven, you're saying, through symbolism and Gary Larson's comic strip, that we should figure out a novel solution and try it?
Poetry is not symbolic. I'm just telling a story about a scared bird, Chicken Bob, who thought he couldn't. Then with a little help he could. It's like when I try to meditate, I can't. But with a little help, who knows. Once my teacher applied peppermint essential oil to my upper lip to keep my attention at the breath as it goes in and out (anapanasatibhavana). It worked. It was subtle, but peppermint is brightening and kept me awake and vigorous, yet not too excited as green tea might do. I would never have thought of that. "Plant helpers" can go a long way to bring us to the verge of samadhi and insight. But without a deva to point that out, it's hard for a fledging sitter or an old bird set in his ways to make progress.
O, hail, Kwan Yin, Goddess of Compassion!
-Ingenius! So you're saying everyone should try peppermint to advance their sitting practice.
I'm saying no such thing. I'm just telling a story about a scared bird, Chicken Bob, who thought he couldn't.
-Is he "Chicken Little," symbolically?
No, he's Chicken Bob.
-Ah, and is "flying" meditation?
No, meditation is meditation, generally of two kinds, initial calming and subsequently systematic practice with a purified mind to know-and-see.
-Know-and-see what?
Ultimate materiality (kalapas) and mentality (cittas).
-What does that mean?
There are particles of perception, and discreet mind-moments that form the stream of consciousness we take to be one thing when it's really part of an impersonal PROCESS going on. We take this process to be a "self," and we cling to it.
-No, a "self" doesn't cling; ultimately speaking, form clings to form, feeling to feeling, perception to perception, mental formations to mental formations, and consciousness clings to consciousness. The whole entanglement is ignorance, avidya, and snapping out of it to wisdom, knowing-and-seeing, and right view is "awakening" or bodhi).
-What ARE they then?
They are impermanent, disappointing, impersonal (empty) phenomena arising and passing away. When we see that directly, we can let go.
-If we let go, is that flying?
Letting go is freedom. Enlightenment is possible in this very life, right here right now, because there's only now, right?
-The past is not real? The future is not real?
One is a memory, one is a dream, and all that's real is right now. This present moment is real and it's all that's ever been real. Forget the rest. Be at your best RIGHT NOW.
-Is that what Ram Dass (Harvard's Dr. Richard Alpert) was saying when he famously said, "Be here now"?
I don't know. But it's good advice. Be. Here. NOW.
-Isn't that Eckhart Tolle's advice?
I think it might be Byron Katie's advice. Do The Work, asking the Four Questions. That'll bring you into the present moment, that is this NOW.
-Then who needs help?
Sometimes we need help. People weren't just spontaneously awakening until the Buddha arose and pointed the Way, revealed the Path, gave step-by-step instructions to make an end of all suffering right now.
-Those instructions still exist?
Yes, they do. Each teacher might put a spin on them unique to each individual's capacity and unique experience, but the fundamentals are right there in the ancient texts.
-Which texts?
The Pali canon is pretty reliable. Pa Auk Sayadaw has renewed their vitality and cleared the cobwebs and so has awakened students like Beth Upton, Ven. Dhammadipa, Sayalay Susila, Sayalay Dipankara, Tina Rasmussen, Stephen Snyder, and my own erstwhile teacher. Even Ayya Khema and her student Leigh Brasington, with the help of a Sri Lankan meditating monk, made it back to the original right-stillness (samma-samadhi) practices for calm. Vipassana is a little more involved.
-But the Heart Sutra is in Sanskrit not Pali!
It is, and isn't it amazing that it is the mostly widely read "discourse" in Mahayana Buddhism, yet no one gets what it's about?
-What's it about?
Ven. Sariputra, foremost in wisdom
"Emptiness" (shunyata). The mark of things is that they are all impersonal. All composite "things" (dharmas) are anatta, "not self." The "perfection of wisdom" is the direct realization that all things are impersonal -- particularly those five things clung to as a "self": form (body) [arrangements of the Four Elements or characteristics of materiality]; feeling (sensation), perception (all we perceive), mental formations (all the other psychological stuff), and the hat trick consciousness (awareness) [the four characteristics of mentality].
-And that made you think up a bird poem?!
No, there's no symbolism. I'm just telling a story about a scared bird, Chicken Bob, who thought he couldn't.
We sent a GoPro [camera with a fisheye lens] into SPACE | full footage
(Landon McCoy) May 14, 2018. PANAMA CITY BEACH. After a year of planning, designing, and preparing, the Engineering Club at Arnold High School in Panama City Beach, Florida, has finally released a high-altitude weather balloon to float up to space (or close enough).
It traveled a total of 90,000 feet (~28,000 meters) into earth's atmosphere, capturing stunning views of near-space with its onboard GoPro camera equipped with a fisheye lens to make sure we saw curvature across the plane of the flat earth.
With the help of a Spot Gen3 GPS tracker included in the payload, the recovered camera was found in St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, Wakulla County, Florida, a full 100 miles (160 km) from Gulf Coast State College, where we launched it.
Many people contributed their time to making this launch possible, so thanks to all the groups and people involved:
The rangers of St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. (Without them, there would be no footage!)
Gulf Coast State College (Tony, Alan, and Brandon)
The entire AHS Engineering Club: Joseph Bell (engineering and math teacher as well as head of the Engineering Club)
Notable time stamps
0:00:00 (launch)
1:50:00 (Panama City Beach, FL)
1:50:34 (St. Marks Wildlife Refuge + more)
1:50:58 (landmarks in GA, AL, and FL)
1:55:45 (balloon burst)
2:34:00 (landing)
The Engineering Club is planning on creating a full video, outlining the design process, set up, launch, and retrieval of the balloon (that isn't 2.5 hours long), so stay tuned for that.
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Flat earth? Who knew?
🚀 NOTES:
1) Due to the influx of comments asking about the fisheye lens or flat earth, let's address that here:
Yes, the Club knows it used a deceptive fisheye lens -- that causes the optical illusion of curvature -- instead of a regular flat lens. But the Club was not concerned with proving that earth isn't flat. If it's flat, it's flat. The Club can't help that. The camera sees what it sees. Yes, the Club put a distorting lens over what it sees, but that doesn't mean the Club was trying to prove that the earth is flat. The Club assumed it was curved and globular like nearly everyone says it is and like we all believe because of childhood indoctrination from having earth globes in all classrooms since childhood.
The Club just wanted a very wide view from 90,000 feet and figured a fisheye lens was the best way to go -- and to keep NASA and secret government agencies from taking the video down for showing the truth we aren't supposed to question, investigate, or know, considering we had never done anything like this before and already though that earth isn't flat. (But let's leave that debate for the comments section).
Side note: The Club actually planned on having two GoPro cameras capture the footage, one with a standard flat lens on one side and another with wide angle (fisheye lens) turned on the other side.
Because the Club had never done this before, someone accidentally let some helium leak out of the canister while inflating, so it prematurely ran out of helium before hitting the target lift.
In order to compensate, the Club had to reduce the total weight by removing one GoPro (the regular lens because that GoPro was heavier) and the 3D printed Tesla Roadster that was going to be sent up as well.
Even with these setbacks and kinks and inadvertently proving the earth flat, the Club still considered this launch very successful since its members were able to accurately predict where the camera would land to be recovered, got good footage back, hit the target altitude, and had a lot of fun in the process.
The Club is willing to ignore the evidence and still consider earth a globe instead of a flat plane just to avoid being ridiculed or questioned.
2) The "smudge" on the camera lens? Although it appears as though someone got fingerprints on the camera lens, the Club just let that slide after a year of planning. Wait, that's completely incorrect. After getting everything set up and ready for launch, the box tipped over due to a heavy wind, and the camera lens hit the concrete, permanently scratching it. It was a scratch. Nobody's fault.
The Club knew the lens was scratched before launch, but no one had time to find a new camera and replace it, due to the custom 3D printed mounts that were designed and printed specifically to the dimensions of each camera. However, the smudge really isn't that bad, and the Club is still extraordinarily happy with the illusory footage.
3) Yes, the Club knows that 90,000 feet (~28km) isn't technically "space" but just a little over a quarter of the way because the Karman line (the most agreed on boundary of "space") starts at 100 km straight up. But the line where space starts, if one ignores the Karman line, doesn't have an officially recognized starting point anyway. Technically, earth's atmosphere extends for thousands of miles into space.
Disregarding the Karman line, the balloon still reached an altitude that was above 99 percent of earth's atmosphere, at a temperature of -77°F and a pressure so low that blood would begin to boil at body temperature, so it was close enough to "space" for the sake of saying "space," which sounds a lot better than "a quarter of the way to space." 😉
Trying to explain "meditation" after a long Buddhist meditation retreat of hundreds of hours of sitting is tough.
But it's about the only time one might be able to explain what happens or what's "supposed" to happen. That's because things are fresh and pre-verbal.
Once the talking (verbalizing) starts up again in the mind, concepts, assumptions, connotations, and confusion come in.
What hasn't been said before and much more cleverly?
Buddha Balloon art (Banksy)
But my mother asked me to, and an example sprang to mind, one never heard before: It could be called "Balloon Meditation."
If one were to get on a balloon laden with the weight of the world and lots of luggage (psychological baggage), one might wonder why the floating, the rapture, the blissful uplift, didn't start right away.
One is ready and gung-ho for a journey, an adventure, a wild ride into the unknown celestial spheres above mundane human experience.
One might think to make more heat, blow more hot air, or jump up and down to shake the basket.
One might well become restless on top of being over-eager (full of craving for the experience), experiencing aversion about not getting off the ground already, confused about what's not happening for all the desire one is generating for something to happen.
How high can a "balloon" go? All the way to the moon because it's really in the atmosphere.
How not to meditate
Sukhothai, Thailand (Alamy)
I sat down, strapped in (braced myself), and wished to go. But nothing happened! A wise meditation instructor might then point out a very simple thing: This isn't a plane, a crane, or other mechanical transport moved by force or combustion power.
Struggling and striving, wanting, craving, needing to go -- and getting angry, reacting, or getting confused -- will keep one on the ground and soon out of the basket. (One can overdo blowing hot air, overheating and burning up the balloon: Just enough heat is enough, let go of everything, and wait without expectations).
How to meditate
The way to go, wherever it is one might go, is very easy: Let go. Not only let go of whatever binds one to the ground. That's easy. Now do the hard part: Throw the luggage (baggage) out. Get rid of all excess weight. And as one does, whaddyaknow, it works.
Think of "meditation" not as what one does but as what happens to us when we are not doing anything but sitting mindfully and still, dispassionate and content, full of wholesome states of mind. It's natural. It doesn't need "doing."
It needs allowing, patience/forgiveness (khanti), and contentment (Pali santutthitā, Sanskrit santosha) coupled with the balanced effort to persist without pushing.
I did it, and now I know how others did it.
It can't be faked. One can't "let go" by appearance and hold on in secret. That doesn't work. One actually has to let go.
One can let go with the help of faith (saddha, confidence/conviction) in one's meditation teacher or the historical Buddha or the noble sangha (the invisible community of attained practitioners who followed the Buddha's instructions, most of them while not wearing monastic robes).
It's hard to let go out using reason and logic and certainty; that tends to bind one up in uncertainty, circular questioning, skepticism, and doubt.
Doubt is good inasmuch as it leads to investigation. It does no good now, sitting waiting to go. It's time to go (now), so let go (now). Allow to go. There's no need to push.
Instead, look around the basket. Let go (get rid) of all that dead weight, all that baggage holding the balloon to the ground. The balloon is enough to carry one to lofty heights but not if it's laden with cares, worries, concerns, attachments, fear, or the weight of the world on one's shoulders.
There's a line of inquiry that might unload some of the weight or make it possible to cast off the weight we were formerly cherishing and holding onto for protection. What? Contemplating how harmful it's been, how it holds us back (in a sad attempt to protect us).
Aversion (dosa, hatred, fear, boredom, hesitation) is fundamentally an attempt to protect ourselves. Now when we don't need it, it's still here doing its job. Let it go.
Look at the harm being done by not letting go, and it may just be possible to wipe the sticky glue from the hand and be free of it. Better things are waiting.
If not rocket force and thrust from below, what will be the "propulsion"? Rapture (piti), effervescence, joy, a floaty sense of weightlessness, taking oneself lightly. It works! But it's closer to play than work. It plays! Play.
Okay, now what? We have the balloon. We have the fire. - Okay, let go. Just let go.
Any photo will do with a fisheye lens. The moon, according to published Russian science, is in the atmosphere. That either means the definition of atmosphere is much thinner and flexible than we know or the moon is much lower. But the gatekeepers keep the deception going. John Lear blew the whistle.More
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