Here is the third weekendlinks edition.
Vael Ouwe bike ride
In the previous weekend I rode the Vael Ouwe bike ride. We had lots of luck with the weather. My video, made with my Sony actioncam, turned out really nice. The ride through the heather with wildflowers was beautiful and at the halfway point we rode past Radio Kootwijk, a large art deco style building that has been used for radio transmission. Near the end we climbed the Posbank twice. You can find details of the route here.
Wally Funk will fly in space
Billionairs are trying to get to space. Elon Musk is hammering away on his Starship and the ridiculously big Super Heavy rocket stage. Will be interesting to see how that turns out. Richard Branson will be flying as part of a crew of 6 on his SpaceShipTwo on July 11th. And Jeff Bezos will launch on his New Shepard rocket July 20th.
I didn’t really care how much who is paying to fly with Bezos, but last week he announced that Wally Funk will fly with him. Who is Wally Funk? She was one of the Mercury 13. 13 women who went through the same medical screening as the Mercury 7 astronauts. This wasn’t an official NASA program and the women never got the chance to fly. Especially when Lyndon Johnson wrote “Let’s stop this now!”.
In the meantime flying instructor Wally Funk kept flying. Over 18,600 hours to be exact. But she never got a chance to get to space. Until now. For a short while the New Shepard rocket will be above 100 km and the crew gets to experience weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth. And she will be the oldest person in space: 82 years.
What I’m (still) reading
Still reading Data Teams by Jesse Anderson. I should do a book review or something. I really like it.
Also I’m reading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. This is a very interesting science fiction book. Things were getting interesting when the narrative in the beginning sayd “.. when I was the ship”. Breq, the narrator of the story, was the consciousness of a vast ship, but also controlled human bodies on the planet below. Though not anymore. And she’s doing something about that.