LOST Vulture One PARIS spaceplane FOUND!!! The Register's epic Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) project ended in glorious triumph this afternoon as our Spanish ground pursuit team finally discovered the landing site of Vulture One, the cutting edge stationery spacecraft piloted by our intrepid playmonaut. Following a nail-biting few hours in which Vulture One …
Sadly I was unable to attend the Internetty live show as I had to wor... wo.. (sorry just can't seem to get the word out).
Apologies for not supply my total attention and therefore failing to bite my nails in the appropriate manner when it was feared our brave playmonaut might be lost forever.
P.S.
Will s/he be taking interviews? Is there a book or film contract in the offing?
"hell-bent on celebrating their achievements with suitable liquid refreshment. However, they've promised that on reaching an area with good mobile data coverage they'll update this report with near-real-time imagery of events as they unfolded."
Looks like they found a bar before they found the mobile data hotspot.
Well deserved.
"Reg scribe John Oates, embedded with the mobile team, breathlessly reports that Vulture One landed "almost completely intact", having suffered only a minor "hole in one wing"."
Shot down maybe?
Culprit -> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/15/fotw/
Anyhoo... Congrats to the PARIS team.
Some ideas for a suitable follow-up:
1. Asking Richard Branson if he wants to sponsor PARIS II, or maybe just take over the PARIS program entirely. He could probably get the real Paris to show up for the festivities! This would lead to:
2. Pictures of Paris Hilton giving a big welcome back kiss to Playmonaut! (Just a kiss, Paris!!)
3. Knighthoods or peerages all around for Playmonaut and the PARIS team! (Doesn't Buckingham Palace hand those things out like toy suprises in kid's cereal?)
Truly an exciting development in dirt cheap aeronautical engineering! Can't raise a glass to you tonight as I have to work the midnight shift but Friday when the pics (and hopefully video) comes out I shall raise several glasses of the traditional Canadian coma inducer - rye and coke.
Chuffed to hear Vulture 1 rode PARIS so high and long, and survived the come-down.
Can we expect pics of Playmonaut (What IS his name?) reclining in a full schooner of ale?
PS. I watched the flight live via the intertubes last night, with my wife cheering on as well. My those jet streams have some poke, don't they?
Well done all.
How's the collective hangover?
Did you get pics of the fame-crazed pilot snorting a line in the men's bogs? or falling out of the limo surrounded by a threesome of loose floozies.? Surely the pilot will be hounded by the 'paper'azzi now.
......In fact that could solve the photos problem for Vulture II; those snappers have got really long zoom lenses, or they could be dropped out of a baloon on vespas to chase the plastic pilot.
Bravo! Well done! etc. etc. Now then, out of curiosity, assuming you have accurate release data, a 6 km jaunt equates to what exactly as a glide ratio?
Bah! It's beer-thirty, lets enjoy another round to celebrate just how sturdy that little craft is. I must say, having seen the LZ, I'm rather surprised to see her in such good condition. Bloody fine work lads.
Congratulations on a typically-daft British endeavour.
Let's see: PARIS was released at near 90,000 ft (a bit more than 27 km), and landed just 6 km from the balloon.
Ignoring the usual complicating factors (wind, and spiral flight, especially), PARIS has a glide ratio of 6/27=0.22. That's even less than the Apollo space capsule. PARIS rocks! (or at least she falls like a rock). It's a miracle that she survived with just one small hole.
Some f**king genius had the great idea of welding a couple of steel plates onto our deck to keep the General safe from ground fire…
Well, it was like trying to fly a freight train. Ok? Gross overload, trim characteristics all shot to hell. I nearly broke both my arms trying to keep her level. And when we released, you know, I tried as hard as I could. Tried to gain some altitude and still keep her from stalling, but we came down like a f**king meteor. This is how we ended up.
To justify budget cuts by proving that science can be done using nothing but paper, rubber and red wine. Lib Dem additional - don't forget the beer and the jolly old trip to Spain.
But a great bit of bodging, lads. Great stuff. Personally I felt that insufficient use duct tape jeopardised the mission* but you did it anyway.
* - Insufficient use of duct tape. or IDT as we know it, is the reason they can't find that Boggs Hissom follicle at CERN, of course. No duct tape in those tunnels at all.
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