Yuri and the girl with the mousy hair

Is space the final frontier? In another life I could of course ask Yuri, what a guy, eh! Makes me dream of the days when I used to get into one of these and the world was mine for about 3 minutes. What a thrill, especially when you got to the top!

 (Source Ducasses du Nord for more fun pictures of these)

I was a bit too young when Yuri Gagarin became the first person to enter space, and any way we did not have TV, but I sure did not miss the landing on the moon, AND I am so looking forward to men going to Mars. The suspense is killing me. Will it be the Chinese or the Americans? All I know is that by 2030, guys, we are there! So I really look forward to seeing a rerun of the landing on the moon, but this time on Mars. 

Plus seemingly they are using the same capsule design, for ORION, and they will be landing in the desert somewhere. I remember so well when the astronauts would lose contact with NASA once they went through the atmosphere, and then you did not know whether they made it or not, the impending sense of possible tragedy, and the relief to see them come out of the capsule alive.

Testing, testing, yes we have landing...

And then to top it all, I go to my dentist who tells me that in his lifetime (and he 40ish) we will be able to regrow teeth. A true marvel. Hurrah for the human race!

So many questions in my head... when we go to Mars, is there going to be passport controls, who is going to be in charge once there, once we get there, could we actually end up living in space rather than on planets, see we only have been settled for about 1% of our time on this Earth. Wanderers we were before, wanderers we may be once again. If we fuck up too much down here we may just not have the choice anyway. What will be the spaceports like? What will it be called a spaceport, a rocketport, a Marsport? Which kind of money will they operate on Mars....

Meanwhile I love airports, hence all these questions I guess. I love airports and plane journeys, long plane journeys in particular, because you enter in a bubble where time almost stops. Once on the plane they bring you stuff, you can watch movies you would never dream of watching in ordinary circumstances. Airports are modern-day cathedrals, by the sheer scale of them. Airports are intrinsically children of the 1960's, you wont find an "old" airport that looks old, say like Grand Central, or Gare de Lyon. I love discovering new airports. Each airport has a story to tell.

Recently I had to travel to Philadephia via Frankfurt, long story. Philadelphia airport is a rather crummy airport, BUT, they decided that the International Arrivals Hall was possibly the face of Philadelphia and by extension the face of America... so when you get into Philly, this very airy space "The American Dream", designed by Robert Fisher is there to greet you.

 "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." 

“Declaration” is a ten-foot high artwork of illuminated glass, creatively divided into thirteen segments representing the original colonies. “This artwork,” says Fisher, "presents an image of the entire Declaration of Independence, enabling a visitor to read its phrases and understand why our country declared itself free." Rendered like parchment, the glass has the text sandblasted into its surface. Fisher chose to produce this aspect of the artwork at Franz Mayer of Munich, Germany, an internationally renowned stained glass atelier. (same souce as above).

On the other hand, land in Frankfurt, and it is your nose thats get the first whiff of this airport which reeks of cigarette! Yes you read this right cigarettes! YOU CAN SMOKE IN FRANKFURT AIRPORT, I thought for a minute that I was transported back to the 20th century.

Look at these people in that little booth, smoking their lungs away, and let me tell you it's not as if these were sufficient to contain the lovely smell of cigarettes. Ah the good old days when I was a smoker!

And in case you don't believe me (because it is quite difficult to conceive that you could be allowed smoke in an airport nowadays) here is the monorail platform that says Frankfurt (if you care to read backwards).

Frankfurt airport is a den of sin and turpitudes. The next thing is that you can also gamble there, see below. I was slightly pressed for time, otherwise I had in mind to look for the "SexZentrum"next, just to see if they have one in the airport, you for busy people who don't have time to get to town.

Vorsprung Durch Teknik, isn't it what they say?

Back home in Dublin, I had the pleasure to discover Dublin new Terminal 2. Oh wait, its not me! Anyway it is "boooootiful", but it also deserves a whole post to itself.

And to celebrate Yuri's day, and the likelihood of man/woman going to Mars, there was only one song, and one song only....