Saturday, April 28, 2012

20 Spitfires Discovered in Burma!


David Cundall, a 62 year-old UK farmer from Scunthorpe, England loves Spitfires! Cundall spent 15 years, and 12 trips to Burma searching for the Spitfires, spending over £130,000 of his own money - and he finally succeeded in his quest.

The British Prime Minister David Cameron secured the historic deal that will see the iconic aircraft returned to Great Britain.

The aircraft, in crates, where shipped to Burma and since jet aircraft had taken over, they (the Spitfires) were abandoned in place.  They were just buried, wrapped in greased paper, and the joints tarred.

Quoting Mr. Cundall, ”Spitfires are beautiful aeroplanes and should not be rotting away in a foreign land. They saved our neck in the Battle of Britain and they should be preserved.”


He said the Spitfires, of which there are only around 35 flying left in the world, were shipped to Burma and then transported by rail to the British RAF base during the war. end quote.

Now to uncover some Me-109s.


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Ref.
1. Patches of PRide. "20 WW2 BRITISH SPITFIRES DISCOVERED IN BURMA" April 23, 2012. (http://patchesofpride.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/20-ww2-british-spitfires-discovered-in-burma/).
2. The Telegraph.  "Spitfires buried in Burma during war to be returned to UK" by Victoria Ward and Rowena Mason.  APril 14, 2012.(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9203822/Spitfires-buried-in-Burma-during-war-to-be-returned-to-UK.html). image of Spitfire by Corbis.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

New Company Called Planetary Resources To Launch Next Week


Google founders Eric Schmidt and Larry Page and teamed up with "Avatar" movie director James Cameron for an ambitious project that will be launched on April 24, 2012.

The new company, to be called Planetary Resources, will have its unveiling at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington this next week.

The purpose of this venture is to combine "space exploration and natural resources" together to earn "trillions of dollars for the global GDP." The Wall Street Journal reprots that this new company will be exploring the feasibility of mining natural resources from asteroids.  Which is an idea that has been around the space colonization effort community for decades.

Former NASA Mars mission manager Eric Anderson, is co-founder for Planetary Resource.  Peter Diamandia is the commercial space entrepreneur who was behind the X-Prize, a competition that offered $10 million to a group that launched a reusable manned spacecraft.




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Ref.
1. Reuters/yahoo.com. "Google execs, director Cameron in space venture" by Gerry Shih, editing by Bernard Orr. April 21, 2012. (http://ca.news.yahoo.com/google-execs-director-cameron-space-venture-005212432--sector.html).