Terra Joule and uphill landings only

Whilst the world is holding its breath how Russians and Americans have raised the global chess game to another level, let's turn to something extraterrestrial.

I know a thing or two about crashes. No, not because I crashed so often myself (touch wood!), but because in a previous life I worked on car safety and attended a lot of car crashes. Watching a car slamming into a barrier at 64 km/h is a humbling experience, let me tell you that. To get the protection right, it's all about energy management. Well there was plenty of energy at the below crash. The news broke this week that last year on September 11 an estimated 4 foot-wide, 880 lbs asteroid hit the moon. It had an explosive force of 15 tons of TNT. I can't really picture how much 15 tons of TNT is. The energy upon impact gives me a better idea: 79,42 TJ (Terra Joule). Now that is a lot and the Spanish telescopes, part of Moon Impacts Detection and Analysis System (MIDAS), that recorded the explosion don't really do justice to it. 

And I came across another top 15 list.
CNN's world's most scenic airport approaches. Have a look.
Of those selected my favourite one is Courchevelle. Only uphill landings and downhill take-off's I guess...

Just for the fun of it some more photos from Airliners.net

All is well, the colour red and a classic giant slalom

We know a thing or two about elections in Belgium. In fact the past 5 years we have been hopping from one election to another, and we have established the world record government formation. So I guess you can call us Belgians a bit of experts. On May 25 there are European elections and with the run up to these elections I'm wondering about something.
Since last Summer, it seems the European crisis is over. The peripheral countries are slowly recovering (btw whoever came up with this dreadful term 'peripheral countries'? As if they are a bit of a drag that we are trailing along behind us, I find the term very denigrating). No one talks any more about the interest rates on government bonds. The eurocrisis is but a long forgotten nightmare. But is this true? Or... are our European politicians purposely painting a rosy picture in view of the European elections? With eurosceptics doing well in the polls the traditional parties are indeed a bit worried the balance of power may shift in the Parliament.
The below slide is made amongst others by the IMF and shows how well Europe is doing economically compared to 2011. For those who forgot, 2011 was the midst of the eurocrisis. And to be clear: the red colour means the situation is worse than in 2011. But hey, all is well.

As the red colour is so prevalent in the above slide, it nicely links up with the major news coming out of our beloved aviation world: the Red Arrows have a new colour scheme on their tailfin!
Here it is:

And yes of course I have seen the Red Arrows numerous times! And, what did you expect, I have the pictures to prove it :-)

Some sport journalists commented a bit laughingly about Vanessa Mae's performance at the women's giant slalom at Sochi. I don't know why. So yes she finished last about half a minute after the golden medal. So what? It was brave to train and participate. I can understand that a young woman who has travelled the world playing the violin, who performed with world renowned orchestras, pop and rock artists and sold millions of records needed a bit of a different challenge. So I take my hat off for her. What a woman.

Billionaires, simulation and a periodic table of a different kind

I was guided to an online survey about billionaires. You know the kind of stuff: utterly useless but fun anyway. A couple of multiple choice questions result in the website comparing you with the billionaire that you would be. If you wanna have a go, do the test here.

This is my result (of course I am only posting this because it is so flattering :-)):

Simulation is a big thing in aviation for obvious reasons. I just came across a little toy for those of us who still nurture the little boy in us. Forget Nintendo or other PlayStations. That's for babies. This is the real racing or flying stuff:

And if you have a living room like this, it fits nicely in!

Check out their website and if you have 14000,- € (up to 50000,- €) to spare, don't forget to invite me to give it a ride!

One of my fellow twitterati pointed me to another website. eDreams made the top 100 list of best airlines based on passenger questionnaires. Nothing new, you can find these lists everywhere. Except that they came up with a neat way to present it: as a periodic table.

So the nitwits amongst us can now enjoy themselves and figure out what following chemical formulas are: SQ2TK, SQ2JPTK4, EKTK2, A3TK3, ...

The thing is that even though SQ achieved first place, FV (Rossiya Airlines) is actually gold (Au - element 79) and BE (FlyBe) is silver (Ag - element 47) and CZ (China Southern Airlines) is Polonium (Po - element 84). I think I better stop here before I cause a global political incident!