Copenhagen Suborbitals currently consists of 50 people — engineers, mathematicians and a kindergarten teacher — who are trying to send a person to space using only off-the-shelf components — the kind you would find in your local hardware store. “All of us have shared the same dream since when we were little kids.
The majority of the team grew up in the seventies and eighties, watching space technologies develop. “For most of us this was all a dream until 2011.” That was the year, he said, that the project’s two founders realised “you could go down to the local hardware store and find almost everything you need to put a rocket into space”.
Four years later, the project is in full swing and there are plans to launch the rocket from a small area in the Baltic Sea. Wilson confesses that it would be much easier to achieve if they could launch from land, but that regulations governing airspace prevent this. After all, Copenhagen Suborbital’s workshop is only around 10 miles from Copenhagen airport. “As you know the land and sea is fairly well regulated, but the air is even worse.” Wilson admits that while the chance of them hitting a plane is probably not that big, “the thought of it is horrifying”.
It is the custom of the Mahars to liberate those who remain alive within the arena after the beasts depart or are killed. Thus it has happened that several mighty warriors from far distant lands, whom we have captured on our slave raids, have battled the brutes turned in upon them and slain them, thereby winning their freedom. In the instance which you witnessed the beasts killed each other, but the result was the same—the man and woman were liberated, furnished with weapons, and started on their homeward journey.
The chances are that ere long you will know much more about it than I,” and he grinned as he spoke. The Sagoths have a well-developed sense of humor. “And suppose it is the arena,” I continued; “what then?” “You saw the two who met the tarag and the thag the time that you escaped?” he said. “Yes.” “Your end in the arena would be similar to what was intended for them,” he explained, “though of course the same kinds of animals might not be employed.” “It is sure death in either event?” I asked.
The Queen smiled and passed on. ‘Who ARE you talking to?’ said the King, going up to Alice, and looking at the Cat’s head with great curiosity. ‘It’s a friend of mine—a Cheshire Cat,’ said Alice: ‘allow me to introduce it.’ ‘I don’t like the look of it at all,’ said the King: ‘however, it may kiss my hand if it likes.’ ‘I’d rather not,’ the Cat remarked.
It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and defyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that same commander’s cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head of the table.
What do the four men you just named have to do with me thriving off drama?
‘Don’t be impertinent,’ said the King, ‘and don’t look at me like that!’ He got behind Alice as he spoke. ‘A cat may look at a king,’ said Alice. ‘I’ve read that in some book, but I don’t remember where.’ ‘Well, it must be removed,’ said the King very decidedly, and he called the Queen, who was passing at the moment, ‘My dear! I wish you would have this cat removed!’ The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. ‘Off with his head!’ she said, without even looking round. ‘I’ll fetch the executioner myself,’ said the King eagerly, and he hurried off. Alice thought she might as well go back, and see how the game was going on, as she heard the Queen’s voice in the distance, screaming with passion.
She had already heard her sentence three of the players to be executed for having missed their turns, and she did not like the look of things at all, as the game was in such confusion that she never knew whether it was her turn or not. So she went in search of her hedgehog. The hedgehog was engaged in a fight with another hedgehog, which seemed to Alice an excellent opportunity for croqueting one of them with the other: the only difficulty was, that her flamingo was gone across to the other side of the garden, where Alice could see it trying in a helpless sort of way to fly up into a tree.
Queen’s voice in the distance, screaming with passion
So she tucked it away under her arm, that it might not escape again, and went back for a little more conversation with her friend. When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she was surprised to find quite a large crowd collected round it: there was a dispute going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once, while all the rest were quite silent, and looked very uncomfortable. The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed to by all three to settle the question, and they repeated their arguments to her, though, as they all spoke at once, she found it very hard indeed to make out exactly what they said.
In his treatise on “Queen-Gold,” or Queen-pinmoney, an old King’s Bench author, one William Prynne, thus discourseth: “Ye tail is ye Queen’s, that ye Queen’s wardrobe may be supplied with ye whalebone.” Now this was written at a time when the black limber bone of the Greenland or Right whale was largely used in ladies’ bodices. But this same bone is not in the tail; it is in the head, which is a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to be presented with a tail? An allegorical meaning may lurk here.
There are two royal fish so styled by the English law writers—the whale and the sturgeon; both royal property under certain limitations, and nominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown’s ordinary revenue. I know not that any other author has hinted of the matter; but by inference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be divided in the same way as the whale, the King receiving the highly dense and elastic head peculiar to that fish, which, symbolically regarded, may possibly be humorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality. And thus there seems a reason in all things, even in law.
