My sweet brother sent me this link in an email with this video that I wanted to share with you. it is spectacular!!! Omg, GREAT photo ops!!! Also, I added more more info about the show and the host towards the end of this post. Take me take me!! ;)
A Ride in a U2 Spy Plane
You can see why the U-2 is considered the most difficult plane in the world to fly. Each pilot has a “co-pilot,” who chases the plane on the runway in a sports car. Most of the cars are either Pontiac GTOs or Chevrolet Camaros — the Air Force buys American.
The chase cars talk the pilot down as he lands on bicycle-style landing gear.
In his spacesuit, the pilot simply cannot get a good view of the runway. On takeoff, the wings of this plane, which extend 103 feet from tip to tip, literally flap. To stabilize the wings on the runway, two pogo sticks on wheels prop up the ends of the wings. As the plane flies away, the pogo sticks drop off.
The plane climbs at an amazing rate of nearly 10,000 feet a minute. Within about four minutes, we were at 40,000 feet, higher than any commercial airplane. We kept going up to 13 miles above Earth's surface.
You get an incredible sensation up there. As you look , it feels like you're floating, like you're not moving, but you're actually going 500 mph! The U-2 was built to go higher than any other aircraft. In fact today, more than 50 years since it went into production, the U-2 flies higher than any aircraft in the world with the exception of the space shuttle.
It is flying more missions than ever before, nearly 70 missions a month over Iraq and Afghanistan , an operational tempo that is unequaled in history. The pilots fly for 11 hours at a time. By flying so high, the U-2 has the capability of doing reconnaissance over a country without actually violating its airspace. It can look off to the side, peering 300 miles or more inside a country without actually flying over it. It can "see" in the dark and through clouds.
It can also "hear," intercepting conversations 14 miles below. The U-2, an incredible piece of history and also a current piece of high technology, is at the center of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan .
Enjoy the ride!
JAMES MAY AT THE EDGE OF SPACE
About the Show
James is no stranger to outrageous challenges on Top Gear, but this time he is put to the test by three days of intense training with the U.S. Air Force as he prepares to go for a ride on the famed U-2 spy plane.
He will have to train like an Apollo astronaut and learn how to emergency eject from the cockpit, survive the thirteen mile fall back to Earth and wear a spacesuit to stay alive in air so thin it can instantly kill. All for a once-in-a-lifetime journey that will take him 70,000 feet into the stratosphere to a place the U.S. Air Force calls the "space equivalent zone" —giving him a close-up of space and an astronaut's view of Earth.
