My pal Rod Rakic – better  known as Mr. My Transponder – and I were chatting today about his upcoming vacation to Florida, not too far from the Kennedy Space Center and almost in time for the next Shuttle launch. I would do almost anything to be in that visitor’s stand since there aren’t going to be too many more ground-shaking shuttle launches any of us will be able to watch now that the final curtain of the manned U.S. Space program has begun to close.

Then I remembered this video a reader sent me some time back. I’ve been saving it up special for just a drizzly gloomy day like today In Chicago to share it with you. Can’t make the Shuttle launch? How close does this come?  It runs 11 minutes, so pop some corn first, but ride along as James May gets a ride in the U2, the world’s highest flying aircraft, now that the SR-71 is gone.

After flying the A380, this would be pretty cool!

Rob Mark

Provided by permission of Jetwhine.com.