Spaniard Aitor Gonzalez of the Fassa Bartolo Team won today’s stage from Carcassonne to Nimes. Thomas Voeckler keeps the Yellow Shirt, Lance remains at no. 2 still 22 seconds behind. No worries, today’s 14th Stage over flatland was a milkrun. If your Texan had wanted the shirt he’d have it. Still kudos for the young Frenchman though. I haven’t checked out French press but I figure he must be a national hero by now. Tomorrow is a resting day.
Btw, Carcassonne. If you ever venture to France and you want to impress those at home with other stories than climbing the Eiffel Tower or visiting Chenonceaux Castle you might want to check out this magnificent must-see town with still intact medieval walls and towers. In 1997 UNESCO recognized it as a World Heritage Center. Nearby is also Cathar Country with lots of ruins of the Cathar Sect’s last strongholds, the most famous being Montségur. It is easily reached by plane, e.g. from my country there are regular cheap flights by either Ryanair ( from Charleroi) or Virgin (from Zaventem, Brussels).
Today was a good day for ESA, NASA’s European counterpart, as an Ariane 5G rocket brought the largest telecommunications satellite ever – nearly six tons - into orbit. Launch took place on ESA’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guyana. Now why do I tell you this, have I become a space freak? Well, I might say I mention it, firstly, just to show you we in the EU are not sitting on our asses when it comes to space exploration. The European Space Agency is doing fine and its projects reach well beyond commercial space activities. An important part of NASA/ESA/ASI’s Cassini project to Saturn, the Huygens probe , which will land on Titan, is a 100% ESA project. There is also the Rosetta comet chaser, the Mars Express Spacecraft and ESA’s participation in the ISS, with a.o. the recent Delta Mission.
Secondly though I thought it worthwile to mention since Anik F2, the satellite launched today, will provide North America with digital communications services and high-speed Internet access, so you will probably benefit from it. Anik F2 was designed and built by Telsat, the Ottawa-based Canadian company which made history in 1972 by launching Anik F2's far cousin, Anik A1, the world's first domestic communications satellite for geostationary orbit.
"The Anik F2 Ka-band system will provide a large user base with small, low-cost terminals as well as with low airtime costs, while meeting the high performance requirements associated with high-speed interactive multimedia and Internet applications.
The Ka-band payload on Anik F2 will provide an array of services — including retrieval/transactional (e.g., Internet access, e-commerce), conversational (e.g., video-conferencing, tele-medicine), messaging (e.g., fax, e-mail, file transfer), and distribution (e.g., video multicasting, caching) services — even though they have diverse characteristics3. Homes (telecommuting during the day and educational/ entertainment web browsing in the evening), schools accessing the Internet and small multi-site businesses are projected to be the primary potential user groups for this multimedia payload."
I might clarify though that the actual building, operation and commercial exploitation of the Ariane launchers is the responsibility of the Arianespace company, although as said the place of launch is ESA territory. I must admit I don’t know exactly how it goes in the States, and whether those commercial launches you have fall under NASA’s responsibility or a private company’s, or both. Anyway, Arianespace has currently 50% of the global share in GTO (geostationary) launches.
To top it all off, I might add that the new Belgian Foreign Minister is Karel De Gucht, former VLD chairman. As some of you may remember, your servant was a member of the used-to-be-centre-right-but-now-centre-left-as-a-result-of-the-greenhouse-effect VLD. Well, since there have been, on June 13th, not only European but also regional elections in Belgistan, there is a shakeup and/or departure of federal excellencies to either the European Commission or the regional governments. Our current FM, Louis Michel, aka MOAP (Mother of All Pompous Asses) goes to the European Commission and Karel De Gucht will assume the vacant post. I have no particular sympathy for Mr. De Gucht, although it pleads for him he took at least a token stance against the municipal voting rights for immigrants in spring, when greens, socialist AND Michel’s MR party forced that folly down our throats. Anyway, anybody at Belgian Foreign Affairs is better than Louis Michel, even a dog with a hat on. I just hope that the European Commission gives him a post in which he wreaks the least havoc. I suggest surveillance of salmon populations in the Lofoten fjords. Yeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaah, I know, poor salmon.
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