Paul Quinn wrote to Roy Witt:   
      
    RW>> You're not familiar with the facts? Joe Kittinger was the guiding   
    RW>> hand that helped the more recent person take a dive in   
    RW>> man-no-air-ship space, called a high dive. He is also on record for   
    RW>> the first man in space from a balloon. Facts over fiction which can   
    RW>> be proven.   
      
    PQ> Whoopee-do.  A 19 mile skydive in an atmosphere measuring 62-75 miles   
    PQ> is hardly 'space' surfing.  If you want to speak of such adventures   
    PQ> in the same breath as mentioning (actual) space travel, then you're   
    PQ> conveniently excluding all the prior work done in ballooning in the   
    PQ> late-1880s.   
      
   Any Aussies baloon to space and then take a nose dive to earth?   
      
    PQ>>>  it was in fact a Chinese alchemist on a rocket-powered throne   
    PQ>>> in the early 1000s AD.   
    RW>> Got a Google link to that info? Didn't think so.   
      
    PQ>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MythBusters_episodes   
      
    PQ> Look for: Season 2004 Episode #16 - "Ming Dynasty Astronaut".  (Well,   
    PQ> look for the video... I haven't.)   
      
   Myths, exploding rockets and dreams of space travel aren't the same as   
   actually getting it done.   
      
    PQ>>>   Though this was later unproven by the Mythbusters team.   
      
    RW>> Ahhh, those guys ... a lot of what they do can be debunked and often   
    RW>> is. Although what their show is about is a lot of fun to watch when   
    RW>> they make such fools out of themselves. Especially the bald headed,   
    RW>> handle barred monkey 'screwing' a football character.   
      
    PQ> That's all they're basically good for: entertainment.  If there's any   
    PQ> real /science/ included they usually provide a warning to viewers, to   
    PQ> 'look away now'.  :)   
      
   If they couldn't reproduce what Steven Spielberg did in the movie,   
   American Grafitti, what entertainment is that?   
      
   I'd like to know how it was done, as we did the same thing to one like it   
   in the 1960s. The cable stopped the car, but didn't tear out the rear end   
   in our 'experiment'.   
      
   On film you see a 1961 Ford police squad car rolling out of a parking lot,   
   lights and sirens going and the cable that Richard Dreyfus's character   
   attached to the rear end of that car pulled the damned thing out from   
   under, leaving the squad car as a pile of junk on the street. How was that   
   done? The best the boiz could do was say they had debunked that myth   
   because they couldn't 'get er done'...   
      
      
            R\%/itt   
      
      
   --- GoldED+/W32 1.1.5-31012   
   --- D'Bridge 3.92   
    * Origin: Lone-Star BBS - San Antonio, Texas - USA (1:387/22)