For Global Astronomy Month 2020 (320): Inertia of Inertia (166)

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For Global Astronomy Month 2020 (320): Inertia of Inertia (166)

By Andrei Dorian Gheorghe (text and photos) and Florin Alexandru Stancu (design)

Published: Wednesday, October 14 2020 22:33

WATCHING THE PARACHUTISTS’ TOWER

“Alone in the sky,
I started laughing like a child
who had managed a hug.”
-Smaranda Braescu
(English translation from Romanian by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe)-

If meteors were beings,
they would feel
something similar to
what the parachutists feel.

Smaranda Braescu (born in 1897)
was a Romanian female pilot who
set women's world record
for highest parachute jump
(6,000 m in 1931,
with a Romanian pilot)
and the absolute world record
for highest parachute jump
(around 7,000 m in 1932,
with an American pilot).

Unfortunately, she died in 1948,
persecuted by the new totalitarian regime
installed in Romania after World War II.

As an irony, in 1950
the same regime began to build
the Parachutists’ Tower in Bucharest.

AndreiDGheorgheGAM320A 600