Aardvark Daily

New Zealand's longest-running online daily news and commentary publication, now in its 23rd year. The opinion pieces presented here are not purported to be fact but reasonable effort is made to ensure accuracy.

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It's a bird, it's a plane...

22 September 2017

A century or so ago, the only things you'd find in the skies above our heads were birds, the sun the moon and stars.

These days however, the skies are filled with all sorts of things.

Down where there is an atmosphere we have all manner of winged craft now scudding about from place to place. Aeroplanes, helicopters, gliders, hot-air balloons, weather balloons, drones, etc.

Escape the thin veneer of draggy gases that shroud our planet and there are satellites, lots and lots of satellites.

These "birds" deliver all manner of services to their terrestrial masters below.

Communications, mapping, navigation, weather data and a whole lot more that we're not allowed to know too much about "cough X-37B cough".

In fact, there's so much stuff in orbit that the issue of "space junk" is rapidly becoming an important one.

And now there are plans to lob a whole bunch of new birds into low-earth orbit, beyond the stratosphere.

Forums are up!

Yes, people have been complaining about the lack of forums for months now so I finally got off my chuff and finished the transition to the new server and the commissioning of the new forums.

Unfortunately you will have to re-register, it just wasn't practical to transition the IDs from the old server -- although the old stuff will be maintained in a "read-only" capacity for some time to come.

So, if you want to "have your say" then register at the new forums using the magic word Aardvarkroxs when asked for it.

Take a moment to introduce yourself to the rest of the Aardvark community and pretty shortly I'll be expanding the number of forums to encompass a number of areas that are regularly discussed on this site.

The contact form is not yet working (got to rejig the CGI scripts) but if anyone wants to email me they can send their communications to editor at this domain or PM me via the forums.

Oh yes, if anyone wants a bit of a plug then the sponsorship space is now up for grabs. Until someone is prepared to offer a donation for the use of this space, I'm happy to offer a free plug to anyone who wants to send me a suitable 150x150 graphic and link.

Stay tuned!

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