Sunday, 22 March 2009

Travel thrills

Matt's post about the Grand Canyon Skywalk made me curious as to what else is out there with a similar sense of 'thrill of the impossible'. In a way, the Skywalk is important for technical and financial reasons: someone spent a lot of money putting that up there, and it costs a lot of money to do it. It's also a massive rip off according to many commentators...

So anyway, I found a list and there were a couple of things I think we should talk about. There were lots of high-adrenalin things (bungees and terrifying roller-coasters) but I don't think we're interested in those (are we?).

Zero Gravity
For $4500 you can experience five minutes of astronaut-style weightlessness with Zero-Gravity Adventures at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. A Boeing 727 traces huge parabolic arcs in the sky and allows even the heaviest of humans to float like a fairy. The walls are padded so you can flip injury free as you fall toward Earth...

Virgin Galactic
Richard Branson and American aerospace engineer Burt Rutan want to fly six passengers to the edge of the atmosphere (or 100km above the surface of our planet) in the world’s most extreme ride. Tickets for this cosmonaut attraction are $241,000 and according to the company 150 people have already paid up.

CSI Experience at Vienna Prater

CSI: The Experience is a completely immersive exhibit that invites visitors to enter crime scenes where they identify and record evidence. It takes them inside laboratories for scientific testing and autopsy rooms for pathology analysis. Then it returns them to the office to build their case, based on the scientific evidence. The exhibit brings to life real scientific principles and the most advanced scientific techniques used today by crime scene investigators and forensic scientists.

(this last one is brilliant)

Hostage rescue team

Have you ever wanted to be part of an Elite Special Operations team and control your own urban block? The Urban Training Centre in Seattle will train you to conduct an urban hostage rescue mission. For $3900 you will be issued with an M4 assault rifle, M9 missile and body armour. Then join other military minded men and women to infiltrate the area and complete your mission.


Wow. This starts to link back to the fictional bomb.

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