Reach for the Skies: Ballooning, Birdmen, and Blasting into Space - Couverture rigide

One of the world's most famous business leaders (and a well-known avian fanatic) explores the pioneers of flight.

Bestselling author and billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson has always been obsessed with the skies. To promote a new Virgin Airlines route, he became the first man to water ski behind a blimp. His Virgin Galactic venture will soon offer ordinary people the opportunity to experience spaceflight aboard the first commercial spaceliner, SpaceShipTwo.

In Reach for the Skies, Branson examines the history of aviation over the last two hundred years, putting the spotlight on trailblazers such as:

*Tony Jannus, who made the first ever commercial flight over Tampa Bay, Florida, in 1914.
*Leo Valentin, the "bird man" who jumped from 9,000 feet wearing a pair of wooden wings in the 1950s.
*Steve Fossett, who broke 130 world records in planes, balloons, and airships.

The pioneers of flight-not just the world-famous Wright Brothers, but also lesser known visionaries and dreamers-made it possible for any of us with the desire and the commitment to reach for the skies ourselves.

I spend a great deal of my life on aeroplanes.

I'm sometimes exhausted by the routine, as much as the next business traveller. but there isn't a flight that goes by when I don't stare out of the window and thank my stars for what I'm seeing and feeling.

Like so many before me, I have plummeted into the sea and been fished, half-frozen, from the water. I know frostbite. I know the wrench you feel in your gut as a balloon rises to where the air is too think to breathe comfortably. I know what an altimeter needle does when you fall from the sky.

If this book makes your air journeys just a little more magical, just an edge more miraculous, then I will have done my job. The skies are full of wonder.