Free Republic

I never get tired of videos like this: Flat Earthers, our beautiful blue garden planet looks awfully round! Here's a longer video: The Fram2 expedition launched on Monday using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Here's the crew: Believe it or not, there has never been a manned spaceflight that orbits around the Earth's poles. In other words, all other manned missions have orbited around the Earth, not over and under it. The mission, funded by Chinese cryptocurrency billionaire Chun Wang, is named after the Norwegian exploration ship Fram, the first to complete expeditions to both the North Pole and South...

In a mission funded and commanded by cryptocurrency entrepreneur Chun Wang, SpaceX said it plans a launch as early as Monday evening, marking the first crewed mission to polar orbit and the first to cultivate mushrooms as a crop in space. The three-to-five-day flight is to be lofted into space by a Falcon 9 booster. The mission is named after the Fram, a steam-and-sail powered ship used by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen during his historic 1910-1912 expedition to the South Pole. A four-person international team will crew the Fram2 mission: Wang from Malta; Jannicke Mikkelsen a film director and cinematographer...