Photo Published by NASASome Get All The Breaks
Sunita (Suni) Williams is stuck, at least temporarily.
She took a flight last December planning to come home in early July.
Her trip home was scheduled for June 28th, but her return flight was canceled. Well, let's say all is not lost! Her arrival shows up on the heads-up display as delayed!
Maybe this might be an all time record for delayed flights. On he bright side of things, she won't have to worry about losing her luggage. It was carefully and neatly stowed in her over-head compartment.
Williams is on track to receive a mega-number Frequent Flyer Miles. At 10 Miles per Dollar spent for the cost of her flight chances are she'll never again have to pay for air travel, at least not in this lifetime. She may also be on track to boast a mega-number of miles flown on a single flight.
Do you think you were inconvenienced because your flight didn’t arrive on time?
Not to mention spending weeks on board her non-stop flight, her flight delay will cause her to miss this year’s Boston Marathon on Patriots Day, something she had looked forward to since running in Houston last January (finishing in 3 hours, 29 minutes, 57 seconds).
If you’re not a marathon runner the distance of the official distance of the Boston Marathon is 26 miles, 385 yards by Olympic standards. I mention this only because Williams plans to run the equivalent distance of the Boston Marathon, in place while still in flight.
At the rate of travel while in flight, 17,500 mph, she will be traveling the equivalent distance of he Boston Marathon every 5.4 seconds. At least so I’m told. You do the math.
Now I mentioned she plans to run the equivalent distance of the Boston race in place while in flight, not something flight attendants are accustomed to. Only on this flight Williams, 41, a U.S. Navy Commander, will pull rank (military slang for have it her way).
She’s run other marathons but running and finishing the Boston Marathon is like a world-class climber planting a flag at the crest of Mount Everest (8,850 meters or 29,035 feet, in Nepal).
Williams will be running in microgravity that will give her an advantage of not facing “heartbreak hill” but a disadvantage of not having the support of the crowds of on-lookers to cheer her performance, not even the flight attendants. And for that matter there will be no first aid stations for refuge.
Suni Williams will run the entire race while in space aboard the International Space Station, temporarily abandoned while NASA repairs the Atlantis' external fuel tank weather battered by a freak hailstorm that passed over Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral on February 26th.
She will run her solo marathon on a one-of-kind treadmill designed for astronauts in flight.
Race officials will be eying the long distance runner from Boston, but there won’t be anyone to hand out cold-water bottles. And there won’t be a Hollywood shower after this astronaut crosses the finish line.
