Look! In the Sky. It’s a Rocket Racer.

eh...what?  It wasn't you?  Oh it must of been one of the other many daredevil astronaut/test-pilot types that read the rivet.  It's one of our core demographics you know...the astronaut.

Racers in rocket-powered aircraft will fly four laps around a five-mile “track” at anywhere from 150 feet to 1,500 feet above the ground. The planes, designed to fly at 340 miles an hour, will start side by side, two at a time. The pilots include professional test pilots who received their training in the military and a former astronaut.

This is a great idea...

Red Bull Air Race already has a competition with acrobatic prop planes.  I guess that isn't hairy enough.  I mean 240+ miles an hour, doing flips and stuff...not enough.

Add rockets.

Race 'em together.

50% faster.  100% louder.  100% more dangerous...what's not to like.

Iceland Lake Race between a suped up 4X4 and a snowmobile. These guys are crazy!

Umm...actually I don't know exactly what they're doing.  But it looks like something at the far ends of the normal distribution of intelligent occupations.  It is either a punishment or a fantasy.

Money quote:

There's only three I've ever been afraid of

1. Electricity
2. Heights
3. and women

...and I'm married too.

Update: This is so interesting that I couldn't just leave it as a video only.  I did a bit of searching and here are some links that I came up with.

Danger! High voltage!: Here's a good article fromthe Reader Wayne Fort that talks about it.

The arc is the burst of light created by the transfer of electricity. Electricity streaking between the wand and the wire is incredible. Viewed from the ground the arc appears to shoot from the lineman’s hand like lightning from an electrified comic book hero. For an Agrotors Powerline crew that’s just part of bonding on so they can get to work.

Up in the air with the blades whirling overhead, getting to work is a delicate aerial dance between the pilot and the wires. If he doesn’t get close enough the lineman can’t bond on but getting too close to the wrong wire can cause a flash-over in which electrical clearance is violated.

Whew! crazy!

And here's a company that does the work: [linky]

The benefits of Aerial live work

• Production up to ten times faster than conventional techniques, depending on applications.
• All work is carried out under “live” conditions, therefore no need for the customer to switch out lines.
• Exponential improvement of network quality of supply due to economies of scale.
• Smaller work force required carrying out pro-active preventative line maintenance.
• Only the safest world-best practices are employed ensuring the customer’s power line integrity is not compromised in any way.
• Access to areas previously regarded as inaccessible.
• Rapid reactive response to repair line faults during outages.