Word: virginity
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...Even as environmental groups roundly pooh-poohed the flight as a publicity stunt, Virgin and its partners stressed that percentages weren't the point. The event was, the businesses claim, meant merely as a demonstration. "What we're proving today is that biofuel can be used for a plane," Branson told reporters. "Two years ago, people said it was absolutely impossible." Among the fears: that biofuel would freeze before a plane reached cruising altitude, or that it would require massive and costly changes to the aircraft or fueling systems to work at all. Those prognosticators were proved wrong. The fuel...
...years. As food prices soar worldwide, people are growing ever more worried that biofuel production can drive up the prices of staple foods. Tens of thousands of Mexicans marched in January 2006, for example, to protest the rising price of corn, used in the U.S. to make ethanol. Virgin and partners claim that their airplane fuel is, as Branson says, "completely environmentally and socially sustainable." It's not made from staple-food crops or from crops that required deforestation. But even coconuts and babassu have their problems: the oil yield is just not that high. If a 747 could...
...Dreamliner, once it's finally shipped out to its buyers, is expected to burn 20% less fuel than similar-sized planes - and that plane will be in commercial use in just a few months. As priorities go in aviation sustainability, "Right now [biofuel] will be very low," Virgin Atlantic CEO Steve Ridgway tells TIME. But with fears that the days of oil are numbered, it only makes sense that a business would try to diversify its raw materials in the long term. And cutting overall industry emissions will be no easy task if demand for flights continues to grow...
...Just before 12:30 at Heathrow, Virgin Atlantic's 747 touched down in Amsterdam, finishing off the event without a hiccup - which is more than could be said for Branson himself. For kicks, the mogul had drunk a sample of his firm's coconut oil and babassu oil jet-fuel blend. "My God that was horrible," he told reporters afterward. "I've been burping ever since." Now that, without a doubt, is a publicity stunt...
...phone photographs, and most contain information that is provably false, and often wholly ridiculous—for example, a recent post claimed VES and Physics concentrator Lewis Z. Liu ’08 would be trading one of his paintings with British billionaire Richard Branson for a ride on Virgin Galactic’s first spaceflight...