STS-132 mission patch

You can read all the facts you like about the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-132 at the Wikipedia page or elsewhere. But being there was a once-in-a-lifetime event for me, and for a whole bunch of other people who travelled from near (Florida, Georgia, Texas, etc.) and far (Australia, Sweden, Germany, etc.) to see the launch.

Crowds gather for the launch

NASA sell tickets for viewing from a number of locations, but they all sold out within a minute a few weeks ago, so I joined the crowds viewing from parks and vacant blocks of land along the waterfront in Titusville. Arriving nearly five hours before the launch, I parked in one of the few remaining spaces in a strip of land that was converted into parking for the day. No doubt there were countless other similar plots of land up and down the coast, earning $20 per car for the lucky owners. For the actual viewing, I was on a narrow kind of sea wall, with a small swamp behind, some low rushes in front, and crowds on either side. And so we waited.

I chatted with some folks who’d driven over from Texas, a family from Canada, as well as the family from Georgia on my left who, like me, had been really bitten by the space bug only in the last year or so. But we’d all taken the time and trouble to be there, and there was plenty to talk about while we waited.

As the 2:20pm launch drew nearer, the crowd kept swelling, and everyone began to sort out their viewing and photography equipment. As we were 12 miles away from the launchpad, there was also a far amount of explaining just which of those bumps on the horizon was the actual shuttle. I was getting regular updates on launch readiness on my mobile (from http://www.spaceflightnow.com/, via Twitter’s tweet-to-SMS service), but unfortunately nobody had the launch radio on nearby.  Someone said that the launch was actually due about 30 seconds after 2:20pm, so we did our own countdown, and around zero, we saw the steam begin to rise from the water they dump under the shuttle to control the noise. Being so far away, the noise would take about a minute to reach us, so we watch as the shuttle silently rose above the launch pad, our cheers by far the loudest noise.

"liftoff of space shuttle Atlantis, reaching the crest of its historic achievements in space"

For scale, the VAB on the far right of the above photo is 160 metres tall. Here’s a closeup (such was possible from 12 miles):

And 43 seconds later, around when we started to hear the noise of liftoff:

We continued watching, looking for the solid rocket booster separation, but it was either too far to see, or cloud obscured it. And then, the shuttle was gone, leaving just the trail of smoke hanging in the sky, and all of us standing on the ground.

Kennedy Space Centre Launch Complex 39

After sampling a variety of lounges, my flying continued with the last leg from Chicago to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I didn’t plan to take this routing for any reason except that the times were convenient. However, as we approached our destination, I was woken by the captain announcing that the Kennedy Space Center was visible to the right. Since the reason for my trip was to see the launch of the Space Shuttle, getting a preview from 37,000 feet was a real bonus. The photo at the right shows Launch Complex 39, with the Vehicle Assembly Building at the top, launch pad 39A (with the shuttle already on it) at the bottom, and pad 39B off to the right.

I’d flown into Fort Lauderdale because of the cheap first class airfare available LAX-FLL; I’ve written previously about how to find such fares. It did however mean that the rest of that day was taken up with driving from Fort Lauderdale to Orlando, which was where the closest available hotel was at the time I booked. I’d planned to allow a spare day before the shuttle launch (on 14 May), in case of flight delays. But despite the flight delays I’d encountered, I ended up in Fort Lauderdale on time, and so had a full day spare to visit the Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

The Orlando region is famous for its many theme parks, but the KSC beats them all for value, and in most other ways (except for a distinct lack of people wearing mouse ears). For half the price of a day’s admission to one of the Walt Disney World parks, you get two days access to the KSC. I’d use one day before the launch, and the other afterwards (assuming the shuttle launched on schedule).

Vehicle Assembly Building

After quickly surveying all the options, the first activity I did was to take the bus tour that’s included with the price of admission.  (There are other bus tours available as well, but they cost extra, and were booked out for all the days I’d be there.) The first stop on the tour was the massive Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). It’s 160 metres high, but I find that it’s difficult to gauge that kind of scale, particularly when you’re not sure how far away you are. Perhaps a better yardstick is the stars in the US flag, which are each as tall as me (6 feet or 1.83 m). In any case, it’s huge; it was used to assemble the Saturn V stack for the Apollo program, was then modified to handle the shorter but wider space shuttle stack.

Crawler used to move the launch platform and shuttle stack to the pad

From the VAB, the bus then followed the path of the crawler tracks towards pad 39A. Our destination was the Observation Gantry, which is about 3 miles from pad 39A. Right next to the gantry was one of the crawlers, presumably the one that deposited the shuttle on the pad about a month previously.

But of course the main item of interest was the shuttle itself, sitting almost ready to launch on pad 39A. A kind gentleman from Germany allowed me to borrow his 100-400mm lens, with which I took the photo below. The orange bit is the top of the external fuel tank; the white object attached to its side is one of the solid rocket boosters, while the roundish tank in the background is the water tower (actually some distance away) for the sound suppression system. The shuttle orbiter itself is not really visible at all: it’s covered on the near side by the gantry used for loading the payload while maintaining a sterile environment. On top of the launch tower to the left is a lightning rod (I presume).

Stay tuned for the second part of this entry soon.

Atlantis almost ready to launch

Those of you who’ve been following along here will recall that I planned to reach Gold frequent flyer status with Qantas last year – which I did, after some effort in chasing up flight credits that didn’t post automatically. Gold status gives access to Qantas lounges (affectionately known by some as the “Qantas Pub”), where there’s food and, depending on the lounge and time of day, “drink”. But what crazy flights will allow me to access four different lounges in the one day? Well, as they used to say on The Curiosity Show, I’m glad you asked!

Today I’m flying MEL-SYD-NAN-LAX-ORD. (For those of you who aren’t airport geeks, the non-obvious airport codes there are Nadi (pronounced “nandi”, hence “NAN”) in Fiji and Chicago.) I’ve already sampled the Qantas Club and Business Lounge in Melbourne (where I had second breakfast), and I’m writing this from the International Business Lounge in Sydney (where I had fourth breakfast, having had third breakfast on the flight - no, I’m not a Hobbit!). In Nadi, I’ll have access to the Air Pacific “Tabua Club”, and then in Los Angeles, the American Airlines Admirals Club. And that makes four lounges.

As for the “in one day” bit, it’s all Tuesday 11 May, even though the sun sets during the flight from Nadi to Los Angeles, thanks to the International Date Line.

And now, they’re calling my flight…

Mt Taranaki from the North Egmont Visitor Centre

Midway through a New Zealand road trip, I’ve set aside one day to climb Mt Taranaki, a 2518 metre volcanic peak. The mountain is also known as Mt Egmont, and is in Egmont National Park, south of New Plymouth in the North Island.

Unfortunately for me, the weather forecast for the day I’d set aside (Sunday 3 Jan) wasn’t too good: drizzle, with a northwest gale (at 2000m elevation), rising to 80 km/h in the afternoon. However, I was fairly well equipped (with a rain jacket, overpants, fleece jacket, merino wool long johns, wool/possum fur gloves (a great NZ innovation), fleece beanie and good waterproof boots), so I decided to give it a go anyway.

Tahurangi Lodge

I set off from the North Egmont Visitor Centre (elevation 936 metres) at around 7:20 am, along with my father, who hiked with me for the first 40 minutes or so. The first third of the climb (in terms of the total elevation gain) is a hike along a 4WD track up to the private Tahurangi Lodge, at elevation 1492 metres. The first part of this track is nicely sheltered by the forest, but the second part is more exposed, and the strong winds here gave a foretaste of what was to come later.

After the lodge are the wooden steps: just as easy to walk as the 4WD track, but with a greater rate of climb. They cross a rocky gully, which still had a patch of snow in it; I stopped here for a break, which also gave a group of hikers below me a chance to catch up. The steps then head up towards a ridge where the real challenge begins: scree. To tackle this, I was happy to have the company of the hikers who had caught up: it was a kiwi family (mum, dad, son, daughter and (Canadian) son-in-law).

Struggling up the scree

Before I decided to do this climb, I’d read a couple of descriptions of the hike from other hikers (sorry, “trampers”).  They’d described climbing the scree as “for every step foward, you take two back” and “a heart breaking section”, so I knew it was going to be bad, but I really didn’t expect it to be as bad as it was. Some spots are firmer than others, and the ridge does seem to be better, but that’s also where it was windiest. The real trick (as used by one of the mountain guides we encountered, along with his group) is to head west (anti-clockwise) around the mountain, to where there is a section of solid rock. We didn’t learn about this until we’d finished the scree, and I don’t know why the marked trail doesn’t take that route. Towards the end of the scree section, I did head over that way; it was easier, although the rock was all over the place, so I had to use hands as well to clamber up.

Clambering up the rock

This type of climbing continued for the next section; it’s hard to say, but I’d guess it was around a 45 degree slope.  There was no one path marked, but everyone chose their own route, while not straying too far from the route marking poles. The clouds remained below us, but it seemed like they were following us up the mountain as we went. The wind however kept getting stronger the higher we climbed.

The rock section ends when you reach the crater rim, which is eroded away in a few places, including the northeast direction of our approach. With the serious climbing done, I zipped my trouser legs back on here, and also put on a rain jacket, mainly to protect against the wind. I also switched my cap for a beanie, to avoid the cap being blown off.

Entering the crater, with the summit to the right

Getting to the summit requires crossing the snow that remains in the crater; hiking guides recommend that you have crampons for this section, but we managed with little difficulty to get up the slope, as the snow was soft enough that you could create good footings, rather than slipping down the slope. At this point, we were regularly being enveloped in cloud — one minute it would be clear (like the photo above) and the next you’d be in the cloud, with visibility quite reduced. So we hurried up to the summit (getting there about 1pm), and enjoyed the views (when the clouds gave us the chance). Thanks to the communications tower near the lodge, it was also possible to send a text message! Then, the cloud closed in for good, and we started back down. This is where things started getting a bit hairy.

View southwest from the summit

First, the cloud deposited a fine mist on my glasses, so they were just like frosted glass, so I couldn’t see where I was going. It was fine at first, as I just headed down the snow slope, but when I got to the flatter part, I needed to see where the guys in front were, and the combination of cloud and droplets on my glasses made that impossible. I’m quite short-sighted, so I need my glasses all the time; this time however, it was going to be better to have a very blurry image without my glasses rather than the diffuse forms visible through them. So, I did the rest of the descent without glasses.

The next challenge was to find somewhere sheltered to stop for lunch, since the wind had continued to increase. This took us a fair way back down the rock section. A couple of ham-and-cheese sandwiches later, we continued the descent, which I found incredibly difficult.

Descending through cloud

As I mentioned, I was somewhat blind, so I wasn’t too sure exactly where I was putting my feet. Then, the wind had reached gale force (as the forecast had predicted); in fact, one of the group thought it might be 100 or 120 km/h. It was gusty as well, so the variability and strength of the wind made it very tricky to stand up and keep your balance. The wind brought with it the moisture from the cloud, along with dirt and grit from the slope — so we slowly became soaked, with grit in the eyes and everywhere else. The terrain was the final challenge, first the rocky section, and then the scree. Thankfully, it was possible to descend the scree in short, somewhat-controlled slides, but these often ended when your feet slid out from under you. Descending should be less physically demanding than ascending, but I was so exhausted by this point that it seemed just as hard going down. And we’d pretty much lost sight of the trail markers as well, and were guided by recollection of the landscape from the ascent. (Rather, I was guided by those who could see the landscape clearly, and remembered it as well.)

We finally reached the steps, which slowly took us out of the main brunt of the wind. The footing was much improved, and so the rest of the hike down was just putting one foot in front of the other (being as gentle on your knees as possible), and putting up with the remaining wind and cloud, and later, rain. We got back to the car park around 4:45 pm, or thereabouts: a bit over 9 hours on the trail.

I’m glad I did the climb (and survived), but I’ve learned some new respect for the power of nature. If I’d been less well equipped, or hadn’t had the encouragement of the group I’d met up with, I could have been in real trouble. Over 60 people have died on Mt Taranaki, usually caught unprepared when the weather turns, and I can now understand why.

I arrived at the park at about 6:30 pm; some rides were due to shut just half an hour later, while others were open to 9 pm. (I had originally thought I’d be able to take advantage of “Extra Magic Hours”, but it turns out that they are only available if you’re staying at a Disney resort hotel — and I wasn’t.)

Spaceship Earth at Epcot

I managed to take four “rides”: the first was some kind of energy thing starring Ellen (who has graduated to that class of stars that no longer have any need for a surname) in alternately a dream quiz show where she shows her ignorance of energy and a dream time-travel sequence, where she learns about energy (as sponsored by oil and coal companies, I think); second was a space training ride, where they put you in a centrifuge to simulate the g-forces of a rocket liftoff; the third was Spaceship Earth, which is a depiction of human history and is contained within the landmark Epcot crenellated sphere; finally I did the Test Track ride, where they put you on a fake test track and subject you to emergency braking, sudden swerving, extremes of heat and cold, and a final high speed run around the whole building at 60 mph or so. (I can’t remember the exact names of these rides, and the Disney website is currently giving me a Java exception when I try to look them up — a lack of quality control that is rare for Disney, I think.) People say you can easily spend multiple day at each of the four Disney World theme parks, and I can certainly see that being the case.

At 9 pm, just minutes after stepping off the Test Track, the nightly light show began.  This show combines music, flames, lasers, an illuminated spinning globe and fireworks, all happening on the lagoon, for a rather spectacular show. I was sorry I didn’t have a bit more time to get a good viewing position, but I finally found an unobstructed view standing on a wall, and hoping a security “cast member” didn’t tell me to get down. (Disney World doesn’t have staff, only cast members.)

Light show spectacular

The lagoon is surrounded by displays representing a number of different countries; the displays consist of copies of buildings, stores selling goods from those countries, including food and drink, appropriate music, and cast members from the countries. A complete lap of the lagoon stopping at each “country” would probably take a few hours; I imagine that many Americans who do this feel they no longer need to visit the real things, thus explaining how few of them travel abroad. (I know, that’s a very unfair generalisation — no matter how true it might be.)

After that show finished, I wandered further around the lagoon, stopping at “Germany” for a beer and pretzel, ordered in my very rusty German from Kristie, whose nametag said she was from Munich. During this time I noticed a thunderstorm nearby, so moved to another spot to see if I could catch a lightshow even better than Disney’s attempt. Judge for yourself which was the more impressive:

Lightning over Epcot

After that, I wandered through various souvenir stores (filled with parents saying no to their nagging children — I expect I was that annoying too when my parents took me to Disneyland) and then took myself home, to the relative normality of my non-Disney hotel.

After my credit card wasn’t accepted when attempting to pay, their helpful text chat help service attempted to troubleshoot the problem, and in the end just gave up and supplied me with a coupon code to get free wi-fi for this flight. So, while GoGo needs to fix their credit card handling, at least they score full marks for customer support.

What can you do while surfing the intertubes at 33,000 feet? Well, apart from all the usual things, you can check where you are with FlightAware (note that that link takes you to the page for the current flight AA534, on whatever day you’re reading this). As we’ve only got 29 minutes of flight left, I’d better hurry up and post this.

FightAware also shows you where you’ve been. (Note that that link will probably expire around 2009-11-18.)

We’re starting to descend, so it’s post time, or my first sentence will be a lie!

UPDATE: The internet is still on, so here’s a picture:

I’m not going to recap the whole conference, but I thought I’d mention some of the highlights (and a lowlight).

The most thought-provoking talk was the keynote given by Avi Bryant called ”Django is obsolete (but so is everything else)”. Although Avi comes from the Seaside web app framework world (and Seaside is written in Smalltalk), his message also applied to Django. The key point is that shipping HTML from the webserver is on the way out; increasingly, the client that web (app) servers are talking to is Javascript running on the browser, and the data transfer format is JSON. Of course, the Javascript client will eventually have to spit out HTML (and maybe CSS) for the browser to display, so that hasn’t gone away. So this means that Django will be increasingly used to “render” JSON, rather than HTML templates. Oh, and those of us who’ve avoided learning Javascript probably need to catch up now.

Curiously, another talk with a similar theme was the worst talk of the conference (in my opinion, and the opinion of the hoards that were complaining about it on the #djangocon IRC channel during the talk) — the talk on SproutCore, excuse me, HTML5, given by a guy I’m not going to name. (I’m sure you can look it up if you really want to.) The talk was titled ‘Are HTML 5 clients Django’s “killer app”?’, but it was really just a thinly veiled infomercial for SproutCore, an “HTML5 application framework” being used heavily by Apple (among others). Now, there’s nothing wrong with SproutCore as a technology, but it’s not what the conference was about; furthermore, the talk title did not reveal that it was so heavily focussed on that topic. But perhaps the most annoying point was the speaker’s complete insensitivity towards the Django community, in particular those members in his audience; his various derogatory comments about Django and implications that we were foolish for choosing to develop and use Django were way out of line. Combined with his arrogant demeanour, I was distinctly unimpressed with the talk.

Between the best and the worst talks, the ones in between were generally excellent as well. However, I thought the keynote on the second day titled “Toward a new self-definition for open source” was uninspiring. I would much rather they’d used that keynote spot for the talk on “Fighting Malnutrition with SMS and Django”, which I missed, but from the sound of the applause from room, and the positive comments on Twitter and IRC, was a really inspiring and worthwhile talk.

Django Pony attacking Alex Gaynor

Of course, any conference on a Python-based technology is going to have a thread of silly humour permeating everything, and it really brought the conference alive. It started with the opening of the conference by the Fake Jacob Kaplan-Moss (actually James Tauber, since JK-M couldn’t be there), which was an investigation into the D^Jango Code (based on some book by Dan Brown) and the links between the various core developers’ names — there’s a video of some of it, which should give  a taste before the official videos are available. Then there was the ever magical Django Pony (seen here at a different conference), who was later joined by the Python snake. The Pony was perhaps the most helpful stuffed toy conference assistant ever, functioning as a meeting place, a decorative scarf or headgear, and as a lightning talk alarm.

So that was DjangoCon 2009. I have some work to do going through my notes, and may post some followup items at a later date. Next up in the Django community calendar of events are EuroDjangoCon 2010, which is going to be in London I believe, and DjangoCon 2010, in Portland again. I hope I’ll be able to put together some talks, or make some other contribution to the community so that I can justify (to myself) attending one or both of those.

…

And now I’m sitting here in Honolulu, waiting for my flight to Portland. The flight from Sydney was delayed about 40 minutes due to thunderstorms on the ground, and we continued to see lightning in the distance for some time after we took off.

The flight was quite full, including Starclass up the front where I was. Next to me was Celeste, proprietor of the Clyvemore Apartment in Ballarat, and we chatted into the night. I eventually managed to get a few hours’ sleep, until I was woken up (despite wearing earplugs and noise-cancelling headphones) by the extremely inconsiderate loudmouth a few rows up who insisted on talking at full volume while standing in the aisle at what was about 4 am Honolulu time. He’d also woken most of the rest of the cabin, a few of whom tried to shush him, but he carried on yakking. I eventually pressed my call button, and asked the flight attendant to deal with him, and he stopped. It’s just a shame he wasn’t reported for congregating, which is against TSA regulations.

I couldn’t get back to sleep after the loudmouth incident, but apart from that, the rest of the flight went without incident. After immigration, baggage claim, customs, agricultural inspection, and dropping my bag off for the next flight, my next item of business was to add credit to my US pay-as-you-go credit card. When I was in the US in June, I added credit at an AT&T store, which worked fine. I’d attempted adding credit on the web, but they wouldn’t accept a non-US address for a credit card. Not surprisingly, when I called their automated service line, I had the same problem of not being able to add credit; I was transferred to one customer service agent, and he tried twice before giving up and transferring me to a specialist, who also tried once before approving it anyway — I must have sounded convincing. Here’s the take-away lesson for US businesses: some of your customers don’t live in the US, so learn to deal with it!

After that rigmarole, I checked my predicted flight arrival on FlightCaster, a new-ish service which uses “algorithms” to predict when flights will arrive. My flight now shows as possibly delayed, because the incoming plane (from Manila) has been delayed by about 50 minutes. It’ll be interesting to see whether FlightCaster’s prediction is correct.

In the meantime, I have Hawaiian shirts to purchase!

I’m a member of Qantas‘ Frequent Flyer program, ever since Ansett collapsed in 2002, taking my Global Rewards points with it. I’ve been doing enough flying in the past few years that I’m now off the bottom status rung (Bronze) and have enjoyed the privileges of Silver, such as extra checked luggage allowance and business-class check-in, since September 2008. I’m travelling to the US again next month, and that will earn me enough status credits to retain my Silver membership level next year. (Qantas bases its membership levels on status credits, whereas US airlines usually count elite qualifying miles (EQM) or some other count of miles flown.)

However, I wondered what it would take for me to get to the next status level, Gold. To qualify takes 700 points, and I’ll have 320 after my US trip. Another 380 points seems out of the question — at least it does to mere mortals, but to members of forums such as FrequentFlyer and Flyertalk, it’s a welcome challenge. And the key to the challenge is cheap US domestic first class fares, generally known as YUPP or KUPP fares (named after their booking codes, and also because they are Y-class (economy) UPgrade fares).

A recent FrequentFlyer forum poster asked how to earn 95 status credits (SC) in a weekend flying out of Sydney. One answer was a return flight to Canberra and a return flight to Melbourne, with one leg of each flight in business class, for a total of 100 SC at a cost of $898, or $8.98 per SC. Another involved a trip to Auckland, coming back via Melbourne, flying a mix of Jetstar Starclass, Qantas and LAN business, for 135 SC at $860, or $6.37/SC.

On the other hand, thanks to FareCompare and with the assistance of FrequentFlyer guru serfty, I’m looking at flights out of Portland, OR (where I’ll be for a conference) that earn 420 SC at a cost of $1170, or $2.78/SC — a much cheaper rate than options out of Australia. (And my flights aren’t even the best that can be done in the US — other routes from other starting points can be even cheaper.) All I’ll have to do is spend a whole day flying from Portland, OR, to Tampa, FL via Dallas-Fort Worth, TX and return. And, because it’s a KUPP fare, I’ll be in first class the whole way. (Don’t get too excited — most US airlines’ domestic first class is of a lower standard than Qantas’ domestic business class. But at least the seats are wider than economy, there’s more legroom, meals are provided, as well as a power port to keep my laptop running. There’s even a chance that wireless will be available on some of the flights.)

So I have a better value option available to me than if I were to do a status run out of Australia, but is it still worth it overall? Let’s look at the value of what’s provided by the Gold status level compared with Silver.

The most obvious improvement is free Qantas Club membership, which gives access to Qantas domestic lounges and international business lounges, as well as British Airways and American Airlines lounges. Lounge access typically provides free food and drinks, computing facilities (usually including free wireless access), as well as showers. I remember a couple of years ago when my Jetstar flight to Honolulu (on which I was flying Starclass, which entitled me to Qantas lounge access) was delayed by about four hours, I spent the time quite comfortably in the Qantas lounge in Sydney; the other passengers had to suffer with inadequate seating in a partially completed part of the terminal, with whatever food was available from vending machines.

How much is Qantas Club membership worth? They’ll quote you a price to join, which as a new member is $775, or less if you can join as part of a corporate membership. (If you join the FrequentFlyer forum as a Gold member (which costs $50), you can save $200 off Qantas Club membership — a net $150 saving.)

Another benefit of Gold is 50% points bonus compared with 25% bonus in Silver; note that this bonus is applied to Frequent Flyer points only, not status credits. So, if I flew 44,000 miles, that’s an extra 11,000 points, which is enough for a one-way flight from Melbourne to Sydney in economy (including taxes). Depending on what fares are on sale, that could be worth something like $90-$140.

The other benefits are priority baggage handling (the value of which is a bit hard to calculate — even if you think it has a value at all) and on-departure upgrades. These upgrades are available from Qantas Club desks and allow you to use frequent flyer points to upgrade to business class from all but the cheapest economy class fares. There doesn’t seem to be a great difference between the number of points needed for the upgrade and the number of points you’d use to book business over economy class in the first place, so it’s hard to say that there’s a great deal of extra value here.

There’s an additional cost to doing a status run that I haven’t included so far, which is the cost to the environment. Looking at the cost in greenhouse gas emissions alone, the Carbon Reduction Institute’s carbon offset calculator estimates that the dollar equivalent of the greenhouse gas impact of my flights would be around $100. (If this seems high to you compared with carbon offsets offered by airlines such as Virgin Blue, be aware that some offset programs are cheaper because they invest in less effective but cheaper offset methods.)

So, adding these benefits all up, there’s perhaps around $750 value in Gold status compared with Silver — that’s the benefit that can have a dollar value put against it. Other benefits are harder to calculate: if there are operational upgrades (i.e. free upgrades to open up lower class seats when they’re overbooked) available, you’re more likely to get one the higher up the status ladder you are. Similarly, when it comes to seating assignments, you’re higher up the ladder, and so should be able to get better seats in whatever class you’re in. On the other hand, the cost of taking the flights to get to Gold is around $1270, including offsetting the carbon impact of the flights.

So, the big question is whether it’s worth it. For me, needing the number of points I need to make Gold, and just looking at dollar values, probably not. Does that mean I’m not going to take the flights?

I don’t know — I’ll keep you posted.

Using the guide’s advanced search feature, I selected the current model (3rd generation) Toyota Prius, the previous model (1.5 litre, 2nd generation) Prius, the MINI Cooper D Hardtop manual (which has the best consumption of all the variants) and a slightly more recent model of the Honda Jazz that I currently have.

Here are the results:

Green Vehicle Guide comparison

Take the air pollution ratings with a grain of salt; most manufacturers don’t test their cars against the higher standards that enable them to get a rating above 5, so the cars that are shown with a rating of 5 may actually be better than that.

One interesting point in the figures above is that the MINI Cooper D has exactly the same combined fuel consumption as the new model Toyota Prius. As far as I’m concerned, that means that MINI’s advertising of the Cooper D as “Australia’s most fuel efficient car” (”As per Green Vehicle Guide as published by the Australian Government, based on combined fuel consumption as per ADR81/01 for MINI Cooper D Manual”) is false advertising. And if you take into account the higher price of diesel compared with petrol, and the greater CO2 emissions per litre, the MINI Cooper D is clearly worse than the new Prius. I think I’ll complain to the Advertising Standards Bureau.

UPDATE: I didn’t complain, but the MINI Cooper D is now advertised as “Australia’s most fuel efficient diesel car”.