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Archive for Super Guppy

NASA ‘Super Guppy’ Swallows Supersonic NASA Jets (Photos)

By alkaon on March 27, 2013 No Comments

Two retired NASA T-38 trainers mounted on a transport pallet atop a mobile transporter are positioned for loading aboard NASA’s Super Guppy prior to ferrying them to El Paso, Texas, for disassembly. Image released March 21, 2013.
CREDIT: NASA

Two supersonic NASA jets were swallowed whole by the space agency’s outsized Super Guppy Transport plane in California this month so that they could be ferried to Texas.

The pair of retired T-38 jets, which are no longer airworthy, were loaded into the Guppy on March 18 at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif.,and flown to El Paso. The jets’ parts will be cannibalized and used for other T-38s that are still flying.

The loading process, which took over two hours, involved opening the Guppy’s nose and hoisting the T-38s onto a specially designed pallet that was put into the Guppy’s 25-foot (7.6-meter) diameter “stomach” of the NASA Super Guppy aircraft. Only the T-38s’ wingtips needing to be removed so that the jets could fit inside the carrier, Johnson Space Center flight engineer David Elliott, the Guppy’s project manager, said in a statement.

The Super Guppy is the last in its class of wide-bodied aircraft to have transported NASA’s unwieldy cargo to their launch site, including rockets for the Apollo program and room-size modules for the International Space Station. The plane is based at Ellington Airport in Houston, near NASA’s Johnson Space Center. [See more photos of NASA's Super Guppy swallowing jets]

The first Guppy aircraft, called the Pregnant Guppy, was built from a heavily modified KC-97 Stratotanker in 1962 by the California-based company Aero Spacelines. Its 19-foot (5.8-meter) diameter cargo compartment was the largest such cavity of any aircraft at the time and it was designed to hold the second stage of a Saturn rocket for the Apollo program.

The next generation, Dubbed the B377SG Super Guppy, was built in 1965 and was outfitted with a 25-foot (7.6-meter) diameter cargo bay, more powerful turboprop engines, a pressurized cockpit, and a hinged nose for easier loading of cargo, according to NASA.

The planes were operated by Aero Spacelines until NASA purchased the aircraft in 1981. The space agency still uses the Super Guppy Transport — the last generation of Guppy that Aero Spacelines built. The plane is slated to bring the Orion Heat Shield from Textron Defense Systems near Boston to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at the end of March. The U.S. Department of Defense and government contractors also have used the Guppy to ferry aircraft and large components around the continent.

Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We’re also on Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

Article source: http://www.space.com/20394-nasa-super-guppy-eats-jets.html

Tags: Guppy aircraft, Pregnant Guppy, johnson space center, Aero Spacelines, international space station, Super Guppy

Categories : Nasa News

Tags : Aero Spacelines, Guppy aircraft, international space station, johnson space center, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Pregnant Guppy, Super Guppy, Super Guppy Transport

NASA Space Shuttle Trainer Lands at US Air Force Museum

By alkaon on August 24, 2012 No Comments

NASA’s Space Shuttle Crew Compartment Trainer 1 (CCT-1), seen here tilted skyward at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, was delivered to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.
CREDIT: NASA

A space shuttle mockup once used to train astronauts, including more than 75 members of the U.S. Air Force, has landed in Ohio, where it is destined for display at the world’s largest and oldest military aviation museum.

The Space Shuttle Crew Compartment Trainer 1 (CCT-1), which was used for more than three decades at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, was flown onboard the agency’s Super Guppy cargo plane to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton on Wednesday (Aug. 22).

Once offloaded from the aircraft on Thursday, CCT-1 will be moved into the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force (NMUSAF), which is located at the base. The museum plans to display the trainer inside its Cold War Gallery until its new Space Gallery inside a planned fourth building is ready late next year.

“Today is a great day for the Air Force as we take another step forward in illustrating the rich history of the [U.S.] Air Force’s space programs and vital Air Force, NASA and aerospace industry partnerships,” Lt. Gen. Jack Hudson, the museum’s director, said Wednesday in a statement. “CCT-1 will be a very popular exhibit and provide exciting hands-on educational opportunities for children and adults of all ages.”

CCT-1, which was used to train the astronaut crews for all but three of NASA’s shuttle missions from 1981 to 2011, was one of two orbiter nose section-only trainers that was housed in Johnson Space Center’s Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. CCT-2, the twin to CCT-1, will be remaining in the facility to be saved for eventual display by Space Center Houston.

The shuttle crew cabin mockups include the flight deck cockpit and mid-deck living area. The switches, dials and instruments inside the trainers were non-functional but the mockups could be tilted to point skyward, recreating the shuttle’s orientation for launch. [NASA's Shuttle Program – A Photo Tribute]

Second-best thing

The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force had been in the running to receive a space-flown shuttle but ultimately NASA chose institutions in California, Virginia and Florida to display its retired fleet. The space agency gave CCT-1 to the Air Force Museum instead.

“I’ll always remember the space shuttle as the vehicle that took me to space, but I always say that the second-best thing about going to space is coming back and telling people about it,” space shuttle astronaut and Ohio native Michael Foreman said. “Telling the story and sharing the experience with others by adding [CCT-1] to the Air Force museum will allow people to see and understand more of what we experienced.”

Foreman and his fellow astronauts used CCT-1 to practice on-orbit tasks, train for emergency escapes, and evaluate engineering issues. During 20 classes that were taught by instructors in the trainer, crew members became familiar with the shuttle’s many systems.

The NMUSAF plans to use CCT-1 similarly, to familiarize the public with the spacecraft that not only flew Air Force pilots to orbit, but also launched with many classified and unclassified payloads and experiments during the space shuttle era.

“When the CCT exhibit is completed, it’ll allow the public to have an up-close and personal look into the cockpit and mid-deck of a shuttle and learn how astronauts trained for their missions,” Hudson said. [Most Memorable Shuttle Missions]

Plans call for the museum to build a full-scale mockup of the shuttle’s 60-foot (18.3-meter) payload bay. Concept art of the eventual exhibit depicts wing-shaped walkways and a tail section theater. Instead of crawling through the crew hatch to enter the trainer, the concept art illustrates the back wall of CCT-1 as being removed so visitors can look into the cabin.

Interactive space

For now, CCT-1 will be displayed as a standalone exhibit in the museum’s Eugene W. Kettering Cold War Gallery surrounded by aircraft, including the only permanent public display of a B-2 stealth bomber. The Air Force museum plans to have the shuttle trainer available for the public to see beginning on Friday (Aug. 24).

Next month, NASA specialists working with the museum’s curators will repopulate the mockup’s interior with the crew seats and other equipment that was removed for the flight aboard the Super Guppy.

The Space Gallery, where CCT-1 will eventually reside, is part of a multi-phase, long term expansion plan and will house the museum’s growing space collection. In addition to displaying the shuttle mockup, the gallery will include a Titan 4 rocket, Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft, and many recently retired shuttle artifacts such as a nose cap assembly, a landing gear strut and a variety of shuttle astronaut equipment.

The new gallery will also exhibit a range of satellites and related items to showcase the Air Force’s reconnaissance, early warning, communications and other space assets.

A unique feature of this fourth building will be the creation of interactive spaces for learning in the galleries. Three “Learning Nodes,” including one proposed to be at the rear of CCT-1, will host lectures and demonstrations, as well as extensions of the exhibit experience.

These 60-seat “gallery classrooms” will allow the museum staff to facilitate new educational experiences, while guest scientists and engineers from Air Force organizations, the aerospace industry, and area colleges and universities will be invited to share their expertise.

When these nodes are not in use for scheduled programs, multimedia presentations will be shown to the public.

See shuttles.collectspace.com for continuing coverage of the delivery and display of NASA’s retired space shuttles.

Article source: http://www.space.com/17257-space-shuttle-trainer-air-force-museum.html

Tags: space shuttle, Air Force museum, The U.S. Air Force, wright patterson air force base, nasa space shuttle

Categories : Nasa News

Tags : air force, Air Force museum, johnson space center, nasa space shuttle, National Museum, space center houston, space shuttle, Super Guppy, The U.S. Air Force, wright patterson air force base

NASA Super Guppy back in Seattle Thursday

By alkaon on July 25, 2012 No Comments

NASA’s huge and odd-looking cargo plane, the Super Guppy, is due back in Seattle Thursday morning on the second of three trips to transport sections of NASA’s Full Fuselage Trainer.

Museum of Flight officials say the bubble-headed, retro-look Super Guppy, based in Texas, is due to arrive at Boeing Field about 10 a.m. Thursday.

The turboprop cargo plane, a heavily modified version of a 1957-vintage Boeing Stratocruiser, was a crowd-pleaser when it arrived June 30 carrying the front end of NASA’s Full Fuselage Trainer.

This week’s trip, and a third next month, will carry sections of the trainer’s cargo bay. The trainer, which had been at Houston’s Johnson Space Center since it was built in 1979, is being reassembled at its permanent home in Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

Thursday’s unloading process can be watched from the parking lot of the museum, 9404 East Marginal Way S.

Article source: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2012/07/super-guppy-back-in-seattle-thursday/

Tags: NASA Super Guppy, johnson space center, Super Guppy, Boeing Stratocruiser, cargo plane

Categories : Nasa News

Tags : Boeing Stratocruiser, cargo plane, johnson space center, NASA Super Guppy, Super Guppy

NASA Space shuttle trainer lands in Seattle

By alkaon on July 2, 2012 No Comments

(SPACE.com) Seattle’s The Museum of Flight moved a nose closer to exhibiting a full-size mockup of the space shuttle on Saturday (June 30) with the delivery of the front section of a retired astronaut trainer by a large NASA cargo plane.

Thousands of spectators gathered for a “Shuttlefest” in the museum’s parking lot to see the Super Guppy aircraft deliver NASA’s Full Fuselage Trainer’s (FFT) crew compartment from Johnson Space Center in Houston. Before landing at Boeing Field, the bulbous cargo plane circled the Seattle area — including flying by the city’s landmark Space Needle — then made a low pass over The Museum of Flight to the delight of the waiting crowd.

Once the aircraft was on the ground and towed into place, the Guppy’s flight crew began the process of swinging open the plane’s unique hinged nose to reveal and offload the nose of the mockup shuttle.

“I think I can speak for all Washingtonians, when I say I am honored that such a critical part of our nation’s history will be right here in Washington state at The Museum of Flight,” Governor Christine Gregoire said during an arrival ceremony staged in front of the Super Guppy. [Gallery: Shuttle Trainer Lands in Seattle]

Staged for flight

The Full Fuselage Trainer was used for more than 30 years to train every person who flew on the space shuttle. Astronauts used the mockup to learn how to exit the vehicle after emergency landings and to gain familiarity with the lighting inside the orbiter’s payload bay.

The crew compartment, which is approximately the same size as the observation deck of the Space Needle, is a mostly wooden but detailed replica of the shuttle’s iconic black and white nose section with its interior, dual level cockpit and living area. It was the first and most recognizable of the mockup’s three large segments to arrive at the museum.

Smaller parts, at least in relation to the crew cabin, were shipped to the museum earlier, including the FFT’s three mock main engines. Still to be delivered by the Super Guppy are the trainer’s 60 foot (18 meter) payload bay and the shuttle’s aft section that supports the vertical stabilizer, or tail, and twin maneuvering engine pods.

Once all the parts have arrived in Seattle later this summer, the museum plans to reassemble the wingless FFT in its Charles Simonyi Space Gallery, a 15,500 sq. foot exhibition hall that was originally built to display a space-flown shuttle. Unlike the real orbiters’ displays however, visitors to The Museum of Flight will be able to go inside and tour the trainer.

No better space on Earth

“Of course we went to bat, we wanted the shuttle. But I got to tell you, we got something much more unique,” Gregoire said. “Imagine what the kids will do when they get a chance to come to this museum, see the history and be a part of this trainer. We’ll be able to inspire a new generation of those who want to get involved in space.”

The Simonyi Gallery was named for the Hungarian-born self-funded astronaut and billionaire software developer after he donated $3 million to the museum’s building fund. He also loaned the institution one of the two Russian Soyuz capsules that took him twice on space tourist trips to the International Space Station.

The FFT’s crew cabin, which was shrink-wrapped in plastic and padded in foam before being loaded onto the Super Guppy, was secured for its flight atop a metal carrier. The 33,000 pound (73,000 kilograms) total assembly was offloaded from the aircraft using a Tunner, a military cargo loader, which in turn was used to position the cabin for cranes to hoist the mockup onto a wheeled steel base. The shuttle nose was then rolled into the Simonyi Gallery, where the public could view it beginning Sunday.

“As you walk you through our space exhibit, with the addition of the space trainer in the new Simonyi Space Gallery, I think you’ll agree that there’s no better space on Earth to tell the story of the last 50 years of space exploration,” said Michael Hallman, chairman of The Museum of Flight’s board of trustees.

Article source: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57464818/nasa-space-shuttle-trainer-lands-in-seattle/

Tags: Space Needle, johnson space center, space shuttle, Charles Simonyi Space Gallery, Simonyi Gallery, Governor Christine Gregoire, Super Guppy

Categories : Nasa News

Tags : Charles Simonyi Space Gallery, Governor Christine Gregoire, johnson space center, museum of flight, nasa space shuttle, Simonyi Gallery, space gallery, Space Needle, space shuttle, Super Guppy

NASA’s Super Guppy delivers piece of space shuttle history to Seattle

By alkaon on July 1, 2012 No Comments

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By Alan Boyle, MSNBC.com
SEATTLE – It may not be a real space shuttle, but it’s ours.

Today NASA delivered a key piece of the mockup that astronauts used for space shuttle practice to the Museum of Flight in Seattle, my hometown. And it arrived aboard one of the most ungainly-looking airplanes ever built. The wingless mockup is known as the Full Fuselage Trainer, or FFT. The plane has a nickname that’s more colorful: the Super Guppy.

The Super Guppy looks more like a Super Whale. The wide-body turboprop airplane has a cargo hold that’s been built up into a bulbous shape, specifically to carry big stuff for outer space. Only five of the Guppies were ever produced, and they were used to cart spacecraft components around for the Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and shuttle programs. This Super Guppy is the only one of its kind still flying, and this week’s odyssey with the most important piece of the Full Fuselage Trainer is one of the highest-profile flights the plane has ever taken.

For decades, the plywood-built FFT sat in a building at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The crew compartment – the part of the structure that was flown to Seattle today – was outfitted with all the buttons, switches, cockpit displays and middeck lockers that the real shuttles had. None of those gadgets worked, but they helped the astronauts get familiar with the layout before they started handling the real controls. Astronauts could also practice how they’d get out of the shuttle in the event of a landing-strip emergency.

With the end of the space shuttle era, NASA’s Johnson Space Center no longer needed the FFT, so the space agency decided to donate it for display. The Seattle museum made a play for one of the flown shuttles, and even built a shuttle-sized, 15,500-square-foot Space Gallery to display it in. But Seattle lost out to Florida, California, New York and the “other Washington” in the competition for Atlantis, Endeavour, Enterprise and Discovery. The Full Fuselage Trainer served as the consolation prize.

Most of the FFT’s plywood parts could be shipped up by traditional means for later assembly, but the shuttle crew compartment had to be transported all in one piece. That’s why NASA’s Super Guppy was called into service.

The airplane has a 25-foot-high, 25-foot-wide, 111-foot-long cargo compartment – big enough to hold the mockup’s most awkward piece, even when it’s bound up in shrink wrap and a protective steel frame. Over the past couple of days, the Super Guppy has been making a journey from its home at Ellington Air Force Base in Texas, over to California, and then up to Seattle at a top speed of around 200 knots. It wasn’t exactly a record-setting pace – but what the Super Guppy lacks in speed, it more than makes up for in the “What the Heck Is That?” department.
The Guppy flew over my hometown and its surroundings with a Seattle-born astronaut, Greg Johnson, at the controls. Then it floated down to a landing right in front of the museum, which is adjacent to Boeing Field. One of the commentators at the museum called it a “beautifully ugly airplane.”

Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire pointed to the craft with pride as the sky spit down rain. “When we get together in Washington state, we can land the big whale right behind me,” she said.

Several thousand onlookers watched as the Super Guppy’s entire front opened up to the side like a four-story-high door.

“It’s really cool that it’s actually able to fly,” Allison Kirkman, a 10-year-old student at Spirit Ridge Elementary School in Bellevue, Wash., told me as she watched from the tarmac. “It’s an amazing plane, and how they built it is cool, too.”

The shrink-wrapped shuttle crew compartment was moved out of the wide-yawning Super Guppy onto a 65,000-pound mobile transporter, then rolled over to the museum’s Charles Simonyi Space Gallery. Over the next couple of months, the shuttle mockup will be assembled in a place of honor, alongside a Russian Soyuz capsule and a prototype lander that was used in Blue Origin’s spacecraft development program. Museumgoers like Kirkman will be able to walk through the shuttle mockup’s cargo bay – and they might even be able to crawl through the crew compartment, just like the astronauts did.

Kids, prepare to be amazed … again.

MSNBC.com

Article source: http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/article/262417/82/NASAs-Super-Guppy-delivers-piece-of-space-shuttle-history-to-Seattle

Tags: real space shuttle, johnson space center, space shuttle, crew compartment, Super Guppy

Categories : Nasa News

Tags : crew compartment, johnson space center, real space shuttle, space shuttle, Super Guppy

NASA Super Guppy lands at Boeing Field

By alkaon on July 1, 2012 No Comments

NASA’s Super Guppy aircraft, carrying Crew Compartment of the Space Shuttle Trainer, makes a flyover around downtown Seattle on its way to The Museum of Flight Saturday. (Photo by Bettina Hansen / THE SEATTLE TIMES)

Updated: 2:05 p.m.

NASA’s bulbous Super Guppy cargo plane broke through the clouds north of Boeing Field at noon Saturday, to the cheers of more than 1,000 gathered at the Museum of Flight.

The plane flew a wide circle around the Seattle area before landing at Boeing Field at 12:30 p.m. for a welcome ceremony outside the museum.

“We want the aerospace leaders of tomorrow to be inspired right here,” said Gov. Chris Gregoire, among speakers at thehalf-hour ceremony. Former governors Dan Evans and Mike Lowry were also present.

Inside the turboprop plane is the crew compartment of NASA’s Full Fuselage Shuttle Trainer, now owned by the museum.

The arrival of the crew compartment of NASA’s Full Fuselage Trainer is just one step in the process of creating what museum officials hope will be a world-class exbhibit.

It will be late September before the 121-foot FFT, which had never before left Houston’s Johnson Space Center, is completely reassembled in the Museum of Flight’s $12 million Charles Simonyi Space Gallery.

When finished, the trainer will look like a life-size but wingless space shuttle, its nose facing East Marginal Way South.

The delivery of the FFT’s 28-foot crew compartment is the first of three trips NASA’s Super Guppy cargo plane is scheduled to make on the project. Two more flights will bring sections of the trainer’s 61-foot cargo bay.

Other parts of the mock-up are being delivered by truck. The first to arrive were three engine bells, replicas of the shuttle’s mammoth exhaust cones, that came in mid April.

The Museum of Flight is paying NASA $2 million to deliver the FFT, which NASA Administrator Charles Bolden awarded the museum last year.

Seattle had been among more than 20 sites that sought to host one of NASA’s retiring space shuttles, which Bolden awarded to visitor centers in New York, Los Angeles, Florida and the Washington, D.C., area — places he said would maximize the number of people who see them

Museum of Flight officials hope to capitalize on the fact that visitors will be able to step inside the FFT, unlike the real shuttles, which must be displayed at a distance.

Chris Mailander, director of exhibits, envisions a display that will have patrons enter near one end of the cargo bay and exit the other, with interpretive material to see and experience along the way.

Access to the trainer’s crew compartment, which is more difficult to enter and move around in, is likely to be restricted to occasional guided tours.

Article source: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2012/06/much-work-ahead-on-museums-shuttle-trainer-exhibit/

Tags: crew compartment, Super Guppy cargo plane, chris gregoire, johnson space center, NASA Super Guppy, museum of flight, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden

Categories : Nasa News

Tags : Boeing Field, bulbous Super Guppy cargo plane, chris gregoire, crew compartment, downtown Seattle, johnson space center, museum of flight, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, NASA Super Guppy, space shuttle, Super Guppy, Super Guppy cargo plane

NASA’s Super Guppy delivers piece of space shuttle history to Seattle

By alkaon on July 1, 2012 No Comments

John Brecher / msnbc.com

A crowd in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle watches NASA’s Super Guppy aircraft approach Boeing Field, carrying a key piece of a space shuttle mockup that will go on display at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

SEATTLE — It may not be a real space shuttle, but it’s ours.

For decades, the plywood-built FFT sat in a building at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The crew compartment — the part of the structure that was flown to Seattle today — was outfitted with all the buttons, switches, cockpit displays and middeck lockers that the real shuttles had. None of those gadgets worked, but they helped the astronauts get familiar with the layout before they started handling the real controls. Astronauts could also practice how they’d get out of the shuttle in the event of a landing-strip emergency.

The airplane has a 25-foot-high, 25-foot-wide, 111-foot-long cargo compartment — big enough to hold the mockup’s most awkward piece, even when it’s bound up in shrink wrap and a protective steel frame. Over the past couple of days, the Super Guppy has been making a journey from its home at Ellington Air Force Base in Texas, over to California, and then up to Seattle at a top speed of around 200 knots. It wasn’t exactly a record-setting pace — but what the Super Guppy lacks in speed, it more than makes up for in the “What the Heck Is That?” department.

The Guppy flew over my hometown and its surroundings with a Seattle-born astronaut, Greg Johnson, at the controls. Then it floated down to a landing right in front of the museum, which is adjacent to Boeing Field. One of the commentators at the museum called it a “beautifully ugly airplane.”

Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire pointed to the craft with pride as the sky spit down rain. “When we get together in Washington state, we can land the big whale right behind me,” she said.

Museum of Flight

NASA’s Super Guppy and a chase plane fly above the mostly cloudy skies of Seattle.

Museum of Flight

After its touchdown at Seattle’s Boeing Field, the turboprop-powered Super Guppy taxis over to the Museum of Flight next door.

Museum of Flight

The entire front of the Super Guppy swings open to reveal the cargo inside.

Museum of Flight

The 65,000-pound Tunner 60K aircraft cargo loader and transporter rolls toward the Super Guppy.

Museum of Flight

The cargo compartment for the Full Fuselage Trainer, wrapped in protective plastic, has been taken out of the Super Guppy for a short ride on the Tunner transporter to its new home in the Museum of Flight’s Charles Simonyi Space Gallery.

Several thousand onlookers watched as the Super Guppy’s entire front opened up to the side like a four-story-high door.

The shrink-wrapped shuttle crew compartment was moved out of the wide-yawning Super Guppy onto a 65,000-pound mobile transporter, then rolled over to the museum’s Charles Simonyi Space Gallery. Over the next couple of months, the shuttle mockup will be assembled in a place of honor, alongside a Russian Soyuz capsule and a prototype lander that was used in Blue Origin’s spacecraft development program. Museumgoers like Kirkman will be able to walk through the shuttle mockup’s cargo bay — and they might even be able to crawl through the crew compartment, just like the astronauts did.

Kids, prepare to be amazed … again.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com’s science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by “liking” the log’s Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out “The Case for Pluto,” my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Article source: http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/30/12498544-nasas-super-guppy-brings-a-piece-of-space-shuttle-history-to-seattle?lite

Tags: johnson space center, crew compartment, Boeing Field, Super Guppy, space shuttle, museum of flight

Categories : Nasa News

Tags : Boeing Field, crew compartment, johnson space center, museum of flight, space shuttle, Super Guppy

Super Guppy delivers space history to Seattle

By alkaon on July 1, 2012 No Comments

Science editor Alan Boyle’s blog: NASA delivered a key piece of the shuttle mockup that astronauts used for spaceflight practice to the Museum of Flight in Seattle, aboard one of the most ungainly-looking airplanes ever built.

Tags: Super Guppy, Science editor Alan Boyle

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Tags : Science editor Alan Boyle, Super Guppy

NASA’s Super Guppy comes to Seattle on Saturday – Yakima Herald

By alkaon on June 29, 2012 No Comments

NASA’s vintage Super Guppy cargo plane performed admirably Wednesday on the first leg of its 3-½-day journey from Houston to Seattle, carrying a piece of space-shuttle history.

But just how much of a show it can put on before it lands at Boeing Field Saturday could be up to Mother Nature.

“If there’s a low (cloud) ceiling, that may impact what we can do,” said Super Guppy pilot Greg Johnson, a Seattle-born astronaut.
Saturday’s forecast calls for clouds and a chance of showers.

Inside the Super Guppy, shrouded, chained and crated, is the front end of NASA’s Full Fuselage Trainer (FFT), a life-size shuttle replica that’s headed for a permanent home at the Museum of Flight.

During its long career at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the FFT was used in the training of every crew in the nation’s space-shuttle program, which ended last year after 135 missions.

Johnson said he doesn’t think the weather would prevent the Super Guppy from landing at Boeing Field at about 11 a.m. and being in place for an 11:45 a.m. welcoming ceremony with Gov. Chris Gregoire, five astronauts and other dignitaries.

But he may not know until Saturday whether the Guppy will be able to fulfill the hopes of Museum of Flight officials and turn a low loop or two around the Seattle area before it lands, to help call attention to the event.

Johnson was interviewed by phone Wednesday afternoon from Tucson, where the Guppy completed Wednesday’s 850-mile portion of the trip, refueling about halfway.

Johnson said the FFT section inside the Super Guppy raises the Guppy’s center of gravity, so turns have to be gradual, and not sharply banked, to keep the aircraft stable.

Plans call for it to make a 750-mile trip Thursday to Travis Air Force Base southwest of Sacramento. Then it is scheduled to wait a day before a flight of about 760 miles to Seattle Saturday morning.

The extra day was put in the schedule in case weather forces a delay, something crew members so far don’t foresee.

The turboprop Super Guppy, a bubble-headed throwback to the mid-20th century, travels low and slow. The amount of fuel is carries varies with its payload and it dependent on weight and balance.

Whether it announces its presence with a pre-landing loop, the Super Guppy is expected to be a big part of the draw Saturday at the Museum of Flight.

Officially NASA 941, this is the last flying member of a family of eight “Guppy” aircraft made, beginning in service in 1962, from the converted fuselage of Boeing Stratocruisers or related aircraft.

They were conceived as a way to create oversized, multipurpose cargo planes out of propeller-driven planes that airlines were parting with as they shifted to modern jetliners.

NASA’s David Elliott, Super Guppy project manager, said the current Guppy rolled off a Boeing production line in 1957, although many of its parts have been modified or replaced.

NASA uses the Super Guppy, which can hold objects up to 25 feet tall and 25 feet across, to haul a variety of aircraft and space-related gear.
As the space-shuttle program drew to a close last year, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden opted to give the Seattle museum the wooden FFT and send the four actual shuttles to museums in New York, Los Angeles, Florida and the Washington, D.C., area.

It’s expected to take until late September to reconstruct the FFT, with other pieces coming on later flights or by truck.

The public will be able to watch the rebuilding in the museum’s Space Gallery as long as safety allows

In addition to Johnson, whose father and stepmother live in Mukilteo, astronauts expected at the Saturday event are Bonnie Dunbar, a Yakima Valley native and former CEO of the Museum of Flight; Janet Kavandi, director of flight crew operations at the Johnson Space Center who earned a doctorate in analytical chemistry from the University of Washington; former astronaut Wendy Lawrence, of Ferndale; and astronaut Michael Foreman, a veteran of two shuttle flights.

Article source: http://www.yakima-herald.com/stories/2012/06/28/nasa-s-supper-guppy-comes-to-seattle-on-saturday

Tags: johnson space center, Super Guppy, museum of flight, Boeing Field, Greg Johnson

Categories : Nasa News

Tags : Boeing Field, Greg Johnson, johnson space center, museum of flight, Super Guppy

NASA’s Supper Guppy comes to Seattle on Saturday – Yakima Herald

By alkaon on June 28, 2012 No Comments