Nasa Aircraft Operations - Two retired T-38 trainers mounted on shipping pallets atop mobile transporters were positioned to be loaded onto Super Guppies before being taken to El Paso, Texas, for unloading. › View larger image
On March 18, the Super Guppy transport plane "swallowed" whole two T-38 aircraft, right on the back ramp of the Dryden Flight Research Center.
Nasa Aircraft Operations
The SGT Super Guppy Transport, the last of its kind still flying, is located at Ellington Airport in Houston, near the Johnson Space Center. The plane was at Dryden to transport two T-38s that Dryden hadn't flown in years and were unseaworthy to El Paso, Texas, where they would be cannibalized for maintenance parts on other T-38s that Johnson operated at El Paso. Fly away. After removing the wings and other serviceable components, the remaining parts of the aircraft will be transported to the Air Force Maintenance and Recovery Center at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Ariz., for final disposal.
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Workers carefully guide the first T-38 as it is placed on a pallet. › View larger image
Aside from the Super Guppy's size—it's more than 48 feet to the tip of the tail and has a wingspan of more than 156 feet with a huge overhead cargo area—the plane has a hinged nose that opens 110 degrees. After loading, the aircraft's cargo loader was used to load two trainer aircraft. Guppy's 25-foot-diameter cargo bay allows two T-38s to be moved, with only the wingtips having to be removed, said Johnson flight engineer David Elliott, Guppy's project manager.
After opening the Guppy's nose, lifting the T-38 onto a specially designed pallet on top of the mobile transporter, loading the pallet and T-38 into the Guppy, and then closing the Guppy's nose section—a process of about 2.5 hours— Guppy left for El Paso.
As the Super Guppy waits for cargo in the background, workers secure the second T-38 to a shipping pallet. › View larger image
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Dryden has seen the Super Guppy Transport before when he delivered the X-38 131R prototype vehicle on July 11, 2000.
The Super Guppy is the latest iteration of its kind—the last of the three large aircraft to carry several returned payloads, ranging from a Saturn rocket to a module of the International Space Station.
The space race has some complicated problems to overcome, Elliott said. In 1962, California-based Aero Spacelines Industries solved the problem of transporting large components when it introduced the first Guppy aircraft. The first version of the Guppy was independently flight tested at the Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base.
Built from a heavily modified KC-97 Stratotanker, the B-377PG Pregnant Guppy had the largest cargo area of any aircraft built at the time. At just over 19 feet in diameter, the large cavity was designed specifically to carry the second stage of a Saturn rocket for the Apollo program, Elliott said. A pregnant Guppy allows a very large cargo to be delivered to Cape Canaveral in 18 hours instead of 18 to 25 days on a barge, he added.
File:sofia Over Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility.jpg
The program was so successful that a larger version of the aircraft followed in 1965. Called the B377SG Super Guppy, it featured a 25m diameter cargo bay, a more powerful turboprop engine, a pressurized cockpit and hinges. nose for easy loading of cargo. Aero Spacelines continued to own and operate the aircraft until 1981, when they purchased the aircraft.
During its 32 years of service, the original Super Guppy flew more than 3 million miles in support of the Apollo, Gemini, Skylab and International Space Station programs. He also transported X-24B and HL-10 lift crew from Dryden to the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio in 1976. (The HL-10 then returned to Dryden, where it remains on display today. ) .)
The current operational version of the Super Guppy Transport is the last generation Guppy built by Aero Spacelines. The most important difference between it and its predecessor is the upgrade to the more reliable and affordable Allison T-56 turboprop. Airbus Industries operated and operated four SGT Super Guppy Transport aircraft to transport large A300 fuselage sections across Europe for the last three decades of the 20th century.
When Airbus retired its museum fleet in 1997, it was able to purchase aircraft number 4 to replace the aging B377SG Super Guppy under an International Space Station exchange agreement with the European Space Agency.
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Super Guppy Transport continues to support the US space program and is scheduled to transport the Orion heat shield from Textron Defense Systems near Boston to the Kennedy Space Center in late March. The US Department of Defense and government contractors have also taken advantage of Guppy's capabilities to move large aircraft and components across the continent, including the T-38 for the Air Force and the B-22 for the Navy.
The oversized transport plane SGT Super Guppy Transport took off from the runway at Edwards Air Force Base after a pre-visit. ( / Tony Landis) › Look at the bigger picture
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