Tabla de contenidos para September 2019 en Air & Space

THE “HOW THINGS FLY” gallery in the National Air and Space Museum is the only one dedicated exclusively to learning about STEAM subjects—Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. Staffed by experienced Museum Explainers—high school and college students who clarify and tell the stories behind the exhibits—the gallery introduces STEAM concepts through demonstrations, hands-on interactives, and design challenges. Now this gallery is about to become an even more engaging educational experience. We have recently received a $10 million gift from Textron to help us reimagine the How Things Fly gallery as part of the multi-year transformation of our Museum on the National Mall. Aimed at a middle-school audience, the new gallery will feature a more sophisticated design and immersive, interactive experiences created to challenge visitors in STEAM concepts. The big idea…

More than 80 years after Pan American Airways System’s Samoan Clipper went missing, the underwater wreckage of the pioneering flying boat continues to elude searchers. “There’s no question the wreck is nearby,” says Russ Matthews, president of the Air/Sea Heritage Foundation, which in July, supported by SEARCH, Inc., conducted a side-scan sonar survey of the ocean floor around 12 miles off the western tip of Tutuila, the main island of American Samoa. Pan Am’s famed chief pilot Ed Musick was flying the Sikorsky S-42B on the inaugural mail route between Hawaii and Auckland when, shortly after takeoff from American Samoa on January 11, 1938, it experienced a mechanical failure. Investigators later concluded it exploded while dumping fuel to lighten the aircraft for landing. Using eyewitness accounts and the discovery of…

On July 2, 1982, Los Angeles truck driver Larry Walters launched his “aircraft”—a Sears lawn chair dubbed Inspiration— from his backyard. He had attached to it more than 40 helium-filled weather balloons. Expecting to rise about 100 feet in the air, Walters quickly found himself at 16,000 feet, where he was spotted by passing airline pilots. To lower his altitude, Walters used a pellet gun to pop some of the balloons (he accidentally dropped the gun soon after). Realizing he was descending too quickly, Walters dumped ballast—water from plastic jugs strapped to the chair. After drifting onto some power lines and a dramatic rescue by the LAPD, Walters gave the lawn chair to a passing neighborhood kid. That kid was Jerry Fleck who, three decades later, donated the lawn chair…

A painter and sculptor since she was a child, Florida International University student Briana Gonzalez brings an artistic sensibility to her work at a new FIU center to design “origami” antennas. The lightweight antennas are designed to fold, like origami, for easy packing, making them useful for spacecraft and for soldiers who ordinarily lug heavy communications equipment. Once deployed, using simple mechanisms, the antennas can continue to change their profiles and performance. Such designs are more efficient than rigid antennas, and their unconventional nature—and aesthetics—appeal to Gonzalez, who is working toward a degree combining art, electrical engineering, and physics. “I think that [art] makes me think about problems differently,” Gonzalez says. “Maybe it makes me approach them from a different point of view…because I’m constantly activating my brain in a…

AT THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP AIR RACES in Reno this month, a couple dozen magnificently restored airplanes will gather once again to be evaluated by judges and admired by fans. Those who attend the races will be able to stroll among some pretty special aircraft, hear the owners and restorers tell their stories, and watch the presentation of trophies. They’ll also get the chance to vote for their favorite airplanes. We think you should get to vote too! We invite you to read the stories of these remarkable airplanes and vote for the one that strikes a chord with you. The airplane with the most votes will win the People’s Choice trophy at Reno and be named “Air & Space Magazine Airplane of the Year.” The Airplane of the Year will…

NO ONE LOVED THE AVIA S-199 at first sight. Perched on narrow, splayed-out landing gear, the Czech-built fighter had a sinister look that made pilots and potential buyers wary. And when airmen became better acquainted with the long-snouted warplane, the wariness turned to distrust. The single-engine S-199 was a product of the Avia Company in Czechoslovakia, which had tooled up to produce Messerschmitt Bf 109s for the German Luftwaffe just as World War II ended. After the war, the company opted to manufacture a version of the Messerschmitt fighter for the Czech air force. The Daimler-Benz DB 605 V-12 engine, which had propelled the Bf 109, was no longer available, so Avia installed the heavier but less powerful Junkers Jumo 211F, the same engine used in the Luftwaffe’s versatile Heinkel…

Beauty and the Beast You mentioned some of the Northrop Grumman EA-6B’s nicknames in “The Prowler’s Last Prowl” (Aug. 2019). Other nicknames for the bird were “Double Ugly” in reference to the A-6 Intruder as “Ugly,” and “The Bridge Club,” for the four crewmembers on board. One time, while taxiing out at an Air Force Base in support of a flight of A-10s, a voice came on the radio and stated, “We took a vote to see who was the ugliest, you or us, and you won.” D.E. ECHLIN CAPTAIN, U.S. NAVY (RET.) via email Who Was First? The article “Why the Soviets Lost” (June/July 2019) caught my attention. The article credits the Soviets with making the “first soft landing on the moon.” No date is given. I have been…

Since small airports often lack the pricey ground equipment—such as the Instrument Landing System—that allows for automated landings, researchers at the Technical University of Munich are developing an onboard system, C2Land, that works anywhere. They conducted a successful initial test in May, when a Diamond DA42 four-seater airplane landed at a small airport in Austria without pilot assistance. C2Land relies on an optical reference system, which processes both visible and infrared light. A computer then compares the images with the airplane’s location, as indicated by GPS signals, calculating a virtual glide path for the landing approach and adjusting flight controls by means of a fly-by-wire system.…

EARLIER THIS SUMMER, we celebrated the half-century anniversary of the first human touchdown on the moon. I don’t want to diminish that heroic achievement, but for the record, I repeatedly crossed the vacuum void between Earth and the lunar landscape in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was trouble-free space travel. No bulky space suit, no eating from a tube. And no New York City ticker-tape parade upon any of my returns. My point of departure was Tomorrowland, a futuristic utopia complete with a visionary, one-of-a-kind spaceport right there in Anaheim, California—25 miles southeast of Los Angeles, and within hitchhiking range of my home in San Diego. Tomorrowland was one of Walt Disney’s five original “lands” within the Disneyland amusement park that opened in July 1955. I never had…

THE JOB: Lara works in the Boeing Research and Technology (BR&T) structures department at the company’s St. Louis facility, where he investigates materials and composites for building lighter and stronger aircraft. Lara has also worked on the electric-powered unmanned Cargo Air Vehicle (CAV), a prototype now undergoing flight tests, and Boeing’s T-X, which is set to replace the U.S. Air Force T-38 Talon advanced trainer beginning in 2024. THE PATH: Lara attended Miami’s Florida International University, where mechanical and material engineering students can take introductory courses in flight mechanics, the design and analysis of aerospace structures, and propulsion systems. The university offers a minor degree program in aerospace engineering, and Lara found ways to expand his studies. A friend suggested that he check out the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE),…

THROUGH MORE THAN 58 YEARS of peace and war, the Boeing Vertol CH-47 Chinook has performed as a modern army’s lifeline, a status even its builders couldn’t have envisioned when it first took to the sky in 1961. The helicopter’s first combat experience came in 1965, when the aircraft carrier USS Boxer arrived in Vietnam with 57 CH-47As below its deck, and wherever U.S. (and many foreign) armies have been since, the Chinook has followed. With powerful engines and tandem rotors, the Chinook has hauled everything from combat troops to heavy artillery to boats, and has flown rescue as well as transport missions. These stories, told by the people who flew and crewed them and by those they served, illustrate why the U.S. Army plans to employ the Chinook until…

U.S. Astronaut Anne McClain receives a little help as she exits the Soyuz spacecraft that returned her to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) in June. The Soyuz MS-11 capsule landed safely near Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, where a slide helped the crew manage the last seven feet of a 250-mile descent. McClain and fellow returnees (not pictured) David Saint-Jacques (of Canada) and Oleg Kononenko (of Russia) spent 204 days aboard the ISS performing scientific studies and maintaining the station. Homecoming from the ISS is the ultimate thrill ride. The Soyuz capsule detaches from the station, fires its thrusters to deorbit, drops its instrumentation and docking modules, and makes a fiery atmospheric reentry. After about 20 minutes of radio-silent plummeting through the atmosphere, the capsule deploys two parachutes at an altitude…

Airmen from the 366th Logistics Readiness Squadron, a.k.a. “Gunfighters,” devised an old-tech solution for reducing the hot-pit refueling time of F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters. Initially, they used R-11 trucks. Each holds 6,000 gallons, enough for refueling only two aircraft at a time. So the Gunfighters instead rigged up a hydrant system from the 1950s with hose carts from the 1970s, directly connected to 500,000-gallon tanks. Now they can run hot-pits 24/7, saving the 15 minutes previously needed to set up a new R-11 between two F-35s.…

A DOUGLAS DC-3’S top speed is 230 mph, but on this particular journey the airplane was moving at a sedate 35 mph—still impressive for an aircraft whose wings had been removed. The vintage airliner, transported at 2 a.m. on a flatbed trailer with a police escort, was being moved along a highway from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s Mall location to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia. As the Museum on the National Mall undergoes a major, seven-year restoration—during which time much of it will remain open to the public—its aircraft and spacecraft must be moved so that construction crews have room to work. The artifacts are going to a storage facility near the Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. Before the airplanes head to storage, however,…

THE CAPSULE that carried Apollo 11 astronauts safely back to Earth in 1969 used a heat shield made of epoxy resin to protect its contents from the 5,000-degree heat of reentry. The resin, called Avcoat, was designed to erode, carrying heat away from the surface. A half century later, NASA’s Orion spacecraft uses the same material. Brian Hinde, Lockheed Martin’s Orion Structures and Aeroshell Senior Manager, says that the most important innovation for heat shield technology isn’t finding new materials, but  increasing the efficiency of materials already in use. On the Apollo capsule, the Avcoat was injected into thousands of individual cells of a fiberglass honeycomb, an agonizingly slow process. The tool used was, in essence, “a high-pressure caulk gun,” says Hinde. For Orion, the caulk gun at least is…

There’s no roadside sign for Sanders Aeronautics in Ione, a remote, bucolic town in northern California Gold Rush country. The only hint that you’re in the vicinity is a derelict T-33 parked near Dennis Sanders’ house. Another indication, if you’re lucky, is the sound of a Hawker Sea Fury buzzing the runway of the airfield nearby at 400 mph. In the 1980s, the Sanders name became synonymous with Sea Furys. The family currently flies three, has a fourth awaiting restoration, and has worked on nearly a dozen more, including celebrated race-planes such as Furias, Critical Mass, and September Fury. “We didn’t set out to become the Sea Fury guys,” Sanders says. “But you do one, you do two, and then they all seem to flock home.” First among equals is…

ARTIST RON MILLER TAKES US ON A TOUR OF ALIEN LANDSCAPES. NASA PROBES HAVE SENT BACK dazzling images of the moons in our solar system, but space artist Ron Miller likens those photos to exploring the United States in an airplane. “Seeing the Grand Canyon from 30,000 feet just isn’t the same as seeing it from the north rim,” he says, adding that it’s his goal to give us that same on-the-ground view of distant moons. And so, thanks to Miller, we find ourselves next to a geyser of water vapor and ice particles erupting from the surface of one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus (below). The Cassini spacecraft detected complex organic molecules in these plumes, hinting at the possibility that there could be life in the sub-surface oceans. More than…