Look to the sky at about 10:30 a.m. Saturday, June 30, and you may see NASA's bubbleheaded Super Guppy essentially a supersized flying aluminum can. <\/p>\n
If weather permits, the cargo plane carrying a piece of a space shuttle mock-up from Houston will signal its arrival in Seattle with two passes around Lake Washington before landing at Boeing Field for an 11 a.m. ceremony. <\/p>\n
The turboprop Super Guppy may be old, slow and odd-looking, but it gets the job done, said David Elliott, NASA's Super Guppy project manager. <\/p>\n
\"It's ideal for this kind of work. With its 25-foot diameter, we can fit just about anything in it.\" <\/p>\n
Besides its swollen shape, the Super Guppy's most distinctive feature is the way it's loaded. <\/p>\n
The front ends swings away, allowing unobstructed access to a cargo compartment that can swallow objects 25 feet high, 25 feet wide and 111 feet long. <\/p>\n
The plane bound for Seattle is the last flying member of a family of eight Guppy aircraft that dates to the early 1960s. <\/p>\n
The aircraft were created to carry outsized cargo by expanding the fuselage of Boeing Stratocruisers or related aircraft planes readily available as airlines switched from propeller-driven planes to jetliners. <\/p>\n
When the first such plane was created, one observer said it looked like a Pregnant Guppy, and the name stuck. <\/p>\n
Early on, its work included carrying Saturn IV rocket parts to Florida's Cape Canaveral, replacing a two-week barge trip that sometimes damaged the rockets. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Read more from the original source: <\/p>\n
Oddball NASA craft is perfect for hauling shuttle trainer to Seattle<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Look to the sky at about 10:30 a.m. Saturday, June 30, and you may see NASA's bubbleheaded Super Guppy essentially a supersized flying aluminum can. If weather permits, the cargo plane carrying a piece of a space shuttle mock-up from Houston will signal its arrival in Seattle with two passes around Lake Washington before landing at Boeing Field for an 11 a.m Continue reading