Innholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2021 i Air & Space

IN THIS ISSUE, YOU’LL FIND the story of the outstanding aviators and innovative engineers who nudged the Vought F4U Corsair fighter into shipshape for carrier service during World War II. It’s an exciting look into a world where the smallest course correction or tiniest “thingamabob” (to borrow a term from the piece) can make a life-saving difference, and it emphasizes the complexity of projecting airpower from the deck of a ship—a process that helped define the modern world in the second half of the 20th century and remains a cornerstone of peace and power in the 21st. The story of the Corsair’s spoiler also captures some of the visceral emotion of landing an airplane on a ship at sea. I had the privilege of flying F-14 Tomcats on and off…

Satellites and space debris are increasing the brightness of the night sky by at least 10 percent over natural light levels, exceeding a threshold set by astronomers in 1979 defining a location as “light polluted,” according to a new study published by the Royal Astronomical Society. The International Astronomical Union defines light pollution as “artificial light that shines where it is neither wanted, nor needed.” That includes not only light created by cities, but by the more than 9,200 tons of objects now orbiting Earth that reflect or scatter sunlight. Satellites have long been a nuisance for astronomers, since they periodically photobomb long-exposure images, appearing as streaks of light. This new study, however, uses a model to estimate the overall impact of orbiting objects. Researchers found that, collectively, this reflected…

In a facility beneath the stands of Arizona Stadium at the University of Arizona in early March, a massive furnace began spinning to produce a one-of-a-kind mirror for a one-of-a-kind instrument. The Giant Magellan Telescope, currently under construction in Chile’s Atacama Desert, is expected to have a resolving power 10 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope when the GMT is commissioned in 2029. At the heart of the massive telescope is an array of seven individual mirror segments that will collectively form a primary mirror surface 25 meters in diameter. The university team is casting the sixth mirror, a process that involves melting nearly 20 tons of high-purity, low-expansion, borosilicate glass. As the glass melts, the spinning of the furnace forces the molten material up the sides of a…

THE GREMLIN-PLAGUED AIRPLANE is a standard of aviation lore. That’s what A-6 Intruder NE 510 was for my squadron mates and me—an inexplicable menace that stalked our aircrew and defied our maintenance department. It had arrived at the squadron in pieces. Chief Warrant Officer Al Gonzales, who was the maintenance matériel control officer for Navy Attack Squadron 145, recalls: “I’d had a bad feeling about this airplane the moment I laid eyes on it.” Gonzales liked the A-6. To him it embodied the toughness that earned Grumman the nickname “The Iron Works.” He found A-6 malfunctions generally honest and their solutions straightforward—until 1988, when, at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island north of Seattle, he encountered 510. At first, the airplane’s problems were minor. Sometimes its speed brakes failed. Extendable wingtip…

JAY LENO’S STASH of 199 cars and 168 motorcycles includes machines run by steam and by electric motors, but he has special affection for vehicles powered by aircraft engines. Given that Leno’s garage in Burbank, California, was once an aviation technology hot spot, those engines are in a suitable environment. A few miles to the south is where Kelly Johnson’s Skunk Works created the Lockheed Shooting Star, America’s first jet fighter. An airport to the north is where the 18-year-old Norma Jeane Dougherty—later Marilyn Monroe—was discovered by an Army photographer assembling Radioplane drone aircraft. A hangar near Leno’s complex was once occupied by Amelia Earhart. Aircraft and automobiles came of age together—so it was inevitable that truly serious auto designers began bolting aircraft engines under their hoods. In pursuit of…

THE INITIAL CARRIER-LANDING qualifications for the Chance Vought F4U Corsair were a disaster. In fall 1942, Lieutenant Commander Sam Porter tested the feasibility of operating the Navy’s bent-wing fighter from the deck of the escort carrier USS Sangamon steaming in the Chesapeake Bay. After four terrifying landings, he called it quits, certain the airplane was on the verge of killing him. The Corsair’s cockpit was so far back in its fuselage that Porter found it difficult to see the Sangamon’s landing signal officer on the port side of its deck. The fighter’s ultra-long “hose nose” made it nearly impossible for the pilot to get timely feedback to make corrections to his approach. When the Corsair thumped down on the deck, the landing gear’s oleos—shock-absorbing struts—bottomed out, then bounced back like…

Big Dream, Small World In 1990, the Antonov An-225 (“Dream Big,” April/May 2021) was the hit of the Aerospace America Airshow, hosted by the Oklahoma Air National Guard. Our load-master invited the An-225 ground crew to a barbecue. Several of us brought along our families. My daughter wanted to give her Cabbage Patch doll to one of the crew to take home to his young daughter. As he gently took the doll, he looked at me and said, “You know, if it wasn’t for our governments, we could be good friends.” A few weeks later, he sent us a letter with a picture of his family. His daughter, who was holding that doll, had a smile on her face that would melt your heart. RON HAYS Burleson, Texas Toy Story…

First came the jeep. Then, the Humvee. And now the military is considering commercially developed, electric “flying cars” for battlefield applications, such as cargo delivery and rescuing troops. But prior to that comes the practical question: Can these vehicles be transported in a cargo aircraft? In late March, specialists from the 355th Wing at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base figured out how to pack a LIFT Hexa vehicle aboard an HC-130J Combat King II for a flight from Springfield-Beckley Municipal Airport in Ohio to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas. The loading process—which included detaching the motors—took around 40 minutes, but the Air Force is confident they can get that time down to 15 minutes. C-130J cargo aircraft could carry five or six LIFT Hexa vehicles at a time. 5,200 THE COUNT…

JUNE EVENTS: SUMMER SOLSTICE June 3 GENERAL AUDIENCE Live Chat: Emirates Mars Mission Hope Probe The Emirates Mars Mission is the United Arab Emirates’ first mission to Mars. Join Her Excellency Sarah bint Yousif Al Amiri, UAE Minister of State for Advanced Technology, and Omran Sharaf, the Project Director of the Emirates Mars Mission, along with Museum curator Matt Shindell as they discuss the mission. Time: June 3 at 1 p.m. ET. June 8 PRE-K Flights of Fancy Story Time The Star of our Solar System—the Sun! In this story, the sun gets the spotlight. Activity: Make shadow puppets shaped like suns and stars. Premieres June 8 at 11 a.m. ET; available on YouTube thereafter. Friday, June 18 and Saturday, June 19 FAMILIES SOAR TOGETHER @ AIR AND…

1910 Ford’s Model T, the most common auto on Earth, was endowed with 20 horsepower and a top speed of 45 mph. At the opposite end of the velocity spectrum, Ferdinand Porsche’s Austro-Daimler Prince Henry, which utilized Zeppelin airship engine technology, boasted over four times the Model T’s power and an 85-mph maximum speed. 1913 British aircraft engine maker Sunbeam installed one of its nine-liter, V-12s in a car chassis to run 119 mph at Brooklands. 1922 Famed racer Count Louis Zborowski drove four car-airplane concoctions immortalized by Ian Fleming’s Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. The first version, a Mercedes chassis powered with a 23-liter, 300-horsepower Maybach 6 from a Gotha bomber, ran 113 mph at Brooklands. 1923 Racer Ernest Eldridge broke the land speed record with a 146-mph public-road run in Mefistofele, a…

WHEN APOLLO 14 landed astronauts on the moon for the third time in February 1971, it was met with a week-long yawn by the press and the public. The TV networks carried live coverage of the launch and paid some mind to the long translunar coast, where misfortune had called on Apollo 13, but offered only occasional snippets of Alan Shepard and Ed Mitchell’s time on the lunar surface. News from Fra Mauro was dutifully passed along by the country’s newspapers, but with palpable lack of enthusiasm. America had grown jaded about moon missions, it seemed. But fact was, the second and third lunar landings made for lousy TV. To viewers, they looked pretty much the same as Apollo 11: The astronauts were on foot. The TV camera was stationary…

WHEN I LOOK UP AT THE STARS, I love to wonder what kind of planets might be around each one. Every star is a sun, and astronomers have found thousands of planets orbiting other stars, called exoplanets. Perhaps there are intelligent beings on a distant planet, looking back at our sun—a star to them—wondering the same thing. We astronomers are unabashedly anticipating a paradigm shift in exoplanet characterization—made possible by a sophisticated new telescope over 30 years in the making: the James Webb Space Telescope, set for launch this October. Webb will undergo a series of daunting deployments, including the unfurling of a tennis court-sized, five-layer sunshield before reaching its destination a million miles away from Earth. Thousands of astronomers all around the world have pinned their research hopes and…

THE LONG-HAUL FIGHTER and bomber escort that helped the Allies achieve air superiority in the final year of World War II didn’t stop making aviation history when the war ended. This Mustang’s record-breaking achievements came after it had done its duty. A. Paul Mantz—the movie stunt pilot and air racer who bought it and christened it “Blaze of Noon”—converted its wing into a giant gas tank so he could compete in the cross-country Bendix Air Race without stopping to refuel. He took first place at Bendix in 1946 and ’47, and set speed records in the latter year. Charles F. Blair, the pilot who bought the modified Mustang from Mantz, had an even bigger goal in mind: a solo round-the-world speed record. He renamed the airplane “Excalibur III,” after the…

The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds and U.S. Navy Blue Angels flight demonstration teams spent most of 2020 like the rest of us—socially distanced. Both teams return this airshow season, and in cities where they appear jointly, they will erase at least some of that separation by flying a tight formation dubbed the “Super Delta,” consisting of six Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons and six Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets. The teams perfected the Super Delta when they met March 2 for joint training at Naval Air Facility El Centro, California (left). During the maneuver, pilots fly within three feet of their counterparts. Nearly all in-person airshows were scrubbed last year, but the Department of Defense launched a series of flyovers called “America Strong,” beginning last April “to recognize healthcare workers, first…

Tell me about a visual effect you’re particularly proud of. When I was on Star Trek, I designed several [starship] Enterprises. For me, that’s a milestone. Where does your inspiration come from? When you get an assignment, the first thing you want to do is to become a mini expert on it. And it’s never been easier than it is right now because I can go on the computer, and I can type in something and get 10,000 things to look at. But 25 years ago, I would have to go to the library. Now you can become a mini expert on submarines and collect several thousand photos in an afternoon. Once you educate yourself, you let it percolate. A lot of the creative process is taking in all that…

On a recent visit to scenic Peterborough, New Hampshire, I stopped in to browse at the Toadstool Bookshop and was surprised by the galaxy of model airplanes suspended from the ceiling. After my initial surprise (and delight) at the size of the collection—there must have been 300 airplanes dangling over the store’s used-book section—my sense of wonderment increased when I noticed that it contained not only famous airplane types that almost anyone would recognize but also rare and fairly obscure aircraft that I, as a former naval aviator, was drawn to. When I asked the sales clerk, “How did these models get here?” I learned about Bill Johnson. Johnson had been building model airplanes since he was a kid, and he held onto his collection, believing that someday they’d serve…

A COLD WIND CUTS ACROSS the boggy heathland of the New Forest on the southern coast of England. Wild ponies drink from the puddles that the heavy rain has left behind. At first there appears to be nothing left of RAF Beaulieu and the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment (AFEE) that covered the heath in concrete. The British Parachute Regiment was established in 1942, and the AFEE was the unit tasked with researching and testing parachutes and the aircraft that would carry the jumpers—gliders, and beginning in 1945, helicopters. From the air, the ghostly A-shape outline of the crisscrossing runways can still be seen, but on the ground, traces are hard to find. The GPS on my phone tells me that I am standing where the runway should be, but all…

In a special double issue, announcing the new National Air and Space Museum Gallery “We All Fly,” we present history’s most comprehensive collection of flying experiences: the joy, terror, exhilaration—and family bonds—that come with flight.…