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FEATURES

At the Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana, a model of the Space Launch System engine section is loaded onto the vast Pegasus barge
for transport to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for tests that will expose it to the extreme forces of launch.

20 28 34 40
To Build a Omaha to Salt Lake Big Dig for a Last of the Long-
Monster Rocket City Without GPS Buzz Bomb distance Escorts
Everything about the Space An admirer of 1920s Thousands of V-1 flying From the annals of the
Launch System is gigantic: airmail pilots imitated their bombs fell on England in Korean War, a unique
the hardware, the test style of navigation. Here’s 1944–45. Two brothers are twin-cockpit fighter is
stands, and the challenges. how thatt worked out. finding as many as they can. resurrected from parts.
BY JAMES R. CHILES BY WILLIAM E. DUBOIS BY TOM METCALFE BY LEIGH GIANGRECO

48 54 62
The Year of UFOs Land Right Here! Adventures Above
For a few brief blurry Once we thought it the Oil Fields 16 At the Museum:
moments, 2019 started to amazing that a spacecraft When oil was discovered The historic Bell X-1
is still on view.
look like an episode of could hit a planet; next year, in the Middle East,
“The X-Files.” one will land on a dime. airplanes soon followed.
BY GREG EGHIGIAN BY KARA PLATONI BY MICHAEL QUENTIN MORTON
DEPARTMENTS
02 Viewport
06 Letters
Cover: Ray Fowler
I WAS THERE was flflying the Twin 08 Up to Speed
Mustang over
NASA/MSFC/JUDE GUIDRY

70 Space Junk A NASA engineer 16 At the Museum

Douglas, Georgia
recalls the dangerous problem last May (with a 72 Reviews
of tossing out trash from the passenger) when 78 Preview
International Space Station. The air-to-air master
solution was not without controversy. 78 Contributors
Scott Slocum got
BY MIKE ENGLE the shot. 80 Ideas That Defyy

February/March 2020 airspacemag.com

 VIEWPORT

From the Director of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum

A “Field” Day for

Planetary Geology by Ellen Stofan

One of the challenges, but

much of the fun, of being a geologist is
getting to the remote places where the
features and rocks you want to study are
found. When those places are hundreds
of thousands or even millions of miles
away out in the solar system, “challenge”
becomes an understatement.
As our technologies advanced, we
progressed from using telescopes to
observe planets and other celestial bod-
ies to sending spacecraft to study them,
and, 50 years ago, we brought back the
first samples. Having the moon rocks in
hand gave us new and unprecedented
insights into how planets work and how
our own planet formed.
While our rovers continue to explore
Mars, and other robotic missions con-
tinue to use incredible instruments to
provide data that changes our under- The ultimate studying Bennu from only about a mile away. It captured
standing of our neighbors across the destination for particle plumes and unveiled a surface covered with boulders.
the lunar and
solar system, we’ve brought very little This spring and early summer, OSIRIS-REx is scheduled
many other solar
back from beyond our own atmosphere system samples is to rehearse the touch-and-go sample collection scheduled
for the kind of study that can only hap- the astromaterials for August. It will grab between 60 grams and two kilograms
pen with humans working in a lab. That laboratory for return to Earth in September 2023. By that time, the
is, thankfully, about to change. at Houston’s Mars 2020 mission, featured in this issue, will be well into
Johnson Space
Later this year, the Japanese Space its efforts to collect and cache samples that a later mission
Center, where
Agency’s Hayabusa2 probe will drop a a technician will bring back for study.
capsule that will land in the Woomera examines No remote instrument today can match what we can
Test Range in southwest Australia. particles of a learn from human geologists working with samples in the
It carries samples retrieved from the comet returned in lab. So these and many other sample-return missions in the
2006 by NASA’s
asteroid 162173 Ryugu. Hayabusa2 will Stardust mission.
works or on the drawing board promise a leap forward in
have traveled 5.2 billion kilometers in our understanding of how we and our celestial home came
its six-year mission to bring back what to be. That’s a “field” trip I’m really looking forward to.
is admittedly a small—but extremely
■ Ellen Stofan is a planetary geologist and the John and Adrienne
valuable—cargo that will, I’m certain, Mars Director of the National Air and Space Museum.
broaden our knowledge in ways that
will surprise us.
NASA/JSC/BILL STAFFORD

Late last year, NASA announced it had

selected sites to grab samples from the
asteroid Bennu. The OSIRIS-REx mis-
sion was launched in September 2016,
Washington, DC Chantilly, VA
and, after a journey of two years, it began

2 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

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Editor Linda Musser Shiner Art Director Ted Lopez Senior Editor Tony Reichhardt Departments Editor Mark Strauss
Senior Associate Editors Rebecca Maksel, Diane Tedeschi Associate Editors Chris Klimek, Zach Rosenberg
Photography and Illustrations Editor Caroline Sheen Researcher Roger A. Mola Founding Editor George C. Larson
Contributing Editors Roger Bilstein, William E. Burrows, Tom Crouch, Ed Darack, David DeVorkin, Arielle Emmett,
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Hallion, Jim Hansen, Gregg Herken, Eric Long, Stephen Maran, Laurence Marschall, Ted Maxwell, Marshall
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Editorial (202) 633-6070 email editors@si.edu website airspacemag.com Subscriptions: (800) 513-3081

S M I T H S O N I A N I N ST I T U T I O N
SECRETARY Lonnie G. Bunch III
DIRECTOR, NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM Dr. Ellen Stofan
SMITHSONIAN BOARD OF REGENTS: Chancellor The Chief Justice
of the United States Chair Mr. David M. Rubenstein VICE CHAIR Mr.
Steve Case MEMBERS: The Vice President of the United States, Ex
Officio Appointed by the President of the Senate Hon. John Boozman,
Hon. Patrick J. Leahy, Hon. David Perdue Appointed by the Speaker
of the House Hon. Tom Cole, Hon. Sam Johnson, Hon. Doris Matsui
Appointed by Joint Resolution of Congress Hon. Barbara M. Barrett, Mr.
John Fahey, Mr. Roger W. Ferguson Jr., Mr. Michael Govan, Dr. Risa J.
Lavizzo-Mourey, Mr. Michael M. Lynton, Mr. John W. McCarter Jr.
NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM BOARD: Mr. William S. Ayer, Mr.
Daniel A. Baker, Honorable Marion C. Blakey, Mr. Neil D. Cohen, Ms.
Karen M. Dahut, Mr. Stanley A. Deal, Mr. Scott C. Donnelly, Mr. Mark B.
Dunkerley, Ms. Michele A. Evans, Mr. Tom Gentile, III, Mr. Thomas W.
Haas, Ms. Dawne S. Hickton, Mr. Shephard W. Hill, Mr. Allan M. Holt,
Mr. Thomas W. Horton, Dr. Christopher T. Jones, Mr. Gary C. Kelly,
Mr. C. Jeffrey Knittel, Ms. Meredith Siegfried Madden, Mr. Gregory L.
McAdoo, Ms. Linda A. Mills, Ms. Eren A. Ozmen, Mr. H. Ross Perot Jr.,
Mr. David P. Storch, Mr. David M. Tolley, Mr. Steven VanRoekel, Mr.
Thomas E. Vice, Mr. Steuart Walton, Mr. Paul R. Wood
EMERITUS MEMBERS: Mr. James Albaugh, Mr. Ronald W. Allen, Mrs.
Anne B. Baddour, Mrs. Agnes M. Brown, Mr. Armando C. Chapelli, Jr.,
Mr. Max C. Chapman, Jr., Mr. Joseph Clark, Mr. Frank A. Daniels, Jr.,
Mr.Edsel B. Ford II, Mr. Stuart L. Fred, Mr. Morton Funger, Mr. Kenneth
E. Gazzola, Mr. S. Taylor Glover, Mr. Randall A. Greene, Mr. James M.
Guyette, Mr. Ralph D. Heath, Mr. David R. Hinson, Mr. David C. Hurley,
Mr. Robert L. James, Mr. Clayton M. Jones, Mr. David L. Joyce, Mr.
Rodney R. Lewis, Mr. Steven R. Loranger, Capt. James A. Lovell, USN
(Ret.), Mrs. Adrienne Bevis Mars, Mr. T. Allan McArtor, Mr. Bruce R.
McCaw, Mr. Jameson J. McJunkin, Mr. Robert A. Milton, Mr. Robert
J. Mittman, Mr. Thomas G. Morr, Mr. Lloyd “Fig” Newton, Mr. Jack J.
Pelton, Mr. Roger D. Percy, Mr. Robert W. Pittman, Mr. John L. Plueger,
Mr. Thomas F. Pumpelly, Jon A. Reynolds, Ph.D., Dr. Donald B. Rice, Dr.
Richard G. Sugden, Dr. Frederick W. Telling, Mr. Charles B. Thornton,
Ms. Patty Wagstaff

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 LETTERS

Big Aircraft, Big Crowd

I enjoyed this photograph
[right] in your article “XXL”
(Dec. 2019/Jan. 2020): Six
inches of freeboard on that
little overloaded boat in the
foreground, and not a life
jacket to be seen. This was
probably the reason the Coast
Guard was founded.
KEITH LUCE
via Facebook

Something’s Loose International Airport. much more rural than it has

Regarding your article
about changing a C-5’s tire
(“Milestone,” Dec. 2019/Jan.
2020): First, the procedure,
described in your article as
“changing a tire,” is really
the procedure for changing a
wheel (with a tire installed on
it). Changing a tire takes more
equipment and more time.
Second, the tool described
(and shown in the photo) is
not a “spanner” (an archaic
British term for wrench). It
is called a “torque wrench.”
WILLIAM MANLEY
Altadena, California
Sentimental Journey
The story “Welcome to the
Airport” (Oct./Nov. 2019)
brought back fond memories
from 50-plus years ago, espe-
cially as it included Pittsburgh
LET US HEAR FROM YOU!
Tell us about your experience, and send us a photo.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram: @airspacemag
Email: editors@si.edu. All emails must include your full
name, mailing address, and daytime phone number.
Write to us at Letters, Air & Space/Smithsonian, MRC
513, P.O. Box 37012, Washington, DC 20013. Please type or
print clearly. You must include your full address and daytime
phone number.
Growing up near the airport,
we would pile into the Chevy
on many Sunday afternoons
and head over to see and hear
the aircraft from the outside
viewing area on top of the old
terminal. This is where I first
fell in love with aviation, and
have never stopped.
Hopefully more airports
will pick up on this move-
ment and allow all of us to
go “airside.”
BILLY CHRISTY
via email
Kudos for Camarillo
Thanks for the great story
about Camarillo Airport (“An
Airport That Looks Like
America’s Skies,” Dec. 2019/
Jan. 2020). I earned my pri-
vate pilot license at Gillespie
Field in the early 1980s after
a hitch in the Navy. (Thanks,
G.I. Bill!) After I moved back
to my hometown of Newbury
Park, I joined the flying club
at Channel Islands Aviation.
It was great to see my old club
prospering. When I grew up
in Ventura County, it was
Air & Space is not responsible for the return of unsolicited materials. Never
send unsolicited original photographs to the Letters department; send only
become. Back then, they still
herded goats to market down
Thousand Oaks Boulevard.
FRANK WISSLER
via email
A Lunar Memory
Thanks for your story “A Few
Ounces of Knowledge” (Dec.
2019/Jan. 2020). When I took
my 4-year-old grandson to
the National Air and Space
Museum, we had a full day.
Old airplanes, new airplanes,
reentry modules, spacesuits,
movers, and so much more.
When we returned home he
ran into the house, took his
mother’s hand, led her out-
side, pointed up at the moon
and said, “I have touched
that!” Thank you for that
30-year-old memory.
STEVEN HART
Waterbury, Connecticut
Correction
The photo on page 49 of
“Aviation Journalists Accused
as Spies” (Dec. 2019./Jan.
2020) shows Martin MB-2s,
not de Havilland DH-4s.
NASM (1A36877)

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6 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

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 IN THE SKY
IN SPACE
IN THE NEWS
BY MARK STRAUSS

8 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 Delivery
at Dawn
Last November 24, Mansfield Lahm Regional
Airport, the home of the Ohio Air National
Guard’s 179th Airlift Wing, welcomed a special
guest: NASA’s Aero Spacelines Super Guppy. At
sunrise the next morning, the nose of the cargo
aircraft swung open on its 110-degree hinges to
reveal the package inside, the Artemis I Orion
space capsule.
The Super Guppy, built from a heavily modified
KC-97 Stratotanker, features a massive cavity, 19
feet in diameter, which was originally designed
to carry the second stage of a Saturn rocket for
the Apollo program. Today, it is serving a new
generation of astronauts, who will eventually fly
the Orion spacecraft to the moon. The space cap-
sule was delivered to the John H. Glenn Research
Center’s Plum Brook Station in Sandusky to test
the capsule in the world’s largest thermal vacuum
chamber, which simulates the space environment.
Although Mansfield Lahm is not the closest air-
port to the NASA facility, its vast runway—9,001
feet long and 150 feet wide—made it the best choice
for the operation. A 135-foot-long flatbed truck
carried the 25-ton space capsule 41 miles to the
NASA facility, accompanied by a police escort.
NASA worked with local authorities and com-
panies to create a “space corridor”—a $6 million
project to clear the rural highway for delivering
Orion and other large-scale craft to Plum Brook
Station by trimming tree branches and moving
some traffic lights. And, to ensure that Orion didn’t
NASA/BRIDGET CASWELL

snag any electrical and broadband wires, more than

300 power poles were replaced with taller ones.
■ MARK STRAUSS IS THE DEPARTMENTS EDITOR OF AIR & SPACE/
SMITHSONIAN.

February/March 2020 AIR & SPACE 9

 BY MARK STRAUSS

Richard Browning launched

himself from Britain’s largest
aircraft carrier during the ship’s

Her Ma et Suit visit to Annapolis last November.

A former Royal Marines reservist has Browning describes his invention

transformed himself into a real-life Iron Man. as “adding a bit of horsepower to
the human frame.”

Last November, the aircraft carrier HMS Queen
Elizabeth—the largest and most powerful ship
ever to sail in the British navy—dropped anchor
at Annapolis to host a transatlantic naval con-
ference. But the $4.5 billion ship wasn’t the only
remarkable spectacle that day: An unconventional
pilot wearing a jet engine-powered suit launched
himself into the air for a celebratory flyover.
The pilot was Richard Browning, a former Royal
Marines reservist and oil trader, who founded a
tech startup called Gravity Industries after spend-
ing several months developing the jet suit “for no
reason initially other than just the sheer joy of the
challenge,” he says.
says. “If you want to land, just flare your arms out…
you drop because tthe vertical component of thrust
has been diminished. And then to move forward
all you’re doing is just deflecting the two forward
front vectors, your arms, pointing them backwards.
It’s a bit like the rotor disk of a helicopter.”
The jet suit can stay aloft for five minutes—and
Richardson recently broke his own world speed
record, achieving 85 mph. He is discussing potential
military applications for the technology with the
Royal Navy, but his bigger dream is to establish jet
suit racing events, in the spirit of aviation pylon
racing. A suit can be yours for a mere $440,000.
TOP: DAN PENDLETON PHOTOGRAPHY; BOTTOM: AUSTEN PAUL

While jet packs, rocketbelts, and their variants

have been around for decades, Browning’s design
stands apart in that its primary means of control
is the human body itself. “The traditional kind of
jet pack tends to be much more of a big kind of
flight object that you’re strapping yourself into,
whereas this is trying to be the most minimalist
you can get away with in order to fly,” he says.
Browning’s suit is fitted with five small jet
engines—two on each arm, one on the back—
which collectively provide lift, and also a means for
intuitive piloting. “There is some modest throttle
control, but most of it is down to vectoring,” he

10 AIR & SPACE

 360,000 COUNT The number of names suggested to the
national Astronomical Union (from people in 112
tries) for exoplanet-and-star systems. The IAU
rated its 100th birthday by offering every country on
the chance to name one of 112 planetary systems.

K 9 Flight School
U.S. military dogs trained to sniff out explosives or
drugs can’t always get to where they are needed in a
land vehicle. And so this past November, members
of the Military Working Dog section of the 92nd
Security Forces Squadron—and their four-legged
partners—participated in UH-1N Huey training at
the Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington state.
The training introduced the dogs to the distractions
and noise they might experience when boarding and
flying in a helicopter. “We don’t want them to ever
come across anything that’s new to them. It just kind

Update: Inaugural
Flight
g in Vancouver

Eager eBeaver
L AST M A R C H , Vancouver-
based Harbour Air—the largest
seaplane airline in North America—
announced plans to convert its
aircraft, including DHC-2 Beavers
and DHC-3 Otters, into an all-
electric flfleet (see “Up to Speed,”
Jun./Jul. 2019). In December,
that goal came closer to reality
with the successful test flflight of
an “eBeaver” over the Fraser River
iin Richmond,
Ri h d British
B iti h Columbia.
C l bi
The aircraft, piloted by Harbour
U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Bethany Ray and her dog Lili Air CEO Greg McDougall, was
LEFT: USAF/STAFF SGT DUSTIN MULLEN; RIGHT: COURTESY HARBOUR AIR

prepare for UH-1N Huey training. retrofitted with a 750-horsepower

electric motor designed by MagniX,
an electric-propulsion start-up in
of throws them off,” says Staff Sergeant James Wilson, Redmond, Washington. With the
whose partner, Fanni, is a Belgian Malinois. A key test flight completed, Harbour
to helicopter training is to “make it a fun situation,” Air and MagniX are applying for
he says, “whether it’s taking out a toy or just keeping certification and approval of the
physical contact with them. Even though she may not electric airplane, and they expect to
begin commercial flights in 2022.
hear me, she sees me talking to her. She could see my
mouth moving, so it helps de-stress the situation.”
“In layman’s terms, these dogs work their asses off,”
says Staff Sergeant Thomas Newman. “And they love While a turbine engine would
doing what they’re doing.” consume $300 of fuel per hour, an
eBeaver has enough battery life to
If called to duty, up to two dogs and their handlers
fly around 100 miles on $10 to $20
could fit in a single helicopter. of electricity.

February/March 2020 AIR & SPACE 11

 Soldiers use an
M88A2 Hercules
Recovery Vehicle to
pull a truck from a
deep puddle of mud
during training. Soil
moisture data from
a NASA satellite
could help prevent
trucks getting stuck
in the first place.

A NASA satellite joins the Air Force

DRIVERS GET HELP FROM ABOVE

Every now and then, we all deal with the
frustration of getting stuck on a muddy road—but
for U.S. Army personnel, it could be a matter of
life and death.
That’s why the U.S. Air Force HQ 557th
Weather Wing is now using soil moisture data
from a NASA satellite in the weather advisories
that it issues for the Army and the Air Force.
Launched in 2015, NASA’s Soil Moisture Active
Passive (SMAP) orbiting observatory measures
the amount of water in the top two inches of soil
everywhere on Earth’s surface. That data helps
scientists monitor droughts, predict floods, and
develop more accurate climate models.
This Air Force initiative will be the first instance
of assimilating SMAP data in an operational,
near-real-time environment. In addition to
assessing how muddy the land surface is for
vehicles, military personnel will be able to provide
better forecasts, since soil moisture is also a key
weather-maker, as it evaporates into water vapor,
rises, and condenses into clouds.

TOP: US ARMY; MAP: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/ASU; INSET: NASA/JPL/UNIV OF ARIZ/UNIV OF IDAHO

TITAN UNVEILED
Relying on data gathered by NASA’s
Cassini mission to Saturn, researchers
have created the first geologic map of
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, revealing
a dynamic landscape of dunes, plains,
craters, and hydrocarbon lakes.
The Cassini spacecraft conducted
more than 120 flybys of the Mercury-
size moon during its 13-year
mission, which ended in 2017. The
mapmakers used data from Cassini’s
radar imager, which peered through
Titan’s atmosphere of nitrogen and to launch a mission to Titan in 2026,
methane. Cassini’s visible and infrared which will deploy a multi-rotor vehicle
instruments were able to capture some named Dragonfly to explore the moon.
of Titan’s larger geologic features As the only other known world in
Cassini’s radar imager
through the opaque haze. the solar system with stable liquid
peered through Titan’s
The map will likely prove useful on its surface, Titan is regarded as a
thick atmosphere (inset),
to NASA planners who are preparing promising candidate for hosting life.
providing data to create a
map of its surface.

12 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

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 Mike Eilts has experienced more
than his share of bad weather.

send us back three or four other routes

and ask, “Is this route better?” And we’ll
provide them the safest route that uses
the least amount of energy. So we’re
helping them cut fuel costs but still stay
safe. We support about 12,000 flights a
day with that kind of service.

Is the information your company

provides based on a computer
model?
Yeah, we built a proprietary algorithm
working with former employees of the
Aviation Weather Center—people who
have expertise in predicting clear air
turbulence.
Interview
Is climate change having an impact
Mike Eilts on the routes airliners fly?
That’s a great question. I would say
A former storm chaser, Eilts is a probably not much—if any. People are
speculating that there might be more
senior vice president at DTN, a clear air turbulence because of climate
company that helps commercial change. Because if you have stronger
weather systems, you might get more
airline pilots avoid turbulence. turbulence in the interfaces between
those systems. But as far as airlines
changing their everyday routes because
of climate change, I don’t think that is
What is clear air turbulence? happening—yet.
When we talk about clear air turbulence—so called because pilots
can’t see it—airplanes are typically at 30,000 to 35,000 feet, and the Tell me about your work as a storm
turbulence at that altitude is caused by weather patterns colliding with chaser.
each other. Wind shear at that level also causes turbulence to form. Back in the day, part of my job at the
National Severe Storms Laboratory was
Is clear air turbulence the most threatening type for to get out and document tornadoes and
commercial airliners? hail and compare it to what we saw on
Yeah, it’s most dangerous because you can’t see it. There is as radar to help the National Weather
strong—or stronger—turbulence around thunderstorms, but there Service issue warnings. Storm chasing
COURTESY OF THE OKLAHOMAN

are restrictions on how close you can fly to severe storms. has two sides: One is pure research.
The other is just going out and seeing
What service does your company offer the airlines? an awesome thing in nature that has a
A given airline will upload, say, all of their planned trips for tomor- lot of power and a lot of beauty.
row, and we’ll tell them which ones have potential turbulence along
■ DIANE TEDESCHI IS A SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR
that route—typically long routes between continents. If we say, AT AIR & SPACE/SMITHSONIAN. ■ READ THE FULL
hey, there’s strong or extreme turbulence along that route, they’ll INTERVIEW AT AIRSPACEMAG.COM/EILTS

14 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

Honoring the 75th Anniversary of the B-17 Flying Fortress

l
Legal Tender, Limited-Edition Coin
s ver-p ate co n k
marking h h
the historic
introduction of the
B-17 Bomber
38.6 mm
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Dynamic
2016 and the
portrait
profile of Her of the
Majesty Queen legendary
Elizabeth on B-17 Flying
the obverse Fortress
Bomber by
Joel Iskowitz
One Crown
denomination

Without the B-17, we might have lost the war.

— General Carl Spaatz, Commander, US Strategic Air Forces in Europe, 1944

KEY DETAILS A Salute to Democracy’s Flying Fortress

EVENT: The 75th Anniversary of the
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helped “the Greatest Generation” achieve
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Artist Joel Iskowitz This renowned coin and aviation artist has had over
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www.bradfordexchange.com/b17bomber ©2020 BGE 17-01027-001-BDN

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 AT T H E M U S E U M

Tiny Rover, Big Impact

A NEW ARTIFACT FOR THE FUTURE OF SPACEFLIGHT
by Rebecca Maksel

THE CALL CAME OUT OF THE BLUE. Sorato is smaller Air and Space Museum as a place that can inspire
About a year ago, the Smithsonian’s National Air and lighter future technologies and activity in space. We’re
than any other
and Space Museum curator Matt Shindell was the national museum, but in a way we’re also a
lunar or Martian
contacted by a representative of ispace, the private space-qualified museum for the entire world. ”
Japanese aerospace company that was one of five rover. It was Hakamada had always been interested in space;
finalists in the Google Lunar X Prize competition. donated last he grew up watching Star Wars movies, and
Founder Takeshi Hakamada wanted to donate the October to the received his master’s degree in aerospace engi-
Smithsonian’s
company’s entry, the Sorato lunar rover. Was the neering from Georgia Tech. But it wasn’t until a
National Air and
Museum interested? Space Museum SpaceShipOne pilot visited the university campus
“It was really exciting,” says Shindell. “It wasn’t by ispace, a to give a lecture that everything clicked.
something that I had been expecting. Because we’re Japan-based “I was so inspired by the lecture that it made
a national museum, most of our artifacts dealing private lunar me decide to enter the private space industry,”
ISPACE, INC

exploration
with planetary exploration come from NASA. It’s company.
Hakamada said by email.
great that around the world people think of the While the Google Lunar X Prize competition

16 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

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 AT T H E M U S E U M

was canceled without a winner, ispace says it will

launch a lander to the moon by 2021, and deploy
lunar rovers on the moon’s surface by 2023.
At just a little over eight pounds, the four-wheel
Sorato rover is the smallest space-qualified rover
in the world. It was built over a decade, and most
of the work was carried out by a small team of
volunteers.
“That’s not the norm in space business,” says
Shindell. “You might compare it to a Silicon
Valley-startup story where you have a small team
of very dedicated people who think that something
could be profitable in the long run, but for now
are mainly working on it because they think it’s
a great idea, and they want to make it reality.”
Sorato will be displayed in the new Future of
Spaceflight gallery, which is scheduled to open
in 2024. The gallery is devoted to commercial Transformation and Revitalization
spaceflight, says Shindell, and will cover “every-
THERE’S STILL PLENTY TO SEE!
thing from space tourism to mining in space,
to ventures like SpaceX where they’re trying to The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum on
bring down the cost of spaceflight, and ultimately the National Mall is undergoing a complete renovation,
plan human missions to Mars, as well as robotic and half of the Museum is now closed to visitors.
But not to worry; there are plenty of “first” and
endeavors, like the ispace story.” “only” iconic artifacts for you to see, including the Bell
To create the gallery, the Museum is collecting X-1 (above), the first airplane to fly faster than the speed
artifacts from Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, ispace, and of sound, piloted by Chuck Yeager on October 14, 1947.
several other companies. But even within the com- Also on display are the 1903 Wright Flyer, the heavier-
mercial spaceflight field, ispace stands out. “The than-air flying machine that started it all; the Spirit of
St. Louis, in which Charles Lindbergh made the first
company plans to take rovers based on this same solo transatlantic flight in 1927; and Neil Armstrong’s
spacesuit, which commemorates humanity’s very first
steps on the moon. To get the most recent updates on
Rover engineer John Walker (left) and ispace what to see, visit airandspace.si.edu.
communication manager Shuhei Akimoto set up
Sorato prior to the official handover this past October.

design to the moon,” says Shindell. “It’s wonderful

that we were able to collect a piece of flight-ready
hardware that was built for a specific purpose—the
Google Lunar X Prize—but that is going to have a
future life beyond that prize because the company
has developed a good piece of technology that will
build into what will hopefully be a sustainable
business enterprise.”
And how does Hakamada feel about the rover
TOP: ERIC LONG/NASM; BOTTOM: MARK AVINO/NASM

donation, now that it’s official? “While the Google

Lunar X Prize ended without a winner,” he says,
“it sparked a new excitement in the space industry,
and boosted interest in private lunar exploration.
I know SpaceShipOne is on display at the National
Air and Space Museum, and I’m very happy to
[have a space vehicle ] inside the same Museum. In
the same way that I was inspired by SpaceShipOne,
I hope that Sorato will also be seen as a symbol of
the dawn of private space exploration for future
generations who visit the Museum.”

18 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com


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 In July 2018 at the Marshall
Space Flight Center, a test
model of the Space Launch
System (SLS) intertank was
subjected to forces that
mimic those of launch and
ascent. Other tests verified
the section’s 26 avionics
boxes and 200 sensors.

20 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 TO BUILD
A MONSTER
FACING IMMENSE

ROCKET CHALLENGES,
NASA BULLS AHEAD
WITH THE SPACE
LAUNCH SYSTEM.

BY JAMES R. CHILES

From a test-stand catwalk almost 300 feet above the ground

at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi,
Maury Vander and I take in a view of the 14,000-acre rocket
propulsion test complex, its 200-square-mile acoustical
buffer zone, and distant New Orleans. Vander, who started
at Stennis in 1989 after graduating from the University of
New Orleans with a degree in mechanical engineering, is
the chief of test operations for the approaching Green Run,
a long-awaited test that will certify for flight the core of a
rocket that has been in development for a decade.
“I spent my first 23 years in the best job on this site, a
test engineer,” he says. “We made the ground shake and the
weather change.” That was during the space shuttle era. The
test that Vander and his colleagues are preparing for now is
for a monster so different from the shuttle that the test stand
itself has undergone a six-year modification, including the
addition of a million-pound steel framework to extend and
strengthen the existing structure. This spring the stand will
support most of the Space Launch System, the rocket that will
push beyond Earth orbit for the first time since the Apollo
program. Before those deep-space missions can lift off, the
SLS must first pass a bolted-down trial of the rocket’s big
NASA/TODD BOLES

core stage, the stack of tanks and main engines that forms its
backbone. The trial is called a “Green Run” because some of
the rocket hardware is new and has never been tested with
all of the pieces running together, as they will at Stennis.

February/March 2020 AIR & SPACE 21


“I’ve been here 30 years now and [SLS] is the
biggest project I’ve been involved in,” says Vander.
“I watched the Apollo videos from the sixties, and
I like to think in 40 or 50 years people will be
watching our activities now and saying, ‘Wow,
they did that?’ ”
The Space Launch System is a critical part of
NASA’s next moonshot, the Artemis program,
named for the sister of Apollo, which promises
to send a woman and a man to the moon by 2024.
With an upper stage and payload atop its core, the
new moon rocket will stand 322 feet tall. That’s
41 feet shorter than Apollo’s Saturn V, but on
22 AIR & SPACE
the launchpad, the SLS will produce 15 percent Northrop Grumman
more thrust—8.8 million pounds, as opposed to technicians in
Promontory, Utah fill
fi
the Saturn’s 7.5 million pounds.
the SLS solid-fuel
By a 2010 order of Congress, the SLS relies booster segments
heavily on long-proven hardware from the space with propellant the
shuttle, including engines, solid-fuel boosters, consistency of a
fittings, and tank design. It also got a head start pencil eraser. Each
booster produces
from pieces developed and tested for the earlier more than 3.6
Constellation space exploration program, which, million pounds of
before it was canceled in 2010, had begun workk thrust.
on its own heavy-lift launch vehicle, the Ares I
and V rockets. Because of this double legacy,
there was an expectation outside NASA that SLS
development would be, if not a breeze, not a reach
either. Although SLS relies heavily on hardware
from the reusable shuttle, it is a simpler machine
because nothingg from the SLS launch vehicle will
return for refurbishment and reuse.
But it turns out that nothing about a heavy-lift
launch vehicle is simple, especially one designed
TOP: NASA/JARED LYONS; BOTTOM: NORTHROP GRUMMAN
to provide the performance that the deep-space
Artemis program requires. High performance
requires invention; invention requires test, refine-
ment, and more test; and lives are at stake. As far
as NASA and its principal contractor Boeing are
concerned, the SLS is a brand new beast, and its
parts must prove themselves individually and
collectively. If any of the technical challenges are
not addressed adequately, the result could be what
NASA managers call a “bad day”—multimillion-dol-
lar damage on the ground or the catastrophic loss
of a mission.
airspacemag.com
 Left over from the space shuttle program,
four RS-25 engines were installed in the SLS core
stage last October. This core stage will be tested at
the Stennis Space Center this spring and, with
solid-fuel boosters, will launch Artemis I in 2021.
“Every day is a new challenge, and you can
quote me,” said Chris Cianciola, Marshall Space
Flight Center’s deputy program manager for the
Space Launch System. Cianciola has shifted his
workplace from Marshall in Huntsville, Alabama,
to the Michoud Assembly Facility, the Louisiana
complex 15 miles northeast of downtown New
Orleans where the enormous pieces of the rocket
core stage are being welded and bolted together.
“I can’t tell you what you will see tomorrow,” he
says. “What we’re doing on the core stage—each
operation is the first time it’s being performed.”
I visited Michoud in October, while workers
were assembling the core stage that will fly on the
Artemis I launch. (On that mission, now planned
for 2021, an uncrewed Orion spacecraft will swing
around the moon, get a gravitational boost to an
orbit 40,000 miles above the moon, then return to
splash down three weeks after launch.) Technicians
were installing the four main engines; afterward,
they would check all the fuel and electrical con-
nections. “There are still some feed lines left to
install,” said Steve Ernst, Boeing’s final assembly
engineering leader, as we walked along the core’s
212-foot length. “And we’ll make sure all the boxes
are all talking to each other, checking sensors to
get
g their feedback. That’ll take several weeks.”
We’re inside Michoud’s biggest enclosure,
Building 103. It covers 43 acres. One could call 103
a single-story building, but that story has a ceiling
more than 40 feet above the concrete floor. Among
NASA facilities, the Vehicle Assembly Building
at Kennedy has a claim on vertical grandeur, but
Michoud rules in acreage.
Among the hardware that the SLS inherited
from the space shuttle are its liquid-fuel main
engines. Though long proven as star performers
during the shuttle era, they present several chal-
lenges when taking their place on the SLS. One
headache is how to finish off the engine instal-
lation without collateral damage. The engines
themselves occupy so much of the limited space
inside the fairing that they leave barely enough
room around their bracing struts for the dense
maze of wiring, actuators, controller boxes, tub-
ing, four auxiliary power units, five helium tanks,
and everything else needed to start and bring the
engines to full power in seconds, then run them
for more than eight minutes, and safely shut them
down. Adding to the Twister-like challenge, the
fairing permits technicians to reach their work
NASA
only through a bottom hatch between the four
February/March 2020
Orion
Spacecraft
Upper Stage
(Liquid Fuel)
Liquid
Oxygen
Tank
Ribbed
Intertank
Section
Liquid
Hydrogen
Tank CORE STAGE
Solid
Rocket
Boosters
Engine Section
NASA’S NEW MEGAROCKET
A LITTLE BIT SHUTTLE, A LITTLE BIT SATURN V.
The Space Launch System carries its payload—the Orion space
capsule—atop its fuel tanks, as the Apollo program’s Saturn V
did, but its propulsion system is inherited from the space shuttle.
Engines, boosters, and tanks are all shuttle hardware, but they
are supersized. There are four liquid-fuel engines instead of
the shuttle’s three, five fuel segments in each of the solid rocket
boosters instead of the four that made up the shuttle strap-ons,
and much bigger tanks. “The hydrogen tank for SLS is almost as
big as the entire External Tank on the space shuttle,” says Mike
Alldredge, who leads the thermal protection system team for the
SLS core stage at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Standing
177 feet tall and burning six tons of propellant every second, the
solid rocket boosters will provide more than 75 percent of the
launcher’s thrust. On the launch pad, they will support the entire
5.75 million-pound weight of the SLS.
The SLS will grow over time. The first rockets will be able
to lift 70 metric tons to Earth orbit. Because escaping Earth’s
gravity requires more power, the early versions of the SLS
will carry only about 26 metric tons to the moon. As a more
powerful second stage is developed and a new generation of
strap-on boosters offers more thrust, the ultimate model of the
SLS will lift 45 metric tons to deep space, putting it ahead of the
Saturn V as the most powerful rocket in history.
AIR & SPACE 23
 engine nozzles or through panels on the side.
Some tasks have been simulated with digital
mannequins to ensure humans can make all the
necessary connections without leaning against,
stepping on, or snagging something delicate.
Avoiding damage during installation is a careful,
Made of steel, the heartfelt effort at NASA. Damaged Teflon wire
SLS core stage insulation likely contributed to the fatal Apollo 1
Pathfinder
fi is a
full-scale
capsule fire in 1967.
mockup—the same The engine section’s elbow-room problem arises
shape, size, and from an early decision about the diameter of the
weight of the real core stage. SLS planners considered going big and
thing—that ground copying the 33-foot-diameter of the first stage
handlers use to
practice lifting and
of the Saturn V, but that would have increased
positioning the the rocket’s weight and cut back on payload. It
colossal rocket on would also have hiked equipment costs because
test stands at the Michoud’s handling equipment and processing rigs
Stennis Space had already been downsized from its Saturn V days
Center (pictured)
and on the Kennedy
to match the diameter of the shuttle’s propellant
Space Center tank, which was a little less than 28 feet across.
launchpad. On the day I visited Michoud, the core had
reached its full length—the hydrogen and oxygen
tanks had been joined by the intertank section; the
topmost forward skirt, which joins the core stage
to an upper stage and houses the all-important
flight control computer, had been connected;
and the engine section had been bolted on at the
bottom. One of the four engines had been eased
through a hole in the fairing, and preparations
were under way for adding another engine within
a week. While one worker has compared the buzz
of activity to ants swarming at a picnic, when I
visited, a more apt comparison would be termites,
since most of the activity that day was on the inside.
Work was also under way along scaffolds at the
midsection, preparing the “system tunnels” that
run alongside the hydrogen tank to shield oxygen
feed lines and cable runs. Two massive blue rings
surrounded the core, which allows Boeing and
its subcontractors to rotate the entire assembly.
While the reused main engines appear almost
identical to the ones that flew on the shuttle orbit-
ers, there are important differences. NASA wants
a higher power output from the engines, with a
second hike planned later. That means higher pres-
sure in the combustion chamber. “I hear comments
about how NASA is using ‘old tech’ on SLS, but
the [space shuttle main engine] is really different
from 25 years ago,” said Steve Wofford, manager
of the Marshall Center’s SLS liquid engine office.
“And it was ahead of its time to begin with. It’s the
best in class by a mile. SSME was upgraded five
times during [the shuttle period].”
The SLS inherited 16 of the sturdy powerplants
from shuttle shelves, and the first four SLS flights,
consuming four engines each, will exhaust that
inventory. “The next challenge for us is taking a
great engine—small, lightweight, powerful, dura-
ble—how can we make that more affordable?” says
Wofford. “We’re doing that right now.”
New replacement engines, NASA believes, will
cost just two-thirds as much to build as the old
ones. The agency is able to make use of technol-
ogy that was unavailable when the SSMEs were
built, such as additive manufacturing, also known
as 3D printing, which can speed the manufacture
of complex and demanding main-engine compo-
nents. According to Wofford, in one component
alone, 100 welds were eliminated.
One immense design challenge was making
sure the engines and their supporting equipment
could tolerate the new “base heating environment.”
The SLS relies on a dense pack of hot devices,
all exhausting at the same level. “We have four
engines shining on each other that are co-planar
with the solid rocket booster [exhausts],” says
Wofford, “and there’s also an [auxiliary power
NASA/SSC

unit] exhausting there.”

The shuttle had only three main engines, and

24 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 Last June a test their nozzles were positioned 14 feet higher than
model of the those of the solid rocket nozzles. The solid rockets
70-foot-long LOX
throw out exhaust gases hot enough to vaporize
tank was loaded
on the Pegasus steel, and the plume expands with altitude. Analysts
barge for transfer decided that structural bands on the main engine
from Michoud to nozzles and drain lines needed extra protection.
Marshall. For the “We tacked on insulation batting, and also used an
SLS core stage,
NASA needed a
ablative layer on top of the batting,” says Wofford.
bigger boat and Batting is a space-age quilt: reflective on the outside
added 50 feet to with a thick filling of heat-resistant silica fiber.
the Pegasus. “The [liquid] engines had to adapt and we did
“ONE GOOD TEST IS WORTH
A THOUSAND EXPERT OPINIONS.”
—STEVE ERNST, BOEING
CORE STAGE ENGINEERING MANAGER
too,” said Bruce Tiller, manager of Marshall’s SLS
solid-booster office. “We modified the thermal
curtain [a ring of insulating blanket between the
SRB nozzle and the aft end of the booster’s steel
NASA/JUDE GUIDRY
case] and added reflective material on the side
where the engines are and added insulation there.”
The major physical difference between the
shuttle and Space Launch System solid boosters
February/March 2020
is the fifth segment added to the four-segment
shuttle booster. Adds Tiller: “Avionics and elec-
tronics that control the booster, the pyrotechnics
that set off the separation charge, and [nozzle]
steering—that’s all new.”
All these changes have been proved to NASA’s
satisfaction using computer runs and individual
engine firings on the test stand, but nothing yet
offered by computational fluid dynamics matches
the fury of the Green Run test-fire scheduled for
Stennis this spring. Boeing’s Steve Ernst com-
mented that in the end, “One good test is worth
a thousand expert opinions.”
The first trial is getting the 100-ton core stage
there. It will travel horizontally by transporter and
barge, supported at each end, until raised by a pair
of cranes and slotted into Stennis’s B-2 Test Stand.
Nothing happens fast while shifting such a load.
“We call it the golden egg,” said Chris Cianciola.
“It’s the only one we have now; if we break it, we
have no more on the shelf.”
The Green Run is a critical test, but it is not the
toughest challenge the Space Launch System faces.
Perhaps the biggest uncertainty in SLS develop-
ment is the risk that ambitious—and highly pub-
licized—private-sector competitors will pull ahead
in the heavy-lift space race, leaving the SLS as a dry
branch on the evolutionary tree. SpaceX founder
Elon Musk announced development of the Falcon
Heavy in 2011, the same year the SLS program got
AIR & SPACE 25

In addition to test under way. Designed for reusability, the Falcon
stands, wind Heavy has already launched three times, the first
tunnels provide
in 2018. It can boost 64 metric tons to low Earth
engineers with
data about the orbit. The first version of the SLS, on the other
SLS. Thomas Steva hand, is rated at metric 70 tons, but its first launch
(left) and Nettie won’t happen until 2021, and Musk says his next
Roozeboom rocket called Starship—a big booster topped by a
discuss the
shiny spacecraft with second-stage engines—will
visualization of
fl
fluctuating launch this year, though a prototype was damaged
pressure during a in a recent test, and work appears to have slowed.
wind-tunnel launch The Starship, claims Musk, will carry at least 100
simulation. tons to low Earth orbit at a fraction of the cost of
the advanced SLS. As former astronaut Ed Gibson
told a Politicoo interviewer in November, “SpaceX
could be a lot cheaper than what we’re going to
do with the SLS and maybe even the Orion, as
nice as those programs are. People have fallen in
love with them, but they got old and expensive.”
According to an October 2018 audit by NASA’s
Inspector General, the SLS core stage has missed
its original launch deadline by almost four years.
(NASA had even considered canceling the SLS
Green Run to speed things up.) The report also
predicted that the core stage will be as much as
$2.7 billion over budget. Originally predicted to
cost as little as a half-billion dollars per launch, a
single SLS trip was estimated in December—by
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine—to cost
between $800 million and $1.6 billion, slightly less
than the IG estimate of $2 billion, not counting
fixed costs. The Space Launch System did receive
some support from witnesses before a November
House space subcommittee hearing. One of them,
former Goddard Space Flight Center director Tom
Young, argued that NASA’s role in moon and
Mars exploration should be leading and manag-
ing, as it did with the Saturn V and Apollo, and
26 AIR & SPACE
not merely renting rides on heavy-lift rockets
created by vendors.
Meanwhile, NASA says the SLS can and will
get someone to the moon by 2024. “The fact of
the matter is, the only system we have today that
is designed, purpose-built, to go ahead and get
men to the moon and women to the moon is the
SLS,” said Doug Loverro, NASA’s new associate
administrator for human spaceflight. He told a staff
town hall at NASA headquarters in December,
“That program is absolutely mandatory....”
A lot is riding on the Green Run.
The B-2 Test Stand at the Stennis Space Center
looks like an unfinished skyscraper. Its rectangu-
lar steel frame, known as “the battleship,” dates
from Apollo. NASA retrofits the stand for each
new rocket: At its zenith is the extension built to
accommodate the SLS core stage.
Once the core stage is installed, the test will
do more than assess how the four main engines
perform when fired together. It will also evaluate
how the new tanks and piping handle a full load of
super-cold hydrogen fuel and oxygen. One of the
steps in the Green Run is a “wet dress rehearsal”
to verify integrity. Each tank will be filled, elec-
tronically sniffed for leaks, then emptied.
The tanks have already gone through a battery
of stress tests, including checks with liquid nitro-
gen, but that’s toasty warm compared to the liquid
hydrogen that will be pouring into the lower tank.
“We have to plan for the worst case,” says B-2 test
director Ryan Roberts as the elevator takes us to
the top deck of the battleship, Level 18.
That plan includes a super-powered, water-del-
uge system fed by a battery of 11 pumps drawing
from a nearby reservoir. These can deliver 5,000
gallons of water per second to the base of the stand,
where it will feed tens of thousands of holes lin-
ing the flame bucket, creating a protective film of
vapor. Water is also available for the giant fire-ex-
tinguishing pipes and nozzles above, aimed at the
core stage and the structure alongside. “Those are
NASA/ADVANCED SUPERCOMPUTING DIVISION/DOMINIC HART
only used in case of a bad day,” Roberts says. One
contingency is a cryogenic liquid spill. Without
the deluge system to disperse it, the contents of a
breached propellant tank could weaken the stand’s
structure or even worse, produce a giant cloud of
explosive vapor. That’s why the nearest viewing
spot considered safe for VIPs and the press during
the Green Run will be a parking lot a mile from
our vantage point atop the B-2.
At various facilities across the United States,
all of the avionics boxes were tested for their
tolerance of vibration, shock, thermal extremes,
and electromagnetic effects. At Marshall, they
airspacemag.com
 were linked together to check for their ability
to communicate and cope with a wide range of
simulated emergencies. During the Green Run,
according to Lisa Espy, NASA lead test engineer
for core stage avionics, of special interest will
be how heritage hardware—equipment adapted
from earlier space ventures—holds up. One item
of interest is the SLS flight computer, which has
been modified from a Boeing box designed for
satellite launches. Because the flight computer is
crucial to a good flight, and because it’s considered
more delicate than other gear, it gets to ride in a
(comparatively) quiet section of the core stage,
the forward skirt at the top.
Automatic controls that govern the main
engines are also new. The shuttle versions relied
on electronic controllers for which parts are no
longer available, so the agency substituted a newer
controller, one designed for the Ares rockets, and
redesigned it to be compatible with the SLS main
engines. The SLS has also inherited from the shuttle
a health monitoring system better able to avoid the
false alert that shut down an engine during climb-
out on shuttle mission 51-F, which had to settle
for a lower orbit than planned. Sensors and the
health monitoring system were upgraded as a result.
All of these electronics as well as the pumps and
engines will operate during the Green Run for the
duration of an SLS ascent to orbit—just over eight
minutes. (The test will be considered successful,
NASA/SSC
February/March 2020
though, if the system runs for at least five minutes.)
If the Green Run is deemed unsuccessful, the
core stage could require an additional test firing.
Technicians will pore over the results; check
for damage from heat, noise, and vibration; and
determine whether another test is necessary. “We
really, really hope it works the first time like it’s
supposed to,” says Roberts.
After testing is complete, refurbishment of the
core stage at Stennis will take two months. Then
comes a second journey by barge—to the Kennedy
Space Center in Florida. At Kennedy’s Vertical
Assembly Building, technicians will work for six
months to integrate the stage with the rest of the
rocket and Orion. Finally, Artemis I, with its cargo
of 13 cubesats and an empty Orion capsule, will
be launched in 2021.
During research for this article, I asked NASA
engineers and contractors how they’d compare
the scrupulous details of SLS core-stage testing to In preparation for
techniques the private sector is using. They said the Green Run,
they didn’t know, even though SpaceX and Blue technicians at
Stennis Space
Origin are leasing some of NASA’s test stands. Center used cranes
SpaceX investors like to describe Elon Musk as a to place the SLS
Silicon Valley-minded disruptor willing to move core stage
fast and break things. Put NASA down as a wary Pathfinder into the
organization with a hallowed track record that B-2 Test Stand,
which began its life
includes past heartache. It moves slowly and doesn’t by testing
want to break anything…unless it’s part of a test components of the
on that long, hard journey back to the moon. Saturn V.
AIR & SPACE 27
To turn Warbler, a I’M STANDING IN PARKING LOT 5 of the Scott
1946 Ercoupe, into Campus of the University of Nebraska Omaha. It’s
a reasonable stunt a cold, gray evening, with low ceilings and spit-
double for the
de Havilland DH-4s
ting rain. I look around at the towering buildings
flown by early on all sides, and it’s hard to imagine that this was
airmail pilots, our once the site of an airfield. If I had been flying the
correspondent Omaha-to-Cheyenne route back in the glory days
ordered “U.S.
of airmail, this would have been my starting point.
MAIL” markings. He
also bought himself Now you need a permit to park your car here.
a leather helmet All that’s left to show that an airport once existed
and goggles. is a forlorn metal plaque erected by the Nebraska
Wouldn’t you? State Historical Society. It faces a busy street. In
the morning I’ll use modern GPS to arrive in the
air above this very spot, but after that, I’m going
to attempt to re-fly a third of the transcontinental
airmail route using nothing but a set of written
instructions that are now nearly 100 years old.
Before aeronautical charts, before the concrete
arrows and the flashing airway beacons, before
radios, the U.S. Post Office Department was boot-
28 AIR & SPACE
strapping its fledgling airmail experiment into a
full-blown, regularly scheduled, coast-to-coast
venture, and it needed a means for new pilots to
find their way. The solution? A contest among
airmail pilots for the best-written description of
each leg of the route. The collection was bound
together into a slim volume called Pilots’ Directions.
Published by the post office in early 1921, Pilots’
Directions is a field guide to contact flying the trans-
continental route, leapfrogging from landmark to
landmark, staying “in contact” with the terrain.
Being a multi-author work, it doesn’t read with
a single voice, nor, having been written at a time
when cross country flying was still in its infancy,
does it give unified advice: Some pilot authors
suggested using railroads as landmarks; others,
the descriptions of towns. Others still give advice
relying upon lakes and rivers.
Starting in New York, the route crossed the
Alleghenies, slid under the Great Lakes, ventured
airspacemag.com
 WHEN HE GOT LOST,
THE AUTHOR SOUGHT
GUIDANCE FROM EARLY
AIRMAIL PILOTS.
OMAHA TO
SALT LAKE CITY
WITHOUT GPS
out across the Great Plains, spanned the Wyoming
Rockies and the mighty Wasatch Range guarding
the Salt Lake Valley, and traversed the rugged
landscape of the far West before finally vaulting
the Sierra Nevada to end on the far side of the
nation in San Francisco.
Flipping through the book’s faded pages, I
wondered if Pilots’ Directions could still be used to
navigate the 2,640-mile route in today’s world.
As the 100th anniversary of the book closed in, I
decided to abandon a century of aviation progress
and find out.
All I needed was an airmail airplane.
It’s a funny thing. People who own antique
biplanes aren’t too keen about loaning them out to
strangers. Truth be told, I didn’t waste time trying
to snag the use of a Liberty-powered de Havilland
DH-4, the sweetheart of the early mail, because
the perfect airplane for the job was in the hangar
next to mine: An Army brown 1946 Ercoupe with
February/March 2020
■ BY WILLIAM E. DUBOIS
PHOTOGRAPHS BY LISA F. BENTSON
bright yellow wings, Warbler. The 1946 Ercoupe,
Now before you cry foul, consider the following: which cruises at 90
The ’Coupe has pretty much the same speed as the mph, is a
reasonable stand-in
early mailplanes, and by sliding its doors down into for the airmail’s
its belly, I can transform it into an open-cockpit Liberty-powered
airplane. All it’s missing is an extra set of wings. DH-4. The ’Coupe
Or maybe not. can’t quite match
the de Havilland’s
Thanks to the DH’s weak and collapse-prone
475-mile range,
landing gear, lower wing damage was a common though.
occurrence, and even with warehouses chock full
of war surplus parts, the “mechanicians” of the air-
mail service quickly ran out of lower wings. In his
book Tracks Across the Sky: The Story of the Pioneers
of the U.S. Air Mail, Page Shamburger observed that
virtually every Postal Department DH-4 ended up
flying solely on its top wings. Plus, this particu-
lar ’Coupe has exactly the same instruments the
mailplanes had: rudimentary engine gauges, an
airspeed indicator, an altimeter, a compass, and…
well, that’s about it.
AIR & SPACE 29
Otto Praeger’s

MAP: THE COOPER COLLECTION OF AERO POSTAL HISTORY; GUIDEBOOK: UNIVERSITY OF IOWA SPECIAL COLLECTIONS; PHOTO: NASM
guidebook (inset
below the 1924
transcontinental
airmail route) was
the best navigation
aid for fliers
fl of the
early mail, who
were “required
required to
familiarize
themselves with the To get Warbler fully airmail worthy, I sent Now I’m 1,000 feet up, attempting to channel
information relating
to the section of the
some pictures of early airmail airplanes to Victory my inner airmail pilot. Who will he be? Will he
route with which Girl—a custom jacket-painting and airplane nose be the courageous “Wild Bill” Hopson, famous for
they are art business—who made me some special vinyl his uncanny ability to find his way through any
concerned,” as markings to dress Warbler for the part: bold text weather? Or will he be the hapless George Boyle,
Praeger wrote on that simply reads, “U.S. MAIL.” To complete the who was shown the door after getting lost on both
the overleaf. Right:
On July 1, 1924, a
transformation, I taped a half-empty bottle of of his first two airmail flights?
mailplane is bourbon to the instrument panel to serve as an I twist my wrist to check the time on my
unloaded at attitude indicator—just like the airmail pilots did. Hamilton watch—09:27—then I jot the time down
Omaha. Of course, it doesn’t work. The airmail pilots knew in pencil on a scrap of cardboard. The Hamilton
that too. But their ground-pounder bosses didn’t, company gave all the early airmail pilots free
and this was during Prohibition, after all. watches to help guide them along their routes. They
Now that Warbler looked the part, I felt that I didn’t give me one, but they were kind enough to
needed to look the part too. I found a knee-length lend me one for my flight, and I’m getting a big
brown leather button-up jacket of the style World kick out of sharing this link with the past. I’m also
War I pilots wore. Then I dug out my longest coming to appreciate the importance of time in
winter scarf. It’s gray, not white, but it would do. contact flying.
Finally, I went online and bought a leather flying My loaner watch is saying I’m 20 minutes out
helmet. And goggles. from my simulated takeoff at the long-buried
I was dressed for success. But would I succeed? Omaha airmail field. I should be at Wahoo, which,
No one I knew was willing to bet on it. according to Directions is a “fair-sized town three

30 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 miles south of the course.” It adds, “Six railroads
radiate from Wahoo.”
Ahead, and much closer than three miles from
my course, is a town. But is it Wahoo? In the past
100 years, fair-sized towns have become cities, and
new fair-sized towns have sprung up where none
existed before. Every cluster of houses that passes
under my wings triggers a flurry of confusion
and doubt. Could that be Loup City? I shouldn’t
be there for five more minutes. Has the wind let
up? Or am I off course? Damn, there shouldn’t be
a town here!
I divert south, coming in over the edge of town,
anxious to find the six railroads, or at least evidence
they once existed. I’m finding living railroads hard
to spot in a landscape crisscrossed with roads and
highways of every size, and dead railroads are
even trickier. Most have vanished without a trace.
Peering over the wing, I see only two rail lines
below. My heart sinks. Either I’m already Boyle-
lost, or the world has changed so much in the last
century that Pilots’ Directions is nothing more than
a fascinating footnote in the dusty bin of aviation
history. Then I see it: A 12-story water tower with
10-foot-tall letters spelling out WAHOO.
“Wha-hoo! It’s Wahoo!” I shout, pumping my
fist in victory. Boyle is buried. Hopson swells in
my breast.
Of course, this is cheating. Such convenient
markers didn’t exist in the days of Pilots’ Directions.
It was common practice for communities to paint
their names on the roofs of their largest buildings,
but that practice wasn’t formalized until 1926.
Still, I rationalize using this modern intelligence
by remembering tales I’ve read about lost airmail
pilots landing in farmer’s fields to ask directions,
which I’ve not had to do. Yet.
Then the ground begins to speak to me. Showing
me clues to keep me on course. Rotted posts rising
from the mud in a stream. A dead bridge’s tomb-
Navigation via
landmarks
indicated in the
guidebook can be
breathtaking, as in
this view of the
Wasatch Range on
the border of
Wyoming and Utah,
which the author
flew by on the
fl
second day of his
journey.
February/March 2020
stone. A smooth grass-covered grade through the
hillocks, the ghost of the Chicago, Burlington &
Quincy Railroad.
And right on schedule come David City…
Osceola…St. Paul…all when and where they should
be. Now that I’ve got the knack, contact flying is
simple. Peaceful. Sailing along low to the ground,
wind swirling through the open cockpit, I’m in
touch with the aviators of old. Back when flying
was physical, tactile, exciting.
Following Mason City, Pilots’ Directionss informs
me that, “no distinguishing landmarks are available”
for the next 65 miles. It’s the most accurate descrip-
tion in the whole friggin’ book. I see only feature-
less prairie. Minutes tick by on my Hamilton. I fly
west by compass, recalling Airmail Superintendent
Benjamin B. Lipsner’s comment: “We had only a
few instruments to contend with, and of these, the
compass was the most troublesome.” My compass
is better, but my directions were written by men
using troublesome compasses.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. I fly over the endless prairie.
The sun is behind my left shoulder so I know I’m
not radically off course, but at the same time my
confidence in my archaic navigation skills is fading.
At the designated time, my destination of North
Platte fails to appear.
Boyle is back.
My insecurities roar up larger than monsters. I
start doubting myself again. I consider my options.
I’ve arrived at all my other waypoints a hair ahead
of schedule. Maybe the wind changed? Or did I drift
north and bypass the city? I couldn’t have wandered
south, as I’ve not crossed the Platte River—which
is to the south of my course.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock.. Nothing but prairie. So I’m
either north…or I’m dead on course and I’ve hit
headwinds. How long should I wait? And if I turn
due south and fly until I hit the river, how will I
know which way to turn to find the city and my
AIR & SPACE 31
 much-needed refueling stop?
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Damn you, Boyle.
Then, over a slight rise to the south, about seven
miles away, are buildings. I bank left and point
Warbler’s nose at the center of the rapidly growing
signs of civilization. And there, on the east bank of
the north branch of the Platte River, right where it
has been for a hundred years, is the airport.
Hopson kicks Boyle’s butt out of the airplane.
Then, winging over the field, I’m instantly
disappointed. I’d seen historic photos of the U.S.
Airmail Station here: a classic art deco hangar
with a graceful curved roof. In my mind’s eye, I
believed it still existed out here in the middle of the
Nebraska prairie, a time capsule. But once again,
I find that nothing much remains of the airmail
service’s past. The airport is grotesquely modern.
Airmail pilots used
bottles of liquor—
our pilot chose
bourbon—as
attitude indicators
to supplement the
primitive
instruments of their
DH-4s: engine
gauges, an airspeed
indicator, an
altimeter, and a
compass. The bottle
was ineffective—for
attitude indication.
Still, I have mail to deliver. And like my way-
finding methods, my mail is old fashioned. Paper
envelopes with stamps on them.
Of course, unlike the early airmail pilots, I find
no ground crew awaiting me in a truck with the
engine running, ready to pull the mail bags from
my airplane the second my prop stops spinning.
Instead, I find a mailbox in front of the terminal
building, and slide my envelopes through the
narrow slot.
Inside the terminal, however, I find a relic from
the past on display: The actual flight jacket of Jack
Knight, hero of the first night mail. It looks like the
one I’m wearing, only faded, old, and brittle. The
100-year-old jacket is torn in several places, but
lovingly mended with leather laces, stitched in the
style of surgical sutures. It’s a reminder that flying
the mail in the early days was dangerous work, the
service averaging nearly one fatality per month.
The following day, freezing air slashes into my
32 AIR & SPACE
leather jacket with icy claws, pierces my gloves,
seems to whisk away the fabric of my canvas pants,
and swirls into my shoes.
Things were better yesterday.
The good book sayeth: “Almost directly west
will be seen black irregular peaks in the Laramie
Mountains. Fly over the mountains just to the
north of these peaks.”
Ahead, the entire horizon, from south to north,
is nothing but black irregular peaks.
I read the paragraph again. Then I stick my head
out of the airplane, into the slipstream. There’s no
need; it just seems like something a real airmail
pilot would do in a situation like this. The blast of
frigid air pushes my goggles into my face and tugs
at the edges of my Perrone leather flying helmet,
but it doesn’t help me figure out which peak I’m
supposed to fly north of.
Boyle is back. Again.
The book tells me to look for sheep, or rather, a
small flat-topped mountain range that, “resembles
a huddled-up bunch of sheep.”
I see no sheep. Huddled or not.
Am I even in the right place? Surely a mere 100
years cannot have changed the look of the moun-
tains? But the jagged, snow-encrusted peak to my
right isn’t mentioned in Pilots’ Directions. And where
the hell are the sheep?
Unless I’m reading the book or the landscape
incorrectly, I’m at the gateway to my crossing of
the Medicine Bow Range. Pilots’ Directions tells me
there are numerous landing fields on the other side
of the ridge that can be reached from 8,000 feet. I
took this to mean I must ascend to above 8,000 feet
to clear the ridge, but now I’m not sure. Warbler
has clawed its way up to 9,500 feet, and with the
drag from its open canopy, will go no higher.
But the ridge looks higher yet. With nothing
visible behind, I can’t be sure if I’m above or below
the crest. Still, this has to be it.
Summoning my inner Hopson, I steel myself
and turn into the heart of the Rocky Mountains.
Below, pine trees cover the shoulder of the
mountain like a tightly woven blanket. There’s
nowhere to put down. Are the trees getting closer?
The ragged mountain peak off my right wing
blots out the northern horizon. Yes, the blanket
of trees is closer now. Warbler’s engine drones
steadily. I scan the meager instrument panel: Oil
pressure good. Temp good. Altitude steady. The
bourbon in the bottle taped to the panel is tranquil,
not to say inviting.
Those trees are really close now.
How close to the treetops did my guide fly his
DH-4 to clear the ridge? Or am I in the wrong place?
Suddenly, I find my inner airmail pilot. He’s not
Hopson. Not Boyle. He’s Maurice Newton, the
bifocaled elder of the pilot group who famously
airspacemag.com
 The author (right),
did his best to
summon the
courage of
legendary airmail
pilot William “Wild
Bill” Hopson (left),
who delivered the
mail faithfully and
fearlessly for eight
years (and 4,043
flight hours) before
being killed in a
night crash near
Polk, Pennsylvania
in October 1928. He
was 38 years old.
became “yellow” following a nasty crash.
I execute a shallow turn and slide back down
off the shoulder of the Medicine Bow Range, the
blanket of trees dropping away beneath me as I
abandon my attempt to cross. Course reversed, I
break out my portable GPS to find my way across
the range, my inner Hopson muttering about
“Yellah” pilots under his breath.
I divert to Rawlins for fuel using this modern
high tech, sulking the whole way about my failure
to do as well on the second day as I had done on
the first. But once gassed up, I’m back on the case,
using Pilots’ Directions to get to Rock Springs—
having trouble finding “a huge black hill of rock
south of the course,” called, appropriately enough,
Black Butte.
Next stop: Salt Lake City. To find the airmail
field, Pilots’ Directions says, “Follow westward along
the road just south of the fair grounds.” The fair
grounds are still there. As is the airfield. But it’s
now among the biggest airports in the country.
So what has remained the same since the days
of Pilots’ Directions? Almost nothing. What has
LEFT: NASM (10780-2007)
changed? Nearly everything. What disappeared?
Nearly every trace of the airmail pioneers. And yet,
I’ve proven that the world of a century earlier has
not been overgrown or overbuilt so completely
that this once-invaluable reference guide can’t still
February/March 2020
be useful. Despite a brief GPS detour, I returned
to its pages, flying through the mountains using
its century-old prose, my wits, a watch, and a
pencil—and relishing my hard-won connection
to a long-dead era.
I throttle back, descending from my high perch
in the sky above the mountains that ring the city.
Their sheer, rocky faces fall so abruptly to the valley
floor that I feel like I’m diving into a pool of deep,
clear water—and suddenly the modern world blasts
the last vestiges of the past out of my cockpit. A
barrage of radio chatter floods into my headset.
My thumb rests on the transmit button, but
there’s no break in the deluge of calls, instructions,
and directions to let me announce my presence.
It’s such a shock from how I’ve been flying that my
inner Yellow Maurice is in his full glory. Although
I’ve arranged permission to land the rudimentary
Warbler with gigantic, instrumented airliners,
I tuck my twin-tails between my legs and turn
Warbler south to flee.
But then my backbone returns. Neither missing
airports nor lost train tracks nor tall mountains
nor scary-busy airspace shall stay this self-ap-
pointed courier from the swift completion of his
appointed rounds.
I land and deliver my last batch of mail. Hopson
would be proud.
AIR & SPACE 33
 BIG
DIG
FOR A
BUZZ
BOMB
THIS PATCH OF ENGLISH WOODLAND near
the village of Bromley Green, about eight miles
from the Channel shore, was once a smoking
crater. A V-1 flying bomb—fired by Germany’s
Luftwaffe at London but shot down minutes
before getting there—crashed and exploded here
around eight o’clock in the morning on August
27, 1944, gouging a hole in the earth 10 feet deep
and 20 feet across. The blast of its warhead and
fuel lifted the nearest house, more than 600 feet
away, off its foundations.
Seventy-five years later, to the exact day, the old
crater is the site of an archaeological investigation
led by two brothers who grew up hearing stories
of the terror wrought by Germany’s V-1s. Colin
and Sean Welch have searched for fragments of
34 AIR & SPACE
the flying bombs over the past 10 years. Today
at Bromley Green, they’ve already cleared away
fallen trees and marked out a grid on the surface.
A magnetometer scan has found deeply buried
pieces of metal—their quarry in the hunt.
Germany started launching V-1s against London
one week after D-Day. Observers saw the first at
dawn on June 13, 1944 over the coastal village
of Dymchurch, some 50 miles from London—a
low-flying aircraft with a bright glow at the back,
making a noise like “a Model-T Ford going up a
hill,” a witness later said. That noise, caused by the
sputtering roar of its primitive pulse jet, came to
KENTONLINE
characterize the V-1s, which soon became known
as “buzz bombs” and “doodlebugs”—a British
nickname for noisy summer insects. By the end
airspacemag.com
 TWO AMATEUR ARCHAEOLOGISTS
SCOUR THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE
FOR REMNANTS OF HITLER’S
VENGEANCE WEAPONS.
■ BY TOM METCALFE

of June, up to 100 V-1s were launched each day
from 157-foot-long catapult ramps near the coast
of occupied France. By the end of World War II,
Germany had fired around 10,000 buzz bombs at
Britain. More than 2,400 struck London, killing
more than 6,100 people.
The V-1s were the first of the German miracle
weapons, Wunderwafen, that Nazi leaders declared
would win the war. Adolf Hitler said they would
avenge the Allied bombings of German cities, and
they were dubbed V-weapons—Vergeltungswafen,
or vengeance weapons. “Hitler’s was a vengeful
personality, always seeking to punish those who
crossed him or who betrayed his fantastic ambi-
tions,” says war historian Richard Overy of Exeter
University. In a prisoner-of-war camp just outside
London, captured German airmen heard the noise Colin (left) and Sean
of the V-1s. “All the prisoners stood there and Welch search for
started to sing ‘Deutschland Uber Alles,’ ” Welch fragments of a
German V-2 missile
recalls reading in an historical account. “They all in the British village
knew that Hitler had promised to win the war at Lynsted. Their other
the last minute with the wonder-weapons.” quarry is the V-1
A V-1 was 27 feet long and weighed more than “doodlebug”—
thousands of which
two tons; its pulse-jet engine was fueled by 165
were shot down over
gallons of gasoline. With a top speed of more than the countryside
400 miles an hour, a V-1 could be over England in during World War II.
15 minutes and over London in 30. A single V-1
carried 1,900 pounds of high-explosive—almost
the entire load of a German twin-engine bomber.
“It was a pretty ferocious beast,” says Tom
Hopkins, a curator at Royal Air Force Museum
Cosford, which displays a captured V-1 flying

February/March 2020 AIR & SPACE 35

 bomb as well as a V-2 rocket. (The National Air
and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. also has
both weapons on display.)
The V-1 was guided by a simple autopilot that
used three gyroscopes powered by a tank of com-
pressed air. The autopilot kept it flying straight
A V-1 begins its
at a height of a few thousand feet, the altitude
deadly descent on determined by a preset barometric altimeter.
London. More than But the launching ramps had to be aimed directly
2,400 V-1s made it at their targets. A few V-1s trailed aerial wires,
through air defenses broadcasting a regular series of pulses so that the
and struck the city,
killing more than
Luftwaffe could calculate when and where they
6,100. Bottom: A fell. But when the flying bombs were aimed at
German crew a large city like London, accuracy didn’t matter
prepares a V-1 for much. More than 6,500 V-1s crashed or were
launch in 1944. shot down by fighters and anti-aircraft guns, but
Initially, the British
mistook the
thousands still got through.
automated weapons When a V-1 neared its target, a counter driven
for piloted aircraft. by a small propeller jammed the elevators down
and locked the rudder in neutral, putting it into
a steep dive, which disrupted the flow of fuel and
stopped the engine. The moment the engine sound
stopped, the bomb was on its way, and British
citizens learned that about 10 seconds after the
silence began, the bomb would hit—a desperate
time for anyone nearby.
“You just prayed that they wouldn’t cut out and
they wouldn’t fall on you. It was a horrible feeling
but you prayed, ‘Please let them go further and fall
on somebody else…’ ” said a mechanic, quoted in
the book Terror from the Sky: The Battle Against the
Flying Bomb by British journalist Graham Thomas.
Digging up the remains of a 75-year-old bomb is
hard work, but the Welch brothers are used to
it. This dig near Bromley Green is their eighth
excavation of a V-1 crash site. (They have also
examined five V-2 rocket impacts and the crash
site of a Tempest fighter flying bomb patrol.) The
county of Kent, where Colin lives, was the closest
part of England to the V-1 launch sites in France,
and it was where most of the flying bombs crashed
or were shot down. “It was almost like the flying
bomb and the V-2 rocket story found us,” he
explains. “Two Typhoons [fighters] collided near
where I live—they were on V-1 patrol. There was
a flying bomb in the valley just by the side of us...
everywhere we looked, we found V-weapons all
over the place.”
The brothers locate the crashed V-weapons by
examining county and national records, includ-
ing the official “bomb census”—an attempt by
the wartime authorities to record the damage
caused by falling bombs. Because those records

TOP: USAF; BOTTOM: NASM (SI-76-5412~A); OPPOSITE (MAP): SEAN WELCH; OPPOSITE BOTTOM: RAF
are incomplete, they also check combat reports
from fighter pilots on V-1 patrols.
The brothers work closely with historical offi-
cers for the county of Kent and send a copy of the
final report from each dig to Britain’s Ministry of
Defence. They make a detailed risk assessment at
each site before a dig begins. Sean explains that
V-2s hit the ground at three times the speed of
sound, so there is little chance that any unexploded
warhead remains. He continues: “The V-1 on det-
onation leaves a characteristic crater, so when we
see this, we know that it has exploded.”
This latest excavation is extremely muddy.
The hole fills with water, which must be pumped
away. Colin, inside the crater, digs with a trowel,
scanning for fragments with a metal detector and
directing the shovel of a mobile excavator. As
scoops of earth are deposited beside the crater,
Sean re-scans them with another metal detector.
Every small piece of metal from the V-1 blast will
be cleaned, conserved, and photographed for the

36 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 A map of Kent
County, created by
the Welch brothers,
shows the
thousands of V-1s
that crashed before
they reached
London and some of
the many that made
it (in the upper left
corner). Fighter
pilots, anti-aircraft
guns, and barrage
balloons brought
down the bombs,
but doing so came
at a cost, draining
resources from
elsewhere in the war
effort. The yellow
circle on the map is
the location of the
Welch brothers’
recent excavation at
Bromley Green.

THE HIGH SPEED OF THE FLYING BOMBS

MADE IT ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE FOR MOST
AIRCRAFT TO CATCH THEM. FAST FIGHTERS
LIKE THE LATEST SPITFIRES, TEMPESTS,
AND AMERICAN-BUILT MUSTANGS AND
THUNDERBOLTS WERE MODIFIED FOR
MAXIMUM SPEED BY STRIPPING OFF
EVERYTHING THAT WASN’T NEEDED.

The only known

image of a Spitfire
nudging a V-1.
Pilots developed
“wing tipping” to
bring down the
flying bombs. By
getting the wing of
final report on the dig, to be filed with Kent’s a few fatalities. “The AA [anti-aircraft] guns were
the fighter close to historical records office. supposed to stop firing once they picked up any
the wing of the V-1, Wartime spy reports gathered by a program fighters chasing the V-1s, but in many cases they
then sharply pulling codenamed “Operation Crossbow” had warned the didn’t and some good experienced pilots were lost
away, the pilot could
British that new German weapons were coming, because of it,” says Thomas.
disrupt the airflow
and destabilize the and aerial photographs had revealed their strange The high speed of the flying bombs made it
V-1 gyroscopes. launching ramps along the French coast. But the almost impossible for most aircraft to catch them.
British weren’t sure what they were up against Fast fighters like the latest Spitfires, Tempests,
until the first V-1s started to fall. and American-built Mustangs and Thunderbolts
Both the pilots and the gun crews quickly learned were modified for maximum speed by stripping
that the V-1s were traveling too low and too fast to off everything that wasn’t needed—including
be easily hit. Some of the guns opened fire on V-1s armor and paint—and souping up their engines.
while they were still being chased by warplanes, Typhoons, Mosquitoes, Beaufighters, Fireflies, and
sometimes resulting in “friendly fire” incidents and American Black Widows were also pressed into

February/March 2020 AIR & SPACE 37

the air fight against the V-1s, as were a few new
Gloster Meteors, the only Allied jets that fought
in combat during the war. They were fast enough
but had trouble with their cannon.
The V-1 excavation has come to an end after 10
hours. The hole has now been filled and leveled,
and the recovered fragments carefully stored for
analysis. A key find is the V-1’s jet tube, a crumpled
and corroded piece of steel weighing hundreds of
pounds, buried deep in the crater and prevented
from rusting away by a layer of heavy clay.
A few days later, in a workshop filled with
intricate metal parts recovered from V-1 and
V-2 impact sites, Colin Welch confirms a strange
account in the wartime records: a Mustang pilot
claimed only half a kill for bringing down the V-1
newly excavated from Bromley Green. “You’ve
got the Mustang flying behind the V-1, going
full speed to try and catch it up,” he says. “But
then a Hawker Tempest swooped in from the
front quarter and below and shot at the thing.”
Corroded ammunition strikes show the Mustang’s
machine gun bullets hit the jet tube directly from
behind, but the Tempest’s 20mm cannon also hit
the front of the engine. “They both got it, and the
archive record is actually right—half a kill for each
of them,” he says. “But it is absolutely astonishing to
get the evidence in a day’s excavation.”
So far the Welch brothers have found only those
V-1 and V-2 impact sites where the warhead and
leftover fuel have detonated in a final explosion.
Many steel parts have now rusted away, but they
often find pieces of the control mechanisms and
fuel system that were made from aluminum. A
38 AIR & SPACE
V-1 impact site at Packing Wood in Kent last
year was especially fruitful—it yielded much of
the flying bomb’s control compartment, which
showed where several bullets from the attacking
aircraft had hit it.
This latest dig has not yielded all that it might,
however. Many of the metal parts usually found at
V-1 crash sites are missing from this investigation,
“ IT WAS ALMOST LIKE THE FLYING
BOMB AND THE V-2 ROCKET STORY
FOUND US. TWO TYPHOONS [FIGHTERS]
COLLIDED NEAR WHERE I LIVE–THEY
WERE ON V-1 PATROL. THERE WAS A
FLYING BOMB IN THE VALLEY JUST
BY THE SIDE OF US…EVERYWHERE WE
LOOKED, WE FOUND V-WEAPONS ALL
OVER THE PLACE.”
— COLIN WELCH
The gyroscope
platform of the V-1,
depicted in the
schematic diagram
on the left, is still
recognizable after
including pieces such as the gyroscopes and con- being excavated at
trol mechanisms. Colin suspects treasure hunters a site near
known as “nighthawks” have already been over the Hamstreet in Kent
crater with metal detectors to find trophies for in 2018. A simple
autopilot used three
themselves or to sell on the internet. V-1 impact gyroscopes
sites are often in woodlands or in the countryside powered by a tank
far from any buildings, so the treasure hunters can of compressed air.
RESEARCH RESOURCE VIA TOM METCALFE (2)
airspacemag.com
 The Welch brothers
excavate a V-1 crash
site in Hamstreet.
The bombs created
a distinctive crater
upon exploding, so
the brothers know
they are not at risk
of encountering
unexploded
ordnance.

avoid getting permission from a landowner by

not asking for it in the first place. They also avoid
making their finds public and documenting them.
It’s an activity Colin is firmly against. “They are
Many of the steel
parts of the V-1
marauding all of the sites, and there is no record
have rusted away being kept for the future,” he says.
over the past 70 By early August 1944, most of the British
years. Elements anti-aircraft guns had been equipped with radar—
made from enabling them to locate V-1s in darkness and bad
aluminum, such as
the fuel system,
weather—and were using new proximity fuses
tend to be in better for their shells. This secret weapon, developed in
shape. Sometimes, the United States, was decisive against the flying
parts are removed bombs and downed an estimated 50 percent of
from sites by the V-1s, says Overy.
metal-detector
wielding treasure
Allied aerial bombing also helped efforts to put
hunters known as an end to the threat of the V-1 flying bombs and the
“nighthawks.” much faster V-2 rockets,, which Germanyy started
launching in September 1944. “Overrunning the
[launch] sites helped, but it was really Allied air
power that made a difference, by disrupting trans- tions is becoming a priority. All their excavations
port and attacking the sources of manufacture,” so far have been largely self-funded. “Nothing can
says Overy. help our work more than financial help,” says
Colin and Sean Welch are already planning to Colin. He’s also searching for witnesses to V-1
excavate another V-2 crash in Kent, and there and V-2 impacts to learn more about what they
are thousands more V-1 crash sites yet to be saw of the V-weapon bombing campaigns. “The
uncovered. The brothers hope to create an online generations who experienced this thing happen-
museum where 3-D photography of their finds and ing are still amongst us but are dying out fast,” he
the history of the V-weapons can be presented. says. “I need to be talking to them. I need to be
They would like some of the recovered parts of knowing where things happened, and recording
KENTONLINE

the bombs to be displayed in brick-and-mortar where things happened for the future.”
museums. In the meantime, the brothers intend to keep
Finding new financial backers for their excava- digging.

February/March 2020 AIR & SPACE 39

LAST OF THE
LONG-DISTANCE
ESCORTS
40 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com
 THE TWIN MUSTANG HAS
EVADED RESTORERS…
UNTIL NOW.
BY LEIGH GIANGRECO

The only flying Twin Mustang

leads the way for a Boeing
B-29 (the restored Doc),
a flight reminiscent of
SCOTT SLOCUM

the P-82’s intended—but

unrealized—role as a bomber
escort in World War II.

February/March 2020 AIR & SPACE 41

 to a hangarr belonging to the Valiant
d Warbird Museum in Titusville,
March, I ran into a familiar sight: a
l bomber named Panchito. By some
stroke of kismet, it was the same B-25 I had seen
five years earlier as a reporter in Georgetown,
Delaware, where I wrote about the bomber’s role
as a mascot for a local boys’ baseball team.
The restored bomber was in Titusville to par-
ticipate in the Space Coast Warbird Airshow.
Sitting next to the B-25 was the man who had
restored it, Tom Reilly. For the last 48 years,
Reilly has restored 34 aircraft, including nine
B-25s (counting Panchito).
“There are two types of people—bomber pilots
and fighter pilots,” Reilly told me. “The fighter
pilots always wear clean clothes. They don’t have
any oil dripped on them. They don’t have any
cuts. Bomber guys have grease on them.” Of the
two camps, Reilly is firmly grounded among the
bomber guys. His blue jeans are streaked with
grease, and his hands show dirt and signs of sun
damage, no doubt from years spent working out-
doors in Florida.
After the war, the
National Advisory
Committee for
Aeronautics used a
Twin Mustang as a
testbed for the
development of
ramjet and missile
technology.
42 AIR & SPACE
In 1971, Reilly was working as a skydiving
instructor in Kissimmee when he took a chance
ride in a P-51 Mustang. The next day, he jumped
into the airplane business. He bought four North
American NA-64 Yales in Canada and doubled
his money when he sold them. Since then, he
has restored a B-24 Liberator, a P-40 Warhawk,
nine T-6s, three Boeing B-17s, and the aforemen-
tioned B-25s.
A master restorer, sporting a baseball cap
emblazoned “Tom Reilly Warbird Restoration
Museum” with his signature stitched on the right
side, Reilly can be brusque. Without knowing his
impressive history, one could easily consider him
arrogant. Once you get to know him, though, his
kindness is apparent.
“He can be intimidating at times, and he can
be an absolute sweetheart,” says Louisa “Weezie”
Barendse, Reilly’s dogged researcher. She has
scoured online sources for drawings and aircraft
parts. “After a while, he expects you to not ask
stupid questions,” she says. “He’s very serious when
it comes to working on the airplanes.”
Reilly’s latest undertakingg might
m be his most
NACA VIA NATIONAL ARCHIVESCREDIT
airspacemag.com
 Tom Reilly (far
right) has a talent
for coaxing old
airplanes back to
life. In the 1980s,
he restored the
B-25 Panchito
(above).

Paul Flora shoots

rivets into the
XP-82’s wing
at a restoration
TOP: PAUL BOWEN; BOTTOM LEFT: WEEZIE BARENDSE; RIGHT: CAROLINE SHEEN

facility in
Douglas,
g , Georgia. g

challenging: a North American XP-82, the sec-
ond prototype—but the first to fly—of the U.S.
Army Air Corps’ Twin Mustang. Invented by
German-born aircraft designer Edgar Schmued
and greenlit by the U.S. Army Air Forces’ General
Hap Arnold in 1943, the Twin Mustang is unique:
It mates two North American P-51 fuselages with
a common center wing and a horizontal stabilizer.
Schmued’s double aircraft could accommodate a
two-man crew, which would lighten workload and
reduce pilot fatigue—a necessity for the airplane’s
expected long-range missions. In February 1947,
Colonel Robert E. Thacker flew a P-82B nonstop
from Hawaii to New York without refueling. The
5,051-mile flight is the longest nonstop flight ever
made by a propeller-driven fighter.
The P-82 arrived too late in World War II for its
original mission as a bomber escort in the Pacific,
but it performed a crucial, if short-lived, role in
the Korean War: flying combat patrols over the
38th parallel. Before its ultimate retirement in
1953, the aircraft, which had been redesignated
as the F-82, would also fly ground-attack missions
in South- and North Korea.
The rarity of the Twin Mustang has only
increased. Of the 272 manufactured by North

February/March 2020 AIR & SPACE 43

 The corroded left
cockpit (left) was
cleaned with a mild
abrasive using glass
beads before
receiving new
instruments and
being fitted with
new metal trim. The
right cockpit got the
same treatment.

American, Reilly’s is one of five remaining and
the only surviving prototype. (Only two proto-
types were built. The first prototype was scrapped
at Maryland’s Naval Air Station Patuxent River
in 1953.) His is currently the only P-82 in flying
condition, though that distinction came unexpect-
edly when test pilot Ray Fowler accidentally flew
the fighter on New Year’s Eve 2018 over Reilly’s
airfield in Douglas, Georgia.
“It was cold, and we wanted to put a little bit
of air underneath the wings just to test the stick,”
says Reilly. “It had so much horsepower, and it
accelerated so much faster than a regular D-model
Mustang, which is usually what [Fowler] flies” that
it became airborne before Fowler intended it to.
While aviation geeks rejoiced over the resur-
rected fighter’s unintentional flight, the occasion
marked only one step in a long journey that
involved a global scavenger hunt. Reilly boasts that
he can rebuild anything, but tracking down the
Twin Mustang parts posed the greatest hurdle of
the project. When he describes his quest, he reit-
erates one word: magical. “It became an incredibly
magical project where virtually everything went
XP-82 was damaged beyond repair when it was
acquired by Soplata, who proceeded to hack away
at its inboard section and unbolt its wings.
The XP-82 would remain in a sad state until
December 2007, when Reilly was picking his way
through Soplata’s snowy yard as he surveyed the
collector’s aircraft for an IRS appraisal. Reilly
turned over a piece of tin to reveal what he assumed
was a P-51 fuselage, but Soplata told him it was
the left fuselage of an XP-82.
The sight was almost mythical for Reilly. He
had seen an F-82 decades earlier, and despite
his affinity for bombers, had fallen in love with Had the Twin
the Twin Mustang and longed to purchase one. Mustang ever flown
It’s now become his favorite aircraft. “It was just in combat, its
sleek, and it was different I guess,” he says. “I had center-mounted
.50-caliber guns (in
seen all the fighters in the world, but I had never a test exercise)
seen one of these.” would have made it
Reilly purchased the left fuselage, and then a potent adversary.
TOP: WEEZIE BARENDSE (2); BOTTOM: NACA VIA NATIONAL ARCHIVES

perfectly right, all at the right time,” he says.

The XP-82’s rising originated where many
warbird restoration stories begin: in the back-
yard of the late Walter Soplata, who had amassed
a junkyard collection of aircraft at his farm in
Newbury, Ohio. When Reilly found the first
piece of the Twin Mustang puzzle, the fighter was
in bad shape. The second prototype had lived a
full and bruising life as a test aircraft for the Air
Force and later the National Advisory Committee
for Aeronautics (the predecessor to NASA). The
XP-82’s run with NACA lasted from 1946 until
1949, when the aircraft skidded off an icy runway.
With a twisted fuselage and bent propellers, the

44 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 For viewers at an
airshow, Reilly (left)
opens up the
gleaming gun-
ammunition bay
CAROLINE SHEEN

with the help of

restoration
volunteer Max
Hodges (right).

February/March 2020 AIR & SPACE 45

pooled the contributions of 40 investors—with-
out revealing to them which airplane he intended
to restore. He knew that if word got out that an
XP-82 was available, other warbird collectors
would pounce.
“It’s one of the last warbird projects to buy,”
says Reilly. “There’s no B-17s. There’s hardly any
Mustangs. There’s no Corsairs. No P-38s—none
of these projects exist any longer. Everything that
was out there has been gobbled up.”
His clandestine search brought him to a wreck
in Alaska, where he found an F-82 tail section
and outboard wings. In Colorado, Reilly bought
a badly damaged right fuselage and had his team
copy the bent pieces. He also procured 40,000
pages of plans for the XP-82 (through the E model
F-82) from a collector in California who had pre-
served the blueprints by transferring them from
microfiche to DVDs.
Perhaps the most unexpected gem he unearthed
was the P-82’s lefthand-turning engine. Reilly’s
aircraft, the first prototype to fly, initially had
upsweeping props: the left fuselage had a count-
er-rotating lefthand-turning engine (a Packard
V-1650 Merlin). The right fuselage had the
standard righthand turner. (Only one flight was
ever made with this configuration.) The Merlin
engines would go on to power the initial pro-
46 AIR & SPACE
duction models until failed contract negotiations
with Rolls-Royce forced the Air Force to switch to
the Allison V-1710 for later versions of the Twin
Mustang. The Merlin engine, though, produces
an appealingly throatier sound than the Allison.
Unable to track down the elusive lefthand-turn-
ing engine, Reilly decided to negotiate for an engine
core that could be rebuilt. Just as he was writing
the check, he got a call from Mike Nixon, an expert
restorer of Merlin V-12 engines in California.
Nixon had discovered a never-used Merlin
lefthand-turning engine sitting in a garage—in
Mexico City. “I said, ‘Buy it,’ ” says Reilly. “Didn’t
even ask the price. How this one spare got to
Mexico, we have no clue and we’ll never know.”
As Reilly widened his search for parts and word
leaked out that the XP-82 might come together, he
began receiving donated parts from well-wishers,
Reilly’s XP-82 including a canopy from North Carolina and a
wasn’t the only rare automatic-direction-finder radio crank from
one at the
Experimental
England. “It’s such a rare airplane,” he says. “It’s
Aircraft not a Mustang, it’s not a Corsair—it’s an XP-82.
Association’s It’s rare. So people are sending me stuff.”
Oshkosh airshow The attention to detail on Reilly’s XP-82 is stun-
last year. One ning, down to the brass mount for the aircraft’s
man was inspired
to build a
fire extinguisher and the original World War II
pedal-car replica radios that include a detonator switch designed
for his sons. to explode the radios in the event of a crash and
CAROLINE SHEEN
airspacemag.com
 capture by the Germans or Japanese. Only a few
of Reilly’s modifications prevent the XP-82 from
being a perfect replica. For example, he has installed
MT composite propellers for lack of steel ones
made by Aeroproducts.
“You’re doing your best to roll the clock back,
and some things you just can’t,” says Bill Parks, a
mechanic who is part of the XP-82 restoration
team.
For parts that can’t be purchased or salvaged,
Reilly’s machinists, Vick Paris and John Eiler,
stepped in. A native of Jackson, Michigan, Eiler is
retired after working three decades as a tool-and-
“YOU’RE DOING YOUR B ES
ST TO
ROLL THE CLOCK BACK, AND
D SOME
S tional standpoint, some pilots felt a psychological
THINGS YOU JUST CA
CAN’T.”
—BILL PARKS, MECHANIC
die maker in the automotive industry. He joined
the XP-82 team eight years ago. Since then, he
has machined more than 300 parts for the aircraft
along with his son, John Eiler Jr., who programs
the machines on a computer. “They’re new parts,
but made exactly like the original,” says Eiler senior.
“You couldn’t tell mine from the original one.”
SCOTT SLOCUM
The team’s commitment to originality paid
off: The XP-82 took home four awards at
the Experimental Aircraft Association’s 2019
February/March 2020
Test pilot Ray AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, including the
Fowler, sitting in Phoenix Award, which Reilly received for restor-
the left cockpit, ing an airplane that was considered beyond help.
took the XP-82
for a ride last
Maintenance on the XP-82 has proven demand-
June. When the ing since few Twin Mustangs exist and Reilly
airplane first
fi has already drained the world of parts, says Max
took to the sky in Hodges, a volunteer mechanic on the XP-82.
2018, it had
Hodges is also an experienced commercial pilot,
been more than
60 years since and he got the opportunity to fly the XP-82 from
the type had the right seat alongside test pilot Ray Fowler lead-
flown.
fl ing from the left.
During the flight, Hodges experienced the same
disorienting effects of flying a double aircraft that
earlier Twin Mustang pilots withstood. In his
book, Twin Mustang: The North American F-82 at
War, r author Alan Carey writes: “From an opera-
discomfort of impending doom of a mid-air colli-
sion when they caught sight of the co-pilot/radar
operator’s fuselage out of the corner of their eyes.”
The XP-82’s bewildering complexity, from
its scarce parts to its unsettling effect on pilots,
might be part of the appeal for Reilly. Back out
on the airfield in Florida, Sharon Mason, who
worked as Reilly’s office manager at his former
warbird museum in Kissimmee, greeted Reilly
under the wings of Panchito. The two worked
together on B-25s as well as on a B-24 Liberator,
a rotted bomber that had served as a coastal air-
craft in India. In that case and with the XP-82,
Reilly welcomed the task of putting together an
aircraft when others said it couldn’t be done. “He’s
drawn to a challenge,” says Mason. “He says, ‘I’m
going to do it.’ ”
The XP-82 might be Reilly’s greatest challenge
to date, but it’s likely not his last.
AIR & SPACE 47
THE YEAR
UFOs ARE BACK. Or perhaps better put, interest
in UFOs is again on the rise.
For most of a generation—from 1987 to 2015—
media coverage of unidentified flying objects
measurably declined. In the past couple of years,
though, television, newspapers, and social media
have made mysterious aerial sightings and the
possibility of visitors from outer space big news
again. Why the sudden resurgence?
A handful of events helped drive the new interest.
Although unrelated, these events have been mutually
reinforcing; that is, stories written about any one
of them typically mention the others, leaving the
48 AIR & SPACE
BRIAN VAN DER BRUG/COPYRIGHT © 2019 LOS ANGELES TIMES.
impression that they add up to a single, developing
narrative. The first event, and the spark that ignited
today’s UFO revival, came in December 2017, when
the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Politico
all reported that from 2007 to 2012, the Pentagon
funded a secret program to investigate reports of
unidentified flying objects. The program certainly
REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION.
wasn’tthefirstofitskind—therehavebeennumerous
government fact-finding efforts dating back to the
1940s. But this latest one had never been disclosed
to the public.
The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification
Program, or AATIP, as it was eventually desig-
airspacemag.com
OF UFOs IN 2019, OUR EYES WERE ON THE SKIES.
■ BY GREG EGHIGIAN

nated, was charged with investigating sightings unexplained aerial phenomena. There was noth- Publicity stunt?
(mostly by U.S. military personnel) and determin- ing new or unusual about a prominent politician Joke? Excuse to
drink alien-themed
ing whether any of the reported objects posed a ordering up a UFO investigation. The question
beer? September’s
threat to national security. The program came of “what’s really going on up there” has drawn #StormArea51
about at the request of former Nevada senator bipartisan attention for decades, from Gerald Ford event in Nevada
Harry Reid, who had a long-standing interest in to Jimmy Carter (who as Georgia governor once ended up being
UFOs and who at the time was Senate majority filed a UFO report) to Hillary Clinton. more of a lark than
a bold attempt to
leader. With support from two other influential All told, it was estimated that AATIP spent
prove that the truth
senators, Ted Stevens of Alaska (who had had around $22 million during its five years of Pentagon is out there. But it
his own UFO experience as an Army Air Forces funding. As part of the investigation, the defense seemed to be
pilot during World War II) and Daniel Inouye of department contracted with Las Vegas-based linked to a rise of
Hawaii, Reid arranged for funding to be inserted Bigelow Aerospace—hotel tycoon Robert Bigelow media interest in
UFOs.
in the defense appropriations bill for investigating is a friend of Reid with a shared interest in UFOs—

February/March 2020 AIR & SPACE 49

to explore the possibility of reverse-engineering
any craft that was imaged or captured. Bigelow
won the contract, Reid explained to New York
magazine interviewer Eric Benson in 2018, because
he’d already been researching the subject for years
and “had spent his own money first.” Today,
Bigelow’s company is best known for designing
inflatable space habitats for future astronauts and
space tourists. (See “The Future of Construction in
Space,” September 2015.) But for the past quarter
century or so, Bigelow has been deeply involved
in researching UFOs and paranormal phenomena,
first through his National Institute for Discovery
Science and then at his 480-acre Skinwalker Ranch
in Utah. As he explained in a “60 Minutes” inter-
view in May 2017, he is “absolutely convinced”
Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials.
Part of what made the 2017 news stories so
compelling is that they were accompanied by
two videos released to the media, with a third
following months later. The footage purported
to show U.S. Navy jet encounters with unusually
shaped, fast-moving aircraft. The videos quickly
went viral and have become the subject of fevered
speculation by UFO investigators. It wasn’t until
long after they first came to light, however, that
the Navy confirmed the dates of the videos. They
had been recorded in 2004 and 2015 by pilots flying
off two aircraft carriers, the USS Nimitzz and the
USS Theodore Roosevelt, off the coasts of California
and Florida. Joseph Gradisher, a spokesman for
the office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations
for Information Warfare, acknowledged that the
three occurrences remained “unidentified,” but
said the Navy would not offer “any hypothesis or
conclusions in regard to the objects contained in
the referenced videos.”
The key figure in all the media reports about the
Pentagon UFO investigation was Luis Elizondo,
known informally as Lue. A career military intel-
50 AIR & SPACE
ligence officer, he identified himself to reporters
as the past head of AATIP, up until the time its
official funding ended in 2012. It was Elizondo
who provided the press with details about the UFO
program’s work, and Elizondo who helped arrange
for the Navy videos to be declassified and shared
with the general public. Right from the start, he
attracted nearly as much media attention as the
aerial mysteries he supposedly was investigating.
Following in the footsteps of past UFO crusaders
like author Donald Keyhoe, psychologist David
Saunders, and astronomer J. Allen Hynek (an
advisor to the Air Force’s Project Blue Book of
the 1950s and 1960s), Elizondo portrayed himself
as a patriotic whistleblower. In a letter resigning
from the defense department in October 2017, he
wrote that he was frustrated by the lack of con-
cern and resources the Pentagon devoted to “what
could be a tactical threat to our pilots, sailors, and
soldiers, and perhaps even an existential threat to The stars of To the
our national security.” Stars Academy of
Beyond Elizondo’s own statements to the press, Arts and Sciences:
Rocker Tom
details about the UFO program’s operations DeLonge (left) and
have been scant. In January 2019, the Defense former military
Intelligence Agency responded to a request from intelligence officer
ffi
the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services for Luis Elizondo
more information about its work. An official at the figured prominently
fi
in a six-part History
agency confirmed that “the purpose of AATIP was Channel series.
to investigate foreign advanced aerospace weapon
threats from the present out to the next 40 years”
and provided a list of all 38 reports associated with
the program. That list has raised eyebrows. Some
of the research topics—high-energy laser weapons
and alternative propulsion systems, warp drives,
antigravity, traversable wormholes, stargates,
and invisibility cloaking devices—struck skeptics
as the stuff of science fiction. UFO enthusiasts,
meanwhile, were left wondering why there was
no mention of sightings like the ones in the Navy
videos released to the media. Because a number
By coincidence, the
fi interstellar
first
object to enter our
solar system
appeared in
October 2017, the
same month To the
Stars Academy was
founded. Called
‘Oumuamua (and
shown here as an
artist’s conception),
it has since been
identified
fi as an
asteroid. Early
speculation that it
might be an alien
spaceship fed the
CREDIT
UFO narrative.
airspacemag.com

of reports on the AATIP list appeared to have
the same titles as reports already in the public
domain, some people wondered if they’d been
repurposed, or if the program had merely done a
literature review.
The second UFO-related event that caught the
media’s attention around the same time as the
AATIP disclosure was the creation of a new, for-
profit company called To the Stars Academy of Arts
and Sciences. Its stated mission is “to investigate the
outer edges of science and unconventional think-
ing” via “an entertainment, science, and aerospace
consortium that engages with global citizens.”
Launched in October 2017—five years after the
Pentagon-funded study ended—its co-founder and
chairman of the board is guitarist Tom DeLonge,
formerly with the rock band Blink-182. Also
joining the team as director of global security and
special programs: Luis Elizondo.
Last March, To the Stars announced that
Elizondo, DeLonge, and four other company
TOP: A+E NETWORKS; BOTTOM: EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY/M. KORNMESSER
executives would be featured in a six-part tele-
vision series to air on the History Channel,
called “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO
Investigation,” and that DeLonge would be exec-
utive producer. The series premiered on May 31
to robust ratings, with each episode reaching
around a million viewers. The show focused on
the highly publicized U.S. Navy videos but also
explored UFO sightings in Italy, Mexico, and the
United Kingdom. Interviews with witnesses were
combined with dramatic recreations.
But the real star of the show was Lue Elizondo,
with To the Stars members Steve Justice, Chris
Mellon, DeLonge, and Hal Puthoff assuming sup-
porting roles, along with Politico correspondent
Bryan Bender. Rather than being a straightfor-
ward documentary about UFOs, “Unidentified”
cast Elizondo as a burly, intrepid, backpack-tot-
February/March 2020
ing crusader seeking to expose the truth in the
face of a stonewalling government bureaucracy
and a culture of ridicule. In doing so, the History
Channel followed a long tradition within ufology
of portraying the UFO investigator as a heroic
figure determined to tear away the veil of secrecy
surrounding extraterrestrial visitors.
Naturally, there have been skeptics all along.
Within days of the release of the Nimitz videos
purporting to show a UFO accelerating at a
rate defying physics, science writer Mick West
showed that the object’s peculiar movement
was the result of a change in the camera’s zoom
level. Writing for Skeptic magazine, Robert
Sheaffer detailed how witnesses in one inci-
dent contradicted one another, and how some
of the anomalous objects appearing on radar
may have been due to a computer upgrade.
The defense department has been little help
in clearing up these mysteries. Since the emer-
gence of UFOs in popular culture in the early
1950s, some investigators have come to expect
silence and denials from government officials
THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT HAS BEEN
LITTLE HELP IN CLEARING UP THESE
MYSTERIES. OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT
SOURCES VERY RARELY COMMENT ON
NEW SIGHTINGS, LEAVING THE FIELD
OPEN TO ALL TYPES OF SPECULATION.
when confronted with claims of sightings. Others
view these tight-lipped responses as evidence of
an official cover-up and conspiracy about alien
visitors. Still others consider them an inevitable,
albeit misguided, reaction by nervous authori-
ties involved in national security. Whatever the
reason, official government sources very rarely
comment on new sightings, leaving the field open
to all types of speculation.
Many in the UFO community were therefore
encouraged when Politico’s Bryan Bender, who
helped break the news about AATIP in 2017,
reported last April that the Navy was drafting new
guidelines for its personnel to report encounters
with unidentified flying objects. The Navy even
appeared to be switching to the designation
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) preferred
by UFO researchers, as the British Ministry of
Defence had already. Navy spokesman Joseph
AIR & SPACE 51
 have become common sources of confusion for
pilots. Said Gradisher, “Sightings of this nature
have increased in frequency from 2014 until now.”
Suddenly the military’s new interest in UFOs
began to seem more mundane than mysterious.
But other, unrelated news stories helped keep
the extraterrestrial narrative going. Around the
same time the AATIP program was revealed,
scientists discovered the first interstellar object
ever seen to enter our solar system. Astronomers
Shmuel Bialy and Abraham (Avi) Loeb of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
raised the possibility that the unusual comet-like
object, dubbed ‘Oumuamua (Hawaiian for “scout”),
could, conceivably, be an alien spacecraft. Later
observations showed it to be most likely natural
in origin, as most astronomers expected. But by
that time, the notion that it possibly was artificial
had become a social media meme.
Then came the “storming” of everyone’s
favorite secret government installation, Area
51 in Nevada. In June, a college student by the
name of Matty Roberts created an event on
Facebook as a joke. He called it “Storm Area 51,
They Can’t Stop All of Us.” The military base
north of Las Vegas has been the site of classi-
fied aircraft testing since the mid-1950s, but
beginning in the 1970s, a number of self-styled
whistleblowers associated with the aerospace
industry began claiming that it also was testing
captured extraterrestrial spacecraft and holding
alien prisoners and corpses. Many in the UFO
community found their claims persuasive.
The #StormArea51 event may have been meant
as a joke, but by early September, more than two
million people had indicated on Facebook that
they would attend. Roberts changed the nature of
the event and decided to hold what he called an
“Alienstock” music festival in the desert town of
Top: Video released Gradisher confirmed to the Washington Postt that Rachel, which he later moved to downtown Las

TOP: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; BOTTOM: MICK AKERS/LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

by the defense the Navy’s UFO reporting guidelines were being Vegas, with Budweiser as a sponsor selling alien-
department, taken
updated, with the purpose of collecting more themed beer. In the meantime, other events were
by U.S. Navy pilots
off
ff the coast of San information for data analysis. But, he cautioned, planned nearer to Area 51, including Hiko, Nevada
Diego in 2004, was don’t expect the data to be shared. “(Any) report (home of the Alien Research Center, a self-styled
presented as an generated as a result of these investigations will, “Area 51 Gateway”), where events and speakers
example of the kinds by necessity, include classified information on were scheduled for the true believer crowd.
of strange aerial
encounters being
military operations,” he said. “Therefore, no release As the date drew closer, the Air Force and local
investigated by the of information to the general public is expected.” police warned potential attendees that trespassers
Pentagon. Above: As Since then, information from the Navy has been on Area 51 property would be arrested. On the eve
for hotel tycoon- sparse, although documents released in response of the event, USA Todayy reporter Ed Komenda said
turned-aerospace- to Freedom of Information Act requests have officials in the area were expecting “anywhere from
executive Robert
Bigelow, he has long
shed more light on the rationale for the new UFO 50 people, maybe 500 people, maybe 10,000 peo-
been convinced that reporting guidelines. Answering reporters’ ques- ple.” Other news outlets and blogs either laughed
Earth is being visited tions last spring, Gradisher said the “wide prolif- off the event or bemoaned it as a pitfall of social
by extraterrestrials. eration and availability of inexpensive unmanned media culture, where silly memes and fake news
aerial systems, such as commercially available can quickly take on a life of their own.
quadcopters, has increasingly made de-confliction In the end, the happening had more the feel
an issue for our aviators.” In other words, drones of a festival than a raid. Lincoln County sheriff

52 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 Kerry Lee told the Associated Press that about 100 craze? Evidence from the United States, Canada,
revelers showed up at the back gate of Area 51 at and the United Kingdom shows that the number
around 3 a.m., with another 40 people going to the of sightings has been holding steady or growing
lesser known Tikaboo Valley gate. Slightly more for decades, so last year was nothing special in that
people showed up during the day, but a source at regard. There was no apparent uptick in public
reports of mysterious flying objects.
The Navy bears some responsibility for the
AS THE DATE DREW CLOSER, THE AIR recent media focus on UFOs, due to its piece-
meal and selective approach to revealing details
FORCE AND LOCAL POLICE WARNED
on reported encounters, which only feeds sus-
POTENTIAL ATTENDEES THAT picions that the government knows more than
TRESPASSERS ON AREA 51 PROPERTY it is telling (as 69 percent of Americans believe,
WOULD BE ARRESTED. according to a Gallup poll taken in September).
But UFO incidents in 2019 did not just happen.
They were promoted. Enthusiasts, journalists,
cable TV networks, academics, bloggers, and To
Two days before the
expected onslaught
the Stars Academy all helped keep the topic in the
at the U.S. Air Force public eye, and all benefited from the attention.
Area 51 facility last Throughout the history of UFO sightings, it
September, artist has never been enough merely to point to isolated
Brandy Whisenant the Independent reported that “the event is clearly weird events. What’s needed are storylines with
paints a mural at the
Alien Research
fairly aimless: dozens of people stood around, characters, drama, suspense, and plot twists. And
Center, a tourist while sheriffs watch on.” The “Area 51 Basecamp” that’s what UFO believers were given in the past
attraction in nearby event at the Alien Research Center in Hiko was year or two. Secret videos. Respectable witnesses.
Hiko, Nevada. The called off after the first day due to small numbers. An eccentric entrepreneur. A celebrity advocate. A
top secret Air Force
Back in Las Vegas, Roberts voiced satisfaction determined whistleblower. Secretive government
LEFTEYEIMAGES

base continues to be
a mecca for about the turnout for the party he organized, and officials bent on stonewalling the truth. None of
believers in alien vowed it would be an annual event. these characters are new to the world of UFOs.
contact. So what should we make of this latest UFO mini- Only the cast has changed.

February/March 2020 AIR & SPACE 53

 WHAT DID THE SCIENTIST SAY TO THE ENGINEER?

LAND

RIGHT

HERE
54 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com
 THE SCIENCE TEAM ON NASA’S
NEXT MARS MISSION KNOWS
EXACTLY WHERE TO GO.
K AT I E STAC K M O R GA N , deputy project sci-
entist for NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, pulls up a
photo of where the rover is headed: the western
rim of Jezero Crater. Billions of years ago, a river
filled that basin, creating a delta and what is today a
dry lakebed. It’s an exciting destination, if, like the
science team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL), you’re on a particular quest. “That is a great
place to go and search for life,” she says.
There’s a neon green ring on the image too:
That’s the ellipse encompassing all the spots their
rover might land. Most of the ring lies in the
lakebed, but because Mars landing is still not an
exact science, it also includes more treacherous
terrain, like the rocky delta and a bit of the crater
rim, as much as a kilometer high.
Tracing a finger on the computer screen, Stack
Morgan maps her desired path. Ideally, they’ll
land in the flats and drive uphill, so scientists
can “read the rocks” from oldest to youngest. It’s
like reading a book, she says: Skipping to the end
might be satisfying, but context is what makes it
most exciting.
What gives Katie Stack Morgan the confidence to
NASA/JPL-CALTECH
point not just to the Jezero Crater but to an area on
its edge, which she hopes the Mars 2020 rover will
explore? A new technology, “terrain-relative
navigation.” The crater once held a deep lake and is
believed to have once harbored microbes.
February/March 2020
■ BY KARA PLATONI
First stop: the delta. “That’s the juicy spot,” she
says, because it would have built up lake sediments
and perhaps organic compounds. Scientists think
life would develop—and fossilize—in quiet, nutri-
ent-rich water, away from the tumult of a river.
Then they would climb to the “bathtub ring,”
the crater’s inner margin, which may have had
warm, shallow waters—another good place to look
for life. Finally, they would ascend to check out
the very oldest rocks in the crater wall, caching
rocks along the way for a future sample-return
mission. “When those samples come back,” she
says, “they are going to feed a generation of Mars
scientists.” (See “Return from a Martian Crater,”
Oct./Nov. 2019.)
But for Allen Chen, the mission’s entry, descent,
and landing lead, this will require some delicate
footwork. “While the scientists love things like
cliffs and scarps and rocks—those are the science
targets for them—that’s death for me,” he says.
Jezero is full of the dangers he would most like to
avoid: rocks (too sharp), slopes (a rollover risk),
and meter-high dunes the team calls “inescapable
hazards” (sand traps).
Therein lies the trade-off that has bedeviled both
Mars and moon landings since the very beginning:
Landing on an open plain is safer, but scientifically
kind of dull. On past missions, Chen says, NASA
wanted each site “to be a parking lot.”
To turn Jezero, once a no-go, into a landing pad,
AIR & SPACE 55

Jet Propulsion the team is relying on terrain-relative navigation,
Laboratory tests the or TRN. The technology, which JPL researchers
sky crane descent have been working on since 2004, enables more
system, which will
gently lower Mars
precise landings by giving the vehicle a visual
2020 to the Red landing system. Using a camera, it scans the
Planet’s surface. The ground for landmarks, compares those images
same method to onboard maps, and estimates its position. Tie
successfully landed
this to related advances in hazard detection and
Curiosity in 2012.
avoidance, and now they have a better shot at not
landing in a sand trap.
With better precision, says Chen, they can tol-
erate more hazards in the ellipse, which can also be
smaller, and closer to the juicy spots Stack Morgan
wants to study. Ultimately, Chen says, TRN means
“we can be near those science targets—those death
hazards to me—and not have to drive years to get
there.” Just like on Earth, drive time means fuel
and money. And you don’t want to know how
much it costs to drive in space.
Before the rover can roll, the spacecraft must
first survive a descent, called, since the 2012 Mars
56 AIR & SPACE
Curiosity rover landing, the “seven minutes of
terror.” After speeding through the Martian atmo-
sphere, an enormous parachute inflates to slow
entry, the heat shield separates from the capsule,
and the rocket-powered “sky crane” hovers to
lower the rover, wheels down, before blowing the
cables and rocketing away to crash somewhere else.
For most of this period, the vehicle won’t have
detailed information about where it is. Mars
missions, Chen says, rely on NASA’s Earth-based
Deep Space Network until the end of the cruise
phase. He compares it to driving while looking in
the rearview mirror.
But once entry begins, the vehicle navigates by
dead reckoning. It’s got an inertial measurement
unit (IMU) that tracks acceleration and angular
rates, but no visual way to scan for landmarks. “At
that point the vehicle doesn’t have a way to figure
out where it is,” says Chen. “It’s still buttoned up
in its aeroshell and we’re about to go screaming
into the atmosphere.”
Chen says it’s like asking a blindfolded person to
find his way across a room based only on a descrip-
tion of how he was positioned in the doorway. “We
tell the vehicle, ‘Well, when the bell goes off, we
think you’re here, and you’re going in this direc-
tion, about this fast,’ ” he deadpans. “Good luck!”
With so much uncertainty, Chen says, after
heat shield separation, “we could be off in our
position in latitude and longitude space by up
to about three kilometers. That’s not so great if
you want to know where you are precisely, and
dodge craters.”
The Apollo series of crew wedd missions to the
moon had a solution: Give the t astronauts a map
and have them look out a win ndoow. But Mars 2020
is people-free, and the landin ng m
must unfurl with-
out help from Mission Con ntrool, because there’s
more than a 10-minute commu unications lag with
Earth. Swati Mohan, lead gguiddance, navigation
and control systems engin neerr for Mars 2020,
describes landing this way: “Because of the delay,
it’s already done it by the time you get the signal
that it started.” TRN fills in this gap by giving the
vehicle its own camera and map.
Mohan and Andrew Johnson, the Mars 2020 guid-
ance, navigation, and control subsystem manager,
NASA/JPL-CALTECH; OPPOSITE: NASA(2)
have gowned up and are standing in a clean room
in front of the Lander Vision System—the eyes
and brain of the navigation technology. (They’ve
recently finished 17 test flights over the Mojave,
so this version is rigged up to fly on a helicopter.)
The system’s “eyes” are the landing camera. “It’s
mounted onto the bottom of the rover, so it actually
takes pictures of the terrain as we come down,”
airspacemag.com
says Mohan, pointing at the left side of the rig. that their estimated position would be off from
The brain—called the Vision Compute Element— the map by no more than 40 meters (about 130
David Sternberg
processes those images. On Mars 2020, it will be feet). When they tested landing conditions similar (left) and Allen
nestled in the rover’s belly. Today, it’s sitting on a to what they expect from Mars 2020, they beat Chen during TRN
shelf, looking like an oversize hard drive. their margin by half—the error was less than 20 testing in
This computer’s job is to swiftly compare the meters. When they tested under more demanding California’s Death
images of the approaching ground with onboard conditions, like areas with high terrain relief or Valley. Bottom: Part
of Jezero Crater,
maps previously stitched together using photos different illumination levels, they stayed within seen from the Mars
shot by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), their original margin. And under the most chal- Reconnaissance
which has been orbiting the planet since 2006. It lenging conditions of all, the system discarded Orbiter, is full of
correlates the two sets, looking for landmarks. estimates it considered unreliable and restarted dangerous rock
But “landmarks” doesn’t mean rocks or craters. It its calculation. Johnson believes this is a good outcroppings but
also contains the
means tiny pixel patterns, gradients of dark and indicator that the system can recover if faced with remnants of three
light that are imperceptible to the human eye but unexpected conditions. rivers, valuable
can be identified by algorithm. Spotting these Meanwhile, on the other side of the JPL cam- science targets.
landmarks, while also using IMU data, will let the
lander find its pos sitioon on the map.
position
Practice shots att a Mars
M landing are vanishingly
rare, so the team m is testing their system using
computer simulaatioons that model parameters
like trajectories, dust, and solar illumination lev-
els. They are also flying their gear over the best
Earth analogs they can locate. “It’s very hard to
find things that look like Jezero Crater,” places
as vast and treeless, says Johnson. They’ve ended
up using desert mesas that are steeper and more
rugged than Jezero, a way to over-train. Other
than a bug that caused the system to reset when
they flew too close to the edge of the map, he says,
“It was a huge success.”
Specifically, Johnson says, they wanted to check

AIR & SPACE 57


pus, scientists have been creating Jezero hazard
maps, marking rocks they can see from orbit, and
modeling smaller ones they can’t—plus those slopes
and sand traps. They will use this to make a “safe
targets map,” which breaks the terrain down into
10-meter-square “pixels,” each scored according
to its hazard level. Before launch, they’ll load this
onto the spacecraft.
The Lander Vision System will activate once
the vehicle is about 4,200 meters above the sur-
face. Once its back shell comes off at about 2,300
meters, the vehicle will use TRN data to gauge its
position, and will autonomously select the safest
nearby pixel from the targets map. Then, down
it will come.
Mohan will be watching from Mission Control,
and Johnson in the entry, descent, and landing
war room, hoping to receive a tone—a specific
radio frequency—indicating that the craft survived
touchdown. Then, a camera mounted higher up
on the vehicle will send back a photo. (The team
is hoping to see ground and not sky, proof the
vehicle’s not upside down or tilted.) By the time
the MRO circles overhead to photograph the
rover, NASA should know exactly where it landed.
TRN is also being researched by private com-
panies working to send spacecraft to the moon.
Among them is Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic
Technology, which is developing TRN for its
Peregrine lander. Fourteen groups have purchased
space on Peregrine to carry everything from sci-
58 AIR & SPACE
entific instruments to time capsules to personal Lead guidance
mementos. engineer Swati
Mohan watches a
“Our business is to make space and the moon
monitor during a
accessible to the world as a whole,” says Astrobotic test at the Jet
principal research scientist Andrew Horchler. The Propulsion
company plans for Peregrine to fly on routine Laboratory. Behind
missions to many lunar sites, landing within 100 her, through the
window, is the
meters of each spot. “Terrain-relative navigation Mars 2020 descent
is an enabling technology for this,” says Horchler. stage.
“It will enhance the overall reliability of landing,
the precision of the landing, and the actual spaces
we can feasibly get to on the moon.”
The frame of the Peregrine lander looks a bit
like a Space Age coffee table; it’s an elegant, alumi-
num-alloy, X-shaped structure atop four spindly
legs, topped by a solar panel. Four payload tanks
can be attached, one to each side of the craft. The
tanks are shaped like golden pill capsules, and
carry a combined 90 kilograms of experiments
or supplies. The entire craft is 1.9 meters tall and
2.5 meters wide.
Astrobotic’s work on TRN received funds from
NASA’s Tipping Point program, which awards
money to bring commercial space technologies
to market. Additionally, Peregrine’s planned 2021
mission to the moon’s Lacus Mortis crater is affil-
iated with NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload
Services (CLPS) program. This public-private
partnership will deliver gear ahead of the agency’s
2024 Artemis landing by astronauts, who will be
sent to the lunar south pole. But landing on the
moon will be somewhat different than landing
on Mars.
First, lunar missions face a photography chal-
lenge. Mars 2020’s rich maps are courtesy of the
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Because it flies a
sun-synchronous orbit, the MRO is continuously
overhead at about 3 p.m. local time, meaning
it’s catching the same shadows on every pass.
Sharp, consistent shadows are important when
you’re trying to map light-and-dark landmarks a
TRN system can find. Mars 2020 is conveniently
scheduled to land at 3 p.m., so what its camera
sees should easily match its maps. (As Chen puts
it: “It’s always kind of 3 p.m. on Mars to me.”)
The moon has the Lunar Reconnaissance
Orbiter, but that spacecraft is on a polar orbit,
and traces a new longitude line on each pass.
“That point in time and view angle will almost
certainly not correspond to what our lander will
see,” says Horchler. “This is even more a factor
at the poles of the moon, where the shadows are
very dynamic, and even small features cast very
long shadows.”
NASA
This variability affects the way private com-
airspacemag.com
 panies headed to the moon make their maps for have more time to run TRN as they descend, which
TRN. Astrobotic and its competitor Draper, a might offer a more precise landing.
fellow CLPS participant based in Cambridge, While Horchler tips his hat to the close rela-
Massachusetts, are creating synthetic landing tionship his company has had with NASA, allow-
images, modeling what the surface will look like ing both to benefit from the other’s research, he
at their intended landing times and spots. They points out that they have another big difference:
Astrobotic’s TRN technology is designed for com-
mercial missions to many destinations. (After their
A CAMERA MOUNTED HIGHER UP ON THE first launch, they hope to fly about one per year.)
VEHICLE WILL SEND BACK A PHOTO. THE He believes their sensor will be able to estimate
TEAM IS HOPING TO SEE GROUND AND NOT position based on a single image, without any addi-
tional information about altitude, orientation, or
SKY, PROOF THE VEHICLE’S NOT UPSIDE velocity, which Horchler says makes their interface
DOWN OR TILTED. simpler, and potentially more self-contained and
robust—better adapted to business use.
Similarly, Draper, which has been building
spacecraft navigation systems since the Apollo mis-
sions, wants to keep things simple. Alan Campbell,
the company’s space systems program manager,
mentions that while their algorithms are likely
The Landing Vision similar to NASA’s, on the hardware side they are
System—essentially build computerized terrain models, then light them “working diligently to build a smaller, lighter, more
a camera attached based on factors like where the craft will be and efficient system to serve many different kinds of
to a hard drive
and inertial
how they expect the moon and sun to be aligned. planetary landing missions.”
measurement Another difference: On Mars, the lander comes After all, that’s still the big idea: landing near all
unit—will image down on a parachute, following a steep trajectory kinds of geologically tricky spots. Horchler says
Mars on the way and using the atmosphere as a brake. But landers that some customers might want to prospect the
ANDREW JOHNSON

down, narrowing can’t parachute on the airless moon, so the land- moon’s poles for ice. Campbell notes that scien-
a potential
3.2-kilometer
ing trajectory must be more horizontal—and that tists are keen to explore its lava tubes, tunnels that
position error to means a bigger map and more data storage. But might shield astronauts from radiation.
40 meters. Horchler says that with a longer trajectory, they’ll And the hope for TRN is that, if your camera

LANDING VISION SYSTEM

COARSE LANDMARK MATCHING

FINE LANDMARK MATCHING

Start as high Switch to fine Operate until
as 13,800 ft landmark 6,560 ft or back
(4,200 m) matching at shell separation
around 12,800 ft

February/March 2020 AIR & SPACE 59


and algorithm work on one heavenly body, they
will work just about anywhere. “We’re really
agnostic to the surface that we’re landing on,”
says Campbell, including ones that are super far
away. Draper has done work for the OSIRIS-REx
sample collection mission to the asteroid Bennu,
and Campbell thinks TRN might be useful for
NASA’s Dragonfly program to send a rotorcraft
to Titan. Horchler points out that their sensor
could be adapted for other moons: Phobos and
Deimos, the satellites of Mars.
“You can’t land on Europa without it,” says
Johnson. Europa has an ocean covered by a giant ice
cap, and is a promising place to hunt for life—but
there’s no detailed imagery of its surface. NASA
plans to send the Europa Clipper orbiter to take
photos, but a lander would have to be designed and
launched before Clipper even arrives. “We don’t
have the luxury like we do at Mars of picking the
landing site beforehand, mapping it out as much
as we possibly can,” Johnson says.
JPL’s Vision Compute Element will perform
a second job after the Mars landing: helping the
rover drive. Mohan says its forebear, Curiosity,
was capable of higher speeds, but poked along at
about 8 meters per hour during autonomous driv-
ing because it couldn’t process terrain images while
moving. The rover, she says, had to constantly
“stop, think, take the next step.” These functions
work in parallel on their new computer, which
they think will boost speeds for fully autonomous
driving to 60 to 80 meters per hour. This too means
getting to the juicy spots faster.
But, suggests Johnson, “Wouldn’t it be cool if
you didn’t have to have a rover?” What if TRN
permitted such pinpoint landings that you could
just send an instrument, like a drill, that works
where it lands? Or, asks Mohan, how about mak-
ing life easier for future human crews? Dropping
their supplies close together will help them set up
60 AIR & SPACE
Andrew Johnson,
Mars 2020’s
guidance,
navigation, and
control systems
manager, boards a
helicopter with the
Landing Vision
System (LVS)
attached for
flight-testing. LVS
performed better
than expected
during 17 test
flights.
their habitats. Instead of scattering payloads over a
huge ellipse, she says, “you’re hitting the bulls-eye
every single time.”
And this, TRN developers say, is the promise
of being able to park in a tight spot. Once you can
safely put people and their machines near dead
lakes or polar ice or anything that was once terra
incognita, the real adventure begins.
Thanks to its novelty, it’s easy to forget that TRN
is being deployed in service of one of humanity’s
oldest questions: Are we alone?
It’s also one of our hardest. “If life existed on
Mars, it was likely microbial and may not have
THE ROVER HAD TO CONSTANTLY “STOP,
THINK, TAKE THE NEXT STEP.” THESE
FUNCTIONS WORK IN PARALLEL ON THEIR
NEW COMPUTER, WHICH THEY THINK WILL
BOOST SPEEDS FOR FULLY AUTONOMOUS
DRIVING TO 60 TO 80 METERS PER HOUR.
NASA/COURTESY ANDREW JOHNSON
advanced beyond that,” says Stack Morgan. It’s
probably very, very small, and very, very dead.
And, for now, scientists have to study it from
very, very far away. Only the second mission of
Mars 2020 is a sample return mission. The rover
will cache rocks to be collected by a future robot,
yet unborn. Until then, scientists must rely on
photos plus electronic data from instruments
airspacemag.com
 Oceanus
Procellarum, where
Apollo 12 landed
thanks in part to
Emil Schiesser,
who realized that
tiny variations in
the spacecraft’s
radio signal could
be used for precise
Intrepid
navigation. NASA
Descent Stage
has selected
(Apollo 12)
Intuitive Machines
to land there again
in July 2021.

Surveyor 3
Spacecraft

A mockup of
Astrobotic’s
Peregrine lander
rests in a
moonscape created
in Pittsburgh. The
spacecraft will use
autonomous TRN
systems to find its
way to Lacus
Mortis, a large
crater on the lunar
near side.
TOP: NASA/GSFC/ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY; BOTTOM: ASTROBOTIC

mounted on the rover arm that can detect organ-
ics like carbon.
So how do you find microbes from 249 million
miles away? Scientists will be looking for biosig-
natures, rock textures, and chemical patterns that
could have formed only in the presence of life.
Take, for example, a fossil formation called a
stromatolite. Stack Morgan picks up a pen. Imagine
a lakebed, she says, drawing a bumpy line. If Jezero
was lifeless, carbon particles falling through the
water column would roll off the lakebed’s peaks
and cluster in its troughs. (She heavily dots the low
points and places only a few on the high ones.)
Once the lake dried up, the resulting stromatolite
would show uneven ripples of carbon: thinner at
the top and thicker at the bottom.
Now imagine the lakebed was covered by a jel-
ly-like mat of microbes. Carbon would have been
equally likely to stick anywhere, she continues,
dotting her pen all over. This time, the carbon
ripples would be consistently thick. “I can explain
that with physics,” she says, pointing to her first
drawing. Then she aims her pen at the second. “I
can only explain that with life.”

February/March 2020 AIR & SPACE 61

 ADVENTURES
ABOVE THE
OIL FIELDS

62 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

IN THE 1930s MIDDLE EAST, PILOTS FACED LONG DISTANCES,
PRIMITIVE AIRFIELDS, SANDSTORMS,
BREAKDOWNS, AND A HOSTILE POPULATION.
■ BY MICHAEL QUENTIN MORTON

D R O N E S EQ U I P P E D W I TH CA M E R AS and
sensors offer an efficient method today to inspect
the vast oil fields of the Middle East. “It’s pretty
useful if you are operating in the Middle East to
know what is going on before you go out into the
field,” British Petroleum technology director Curt
Smith told Hart Energy in 2015. His words echo
the thoughts of Charles Ritchie, a manager for
the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, the forerunner
of British Petroleum. In 1911, tired of inspecting
oil pipelines on horseback, Ritchie decided to
import the first airplane into Persia (today’s Iran).
At the time, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company
was in the process of testing a new pipeline run-
ning from its oilfield at Maidan-i-Naftun to the
site of a new refinery at Abadan. The project had
brought employment to local people, but such was
their enthusiasm for the work that they loosened
the bolts on the pipeline at night so that they
would be hired to tighten them up the next day.
Ritchie was living his own version of Groundhog
Day, caught in an endless replay as he rode up
In 1930 from a
Junkers F.13 leased by
and down the pipeline to inspect and fix the leaks
the Anglo-Persian Oil only for them to reappear again. In his frustration,
he telegraphed his head office: “Send one Blériot
© BP ARCHIVE (ARC36131_029)

Company (a forerunner
of BP), the site of the monoplane with instruction book.” Barely 18
first oil strike in the months had passed since Louis Blériot’s famous
Middle East (1908),
looks deserted. Today,
flight across the English Channel.
its wells produce 5,000 It was a bold move that surprised his colleagues
barrels a day. and alarmed officials of the Persian government,
who thought that “it would be highly undesir-

February/March 2020 AIR & SPACE 63

 The air route
between Amman,
Jordan, and
Baghdad, Iraq
offered
ff limited
refueling; the fort at
the halfway point
was a welcome
sight.

TOP: QATAR DIGITAL LIBRARY; INSET: LOC; OPPOSITE: UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MILWAUKEE AGSL DIGITAL PHOTO ARCHIVE
A March 1945 map
of Middle East oil
concessions shows
all known oil fi
fields,
projected pipelines,
and existing
refineries.
fi

able that it should be used in Persia, where…the
Mullahs might make trouble.” The airplane duly
arrived, but the instructions were in French, which
Ritchie did not understand. A tenacious character,
he assembled the machine, distilled his own fuel,
and cleared a patch of ground to create a basic air-
field. A crowd of employees and locals gathered to
watch his first flight. At about three o’clock in the
afternoon, the flimsy craft took to the air.
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company magazine, The
Naft,t recalled the story in a 1934 edition: “Having
flown a short distance[,] Mr Ritchie tried to turn
round when, unfortunately, the aeroplane came
rather close to the surface, so that on banking one
of the wings caught a small hillock and, of course,
immediately broke and the machine overturned.”
His colleagues quickly ran to assist him, but Ritchie,
trapped upside down in the cockpit, exclaimed,
“Don’t touch anything, you chaps, take a photo-
graph.” The locals remained unfazed throughout
the proceedings. Ritchie was unharmed but did not
repeat his experiment, preferring his trusty steed
for future pipeline inspections. The aircraft itself
was recovered and later displayed in the entrance
hall of the company’s head office in London.
As oilfield operations expanded, the value of
air transport for supply and survey work became
apparent to others besides the courageous Charles
Ritchie. Not until 1929, however, did the Anglo-
Persian Oil Company start its own air service.
The company leased a single-engine Junkers
F.13 from Junkers-Luftverkehr, which held the
airmail concession for the country. The aircraft
came with its own pilot, Baron Edgar Viktor von

64 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 Wangenheim. He had learned to fly in World
War I and was the first pilot to fly an airplane
from Dessau in Germany via Russia to Persia. He
was highly regarded by the company, and when
the contract with Junkers ended four years later,
he was retained.
These were still the early days of aviation, and
journeys were often eventful. On one occasion,
von Wangenheim took off in the Junkers F.13
from Baghdad carrying the chairman, Sir John
Cadman, to Tehran for meetings with the shah
and his ministers. By road, the journey would have
taken up to five days, crossing three mountain
ranges, but by air it was ordinarily completed in
four hours. On this trip, however, the aircraft
encountered a heavy snowstorm and was forced to
land and stay the night at Kermanshah. The delay
stretched into another day when the lubricating
oil in the engine froze. Another airplane had to
The Iraq Petroleum be obtained from Tehran to enable Sir John to
Company made use complete his journey.
of a Short L.17, one After completing his stint in Persia, von
of only two built. Wangenheim returned to Germany only to
The Syrinx, landing
at Amman, Jordan
perish in an airplane crash in 1937. The Junkers
in 1935, was was replaced by a twin-engine de Havilland 89A
scrapped in 1940. Dragon Moth supplied and operated by Airwork
February/March 2020
Ltd. This had a cruising speed of 110 miles per hour
and could carry five passengers. Its successor, the
DH.89A Dragon Rapide, was used in May 1935
for the company’s first aerial mapping surveys.
Within three years, six Rapides were in regular
use, the aircraft having proven its reliability and
suitability for operating in the oilfields.
ONE AFTERNOON IN THE AUTUMN OF 1932,
two men in resplendent uniforms arrived at the
headquarters of the Iraq Petroleum Company
in Haifa. On being ushered into the office, they
saluted and announced to the astonished manager
that they were reporting for duty. Introducing
themselves as Captains Mollard and Thomson of
Imperial Airways, they proceeded to explain that
the Iraq oil company now owned two airplanes
parked and ready for use. In fact, the aircraft were
40 miles away at a landing ground at Semakh in
the Jordan Valley, that being the nearest regular
airfield to Haifa.
Roger Mollard and George Thomson were
experienced pilots, and they certainly drew on
that experience when it came to flying the aircraft
AIR & SPACE 65

in question. One was an Avro 618 Ten, which
carried two crew and eight passengers. It was a
three-engine, high-wing monoplane built under
license from Fokker. Its passengers suffered exces-
sive levels of noise, vibration, and fumes, while
the crew—firmly strapped into an open cock-
pit—enjoyed a fresh, if stiff, breeze. The aircraft
could reach 100 mph with a tail wind, but it had a
“marvellous nose for an air pocket,” recalled Iraq
Petroleum Company manager J.B.P. Glennie in
1953. This caused the airplane to drop like a stone,
leaving the passengers to fend off the luggage that
rained down from the racks above.
The other aircraft was a de Havilland DH.50,
a single-engine biplane that carried up to three
passengers in a box-like cabin, the lid of which
was fastened down from outside. The pilot trav-
eled behind them in an open cockpit. The “Fifty”
ambled along at a cruising speed of about 85
mph. “She led a blameless life with us for about a
year, apart from a slight misunderstanding with
a Palestine Railway signal, the ornamental spike
of which was found embedded in her tailplane
when she landed at Semakh one dirty evening,”
wrote Glennie in 1953.
Airfields were few and far between, but this
was no problem for a pilot like Gustave Douchy,
a French wartime flying ace. He was employed by
Société des Transports du Proche Orient, which
also provided flying services for the Iraq Petroleum
Company, primarily in Syria and Lebanon. His
aircraft was a Farman F.190, a single-engine,
66 AIR & SPACE
high-wing monoplane with a cabin for four and
an enclosed cockpit. From its base in Homs, the
aircraft spent most of its time flying up and down
the company’s northern pipeline, with an occa-
sional sortie along the southern pipeline.
Douchy and his aircraft were not always in har-
mony, however. The Farman’s “shotgun-starter”
system often failed to work. On one hot day in the
desert, a dozen efforts failed to stir the engine to
life. Reaching the limit of his patience, Douchy
proceeded to address the engine in “sulphuric”
terms, then hit a vital part of it extremely hard
with a hammer. Simultaneous roars from the
engine and pilot assured the passengers that all
was well. In fact Douchy was highly regarded by
his passengers, one of whom remarked, “If that
man Douchy strapped an engine and propeller
to his head and a pair of wings to his arms, I’d fly
pick-a-back with him.”
On another occasion, the Farman was approach-
ing Homs aerodrome just after sunset. Its tail wheel
caught an electrical powerline and plunged the
An Imperial town into darkness for most of the night. Douchy,
Airways aircraft unaware of the accident, rang up the electricity
refuels at Rutbah company when he arrived home to complain
Wells, in Iraq. In
the 1930s, the
bitterly about their incompetence in causing a
fort there was a blackout. When the Farman was eventually retired
fuel station for from company service, Douchy received a state-
flights between of-the-art, twin-engine, low-wing monoplane,
Britain and India.
a Caudron C.445 Goéland, which included such
THE AVRO 618 TEN COULD REACH 100
MPH WITH A TAIL WIND, BUT IT HAD
A “MARVELLOUS NOSE FOR AN AIR
POCKET,” ACCORDING TO AN IRAQ
PETROLEUM COMPANY MANAGER. THIS
CAUSED THE AIRPLANE TO DROP LIKE A
STONE, LEAVING THE PASSENGERS TO UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MILWAUKEE AGSL DIGITAL PHOTO ARCHIVE
FEND OFF THE LUGGAGE THAT RAINED
DOWN FROM THE RACKS ABOVE.
refinements as a retractable undercarriage and
variable-pitch propellers. But, after a number of
mishaps, Douchy was forced to admit that the
Caudron had to go and reluctantly bade it farewell.
In 1934, the Iraq Petroleum Company introduced
airspacemag.com
 DOUCHY WAS HIGHLY REGARDED
BY HIS PASSENGERS, ONE OF
WHOM REMARKED: “IF THAT MAN
DOUCHY STRAPPED AN ENGINE AND
PROPELLER TO HIS HEAD AND A
PAIR OF WINGS TO HIS ARMS, I’D FLY
PICK-A-BACK WITH HIM.”

French pilot
Gustave Douchy
stands next to a
Potez airplane in
1921; he would
later fly for the
Iraq Petroleum
the de Havilland Dragon to Iraq. It was smaller and Company.
more economical than its predecessors, but it came
with a few tricks. In one instance, as the airplane
circled above Baghdad airport, the crankshaft in
During World
the port engine sheared, and the airscrew landed on War II, Arab
the white circle of the aerodrome. After making a Legionnaires
safe landing, the captain was congratulated on the guard a
accuracy of his aim. A few days later, the Dragon Jordanian
visited Amman. “The service personnel stationed pumping station
on the Iraq
there were naturally keen to see the new Dragon,” Petroleum
chase its own tail and spin round in a circle with
recalled Glennie in 1953, and a large crowd gathered Company “the joyous abandon of a puppy.” Such were the
to watch, but, as the Dragon taxied out, it began to pipeline. sideshows of flying in the Middle East.
TOP: BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE DE FRANCE; BOTTOM: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

February/March 2020 AIR & SPACE 67

T H E Y E A R 1 9 3 4 SAW T H E STA RT of aerial
surveys in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. After
hearing that an American oil company, California
Arabian Standard, was bringing a Fairchild 71
to the area, a British official wondered what the
“71” might signify: “probably some form of cabin
machine,” he mused. Indeed, it had a cabin that
could accommodate two crew members and two
geologists. It was also adapted for taking aerial
photographs, with a hole in the bottom of its
fuselage, and carried a Fairchild K-4 camera and
special Kodak film for desert conditions.
When pilots Dick Kerr and Charles Rocheville
subject to conditions: The pilots should observe
radio silence, fly high, and stay away from the
Bedouin areas of the desert. And, although the
airplane’s subsequent career in Saudi Arabia was
relatively trouble-free, the incident flagged the
problems that would occur elsewhere on the
Arabian Peninsula, where various Iraq Petroleum
Company-associate companies were prospecting for
oil. In Oman, for example, Sultan Said bin Taimur
prohibited airplanes from flying over those parts
where an imam held sway and he expressed fears
for the safety of crews should they make a forced
landing. Eventually, he relented, agreeing that oil

LOGBOOK: NASM (SI-2007-8652); BOTTOM: NASM (SI-92-15966)

landed the airplane at the Royal Air Force base company aircraft could overfly the area provided
in Basra in March, they were welcomed, but they stayed “beyond the range of a rifle.”
On the Trucial Coast (today’s United Arab Joseph Mountain,
Emirates), the sheikhs raised few objections, but a former Army Air
the cost and the lack of landing grounds were pro- Service
S i pilot,
il t
conducted an
hibitive and airplanes were not used in oil surveys aerial survey of
until after World War II. The RAF and Imperial Saudi Arabia in
Airways were allowed to fly over the Persian Gulf, 1934 for California
so local people occasionally saw airplanes, but they Arabian Standard.
were completely unused to cars, as geologist Jock His logbook, left,
is part of the
Williamson discovered in the 1936-1937 season collection of the
when he drove toward a group of women collecting National Air and
firewood in the desert. Space Museum.

were warned not to fly directly into

Saudi Arabia. They were urged to land
in British-protected Bahrain instead.
Few, if any, aircraft had flown over the
Arabian interior, and it was feared that
they might alarm the local population
and infuriate the Wahhabi clerics of the
land, who were suspicious of Western
influences. But the pilots knew that
permission to land had already been
granted and saw no problem in stick-
ing to their original plan. They headed
straight for Saudi Arabia and found the
town of Jubail with ease, landing on an
airstrip that had recently been scraped
out of the desert. But when an elated
Kerr jumped out of the airplane, he was
promptly arrested.
It was a misunderstanding, of course.
The Fairchild was cleared to fly,
y, though
g

68 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 The Iraq Petroleum
Company terminus
in Haifa, circa
1930s. Two landing
strips existed at
Haifa, recalled
company planning
and projects
manager J.B.P.
Glennie, in 1953.
“The one on the
sand dunes was
unusable in the dry
season, the other
on cotton soil near
the site of the
refinery
fi was too
soft to use in wet
weather.”

“At our approach, they fled screaming into the 1938, geologists Ruthven Pike and Henry Wofford
undergrowth. Our newly acquired friend [guide] arrived for a six-month survey. They used a Short
was sent to assure them that we intended no harm S.22 Scion Senior, chartered and maintained by
and after a time came back laughing to tell us that Imperial Airways. This was a high-wing mono-
these ignorant people thought that our white van plane with four 80-hp Pobjoy engines and the only
was an aeroplane which had come down from land-based example of its type. In addition to the
surveys from the air, the geologists made several
ground excursions, despite the area’s reputation.
PIL OT
TS DICK KERR AND CHARLES Pike wrote in 1938: “I got the impression that the
ROCHE EV ILLE WERE WARNED NOT TO place was somewhat dangerous; that if people left
FLY DIRECCTL LY INTO SAUDI ARABIA. FEW, the coast and travelled inland they did so at their
own risk: they survived, but did not have an alto-
IF ANY
Y, AIRCRAFT
A HAD FLOWN OVER gether easy time.”
THE ARABIAN
RA INTERIOR, AND IT WAS World War II brought a hiatus in oil explora-
FEARED TH
T AT THEY MIGHT ALARM THE tion, but by the time the geologists returned to the
LOCAL L POPULATION
P AND INFURIATE region, airplanes had been transformed. They were
THE WA
W HHABI CLERICS, WHO WERE stronger and faster and had greater range. New
SUSPICIOOUS S OF WESTERN INFLUENCES. techniques, such as magnetic and gravity surveys,
were introduced. From Iran to Aden, discoveries
were being made, and aerial reconnaissance was
now a vital part of the exploration repertoire. In
March 1948, geologists were excited to see two
anticlines—classic oil-bearing structures—as they
flew across the newly opened skies of Oman. But
Opposite: Mountain
took hundreds of
access was still a problem in certain parts. “If only
photographs we can get in on the ground,” bemoaned Exploration
documenting the News, the oil company’s in-house magazine, hinting
Saudi kingdom at the skies, folded its wings like a bird and was now at the sensitivity of the tribes to foreign intrusion.
the outset of the coming along the ground to devour them.” For despite the advantages of air travel, the ten-
petroleum era,
including the view of
The Aden Protectorate, which today is part of sion between Western “progress” and traditional
a well from the roof Yemen, was the setting for the first aerial reconnais- societies remained. The airplane was only the start
LOC

at Fort Dammam. sance byy an oil company

p y in southwestern Arabia. In g to come.
of things

February/March 2020 AIR & SPACE 69

 I WAS T H E R E

Space Junk
IN ORBIT, TAKING OUT THE TRASH IS NO MINOR CHORE.
by Mike Engle

AST R O N AU T C L AY A N D E R S O N fleet, requiring us to develop another solution. As

leaned back, his feet fixed in the portable foot technical lead for space environments in the ISS
Standing on one
restraint attached to the end of the International end of a big robotic
Program Integration Office, I proposed an official
Space Station’s robot arm. In his gloved hands arm, Clay Anderson jettison policy, which would allow astronauts to
he held onto a pair of handles mounted on the settled months push space junk into a decaying orbit where it
side of a refrigerator-size object called the Early of debate within would burn up during reentry.
Ammonia Servicer (EAS). Clay leaned farther NASA on July 23, Working closely with Nick Johnson, one of the
2007, when he
backwards and then rotated his body forward to manually shoved
world’s foremost authorities on orbital debris, I
stand upright, releasing the EAS as he stood up a large ammonia documented the requirements for any jettison
in the foot restraint. “Jettison!” he shouted as the tank (inset) safely operations from the ISS. Flight dynamics experts
EAS tumbled away from his outstretched arms. away from the developed the requirements governing orbital
Before Anderson’s July 2007 EVA, the ISS pro- International separation and tracking of jettisoned objects, and
Space Station. This
gram had disposed of trash by loading it aboard manual-jettison
EVA operations specialists outlined the capabilities
NASA (2)

space shuttle orbiters for return to Earth. But the maneuver became of astronauts to manually perform jettisons. The
loss of Columbia in 2003 had grounded the shuttle standard procedure. U.S. State Department even weighed in with a

70 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 requirement that any jettisoned object must pose
less than a one-in-10,000 chance of harming any-
one on the ground.
Jettisoning trash from a spacecraft is no mere
stroll to a dumpster. First and foremost, you have
to make sure that whatever you throw away doesn’t
come back and hit you—a frightening possibility in
the weird realm of orbital mechanics. Our idea was
to have EVA astronauts manually push jettisoned
items away in the direction opposite the station’s
orbit. Analysis showed that a surprisingly small
retrograde change in velocity was required: only
about 1 to 1.5 inches per second would ensure no
recontact. The drag of the jettisoned object would
be greater than that of the ISS, further ensuring
that the jettisoned object would keep moving
behind and below the ISS until it eventually
burned up in the atmosphere. In the case of the
EAS, however, we scheduled a thruster burn to
raise the ISS orbit after jettison just to make sure.
Safety engineers insisted that we define a jettison
“cone” to account for any directional errors, so that
even if an object were at the edge of the cone, it
would still fly away safely. Simple trigonometry
led to the conclusion that pushing an object away
at two inches per second (a rate easily achievable
by an EVA astronaut) within a 30-degree cone
centered on a line directly opposite the direction
that the ISS was traveling as it orbited the Earth
would be enough.
We successfully jettisoned a few objects and
received little attention. This changed in early
2006, when safety personnel remembered that
the Early Ammonia Servicer was nearing the end
of its design life.
The EAS had been carried up by the space shut-
tle Discovery on STS-105 in August 2001. It was
essentially an ammonia reservoir that could be
used to top off the space station’s cooling system
in the event that leakage occurred. The ISS cooling
system proved to be leak-free, and so we found
ourselves with a full EAS at the end of its five-
year design life. The engineers who’d designed it
could not certify that the structure would remain
intact after five years. There was a risk, albeit a
very small one, that it might simply break off
the station. Furthermore, the shuttle program
refused to carry the fully-loaded EAS tank back
to Earth, citing potential danger to both the flight
and ground crews.
COURTESY MIKE ENGLE
And so we found ourselves in a pickle: It wasn’t
safe to return the EAS to the ground, nor was it
safe to leave it on board. I suggested we jettison
the EAS during an upcoming EVA. The safety
team hated the idea: They didn’t believe a single
February/March 2020
astronaut would be physically capable of shoving
a big tank full of toxic ammonia away from the
ISS, and they were also skeptical of the orbital
mechanics calculations that had indicated this
method was safe. But my managers backed me,
and I began my long campaign to convince their
bosses—all the way up to NASA Administrator
Michael D. Griffin—that jettisoning the EAS was
the right call.
YOU HAVE TO MAKE SURE THAT
WHATEVER YOU THROW AWAY
DOESN’T COME BACK AND HIT YOU—
A FRIGHTENING POSSIBILITY IN THE
WEIRD REALM OF ORBITAL MECHANICS.
Despite all our analyses and simulations, it
remained to be proven that an EVA astronaut in
a foot restraint at the end of the ISS’s robotic arm
could push the massive EAS with enough velocity
to ensure separation. Discussions with experienced
astronauts, and tests of a full-scale EAS mock-up
on a special “air bearing floor”—picture a glorified
air hockey table—at the Johnson Space Center
gave us plenty of confidence in our plan. Still,
one colleague told me “we’ll jettison EAS over my
dead body.” Finally, less than a month prior to the
launch of space shuttle Atlantis carrying Anderson
up as the flight engineer for ISS Expedition 15, I
presented my case at Kennedy Space Center. My
plan to jettison the EAS was approved.
Two months later, I stood in the robotics support
room in Mission Control. At last the months of
hard work were coming to an end. I even had a
draft email written to my colleague who had said
all this would happen over his dead body. (Subject
line: “Just checking on you.”) But as the EAS moved
slowly away into its decaying orbit, to my horror it
appeared to be heading straight for one of the sta-
tion’s huge, flimsy solar arrays! My 27-year career
at NASA flashed before my eyes. Fortunately it
was just a trick of the camera’s orientation, and the
EAS easily cleared the ISS structure. A short time
later the ISS crew performed a small separation
Mike Engle retired
from NASA after
burn for added insurance. Mission accomplished!
38 years, having I pulled up that email and let my finger hover
served as a space over the “send” key. But my better angels prevailed,
shuttle flight and I deleted it instead. Less than 16 months
controller and a later, the EAS re-entered the atmosphere. Parts
chief engineer for
the astronaut
of it remained intact enough to splash into the
office, among many vast ocean between Australia and New Zealand,
other roles. harming no one on the ground or on the sea.
AIR & SPACE 71
 R E V I E WS
The People Who
Made Hubble Great
A SPACEWALKING PIONEER REPORTS ON THE
BEHIND-THE-SCENES WORK THAT ENABLED THE HUBBLE
SPACE TELESCOPE TO WOW THE WORLD.
THE BOOK Former astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan was part
of the space shuttle crew that put the Hubble Space Telescope
into orbit on April 25, 1990. Before Hubble could be launched,
however, Sullivan, her crewmate Bruce McCandless, and doz-
ens of engineers spent thousands of hours on Earth working to
ensure that the telescope could be maintained and repaired in
orbit. That element of maintainability has made the telescope
far more powerful today than when it was launched 30 years
ago. Sullivan’s memoir not only examines the work conducted
on the telescope but also offers an engaging account of her
grand career as one of NASA’s first six female astronauts.
72 AIR & SPACE
WHY THE AUTHOR DECIDED
TO WRITE IT
“This chapter of Hubble history was
missing in everything I’ve ever read about
Hubble, and the huge contributions of
the maintainers—if mentioned at all—
was reduced to: ‘Hubble was designed
from the outset for maintenance.’ I
wanted to give the engineers involved
their rightful place in the historical
record.”
A CHAT WITH KATHRYN SULLIVAN
You are the first American
woman to walk in space. Did the
history-making nature of this
accomplishment loom large as you
executed the spacewalk?
It never entered my mind. I was
solely focused on mastering spacesuit
operations and the work we had to
do outside.
Was it disappointing when you
weren’t selected for the Hubble’s
1993 repair mission?
Yes, that stung for a while.
Astronauts seem to handle
pressure well—why is that?
Because it’s essential to our success
and survival. Spaceflight involves huge
amounts of energy, extremely high
velocities, very expensive hardware, and
human lives. Every decision and action
can have immense consequences, and
we—as decision-makers and actors—
must be able to remain focused and calm.
■ DIANE TEDESCHI IS A SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR
AT AIR & SPACE/SMITHSONIAN. ■ READ THE FULL
INTERVIEW AT AIRSPACEMAG.COM/SULLIVAN.
TO ORDER
To order these books
from Smithsonian Shops
call 202-633-4510.
airspacemag.com
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Over8,000U.S.ArmyAirForcess bombers
were lost in western Europe during
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At 21, daughter Yvette Morin was
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Rich with detail and credibility,
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64005/60566 *68755213*
68755213
63601/67227shown
• Weighs 175 lbs. SNAP-ON
*68757138* Limit 1 coupon per customer per day. Save 20% on any 1 item purchased. *Cannot be used with
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8
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ITEM 69505/62418/66537 shown ITEM 64410 ITEM 61970/56597/56775/61969 shown VALUE
ITEM 64686
*68762143*
68762143
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68766583
*68770235*
68770235
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1
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49
$1
• Weighs 34 lbs.

9 139 $1 09
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COMPARE TO SAVE
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90913, 61436, 90909 shown ITEM 68998/63248/64080/64263/63091 shown ITEM 63419/67646/62514/63418/63417 shown MODEL: 78001 ITEM 42367
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N
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$ 99
5 $44 9
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ELECTRIC MODEL: SE-1250 3418/60653 shown DEWALT 83% 62281/61637 shown
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1599 $1 1 99
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ITEM 56621/56622/56623/56624 shown ITEM 64498/64497 shown ITEM 69645/60625 shoo ITEM 38970/92486/39757/60496/623
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68833035
*68834919*
68834919
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Rasputin’s Nephew: A Psi-Fi Thriller
First of a Series
Parapsychologists are being kidnapped!
“A Mind-boggling book!” Uri Geller
marcseifer.com
AIR & SPACE/SMITHSONIAN; FEBRUARY/MARCH
2020, VOL. 34, NO. 7 Air & Space/Smithsonian (ISSN
0886 2257) is published 7 times per year (February/
March, April/May, June/July, August, September,
October/November, and December/January) by
Smithsonian Enterprises, MRC 513, PO Box 37012,
Washington, DC 20013 7012. We may occasionally
publish extra issues. Periodical postage paid at
Washington, DC, and additional mailing offices.
POSTMASTER: Send change of address to Air &
Space/Smithsonian, PO Box 420300, Palm Coast, FL
32142 0300. Printed in the USA. Canadian publication
agreement no. 40039324. Canadian return address:
Asendia, USA, PO Box 1051, Fort Erie, ON L2A 6C7
Canada. ©Smithsonian Institution 2020. All rights
reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without
permission is prohibited. Editorial offices: MRC 513,
PO Box 37012, Washington, DC 20013. Circulation
and advertising offices: 420 Lexington Ave., New
York, NY 10170. MEMBERSHIPS: All subscribers to
Air & Space/Smithsonian are Air & Space National
Associate members. Ninety nine percent of dues
is designated for magazine subscription. Address
changes and subscription orders: Mail to Air &
Space/Smithsonian, PO Box 420300, Palm Coast, FL
32142 0300; call (800) 513 3081; outside the U.S.,
call (386) 246 0470. MAILING LISTS: We sometimes
make our subscriber list available to companies
that sell goods and services that we believe would
interest our readers. If you do not want to receive
such mailings, send your current mailing label or
an exact copy to: Air & Space/Smithsonian, Mail
Preference Service, PO Box 420300, Palm Coast, FL
32142 0300. SINGLE COPIES: To purchase an issue
(current $6.99, back issue $7), please write Air &
Space/Smithsonian, 420 Lexington Ave., Suite 2335,
New York, NY 10170, or call (212) 916 1323.
78 AIR & SPACE
C O N T R I B U TO R S PREVIEW
TINY ROVER , BIG IMPAC T. Rebecca
Maksel is a senior associate editor at Air
& Space/Smithsonian.
TO BUILD A MONSTER ROCKET. James
R. Chiles is a frequent contributor and
the author of The God Machine (Bantam
Dell, 2007), a social history of helicop-
ters. Further reading: To Reach the High
Frontier: A History of U.S. Launch Vehicles,
edited by Roger D. Launius and Dennis
R. Jenkins (The University Press of On the Channel
Kentucky, 2002). Black in Space:
OMAHA TO SALT LAKE CITY WITHOUT
Breaking the
GPS. William E. Dubois is an aviation Color Barrier
writer, world speed record holder, and a
The powerful story of the race
two-time National Champion air racer. to get the first black astronaut
Aviation photographer Lisa F. to space premieres Monday,
Bentson is the owner of the 1946 February 24, at 8 p.m. on the
Ercoupe airmail stunt double, and Smithsonian Channel. Meet
served as safety pilot on the flight. the unsung pioneers of the
U.S. space program in this
groundbreaking documentary.
BIG DIG FOR A BUZZ BOMB. Tom
Metcalfe is a journalist based in London.
Further reading: Terror from the Sky: The
Battle Against the Flying Bombs by Graham
A. Thomas (Pen & Sword, 2008).
LAST OF THE LONG-DISTANCE ESCORTS.
Leigh Giangreco is a freelance writer
based in Washington, D.C. Previously
she covered national security and
defense aviation for several publications
including FlightGlobal.
THE YEAR OF UFOs. Greg Eghigian is
a professor of history at Penn State
TOP: SMITHSONIAN CHANNEL; BOTTOM: USAF/STAFF SGT AARON ALLMON
University. He is currently writing a In the next issue
book about the history of UFOs.
The New Old Fighter
LAND RIGHT HERE! Kara Platoni is a Along with the shiny new F-35s
science reporter in Oakland, California, that will be delivered to the U.S.
and a teacher at UC Berkeley’s Graduate Air Force this year, the service may
School of Journalism. also be getting just as shiny F-15s,
the fighter that first flew in 1972.
ADVENTURES ABOVE THE OIL FIELDS. The Air Force decision to buy the
Michael Quentin Morton grew up fourth-generation fighter was con-
in Qatar, Bahrain, and Abu Dhabi in troversial, but proponents say it’s the
the 1950s and ’60s. A barrister, he has cheapest way to air dominance. One
written a number of books about the aspect of the order is undisputed:
history of the Middle East, including The production line for the F-15EX
Empires and Anarchies: A History of Oil in looks nothing like the one that built
the Middle East (Reaktion Books, 2017). F-15s 48 years ago.
airspacemag.com
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 ONE MORE THING
Bücker Bü-133C Jungmeister
FLOWN BY CHAMPIONS, IT WAS THE AEROBATIC SHOWSTOPPER OF THE 1930s AND ’40s
COMPACT, LIGHTWEIGHT, powerful,
and equipped with ailerons on both its upper and
lower wings, the Bücker Bü-133 Jungmeister was
an aerobatic pilot’s dream, dominating the sport
in Europe and the United States in the 1930s
and ’40s. Today it remains a favorite of airshow
pilots like David Martin, whose repertoire has
included a daring inverted, no-hands flight of his
Jungmeister since 2010.
Built in Germany before World War II and,
during the war, in Spain, this single-seat variant
of the Bü-131A Jungmann had a steel-tube fab-
ric-covered fuselage and wings of wood spars and
ribs. Most Jungmeisters used a 160-horsepower,
seven-cylinder radial air-cooled Siemens Sh-14A.
The Museum’s Jungmeister was imported to the
United States by aerobatic champion Alex Papana
aboard the airship Hindenburg in 1936. Both Papana
80 AIR & SPACE
and Count Hagenburg flew it at the Cleveland Air
This Jungmeister, Races the following year. Hagenburg had crashed
YR-PAX (later his own Jungmeister trying to outdo Papana’s fancy
N15696), was flown
by aerobatic legends
flying with an extremely low-altitude inverted
Alex Papana, Count pass over the grandstand. Escaping serious injury,
Hagenburg, Mike Hagenburg took off again mere moments later—in
Murphy, and Beverly his friendly rival’s Jungmeister this time.
“Bevo” Howard—
Bevo Howard, who inspired Martin’s
who perished in the
aircraft at age 57 Jungmeister routine, won the 1946 and 1947
when it crashed as Aerobatic Championships in this same aircraft. In
he was flying in a 1971, Howard was performing an inverted turn in
charity airshow. the Jungmeister at an airshow in Greenville, North
Carolina when it crashed, killing him instantly.
His estate donated the restored airplane to the
ERIC LONG/NASM
National Air and Space Museum in 1973.
■ CHRIS KLIMEK IS AN AIR & SPACE/SMITHSONIAN ASSOCIATE
EDITOR.
airspacemag.com
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