Hangar 990
Published on Jan 8, 2009 at 10:47 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under NASA, microgravity flight.
Today started in typical Houston area fashion: extremely humid with low fog. As we drove to Ellington Field, I saw a rather dense layer of fog about 7 feet deep around the airfield. The fog burned off pretty quickly, though. Ellington was an active air force base for many years — all the way back to World War I, though now it is a joint National Guard, Coast Guard, and civilian airport. NASA’s Johnson Space Center was built only a few miles from Ellington Field. NASA has plenty of need for aircraft, including high performance and odd usage aircraft. So, it makes sense for NASA’s Johnson Space Center to make use of Ellington Field as the most suitable airport nearby. I’ll be posting more about Ellington in a later posting. Today, I am focusing primarily on one building at Ellington: Building 990. This building is a hangar.
We were told to meet at Hangar 990 at Ellington Field this morning. So, we drove from the hotel to Ellington and parked near the hangar. You can tell which building is Hangar 990 because of the big NASA emblem painted on its side, as seen above. Hanger 990 is the home to NASA’s C-9B aircraft and two WB-57 high altitude research aircraft (operational B-57 aircraft are extremely rare!). Once inside the hangar, we were able to see the C-9B. Below is a photo of most of our team standing in front of the aircraft. Missing from the team photo are our NASA point of contact and our mentor, an engineer with Lockheed.
Hangar 990 is a working hangar. We are cautioned about where we can walk and what we can do. The WB-57 aircraft are being serviced. The C-9B was being loaded with equipment for an experiment. There are spare engines off to the side. The aircraft are fueled, so we need to be careful. We are also warned to be careful out on the flight line. After all, you don’t want to be hit by jet wash or sucked into an engine. And, there is also the danger of being hit by a vehicle. After all, it is pretty noisy out there. And, we were warned multiple times NOT to cross the red line painted on the tarmac. That is the military side of the airfield, and if you go there then you are not coming back for a while.
The hangar is naturally big enough to put the C-9B in it, and is actually big enough to put more than one aircraft of that size in the hangar. A good idea of how big the hangar is can be gotten from the picture below, where on of the team members is standing next to the door of the building.
There is something else interesting about this picture. You can see the paint peeling on the face of the hangar. Part of this may be damage from the hurricane a few months ago. But, I suspect that it is simply that the hangar has not been painted in a while. The inside also shows signs of wear. Now that is not totally unexpected for a building this old. But, I think that many people will find this surprising. After all, NASA is our nation’s space agency. They get all of that government money, right? Well, unfortunately, NASA has a lot to do with that money. While NASA’s budget may be huge for you or me, and it is even huge for an institution like my college. However, given all that NASA has to do, the budget doesn’t really cover everything. So, there is little or no money to paint buildings. Many of the computers are old. In many ways, the college even does better in keeping up to date in that regard. It is really amazing how much NASA accomplishes with as little money as they have. A lot of people don’t understand how much money it takes to do what they do. Much of what they do operates on a shoestring budget. They have to pick and choose what to spend money on. Painting the hangar, obviously, is not the highest of priorities.
Oh, and we got a bit of a surprise this morning. It turns out that there will be a change in aircraft for our use. Instead of flying on the C-9B like we had been expecting, NASA is contracting with a private company, Zero G, to fly the mission for us. Apparently Zero G will be flying missions for NASA. This is the first one, and so we and the other teams flying will be sort of guinea pigs to help work out the bugs for this arrangement. Amerijet flies a modified Boeing 727 for Zero G. They’ve been doing this for a few years, so this is not a first for them. However, most of their flights are aimed more at providing people with the fun of microgravity rather than doing pure science missions (though they apparently do those, too), so this will be a bit different from their normal flights. The 727 is a fair bit larger than the C-9B. That could be a good thing. One thing, though, is that the aircraft is not here yet. That means that we may have some issues getting the experiment set up aboard the aircraft when it arrives. Supposedly there will be the same connection points, but with not as much flexibility. I’ll be interested in seeing how this works. NASA will be interested in seeing how it works, too.
-Astroprof
Images courtesy of Astroprof
Chelsea on September 3, 2009 at 9:20 am: 1
groovy lookin’ buildin’