The Super Guppy
Published on Jan 19, 2009 at 3:43 pm.
3 Comments.
Filed under aeronautics.
Eons ago, when I was in elementary school, every few months or so, the teacher brought us a catalog from the Scholastic Book Club. We got to order some rather inexpensive, age appropriate books. While some kids never ordered anything, I always looked forward to it, and eager waited for the books to arrive a few weeks later. Once I got the books, I took them home and just read though them all weekend. I still remember some of those books. One that I got was a book about airplanes. It had pictures of some of the most common airliners and some of the most novel aircraft complete with descriptions. I have always been fascinated with aircraft, so I eagerly went through that book. One aircraft that really caught my attention was an oversized cargo aircraft called the “Super Guppy.” It didn’t look like any normal aircraft. It had a fuselage that was vastly enlarged over that of any other airplane that I had ever seen. In fact, it looked hardly like it could fly at all!
The Super Guppy was a modified C-97J (the military version of the Boeing 377) operated by Aero Spacelines. They actually operated several modified Boeing 377 aircraft, creating a whole line of guppies. The Super Guppy was used to transport large rocket components for NASA. Only one guppy is still flying, and after passing through several hands, it is now part of NASA’s fleet of aircraft. NASA’s Super Guppy, registration number N941NA, is based at Ellington Field, in Houston. Those of you who have been following my last week’s worth of postings will recall that I just spent over a week at Ellington Field in conjunction with my reduced gravity research flight. I was a little disappointed when I got there to find that the Super Guppy was out of town undergoing an airframe check. But, Friday as I drove from the hotel to the airfield, I couldn’t help but to see this monster aircraft sitting out on the flight line. I had flown my reduced gravity mission earlier in the week, so when Friday’s mission took off, I was still on the ground and got a chance to tour the Super Guppy. A crew member for the Super Guppy asked if we wanted to see it. Naturally, I was eager to take him up on that offer, so we walked across the tarmac to where it was parked. Finally, nearly four decades after hearing about it, I got my chance to see this very unusual aircraft!
The true size of the aircraft is hard to judge in this picture of me with the Super Guppy in the background, but if you click on the picture you’ll get a bigger version of it, and you can see a person standing near the front nose gear of the aircraft. That gives a sense of scale.
The cargo area is 25 feet tall, 25 feet wide, and 111 feet long. The nose of the aircraft is held on by 12 bolts which can be released to permit the front section (including the cockpit) to swing aside, permitting loading directly into the vast cargo area. The Super Guppy has carried rocket components, aircraft components, and even whole aircraft in it! It fly cargo weighing up to 26 tons. The cargo bay floor is only a bit over 8 feet wide, with the tracks on which the loading pallets run being even narrower. Thus, for wide cargo, a special platform can be used to hold the cargo at the proper height to take advantage of the 25 foot wide width of the middle of the cargo area. This, naturally, has the problem of putting the center of mass well above the mid-line of the aircraft, and makes the Super Guppy sloppy to fly, but is obviously does fly like that.
The aircraft’s cockpit still has what by modern standards is antiquated instrumentation (though a few more modern instruments have been fitted). I counted seats for seven crew members. Access to the cockpit is trough a trap door hatch in the cockpit floor. You enter the aircraft through a small hatch near the nose gear, climb up a small ladder through a small hatch into a small compartment that has another short ladder going into the cockpit. You kind of have to contort yourself to fit through the hatches, so a really big guy might have had some trouble getting into the cockpit this way.
The microgravity flight was wonderful. However, seeing the Neutral Buoyancy Lab and the Super Guppy (along with several other things that I haven’t blogged about) really made this flight more than just a flight: it was an experience. I am very happy to have had the opportunity to take part in all of this.
-Astroprof
Andreas Vossinakis on January 19, 2009 at 3:49 pm: 1
fascinating experience…
DoctorWho on January 21, 2009 at 12:55 pm: 2
I could be wrong, but I seem to remember that the original Super Guppy was based on a B-29 airframe; the engines and wings in your photo sure look a lot like B-29 bits!
What fascinates me the most about the SG is that its bulbous body was shaped to produce lots of lift.
P.S. Yup, there’s more than one of us…I’m another astroprof and aerospace nut. Just found your site–great stuff!
Astroprof’s Page » NASA’s WB-57 Aircraft on January 24, 2009 at 10:32 pm: 3
[…] for their microgravity flight (mine had been earlier in the week), I got to see the Super Guppy (I wrote about that a few days ago). But, if you look at the photograph that I took of the Super Guppy, you can see a […]