A Big Surprise

Just before lunch last Monday (5/20/19), I heard a strange aircraft noise over my office building.  I didn't know what it was, so I took a look on my FlightRadar app and I got a really nice surprise.  It turned out to be a T-38 Talon.

After work, I decided to head over to Willow Run because that is where she was headed.  I saw that she was still parked there, so of course I had to get a couple pictures of it.  This is not an aircraft that I normally see in person.

I was not happy with the angle that I had, so I decided to look for a better angle.  I saw an executive terminal and I figured that I would go in and ask.  The worse they could say was, "No".  So I went in and they let me take pictures as long as I stayed in the terminal.  I was fine with that.

In the mid 1950's, the Air Force put forth a requirement for a new training aircraft to replace the T-33s they were using at the time.  Northrup put forth their light fighter design.  It was pitted against the F-100 Super Sabre.  The Super Sabre was not considered as an ideal candidate because of some issues it had at the time.  Northrup was awarded the contract and it became the T-38 Talon.

The new aircraft first flew in 1959 and became operational in 1961.  It serves the US Air Force as the only supersonic trainer in the world.  Other countries use high subsonic aircraft.  At one time, this aircraft was used for the Thunderbirds.

NASA operates a fleet of 32 of these aircraft and they are used as astronaut trainers and chase planes.  Eventually these aircraft will be retired.

The Apollo Moon Landing

At 13:32 UTC on July 16, 1969, the Saturn V rocket carrying Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins was launched from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.  Four days later, these three men would find themselves orbiting the Moon.

(I wish this were my picture.  It comes from the NASA archives)

At 20:18 UTC on this day 47 years ago, Neil Armstrong emerged from the Lunar Module to become the first person to step on the moon.  He was joined shortly after by Buzz Aldrin (pictured above).  Almost 20 hours later, they would leave the lunar surface after collecting soil and rock samples.

I think it was pretty amazing that President Kennedy set a goal to land men on the moon and we achieved it within the end of the decade that he proposed it.  And then when you consider the tools that they had to work with in order to achieve this, it becomes even more amazing.  The components for the spacecraft were drawn on drafting tables and calculations were made using slide rules and rudimentary computers.  The funding was passed through a much more cooperative Congress.  I'm sure there were delays and setbacks but nothing that compares to the F-22 or F-35 programs.  And you also consider that a politician actually made a statement where he set the bar high because that forces us to do better.

Given the current political climate, I can't imagine any of the above happening these days.  Rather than looking for more ways to explore our world and the universe that surrounds it, we are talking about building a wall around our country.  Instead of further cooperation with the other citizens of this planet, we are talking about pulling back from the world.  When we should be shooting for the Moon or Beyond, we are barely shooting for making our country's infrastructure better.

I don't normally get political on this blog but times like this make me wish that we had better leadership.

The Challenger Disaster Anniversary

Normally I do not use pictures taken by people other than me, but today is an exception.  Today marks the anniversary of the Challenger Disaster.  The space shuttle Challenger blew up on January 28, 1986.  Everyone has that moment in history that they remember.  I guess TV has helped that regard a bit since we don't actually have to be a first person witness to history but still.

The Challenger explosion marks one of those moments for me.  If you have followed this blog for any length of time, you know that I am a huge aviation fan and some of that extends to our space program.  The first shuttle launch occurred when I was 12 and I was a junior in high school when this happened.  One of the teachers showed the news broadcast in our class.

I think one of the sadder aspects of this disaster is that it gave us too much pause about our space program.  Up until this point, space launches were fairly routine and people didn't remember some of the disasters prior to this.  The investigation of this accident delayed the program for over two years.  Even when the shuttle program resumed, some of the luster of the space program has worn off and I don't think it ever really recovered.

 The mission was designated as STS-51-L and the crew are pictured above.  The front row from left to right:  Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee (the commander of the flight) and Ronald McNair.  The back row from left to right:  Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis and Judith Resnick.  The mission was the first that would send a teacher into space (Christa McAulliffe).  Take a look at the picture, it represents a good sample of America.  I always looked up to pilots (and astronauts by extension) and while now I realize that they have flaws just like everyone else, there was nothing cooler in my books.

 A picture of the astronauts as they head towards the shuttle.  They almost look like passengers heading towards a flight.

The mission itself was originally scheduled to launch on January 22, 1986.  Delays in the previous mission caused this launch to get delayed to January 24.  Bad weather at one of the abort locations pushed the launch to January 25.  Predictions of bad weather at Kennedy Space Center pushed the launch back further January 27.  The fact that the alternate abort site picked was not equipped for night landings pushed the launch to the fateful day of January 28.  (NOTE:  I wish I had my own picture of a shuttle launch.)

Unusually cold weather on the morning of launch raised some concerns with the booster rockets.  The Thiokol engineers were of the thought that the o-rings used to seal the boosters would not be resilient enough to keep the hot gases of the boosters from affecting the shuttle.  The Thiokol engineers were over-ridden by NASA which couldn't afford another delay.

The picture above would have been taken around 11:38 A.M., the time of the shuttle launch.  At that time the temperatures were around 28 to 29 F.  Not only were the o-rings a concern, but the Rockwell engineers were concerned that ice may fall off the shuttle and damage some of it's heat resistant tiles leading to the potential of the shuttle burning up as it tried to land.

As the shuttle escaped the launch pad, it experienced wind shear greater than any other time in the past.  This could have been an abort point.  68 seconds after launch, we would hear the last transmission from the Challenger as the Shuttle Commander Scobee would acknowledge "throttle up".  The Challenger would explode roughly 22 seconds after that point.  I figured I would not include pictures of that, as that is probably the most famous scene.  Even if the explosion hadn't been so spectacular, the crew really had no chance as there was no escape mechanism during the powered phase of flight.

After the disaster, a Presidential commission was formed to investigate the cause of the disaster and it pretty much pointed at the o-rings.  The weren't designed for the temperatures at the time of launch.  The seal on the booster rockets wasn't the greatest and a few other things.  One of the members of the commission was the physicist Richard Feynman (look up his two autobiographies, they are pretty good reads).  He basically said that NASA's management had different numbers for reliability than the engineers (the management numbers were more optimistic).  His quote related to this:  "For a successful technology," he concluded, "reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."  He probably would have said the same thing about the Columbia disaster.

As I said above, the disaster delayed the Shuttle program for two and half years while the fixes were implemented.  I honestly don't think the Shuttle ever really recovered from the disaster.  For that matter, I don't really think NASA ever really recovered.  It is kind of sad really because NASA should be our nation's inspiration.  There is nothing particularly inspiring by any of the science programs coming out.  More fuel economy is nice...but it is not the Moon or Mars.  I think we need another grand vision like Kennedy's.

The pictures come from NASA's archives.