[meteorite-list] Shuttle Carry

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:01:05 -0500
Message-ID: <CFADB978128C4445A952C6BF6CD872A6_at_ATARIENGINE2>

The original NASA e-mail that Carl forwarded
to The List can be found here:
http://infinite-frontier.blogspot.com/2009/06/nasa-747-pilot-shares-experience.html

An article about James Nickel can be found here:
http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-space/article/2002-02/twinkle-twinkle


Sterling K. Webb
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: <cdtucson at cox.net>
To: "Simon" <sbdeboer at wightman.ca>; "meteoritelist"
<meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 2:20 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Shuttle Carry


> Simon, List,
> Thank you for that but many on this list know me and unfortunately I
> was not the author or pilot. This was a forward intended only to share
> with the List. Sorry for any confusion. Thanks Carl
>
> ---- Simon <sbdeboer at wightman.ca> wrote:
>> HI Carl : I am an organic farmer in Ontario Canada, I really
>> enjoyed
>> your account of bringing the shuttle back on the 747, I guess we're
>> all
>> good at whatever we do but I can just imagine the stress involved
>> in your
>> mission. You must be well paid to be able to do an assignment like
>> that.
>> Thanks for giving us an inside feel of your job .
>>
>> Regards
>> Simon
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
>> [mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] On Behalf Of
>> cdtucson at cox.net
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 1:42 PM
>> To: meteoritelist
>> Subject: [meteorite-list] Shuttle Carry
>>
>> Enjoy.
>>
>> Well, it's been 48 hours since I landed the 747 with the shuttle
>> Atlantis on
>> top and I am still buzzing from the experience. I have to say that my
>> whole
>> mind, body and soul went into the professional mode just before
>> engine start
>> in Mississippi, and stayed there, where it all needed to be, until
>> well
>> after the flight...in fact, I am not sure if it is all back to normal
>> as I
>> type this email. The experience was surreal.
>> > >> >
>> > >> > ?Seeing that "thing" on top of an already overly huge aircraft
>> boggles my mind. The whole mission from takeoff to engine shutdown
>> was
>> unlike anything I had ever done. It was like a dream...someone else's
>> dream.
>>
>> > >> >
>> > >> > ?We took off from Columbus AFB on their 12,000 foot runway, of
>> > >> > which
>> I used 11,999 1/2 feet to get the wheels off the ground. We were at
>> 3,500
>> feet left to go of the runway, throttles full power, nose wheels
>> still
>> hugging the ground, copilot calling out decision speeds, the weight
>> of
>> Atlantis now screaming through my fingers clinched tightly on the
>> controls,
>> tires heating up to their near maximum temperature from the speed and
>> the
>> weight, and not yet at rotation speed, the speed at which I would be
>> pulling
>> on the controls to get the nose to rise. I just could not wait, and I
>> mean I
>> COULD NOT WAIT, and started pulling early. If I had waited until
>> rotation
>> speed, we would not have rotated enough to get airborne by the end of
>> the
>> runway. So I pulled on the controls early and started our rotation to
>> the
>> takeoff attitude. The wheels finally lifted off as we passed over the
>> stripe
>> marking the end of the runway and my next hurdle (physically) was a
>> line of
>> trees 1,000 feet of
>> f the departure end of Runway 16. All I knew was we were flying and
>> so I
>> directed the gear to be retracted and the flaps to be moved from
>> Flaps 20 to
>> Flaps 10 as I pulled even harder on the controls. I must say, those
>> trees
>> were beginning to look a lot like those brushes in the drive through
>> car
>> washes so I pulled even harder yet! I think I saw a bird just fold
>> its wings
>> and fall out of a tree as if to say "Oh just take me". Okay, we
>> cleared the
>> trees, duh, but it was way too close for my laundry. As we started to
>> actually climb, at only 100 feet per minute, I smelled something that
>> reminded me of touring the Heineken Brewery in Europe...I said "is
>> that a
>> skunk I smell?" and the veterans of shuttle carrying looked at me and
>> smiled
>> and said "Tires"!
>> > >> >
>> > >> > ?I said "TIRES??? OURS???" They smiled and shook their heads
>> > >> > as if to
>> call their Captain an amateur...okay, at that point I was. The tires
>> were so
>> hot you could smell them in the cockpit. My mind could not get over,
>> from
>> this point on, that this was something I had never experienced.
>> > >> >
>> > >> > ?Where's your mom when you REALLY need her?
>> > >> >
>> > >> > ?The flight down to Florida was an eternity. We cruised at 250
>> > >> > knots
>> indicated, giving us about 315 knots of ground speed at 15,000'. The
>> miles
>> didn't click by like I am use to them clicking by in a fighter jet at
>> MACH
>> .94. We were burning fuel at a rate of 40,000 pounds per hour or 130
>> pounds
>> per mile, or one gallon every length of the fuselage. The vibration
>> in the
>> cockpit was mild, compared to down below and to the rear of the
>> fuselage
>> where it reminded me of that football game I had as a child where you
>> turned
>> it on and the players vibrated around the board. I felt like if I had
>> plastic clips on my boots I could have vibrated to any spot in the
>> fuselage
>> I wanted to go without moving my legs...and the noise was deafening.
>> The 747
>> flies with its nose 5 degrees up in the air to stay level, and when
>> you
>> bank, it feels like the shuttle is trying to say "hey, let's roll
>> completely
>> over on our back"..not a good thing I kept telling myself. SO I
>> limited my
>> bank? angle to 1
>> 5 degrees and even though a 180 degree course change took a full zip
>> code
>> to complete, it was the safe way to turn this monster.
>> > >> >
>> > >> > Airliners and even a flight of two F-16s deviated from their
>> > >> > flight
>> plans to catch a glimpse of us along the way. We dodged what was in
>> reality
>> very few clouds and storms, despite what everyone thought, and
>> arrived in
>> Florida with 51,000 pounds of fuel too much to land with. We can't
>> land
>> heavier than 600,000 pounds total weight and so we had to do
>> something with
>> that fuel. I had an idea...let's fly low and slow and show this beast
>> off to
>> all the taxpayers in Florida lucky enough to be outside on that
>> Tuesday
>> afternoon. So at Ormond Beach we let down to 1,000 feet above the
>> ground/water and flew just east of the beach out over the water.
>> Then, once
>> we reached the NASA airspace of the Kennedy Space Center, we cut over
>> to the
>> Banana/Indian Rivers and flew down the middle of them to show the
>> people of
>> Titusville, Port St.Johns and Melbourne just what a 747 with a
>> shuttle on it
>> looked like. We stayed at 1,000 feet and since we were dragging our
>> flaps at
>> "Flaps 5", our spee
>> d was down to around 190 to 210 knots. We could see traffic stopping
>> in the
>> middle of roads to take a look. We heard later that a Little League
>> Baseball
>> game stop to look and everyone cheered as we became their 7th inning
>> stretch. Oh say can you see...
>> > >> >
>> > >> > ?After reaching Vero Beach, we turned north to follow the
>> > >> > coast line
>> back up to the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF). There was not one
>> person
>> laying on the beach...they were all standing and waving! "What a
>> sight" I
>> thought...and figured they were thinking the same thing. All this
>> time I was
>> bugging the engineers, all three of them, to re-compute our fuel and
>> tell me
>> when it was time to land. They kept saying "Not yet Triple, keep
>> showing
>> this thing off" which was not a bad thing to be doing. However, all
>> this
>> time the thought that the landing, the muscling of this 600,000 pound
>> beast,
>> was getting closer and closer to my reality. I was pumped up! We got
>> back to
>> the SLF and were still 10,000 pounds too heavy to land so I said I
>> was going
>> to do a low approach over the SLF going the opposite direction of
>> landing
>> traffic that day. So at 300 feet, we flew down the runway, rocking
>> our wings
>> like a whale rolling on its side to say "hello" to the people looking
>> on!
>> One turn out
>> of traffic and back to the runway to land...still 3,000 pounds over
>> gross
>> weight limit. But the engineers agreed that if the landing were
>> smooth,
>> there would be no problem. "Oh thanks guys, a little extra pressure
>> is just
>> what I needed!" So we landed at 603,000 pounds and very smoothly if I
>> have
>> to say so myself. The landing was so totally controlled and on speed,
>> that
>> it was fun. There were a few surprises that I dealt with, like the
>> 747 falls
>> like a rock with the orbiter on it if you pull the throttles off at
>> the
>> "normal" point in a
>> > >> >
>> > >> > landing and secondly, if you thought you could hold the nose
>> > >> > off the
>> ground after the mains touch down, think again...IT IS COMING DOWN!!!
>> > >> >
>> > >> > ?So I "flew it down" to the ground and saved what I have seen
>> > >> > in
>> videos of a nose slap after landing. Bob's video supports this! :8-)
>> > >> >
>> > >> > ?Then I turned on my phone after coming to a full stop only to
>> > >> > find
>> 50 bazillion emails and phone messages from all of you who were so
>> super to
>> be watching and cheering us on! What a treat, I can't thank y'all
>> enough.
>> For those who watched, you wondered why we sat there so long.
>> > >> >
>> > >> > ?Well, the shuttle had very hazardous chemicals on board and
>> > >> > we had
>> to be "sniffed" to determine if any had leaked or were leaking. They
>> checked
>> for Monomethylhydrazine (N2H4 for Charlie Hudson) and nitrogen
>> tetroxide
>> (N2O4). Even though we were "clean", it took way too long for them to
>> tow us
>> in to the mate-demate area. Sorry for those who stuck it out and even
>> waited
>> until we exited the jet.
>> > >> >
>> > >> > ? I am sure I will wake up in the middle of the night here
>> > >> > soon,
>> screaming and standing straight up dripping wet with sweat from the
>> realization of what had happened. It was a thrill of a lifetime.
>> Again I
>> want to thank everyone for your interest and support. It felt good to
>> bring
>> Atlantis home in one piece after she had worked so hard getting to
>> the
>> Hubble Space Telescope and back.
>> > >> >
>> > >> > ?Triple Nickel
>> > >> >
>> > >> > ?NASA Pilot
>>
>> Carl Esparza
>> IMCA 5828
>> ____________________________________________________________
>> > Digital Photography - Click Now.
>> >
>>
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Received on Wed 17 Jun 2009 07:01:05 PM PDT