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 THE FIRST ROCKET
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NOVEMBER 2019

World War II’s

Worst Airplane

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FEATURES

With nearly half the fuselage made of Plexiglas, the YL-15 Scout offers Keith Brunquist a fine view of central Minnesota.
In the 1940s and ’50s, U.S. Fish & Wildlife rangers looked out its windows to count wildlife populations in Alaska (p. 40).

24 32 40
The 21st Century The Greyhound The Only Flying
Moon Suit and the Osprey YL-15 Scout
For the U.S. return to No catapult, no trap. When We’re almost sure you’ve
the moon, engineers are the Osprey takes over never seen a Boeing YL-15.
designing the astronauts’ carrier deliveries, what else Keith Brunquist would like
new clothes. will change? to show (and sell) you his.
46 Mars Sample Return mission
BY MARC KAUFMAN BY ZACH ROSENBERG BY KEN SCOTT

46 52 60 DEPARTMENTS
Return from a Welcome to World War II’s 02 Viewport
Martian Crater the Airport Worst Airplane 06 Letters
For NASA’s next No longer are airports The German Ministry of 08 Up to Speed
near-to-impossible feat, merely the beginning or Aviation refused to fund its 20 At the Museum
it will attempt to launch a end of a journey; they are production…until the Nazi
22 A+S NEXT
payload from Mars. becoming the destination. SS intervened.
BY BRUCE LIEBERMAN BY CRAIG MELLOW BY D.C. AGLE
68 Sightings
70 Reviews

Cover: U.S. Navy 76 Previews

I WAS THERE
TOP: RICHARD VANDERMEULEN

Specialist 1st Class 78 Contributors

Daniel Barker
16 This edition’s first-person recollection poses a question 80 Ideas That Defy
caught a Marine
many pilots may ask themselves: Will I ever get tired Osprey in 2018
of flying? One answer comes in a surprising way from flying to join an
racing legend Bill Brennand, whose midget racer Buster amphibious assault
won the 1947 Cleveland Air Races and is now in the ship. Deliveries to
collection of the National Air and Space Museum. carriers are next.

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 1

 VIEWPORT

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

An Early Start in STEM by Ellen Stofan

At the National Air and Space Museum,

we celebrate aerospace groundbreakers and their
incredible achievements. Some found their way
into the history books by being the first or the
fastest, and others made history by overcoming
extraordinary obstacles to accomplish exceptional
tasks. The path to these milestones starts early.
By the time the Wright brothers were teenagers,
they were already exhibiting the kind of curiosity
and creativity that would lead them to greatness.
Early exposure to science and technology, or
an early brush with history, can have a profound
impact on a young person’s future. For me, I
found inspiration on a geology field trip with my
mother. I was fascinated by the way the geologist
could read the layers of the rock like the pages of
a book. The spark can come from any number of
experiences—a visit to a museum, a conversation
with an expert in the field, or hands-on activities
provided through Scouts and other community NASA opened U.S. spaceflight to women in 1978. Five
programs. In 1941, when most women were of the six women the agency selected that year—(from
told the only job for them in aviation was that of left) Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy
Sullivan, and Rhea Seddon—were all Girl Scouts.
a stewardess, the Girl Scouts of the USA started
the Wing Scout Program. Through the program,
every woman who has flown in space is a Girl Scout
alum, including the first U.S. woman astronaut,
Sally Ride. (Read about her on p. 80.)
NEW BADGES ENCOURAGE GIRLS TO One of the keys to success is excitement about
RESEARCH WORLDS BEYOND EARTH your work. Our goal at the Museum is to inspire
AND LEARN ABOUT SPACE SCIENCE. a passion for flight in our visitors, and I hope
these new Girl Scout badges will help more young
women find their passion for exploration and
girls learned about aviation, and many even had space. After all, we might one day be telling their
the opportunity to take the controls of an airplane. stories at the National Air and Space Museum.
Just as it did when I was a scout, Girl Scouts
continues to provide inspiration for girls, including Ellen Stofan is the John and Adrienne Mars Director of
the National Air and Space Museum.
the opportunities to earn new Girl Scout badges in
outdoor adventure and STEM (described on p. 10).
I was especially pleased to see the new badges in
space science developed with the SETI Institute.
These new badges encourage girls to research
worlds beyond Earth and learn about female role
models currently working in space science. Such
activities for teenagers can definitely influence a
NASA

Washington, DC Chantilly, VA
future career: According to the Girl Scouts, almost

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,
John Fleischman, Daniel Ford, David Freed, Greg Freiherr, William Gregory, Dan Hagedorn, R. Cargill Hall, Richard
Hallion, Jim Hansen, Gregg Herken, Eric Long, Stephen Maran, Laurence Marschall, Ted Maxwell, Marshall
Michel, Ron Miller, Brian Nicklas, James Oberg, Chad Slattery, Marcia Smith, John Sotham, Stephan Wilkinson
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, Mr. Stanley A. Deal, Mr. Scott C. Donnelly, Mr. Mark B.
Dunkerley, Ms. Michele A. Evans, 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

SMITHSONIAN ENTERPRISES

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 LETTERS
Young at Heart
As a pilot privileged to have
flown the Navy’s Grumman
S-2, I am wounded by the
word “ancient” in your feature
“Wildfire Wars: A Squadron
of Ancient Airplanes Wages
California’s Battle Against
Natural Disaster” (Aug.
2019). While it is true that
I, a retired naval aviator, am
86 and can be called ancient,
it is not a word I would use
to describe the S-2. I flew
the S-2F, which according to
Wikipedia is still in service
in Argentina. I might use the
word “ancient” to describe the
Grumman F4F, maybe even
the F6F, but I think it’s a little
early to call the S-2 ancient.
JOHN LYNN
United States Naval Reserve,
(Retired and still vertical)
Carlsbad, California
Was It a Helicopter?
Your article “The Helicopter
Goes to War,” says that it
was only in Burma that heli-
copters were used in com-
bat conditions. My father,
Carl J. Dahlberg, Seaman
1st Class, was stationed on
the USS Birmingham, which
saw action at Iwo Jima and
Okinawa. As my father told
the story, he was an eyewit-
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.
6 AIR & SPACE
ness to a helicopter rescue Birth of the AR-5
mission in early April 1945 Your article on hang gliding
on Okinawa. A light recon (“Like Birds”) brought back
plane was flying a mission at memories of the origins of
the Battle of Okinawa when Mike Arnold’s record-setting
the pilot got into some type AR-5 monoplane. Michael
of trouble and had to ditch on and I were roommates in
the beach. Quickly a “secret the 1970s, and one night he
machine thing” flew off an said he had decided to build a
LST straight to the beach, hang glider with a wing cov-
landed, rescued the pilot, ered in fiberglass or metal.
and flew back to the LST. When I asked why, he said
My father said that while the he felt a rigid wing would
“secret machine” was in flight, be safer than the Rogallo
not a shot was fired from the wing. Although a pilot, he
Americans or the Japanese. had no engineering experi-
Soon after, fighting resumed. ence. Michael began to build
JONATHAN DAHLBERG test parts for the Floog Zoig
via email (“Fly thing” in German) in
his room. Eventually Michael
Editors’ reply: We weren’t there moved out, and not long
in 1945, and your dad was, but after, he called and told me
we know of no other reports of he had decided to turn the
helicopters lying from LSTs. Floog Zoig into a powered
Roger Connor, aeronautics cura- airplane. The AR-5 was born.
tor at the National Air and Space PAUL LAWRENCE
Museum, tells us that during via email
the Okinawa campaign, L-4
Piper Cubs were launched from Corrections
LSTs via Captain James Brodie’s The photo on p. 51 of
trapeze-like catapult system. “Wildfire Wars” shows the
Helicopters also lew in combat 2017 Thomas Fire, not the
conditions in the Philippines. 2018 Carr Fire, as reported.
Air & Space is not responsible for the return of unsolicited materials. Never
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 IN THE SKY
IN SPACE
IN THE NEWS

8 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 Solar
Cruising
LightSail 2 deployed its 32-square-meter
Mylar solar sail on July 23, demonstrating
that light alone can propel a small satellite.
On July 31, the Planetary Society—
which built and operates the crowd-
funded CubeSat—reported that its solar
sail had raised the apogee of the satellite’s
orbit by two kilometers (1.2 miles).
After another two weeks, LightSail had
ascended another 3.2 kilometers, all using
nothing more than sunlight.
The sun constantly blasts out pho-
tons, which have no mass but transfer
momentum when they bounce off
a reflective surface. Put something
big and reflective enough in the vac-
uum of space, and in theory spacecraft
could maneuver without the chemical
thrusters that move all of today’s orbital
satellites—allowing them to save more
of their launch weight for important
payloads and experiments.
But LightSail is not entirely without
mechanics. Camera and communications
aside, the satellite has a reaction wheel
that tilts the sail as it moves along its
orbit, increasing or decreasing its angle
relative to the sun and so allowing it to
keep raising its orbit.
LightSail 2 is not the first of its kind,
as the name suggests: The first LightSail,
launched in 2015, was designed to test
THE PLANETARY SOCIETY

the solar sail deployment mechanism.

(It worked.)

■ ZACH ROSENBERG IS AN ASSOCIATE EDITOR AT

AIR & SPACE/SMITHSONIAN.

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 9

 Girl Scouts can earn badges in space
sciences by learning about astronomy and
recreating scientific experiments.

says that space plays a significant role in

Scouting the Cosmos
New Girl Scout badges encourage young
women to study stars and exoplanets.
The Girl Scouts was just a year old when, in 1913,
it began awarding badges to young women for
electronics and aviation. More than a century
later, it is challenging members to aim even higher,
with the release this summer of three new space
science badges encouraging scouts to learn about
astronomy and the exploration of other worlds.
Funded by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate,
the SETI Institute, working with the Girl Scouts
of the USA, led a partnership of groups to develop
the broader STEM initiatives, because
“part of science literacy is understanding
our place in the big world, in the solar
system, in the universe. And, once we
realize that, I think it’s easier to think
about protecting our planet.”
Girl Scout cadettes (grades 6-8) can
earn the space science researcher badge
by investigating properties of light and
observing the night sky; seniors (grades
9-10) can obtain the space science expert
badge by classifying stars and studying
their life cycles; and ambassadors (grades
11-12) seeking the space science master
badge will explore exoplanets through
activities such as designing a habitat for
an alien world.
TOP: NG IMAGES/ALAMY; BOTTOM: COURTESY GIRLSCOUTS.ORG

the badges. They were issued at the same time as

nine new cybersecurity badges and 18 new badges
in coding, as part of the Girl Scouts’ ongoing ini-
tiative to promote learning in STEM fields. The
organization reports that its members are almost
twice as likely as non-Girl Scouts to participate in
STEM activities (60 percent vs. 35 percent), and
77 percent of girls say that, because of Girl Scouts,
they are considering a career in technology.
Pamela Harman, the director of education at
This summer, Girl Scouts of the USA issued 42 new
the SETI Institute and principal investigator on badges for outdoor adventure and STEM activities,
the Girl Scouts Stars program (designed to foster including a space science master badge (inset) for girls
girls’ interest in STEM through space science), in grades 11-12.

10 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 4.4 THE COUNT

BILLION: The number of airline

passengers in 2018, according to the
International Air Transport Association.
The Asia-Pacific region has the biggest
market share, with 1.6 billion passengers.

Road Trip for a Corsair

Safe Landing
Veterans Memorial Park in Lewiston, Maine is home
to several wartime relics, including a shell from the
USS Maine, a five-inch rotating gun, and an Army jeep. A SMALL
SUCCESS STORY
And now, visitors to the park will also see a Vietnam-
era A-7D Corsair II—a single-seat, tactical close-air-
support aircraft derived from the U.S. Navy’s A-7.
The Lewiston & Auburn Veterans Council spent The Los Angeles-based launch company
two years trying to obtain the aircraft, which had Rocket Lab continues to prove that small
satellites can mean big business.
previously belonged to the Montana Vocational
On August 19, Rocket Lab’s two-
Technology aviation school in Helena. When the stage Electron rocket lifted off from
school shut down, most of its aircraft were sold to New Zealand, carrying four satellites
museums, but the A-7D remained behind, sitting alone
and exposed to Montana winters. In 2018, the veterans’
group was told they could have the A-7D, but that
presented another problem: How to get the 20,000-
pound aircraft to Maine?
Enter trucker Eric Dashiell of Dashiell
Transportation Inc. In July, he volunteered to make
the two-week round trip. “It just seemed like nobody
wanted to help them out,” says Dashiell. “And it’s
like I said, ‘If it wasn’t for the vets helping us for our
freedom, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to go do
this to help them.’ ” The drive back to Maine took a bit
longer than expected, Dashiell says, since every time he
stopped for brief breaks, “it always turned into a half-
hour, hour longer. Because you had a lot of veterans
coming over with their grandkids telling the stories
that they used to fly one and then they’d start crying,
thinking about their buddies.”
Although the A-7D had been disassembled, Dashiell
was unable to deliver the entire aircraft. The veterans’
group is raising money to cover his expenses for a
second trip to pick up the 38-foot wing. Fired Up: Rocket Lab launched its 25th
satellite, a DARPA payload, last March.

belonging to the U.S. Air Force and private

companies in Seattle and France. The
mission, named “Look Ma, No Hands,”
marks the eighth launch since 2017, with a
total of 39 small satellites placed in orbit.
TOP: ROCKET LABS; BOTTOM: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

As Air & Space reported in its April/

May 2018 issue (“Small Shot”), Rocket
Lab is using several innovative techniques
to keep its costs low—around $5 million
per launch—for customers. The Electron
booster, which can lift 500 pounds into
orbit, is made from a carbon composite,
which reduces mass, and its engines are
manufactured with 3D printing, which
Between 1968 and 1976, 459 A-7D Corsair aircraft were
reduces labor.
delivered to the U.S. Air Force.

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 11

 This is only a
drill, for now:
Over the fictional
town of Razish
at the National
Training Center
at Fort Irwin,
California, 40
quadcopters fly
in a swarm.

Drone Defense and Offense

ENEMY DRONES WON’T
FIND SAFETY IN NUMBERS
U.S . M I L I TA RY BAS E S around the globe
might soon harness the power of THOR to defend
against drone swarms.
The Air Force Research Laboratory unveiled
the $15 million weapon system—the Tactical
High Power Microwave Operational Responder—
this past June at Kirtland Air Force Base in New
Mexico, where it used an electromagnetic wave to
knock a drone out of the sky.
Unlike conventional defenses, such as
sharpshooters, THOR can instantly disable
multiple drones simultaneously. “It operates like
a flashlight,” program manager Amber Anderson
told reporters viewing the demonstration. “It
spreads out when the operator hits the button,
and anything within that cone will be taken down.”
THOR was designed for rapid deployment
and can be assembled within three hours. The
system is intended for short-range defense,
but the Air Force is working on another system,
called CHIMERA (Counter-Electronic High-Power
Microwave Extended-Range Air Base Air Defense)
that can target several drones at mid- to long-
range.

MICRO DRONES
JOIN ARMY TOP: US ARMY/PV2 JAMES NEWSOME; BOTTOM: USMC/PFC RHITA DANIEL
PATROLS
FO R T H E F I R ST T I M E , an Army
brigade in Afghanistan is using tiny,
Black Hornet personal drones. In
August, paratroopers from the 3rd
Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne
Division, deployed the device—which
weighs less than two ounces and has
a flight time of up to 25 minutes—for
overhead surveillance while conducting
patrols in Kandahar Province. The Army U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Cesar
said in 2018 that it plans to eventually Salinas participated in an exercise
issue the drone to each of its infantry that tested the Black Hornet
units. drones in 2016.

12 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

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 Fraser MacDonald, who lectures on the
history of science at the University of
Edinburgh, is the author of Escape From
Earth, a biography of Frank Malina.

Why isn’t Malina more well-known?

I don’t think it’s a conservative conspir-
acy, but politics does play a role. There’s
been a cloud over Malina’s reputation
for years. I think people have long sus-
pected that he was a communist, and
now the rumors of his party member-
ship turn out to be true.

Do you think the FBI’s investigation

of Malina was warranted?
Actually, I do—though I didn’t at the
beginning. I saw things rather dif-
ferently by the end of the book. That
doesn’t mean that the FBI investigation
of Malina was fair—it often wasn’t—but
Interview
he was a member of the communist

Who Was Frank Malina? party at a time when the party was
routinely used as a front for intelligence
Fraser MacDonald examines the operations. He must have known that
being a communist working in clas-
controversial life of the brilliant sified defense research would attract
rocket scientist who co-founded the some scrutiny.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Was Malina comfortable accepting

What compelled you to research the story of Frank Malina?
He is America’s first successful rocketeer—the person who made
rocketry scientifically respectable. Yet, weirdly, he has only ever
been a bit-part player in other people’s histories. A book about
Malina is long overdue, not just because of his historic significance,
but because his story is so full of intrigue, tragedy, and improbable
good fortune.
Malina invented jet-assisted takeoff (JATO) and the WAC
Corporal, the first sounding rocket developed in the United
States. He also co-founded JPL and Aerojet. Do you think his
accomplishments merit broader recognition?
Absolutely. Aside from his institutional legacies, many of his technical
contributions have largely gone unnoticed: from hypergolic liquid
propellants to the theory of long-duration solid propellants. He also
military contracts?
At the beginning, I’d say he was sanguine
rather than comfortable. He told himself
that rockets might be needed to fight
fascism. But he was deeply unhappy
at the prospect of his Corporal missile
becoming the bearer of a nuclear war-
head. He started to have panic attacks
in meetings. He even sought help from
a psychoanalyst—not realizing of course
that his analyst was all along working
for the FBI.
What would you like people to
know about Malina?
Malina was anti-fascist and anti-racist.
He took the risk of fighting for the polit-
ical change he believed was important.
JAMES BIRD

■ DIANE TEDESCHI IS A SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR

helped develop the political infrastructure of space exploration: the AT AIR & SPACE/SMITHSONIAN. ■ READ THE FULL
International Academy of Astronautics, for example. INTERVIEW AT AIRSPACEMAG.COM/MACDONALD

14 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

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 I WAS T H E R E
My Flight with a Legend
IF ONE OF AVIATION’S ALL-TIME CHAMPIONS LEARNED TO LIVE
WITHOUT FLYING, I’LL BE ABLE TO LEARN, TOO. RIGHT?
BILL BRENNAND’S FRIEND, Marybeth,
gripped my forearm and looked straight into my
eyes as she delivered the news: “Kerry! Bill has
not stopped talking about the airplane ride you
gave him!”
My heart sank. That meant Bill had lied to me
two weeks earlier as I helped him off the wing of my
airplane. It was September 2007, some six decades
after 23-year-old William F. “Bill” Brennand had
lowered his 100-pound frame into a midget air-
plane racer to fly at the 1947 National Air Races
in Cleveland. Before I got to know Bill as a quiet
man with a cutting wit, I knew him only by his
accomplishments. The first time I approached him,
in 1998, I held a heavy wood propeller, a marker,
and a degree of anxiety about asking him to sign
the prop. My hometown, Oshkosh, Wisconsin,
is host to the Experimental Aircraft Association’s
16 AIR & SPACE
by Kerry Fores
annual fly-in convention, AirVenture, and is no
The author with stranger to aviation legends. But Bill was home-
Bill Brennand and grown, raised on a farm that is now part of the
Metal Illness, his
homebuilt Sonex,
Oshkosh airport. He was one of them, but also one
in Oshkosh, 2007. of us. After my anxious introduction, our paths
Kerry Fores is a crossed frequently within the Oshkosh community.
freelance writer Among Bill’s competitors at the 1947 Cleveland
and photographer Air Race was Tony LeVier, who competed in his
who built an
airplane in his
first National Air Race in 1936 and won the Greve
garage in Oshkosh, Trophy in 1938. In the 1946 Thompson Trophy
Wisconsin. race, LeVier had piloted a Lockheed P-38 to a
second-place finish. LeVier was a seasoned pilot,
accustomed to winning. Bill, a flight instructor,
COURTESY KERRY FORES
had never raced before. He and Steve Wittman
had built his aircraft, Buster, from the bones of
Wittman’s pre-war racer Chief Oshkosh. Wittman
had damaged the airplane in a 1938 crash, and
its charred fuselage had hung from the rafters of
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 I WAS T H E R E
Wittman’s hangar during the war while Wittman
trained pilots for the military.
In 1945, with the war over and time on their
hands, Witt and Bill—who had taken a job with
Wittman Flying Service two years earlier to pay
for his flying lessons—rebuilt and rechristened the
hobbled racer. Bill taught himself aerobatics in it,
then modified it again to compete in the inaugural,
Goodyear-sponsored, midget class (now known
as Formula 1) race in Cleveland.
Buster, a truly homebuilt aircraft with a
Continental C-85 four-cylinder, 85-horsepower
engine under the cowl, would compete against rac-
ers like Lockheed’s Cosmic Wind and Art Chester’s
Swee’ Pea. Bill and Buster were clocked at 165.9 mph
on the 2.2-mile course, leaving LeVier and every
other racer in their wake.
Sixty years later, long retired from racing,
Brennand maneuvered himself into the right
seat of Metal Illness, my homebuilt Sonex aircraft.
AS HE STEPPED OFF THE WING,
HE SAID, “I REALLY DON’T MISS
IT. I DID IT FOR SO MANY YEARS.“
When I gave him the stick, he flew with the skill
and confidence of a lifer. He was in his 80s, but
there was nothing tentative about his flying.
If Bill was happy to be piloting again, I didn’t see
it. His eyes were outside the cockpit. Good pilots
don’t need instruments; their senses relay visual,
aural, and physical messages to the brain and the
brain subconsciously commands the controls.
While Bill’s eyes were outside the cockpit, my
eyes were on him. Not out of concern, but out of
awe. I was thrilled to share Metal Illness with an
18 AIR & SPACE
aviation legend. If Bill had performed an aileron roll
or pulled up into a stall and kicked in full rudder to
spin earthward for a few hundred feet, I was all in.
When offered control of an airplane, many pas-
sengers, even pilots, demur. My logbook shows
we flew for 42 minutes. I don’t recall piloting the
aircraft much myself, and I don’t remember the
landing so I must not have embarrassed myself.
Bill, however, remembered his landing in the
final qualifying flight at the 1947 National Air
Race. Buster’s propeller broke, causing the aircraft
to shake violently. Bill shut off the engine, pulled
straight up to bleed off airspeed, then glided over
the grandstand to an uneventful touchdown.
A rescue crew arrived as Bill opened his canopy.
“What happened?” they asked.
Buster, née Chief “I don’t know, I just got here myself,” Bill replied.
Oshkosh, spent the The following day, Bill flew his first race and
decades between recorded his first national victory with a borrowed
1931 and 1954 propeller bolted to Buster. Today, Buster hangs in
becoming one of
the most successful
the National Air and Space Museum.
racing aircraft in the After shutting down the engine of Metal Illness
history of the sport. and opening the canopy, I helped Bill up from the
seat, out of the cockpit, and onto the wing. As he
stepped off the wing, he said, “I really don’t miss
it. I did it for so many years.”
That set me back. Millions of people fly in air-
planes every day, but relatively few pilot them. My
last airline flight left me wanting to give up flying,
but piloting? I couldn’t imagine life without it.
I was in fifth grade when I realized I had to fly.
By my junior year of high school I was spending
six years of yard-work earnings on lessons; one
a day, every day. I soloed in two weeks. I flew an
airplane before I drove a car. Poor eyesight meant
flying would always be recreational for me, but it
remained central in my life. When I couldn’t afford
to fly, I haunted Wittman airport, often spending
an hour of my 30-minute lunch there. That’s how
I met John Monnett, founder of Sonex Aircraft,
whose Moni design hangs in the Museum’s Steven
F. Udvar-Hazy Center. Just as I had to become a
pilot, I had to build a Sonex.
I thought again about what Bill had said. He
didn’t miss flying? Bill’s words hit me like an icy
wave on a hot summer day, a brief shock followed
by great relief. They gave me hope that when my
skills and health fade, so too will my desire.
Two weeks after I took Bill flying, Marybeth
MARK AVINO/NASM2018-10284
told me that Bill had not stopped talking about
our flight. Bill’s biographer Jim Cunningham
once quoted him as saying, “I was not one to ride
around the patch very much; the flight had to have
a purpose. I guess 65 years of flying was enough.”
Or maybe it wasn’t.
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 AT T H E M U S E U M
Handle With Care
WHAT GOES INTO DISPLAYING A SUPERSONIC PASSENGER JET?
by Rebecca Maksel
ON ITS FINAL FLIGHT, THE CONCORDE
hurtled toward its destination at Mach 2, while
those on board leisurely feasted on caviar, rock
lobster, and foie gras. When the aircraft landed
at Washington Dulles International Airport, its
flying career was over, but it was about to start a
new journey, as part of the Smithsonian’s National
Air and Space Museum’s collection.
It was June 2003, and the Museum’s Steven F.
Udvar-Hazy Center was scheduled to open in just
six months. When the Concorde arrived, it was
the third aircraft waiting to enter the Hazy Center,
along with the Boeing 367-80 (known simply as the
Dash-80), and the Boeing 307 Stratoliner.
20 AIR & SPACE
“We had set aside three weeks to defuel all three
Part of the jet set: aircraft and move them into the building,” says
The Museum’s
Museum Specialist Rob Mawhinney. “And then
Concorde was the
first in the fleet we learned a hurricane was coming.”
to open service In order to beat the hurricane, the Museum
between Paris and pulled in a new group of volunteers who were also
New York. United Airlines employees. A year earlier, Gary
Berrian and his fellow employees were attending
a United Airlines meeting at the Dulles Sheraton
when they realized the presentation next door,
ERIC LONG/NASM
which was about the new Hazy Center, sounded
far more interesting. They crashed the adjacent
meeting. “We asked how we could help,” says
Berrian, “and we were put in touch with the res-
airspacemag.com
 toration shop foreman. We ended up working Workers remove
on the Enola Gay.” the first of
15,000 marble
“About 20 of us from that project were asked to panels to be
give the Museum a hand because of the storm,” replaced.
says Berrian. “We defueled the Concorde on the
ramp. But that aircraft is tail-heavy.” To keep the
tail off the ground once the fuel was removed
took some work. “We had to load 8,000 pounds
of sandbags into the forward baggage compart-
ment. These were 40-pound bags—you can do the
math,” says Berrian.
Some 200 sandbags later, the Concorde was
towed into the Museum, where the volunteers
added even more ballast. (The sandbags are still Transformation and Revitalization
there, but the Museum has plans to eventually In the first year TEAR DOWN THAT WALL
remove them, when it attaches a cable to the nose, of the Mach 2
applying 8,000-pounds of force.) airliner’s flights The National Air and Space Museum, one of the
to the United most visited museums in the world, is getting
All of the aircraft at the Hazy Center are dis- a much-needed facelift. On August 21, the
States—1976—
played in an environmentally stable environment a British Airways first of 15,000 exterior stones was removed;
with a temperature of 70 degrees Fahrenheit and Concorde the building’s existing Tennessee Pink marble
50 percent relative humidity, says Robert van der (left) and an cladding has warped since the Museum opened
Air France in 1976, and all 15,000 stones will be replaced.
Linden, a curator in the aeronautics department. The recladding is part of the Museum’s multi-
Concorde meet
“The Concorde is not illuminated from the inside, nose to nose at year renovation, but not to worry: Although
so there are no electrical considerations,” he says. Virginia’s Dulles parts of the Museum are closed, multiple
“All of our aircraft are mounted on steel support international galleries remain open to the public.
stands that take the weight off of the tires. And airport.
TOP: JIM PRESTON/NASM; BOTTOM: NASM

the compression struts of the landing gear are

locked into place so that if a shock absorber fails,
the aircraft will not drop.” WHEN THE CONCORDE LANDED AT
The Concorde was placed so that visitors standing
on the upper mezzanine walkway can look down
WASHINGTON DULLES AIRPORT, ITS
and see all of the fuselage. “It’s a bigger aircraft than FLYING CAREER WAS OVER, BUT IT WAS
most,” says Mawhinney. He should know: Along ABOUT TO START A NEW JOURNEY, AS
with other workers, Mawhinney hand-polished PART OF THE MUSEUM’S COLLECTION.
the entire aircraft. “Because of all of the time it

had spent at airports, the paint was oxidized and

there were jet fuel stains all over it,” Mawhinney
recalls. “We couldn’t do a machine-polish since it
was inside; you’d end up spraying polish all over
everything.” It took a week for the crew to finish
the task. “We’d do three or four square feet and
take a break; do another three or four feet and take
another break,” he says.
In 2010, Museum staff noticed that one of the
Concorde’s compression struts was sagging. Berrian
was called back in to help: He’d left United Airlines
and had gone to work for British Airways, and had
continued to volunteer at the Museum.
The Museum’s Concorde was the first pro-
duction Concorde delivered to Air France, and
had spent 17,824 hours in the air. Preserving the
crown jewel of supersonic transport: Just another
typical day at the Museum.

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 21

 THE FUTURE
OF AEROSPACE

I Love My Job and Here’s How I Got It

Going Places in a Herk

MICHAEL LENOCH, C-130 PILOT TRAINEE, ILLINOIS AIR
NATIONAL GUARD, 169TH AIRLIFT SQUADRON

Michael Lenoch, German dual major. My dad was an

on the day in aeronautical engineering major, and
2018 that he
got his master’s degree from MIT. You
soloed in an Air
National Guard can’t possibly live up to that if you’re
T-6 Texan during not good at math in the seventh grade.”
his training at But Lenoch’s dad encouraged him, and,
Laughlin Air Force after getting his private pilot’s license,
Base, Texas.
Opposite: More
he took his dad’s advice and applied to
than 50 years the Air National Guard.
earlier, a
somewhat more THE WARBIRD ADVANTAGE:
famous pilot “For some reason I had an easy time
strikes a similar
pose before his
withstanding Gs in the T-6. I think
solo in the having been surrounded by aviation all
Mercury space my life—honestly, it was a very spoiled
capsule. upbringing, being exposed to all those
warbirds. In the T-6, I could withstand
5 Gs without even doing the anti-G
straining maneuver; by contrast, I had
heard of other students starting to gray
out at 3 Gs. It was one less thing I had
to focus on.”

SKILLS NEEDED FOR THE JOB: Prior to

THE JOB: The 169th Airlift Squadron provides
airlift support to the U.S. Air Force. “There will
never be a dull moment in the C-130,” says Lenoch.
“We can drop personnel, vehicles, or supplies.
The C-130 is known to be commonly fired upon
by surface-to-air threats, which is alarming but
also exciting.”
EARLIEST INFLUENCE: “My father, airshow
qualifying on the C-130, Lenoch trained
in the Raytheon T-1 Jayhawk and the
Beechcraft T-6 Texan II.
In primary training, he found the
T-1 the bigger challenge. “It’s always
challenging when there are a number
of aircraft in the pattern,” says Lenoch.
“I remember one day especially, flying
the T-1, and there were terrible wind
gusts. The T-1 is a bear to control, and
it takes an incredible amount of effort
from the pilot to tame the aircraft. I was
SCOTT HESTER

pilot Vlado Lenoch. My father had flown a P-51 just coming to grips with how to fly the
Mustang ever since I was born. I did not have a T-1 and was struggling. I was cleared
math or science major; I was a journalism and for landing, and I was looking at my

22 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com/next


instruments rather than at the pattern, because
for all of my previous approaches, the instructor
told me I was off speed or too low. During this
final approach, the instructor called ‘Go around.’
I learned in the debrief that I failed the flight
because a Learjet was on the runway and had not
taxied clear. It was frustrating, but I’ve never done
anything like that again.”
“IN THE T-6 I COULD
WITHSTAND 5 Gs WITHOUT
EVEN DOING THE ANTI-G
STRAINING MANEUVER;
OTHER STUDENTS WOULD
BEGIN TO GRAY OUT AT 3 Gs.“
PLANS FOR THE FUTURE: “As I serve in the Air
National Guard, I’ll build experience at the unit in
order to become the best tactical airlifter I possibly
can. I love to fly because when you’re working you
don’t feel like you’re working, and when you’re
working, you feel like you’re traveling. That’s why
I see flying as the perfect career for me.”
ADVICE FOR ASPIRING PILOTS: “The Air
National Guard offers the widest range of career
opportunities and flexibility, from part-time to
full-time to traditional Guardsman.”
—Interview by Rebecca Maksel
LET US HEAR FROM YOU!
Have you just soloed? Started a new job?
Finished an internship? Invented an aeronautical
gadget? Tell us about your experience, and send
us a photo. editors@si.edu or
facebook.com/AirSpaceMag
NASA
October/November 2019
VOLUME 4 | NUMBER 3
Unbelievable but True
JUST THE RIGHT WORD
Chutzpah. Kibitz. Klutz. Maven. Schmooze. Tush.
These are words derived from Yiddish that have
worked their way into the American idiom. Most were
introduced through entertainment—radio, television,
literature—by descendants of Yiddish-speaking
immigrants who found no English words adequate to
describe what they were trying to express.
One word derived from Yiddish, glitch, was also
introduced in radio, and found its way to the world of
electrical engineering and, from there, to the hallowed
halls of 1960s NASA, and thence, everywhere.
Glitch is derived from glitsh, Yiddish for slippery
place, and from glitshn, meaning to slide, or glide.
Glitch was in use in the 1940s by radio announcers
to indicate an on-air mistake. By the 1950s, the term
had migrated to television, where engineers used
glitch to refer to technical problems.
Perhaps one of these engineers later joined NASA
and began using glitch around a freckle-faced aviator
from New Concord, Ohio: In Into Orbit, a1962 book
by the Mercury Seven, John Glenn mused about the
word, which he evidently hadn’t used before joining
the space program. “Another term we adopted to
describe some of our problems was ‘glitch.’ Literally,
a glitch is a spike or change in voltage in an electrical
circuit….”
We’ll never know if an engineer’s use of a Yiddish
term around John Glenn is the reason we all say glitch
today. But imagine if an engineer had used a different
Yiddish term around him: John Glenn’s first words
upon the splashdown of Friendship 7 might have
been, “Oomph! That’s a jolt to the tuchus!”
—Jim Vespe
AIR & SPACE 23
24 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com
 THE 21 ST
CENTURY
MOON SUIT THE DATE FOR THE NEXT
LUNAR LANDING HAS BEEN
SET, BUT THE ASTRONAUTS
DON’T HAVE A THING TO
WEAR.
■ BY MARC KAUFMAN

O N E O F T H E L AST T I M E S former astronaut John Grunsfeld was

in NASA’s immense underwater training pool in Houston, wearing a
spacesuit and practicing for his third and final Hubble Space Telescope
repair in 2009, he felt a growing pain in his shoulder.
ERIC KAYNE/AP IMAGES FOR UNITED TECHNOLOGIES

He was only weeks from liftoff, and the telescope’s fate—as well as
a substantial NASA investment in his training—was on the line. He
knew right away what might be causing the pain: a rotator-cuff ten-
don injury. He knew because after his second Hubble repair mission
in 2002, he had needed surgery to repair significant tendon damage
in his other shoulder.
He was also aware that other astronauts—as many as 25, according
to NASA—had experienced similar shoulder problems, and that the
design of the suit’s shoulder joint appeared to be associated with at
least some of these injuries. Under the suit’s fabric was a stiff “hard
upper torso” made of fiberglass, which can restrict shoulder motion

Spacesuit builders ILC Dover and Collins Aerospace

showed off their privately developed Astro
exploration suit at an event on Capitol Hill last July.
NASA may need help from such commercial
ventures if it hopes to make a 2024 moon landing.

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 25

and put increased strain on the rotator-cuff
muscles, especially when the astronaut was in a
sideways or upside-down position. This issue had
been brought to the attention of NASA officials
years earlier, but the costly-to-replace suits were
still being used.
Grunsfeld had to decide. “If it was just a little
bit worse, I don’t think I could have gone [on the
Hubble repair mission],” he says. But given the
stakes, he continued preparing for the flight. As
it turned out, he and his fellow astronauts suc-
ceeded in upgrading the telescope during a series
of EVAs (extravehicular activities, or spacewalks)
that stretched to almost eight hours each. Moving
his shoulder was in fact much easier in weight-
lessness. But Grunsfeld knew what he was likely
to face back on Earth. Sure enough, soon after
returning, he had a second rotator-cuff surgery.
Not long after, he retired from the astronaut corps.
Grunsfeld is quick to say that NASA spacesuits
do their job and have kept hundreds of astronauts
safe over the years. A strong advocate for human
space exploration who went on to head NASA’s
science program, he doesn’t want the agency to
quit doing spacewalks or making spacesuits for
26 AIR & SPACE
missions to the moon, asteroids, and Mars.
He just wants better ones.
Now, with NASA gearing up to send astronauts
to the moon in 2024 (see “Moon Rush,” August
2019), it has become apparent that spacesuit devel-
opment has not kept up with the times. Designs for
suits—technically called Extravehicular Mobility
Units or EMUs—have continued to evolve since
the Apollo days, but the suit astronauts wear today
WITH NASA GEARING UP TO SEND
ASTRONAUTS TO THE MOON IN 2024,
IT HAS BECOME APPARENT THAT
SPACESUIT DEVELOPMENT HAS NOT
KEPT UP WITH THE TIMES. ASTRONAUTS
STILL WEAR A MODIFIED VERSION OF A
SUIT FLOWN ON THE SHUTTLE IN 1981.
is basically a modified version of what first went
up on the space shuttle in 1981. And the current
suit is made for weightless work outside the space
station, not for hopping around in one-sixth G
on the lunar surface.
If the moon program stays on schedule, space- Opposite: In the
suits will within a few years be asked to do more early 2010s,
researchers at
than they ever have. They’ll have to be far more NASA’s Johnson
flexible and dust-resistant; they will have to keep Space Center tested
astronauts safe for longer periods outside their this Z-1 prototype
spacecraft; they’ll need to be interchangeable suit, designed to be
among astronauts of different sizes, and, NASA more flexible,
particularly in the
hopes, less costly; and they will have to reduce the legs, and to be
risk of injury. After all, there will be no surgeons easier for
onboard the lunar lander to fix an incapac- astronauts to put on
itated shoulder. and take off.
Despite the long-standing aware-
ness of these needs, there has been
only limited testing of advanced
suit technology outside the lab—a
few modestly funded exper-
iments conducted at remote
desert locations or underwater
habitats. There have been zero
trials on the International Space
Station, although these are due
to begin this fall.
The reasons for this lack of
NASA (2)
progress have partly to do
with changing requirements
over the past two decades.
airspacemag.com
On a 2007 space
station expedition,
Suni Williams works
outside the station
wearing a suit that
has a rigid hard
upper torso.
Perhaps because of
that rigidity, many
astronauts of the
space station and
shuttle era have
experienced
shoulder injuries.
Engineers would be working one year on a new
suit for lunar exploration. Then it would be Mars
or an asteroid. Each mission had slightly different
technical demands, and the frequent change of
destinations made the overall research program
more complicated.
In addition, there was little or no competition
in the spacesuit business for more than 40 years.
The same company, Delaware-based ILC Dover,
has outfitted NASA spacewalkers from Apollo
through to the current space station era. This
summer, in partnership with Collins Aerospace,
which makes the suit’s life-support backpack, the
company introduced an advanced EVA suit called
“Astro,” which—perhaps looking ahead to a new
era of private lunar missions—it developed on
its own, instead of waiting for a NASA contract.
Chris Hansen, manager of NASA’s EVA Office,
would like to see many more players in the game.
Even before the 2024 deadline put spacesuit work
on a fast track, he says the pace of development had
already picked up. “About two years ago we came
to the conclusion that we needed a new spacesuit
that could be used on a wide range of missions,”
he says. “Using our long experience and then new
technologies and approaches, we’ve been making
real progress. This is a super exciting time for us.”
It may be no coincidence that the speed-up in suit
development happened around the same time as
the release of a NASA Office of Inspector General
October/November 2019
report sharply criticizing the program. The IG
identified almost $200 million in agency spend-
ing over a decade on three programs to develop
next-generation suits. Despite this investment,
the report concluded that “the Agency remains
years away from having a flight-ready spacesuit
capable of replacing the EMU or suitable for use
on future exploration missions.”
The report also criticized NASA for paying $80.8
million between 2011 and 2016 to a Houston-based
company called Oceaneering International that had
been developing a spacesuit for the Constellation
moon program, which was canceled in 2010.
Not only were project managers advised a year
later to terminate the Oceaneering contract, but
subsequent work done by the company appeared
to duplicate work done by the agency in-house,
according to the IG. Hansen says that while NASA
accepted much of the report, it took issue with the
part criticizing the continued Oceaneering work,
because the research and development produced
under that contract had been valuable.
NASA’s next suit, called the Exploration EMU or
xEMU, is being developed in-house at the Johnson
Space Center in Houston, where the astronauts
train. Numerous commercial suppliers are involved
in its development, and once the design is final
and the suit passes initial qualification tests, NASA
will turn to industry for full-scale production.
AIR & SPACE 27

One reason to keep the design in-house is the
accelerated schedule for landing on the moon.
Before Vice President Mike Pence announced
the 2024 deadline at a National Space Council
meeting last March, spacesuit research managers
had been planning to have a next-generation suit
ready by 2027. In the span of one short speech,
they lost three years.
At a spacesuit technology workshop held in
Houston in late July, there was much talk about
the deadline. NASA officials said they were con-
fident they could hit 2024, but the astronauts who
will make that first moon landing in half a cen-
THE NEW MOON SUITS ARE DESIGNED
TO BE ENTERED FROM THE BACK,
RATHER THAN HAVING THE
ASTRONAUTS LOWER THEMSELVES
INTO THE BOTTOM HALF AT THE WAIST,
THEN PUT ON THE TOP HALF, AS THEY
HAVE DONE SINCE APOLLO.
28 AIR & SPACE
tury—on a mission designated Artemis 3—might
have to settle for a limited version of the xEMU
if significant issues arise during testing.
In an interview a few weeks later, Hansen and
his colleague Jesse Buffington, NASA’s Exploration
EVA system development lead, were more opti-
mistic. They have plans for the full xEMU to be
ready for the 2024 landing, with a flexible lower
torso assembly rather than a rigid one, for enhanced
mobility during a moonwalk.
That’s a key design goal for a 21st century
spacesuit. Today’s EMUs have some flexibility
in the arms and hands, but not in the legs. That’s
not much of a problem when floating on a tether
outside the space station, but for the moon,
leg mobility is a high priority. Reaching down
to pick up a rock was a major undertaking for
the Apollo astronauts. It sometimes required
dropping to their knees, grabbing the sample,
then pushing themselves back up. Falls were
not uncommon.
The xEMU’s lower torso assembly has at least
two bearings per leg, to allow for some movement
and bending—technology advanced in the Z-2
experimental suit developed for NASA several
years ago by ILC Dover. Walking in such a suit
would still have limitations, but it would be a sig-
nificant improvement over the Apollo experience
Dust will be a and would lead to suits with even greater mobility,
constant hazard which could also be adjusted at the shoulder and
on the moon, just waist based on the size of the astronaut.
as it was in 1972
for Apollo 17’s
Weight is always an issue with space hardware,
Jack Schmitt, so lightweight titanium is being considered for
whose suit is the leg bearings. As usual, there are tradeoffs.
black with it. The While titanium is appealingly light, NASA
fine particles got
studies show that it is more prone to wear than
everywhere, and
the sharp, glassy steel, a drawback when engineers are aiming
minerals in the for a cycle life roughly 100 times that of current
lunar soil EMU bearings. Titanium also is known to be
abraded the flammable in reduced pressure and 100 percent
spacesuit fabric.
oxygen environments, so there has been exten-
sive testing and analysis to make sure it would
be safe to use in the xEMU.
Another feature NASA wants in its next moon
suit is modularity. The parts of the suit will be
designed to work together in a variety of combina-
tions that can be mixed and matched. Commercial
providers will have to follow those modular stan-
dards accordingly. The Apollo suits, by contrast,
were individually (and expensively) fitted, and the
current space station EVA suits are made from
two large pieces.
Modularity will also come in handy when the
suits are adapted for other missions, like Mars
NASA (4)
exploration. “What we come back to frequently is
the question ‘What should a spacesuit look like to
airspacemag.com
go wherever we might want to go,’ ” says Hansen. redundancy into the suit’s life-support system.
The new moon suits are designed to be entered The new moon suit also will have digital commu-
from the back, rather than having the astro- nications befitting an Internet-era astronaut, and
nauts lower themselves into the bottom half at electronic displays may replace Apollo’s printed
the waist, then put on the top half, as they have
done since Apollo. Russian spacesuits have been
rear-entry for decades, and NASA now agrees SPACESUITS ARE SOMETIMES
that is preferable. That was in fact something DESCRIBED AS THE WORLD’S SMALLEST
the agency learned from research done under SPACECRAFT—VEHICLES BUILT FOR ONE.
the Oceaneering contract. RIGHT NOW THEY COME IN ONLY
The next-generation suit will allow for lon-
THREE SIZES: MEDIUM, LARGE, AND
ger EVAs, beyond the roughly 6.5-hour limit of
current spacewalks. A key to meeting that goal is EXTRA-LARGE.
to have a life support system that can scrub out
carbon dioxide and water more efficiently than
current systems can. One promising approach
is the rapid cycle amine system, which removes
carbon dioxide and humidity, and, unlike today’s
lithium hydroxide scrubbing system, is regenerated
during a spacewalk.
As a general approach, NASA wants to build

checklists. The “Snoopy Cap” and old-fashioned

Moonwalkers of microphones will be replaced by an integrated
the Apollo era communication system mounted inside the suit.
couldn’t move
their stiff legs
easily, so they
were prone to
falling, as Charlie Astronauts working on the lunar surface will
Duke did on need to be better protected from dust than were
Apollo 16.
the Apollo moonwalkers. Minerals in the lunar
Advanced suits
are expected to soil include tiny glass particles that can erode
make walking fabric. The dust is sticky and gets everywhere.
easier in the Understanding the dust problem and how to miti-
moon’s one-sixth gate it is therefore among the spacesuit engineers’
gravity.
highest priorities.
The Apollo suits had a variety of protective
layers, but the dust found ways to make it through
the weave as well as most everything else. Gene
Cernan, the last person to step onto the moon, put
it this way in his Apollo 17 debrief: “You have to
live with it but you’re continually fighting the dust
problem both outside and inside the spacecraft. …
You can be as careful in cleaning up as you want to,
but it just sort of inhabits every nook and cranny
in the spacecraft and every pore in your skin.” One
active area of study is how and where the dust got
into the Apollo suits; often it was at the glove-arm
connection, zippers and other junctions.
As an alternative to fabric suits, outer shells are
being tested that are highly flexible and durable,
using materials that didn’t exist in the 1960s (and
are held as proprietary secrets by their inventors).
Another idea for beating the dust problem—not
focused on the suit—is to redesign the airlock sys-
tem astronauts will use to transfer between their

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 29


lander and the lunar surface. Engineers have also
looked into an integrated “suitport” attached to
the lander. Astronauts would enter the suits from
behind, detach, and walk right out onto the surface.
Spacesuits are sometimes described as the world’s
smallest spacecraft—vehicles built for one. Right
now they come in only three sizes: medium, large,
and extra-large. Today’s space station suits were
made primarily with male astronauts in mind. (A
smaller suit was discontinued in 1992.) But even
before NASA decreed that the Artemis 3 lunar
landing crew will include a woman, that size
constraint was a problem.
The issue made a splash last March when NASA
announced that, for the first time, two women
would be making a space station EVA together.
That contingency had never been planned for,
and it soon turned into a problem. When it was
learned that only one medium suit was in good
enough shape to be used, the idea of an all-fe-
male spacewalk had to be quickly (and with some
embarrassment) scrapped.
It was ultimately astronaut Anne McClain’s
decision to step down and give to a male colleague
the spacewalk she had been assigned. Judging
from her own past spacewalking experience, she
believed that she wouldn’t perform as well in a
large, rather than a medium, suit.
It’s now generally accepted that a wider range
30 AIR & SPACE
Spacesuit
designers at the
University of North
Dakota test their
experimental
NDX-1 model in
the field in 2009.
Modest NASA-
funded research
like this has yielded
interesting results,
but not a finished,
flight-ready suit.
of suit sizes has to be made available, especially
for women. The training and flight experiences
of retired astronaut Catherine “Cady” Coleman
demonstrate why. At 5 feet, 4 inches, Coleman was
one of the shortest astronauts of her generation
(although Yuri Gagarin was two inches shorter).
She and other women of similar stature were able
to do their jobs in space, but not without some
jury-rigging of their spacesuits.
CADY COLEMAN IS AN ARDENT SUPPORTER
OF HUMAN SPACE EXPLORATION, BUT SHE
SAYS FUTURE SUITS ABSOLUTELY MUST BE
MADE WITH THE CHANGING ASTRONAUT
CORPS IN MIND. SPACESUITS ARE “THE
GATEKEEPERS” FOR WHO WILL BE SPACE
EXPLORERS AND WHAT THEY CAN DO.
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA
As Coleman explains it, she was able to wear a
medium suit, but there was a lot of extra room—too
much. She consulted female former astronauts to
learn how they had dealt with similar situations,
and was told about packing the suit with foam
rubber. The space gloves were also too large for
airspacemag.com
 her hands, and a new pair had to be made for her.
But they didn’t work either, and she experienced
numbness in her hands for months. The pain
sometimes still returns.
Coleman is an ardent supporter of human space
exploration, but she says future suits absolutely
must be made with the changing astronaut corps
in mind. Spacesuits, she said, are “the gatekeepers”
for who will be future space explorers and what
they will be able to do.
Hovering over the advanced spacesuit research
program—and the entire Artemis enterprise—is
the ever-present question of whether today’s
ambitious lunar plans will remain a priority for
NASA. EVA officials say their work on a modu-
lar suit can still progress, but before long they’ll
need specifics: How many astronauts will land in
2024 (the current plan is at least two), and where
exactly will they land? How many spacewalks are
required? How much power will be available?
How heavy can the suits be, and where and how
will they be packed inside the lunar lander? The
engineers will need those answers and more, and
they’ll need them soon.
Only recently has NASA even hinted at a total
price tag for the Artemis program—in the $20 bil-
lion to $30 billion range over five years, according
to administrator Jim Bridenstine. That would be in
NASA
$21.5 billion. Hansen of the EVA Office says that
spacesuits are expected to get less than five percent
of that—between $1 billion and $1.5 billion over a
decade, depending on how the schedule unfolds.
ONLY RECENTLY HAS NASA EVEN
HINTED AT A TOTAL PRICE TAG FOR
THE ARTEMIS PROGRAM—IN THE
$20 BILLION TO $30 BILLION RANGE
OVER FIVE YEARS, ACCORDING TO
ADMINISTRATOR JIM BRIDENSTINE.
In Arizona in
2009, a NASA He and others in the agency embrace the need
team tests a to demonstrate real progress in the near term,
prototype lunar
rover, with
and to no longer simply talk about the moon and
spacesuits Mars as goals for the future. “The public has to
attached. The see us fly,” he says. “We just have to show tangible
“suitport” would results. Then, as soon as we start going back to the
let astronauts moon, we think the support will come publicly
step into the
suits from inside
and politically.”
the cabin, then And along the way, a new and better spacesuit

addition to the agency’s current annual budget of walk away. just might be born.

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 31

 WHAT IT LACKS IN GLAMOUR,
THE GRUMMAN C-2 GREYHOUND
MAKES UP FOR WITH UTILITY.
WILL THE OSPREY MEASURE UP?

THE
■ BY ZACH ROSENBERG

GREYHOUND
AND

32 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 Hail and Farewell: A C-2
Greyhound (opposite)
departs the USS Eisenhower
in 2016; an MV-22 Osprey
approaches the USS Wasp in
2018. A new version of the
Osprey is being readied to
replace the long-serving
Greyhound and is expected
to begin deliveries to carriers
in 2021.

THE
OSPREY
US NAVY/SPECIALIST DANIEL BARKER; OPPOSITE: US NAVY/SPECIALIST ANDERSON W. BRANCH

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 33

 DAW N H AS BA R E LY B R O K E N and Rawhide
78, a Northrop Grumman C-2 Greyhound, is
already dodging storm clouds on its way to the
aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, about 100
miles off Florida’s northeast coast. The Truman is
gearing up for a nine-month cruise and is chock-
full of airplanes, but they aren’t launching and
landing. Today is a change-of-command ceremony.
Rawhide’s load is light: one bulky access panel for
an F/A-18, a couple dozen personal packages for
the carrier’s crew, 28 empty seats, and one nervous
writer. A few-minutes’ flight ahead is another C-2
full of command staff for the ceremony.
The C-2 is—with its close cousin, the E-2
Hawkeye—the heaviest airplane to board the
carrier, but its pilots take pride in a crisp “break”
over the ship. They make to overfly the carrier at
an 800-foot altitude but, midway down the deck,
throw their airplane into a hard left bank, lower-
ing the flaps and landing gear as they descend and
bleed off speed. When the Greyhound rolls level,
it is on glideslope for the Truman’s angled landing
area, and as aircrew in the back signal to brace,
Rawhide 78 catches the three-wire and jerks to a
halt. The pilots fold the wings immediately and
taxi to its parking area.
The C-2’s ramp starts to lower before the air-
plane stops moving, and as soon as it does, the
34 AIR & SPACE
Truman’s deck crew swarm to offload it. The pack-
ages are thrown unceremoniously into wheeled
yellow baskets. The F/A-18 panel disappears
below decks. The Greyhound crew doesn’t pay
attention as the Truman’s outgoing captain gives
his final speech over the PA. They are checking
weather, finalizing the load manifest, inspecting
the auxiliary generator, taking instructions from
the carrier’s air boss, and conferring with the
flight deck personnel. As the speech ends, nine
passengers materialize and tromp aboard—one
has a broken arm and will be met by an ambulance
upon return to shore. The Greyhound starts its
engines, taxis to the No. 3 catapult, and—whump,
thunk!—Rawhide 78 is airborne again, headed back
to Naval Air Station (NAS) Jacksonville. The air-
plane spent barely 40 minutes on deck, a textbook
Carrier Onboard Delivery (COD) resupply run.
An aircraft carrier battlegroup sets sail filled to
the brim with spare parts, supplies, and crew, but
the ships still require a constant churn of fresh
parts and people. The only road in or out, so to
speak, is the C-2, landing and lifting off with care
packages of up to 10,000 pounds or 28 people at
a time. Whenever a U.S. aircraft carrier leaves
airspacemag.com
 A C-2 prepares to
unfold its wings
and launch off the
Harry S. Truman
in 2014. The Navy
attempted to
decommission
the Greyhound in
the 1980s but
ended up simply
replacing them
with newer C-2s.
port, a detachment of two Greyhounds follows
to keep it supplied.
Unlike other carrier-goers, C-2s are neither
permanently assigned to a “boat” nor dedicated to a
specific air wing. Instead, the Navy maintains two
squadrons—VRC-30 at NAS North Island, in San
Diego, and VRC-40 at NAS Norfolk, Virginia—that
send detachments to cover the Pacific and Atlantic
carrier fleets respectively. The detachments board
the carriers at the start of a cruise, but stay aboard
only until land is once more within range; then,
they set up at the nearest large airport and com-
mence shuttle runs.
As the ship sails onward, the 50-person detach-
ments hopscotch from base to base. For VRC-40
that usually means a first stop on the Azores. A
typical itinerary might next send them to fly from
Rota, Spain, for a week, then Sigonella, Italy; Souda
Bay, on Crete; and finally Bahrain, where they can
stay for months as the carrier steams around the
Persian Gulf. The goal is two “bounces” per day
aboard the carrier, but one is common depend-
US NAVY/SPECIALIST 3RD CLASS JUSTIN R. PACHECO (2)
ing on how far away the ship is or whether a
Greyhound needs maintenance. VRC-40 has two
detachments out in mid-July, one servicing the
Truman from Jacksonville and another in Bahrain
About to land on the
keeping the Abraham Lincoln supplied. Unusually,
Truman in the a third detachment is gearing up to support an
Persian Gulf during upcoming Eisenhower deployment.
the carrier’s 2015 Once ashore, the detachments are essentially
missions to strike on their own to figure out how to keep airplanes
ISIS, this C-2A
Greyhound most
in the air, get cargo to the ship, and find food and
likely returned to a lodging. Over the years, that independence has
base in Bahrain. earned C-2 crews a reputation for self-reliance.
October/November 2019
“When we go on deployment, we’re pretty much
alone in terms of how we coordinate with differ-
ent countries and airfields and customs—all that
stuff,” says Paul Masteller, a VRC-40 pilot. “This
is the Navy; something can change overnight and
now we’re going to a different location. Now the
carrier’s saying hey, we’re off the coast of Morocco
and we need a hit tomorrow. Morocco, lead time
is 14 days just to get a clearance to fly over their
country, so now we have to figure out is there a
way around this?”
But being out there alone is a double-edged
sword. C-2 crews spend each night ashore, earning
the envy of their ship-bound colleagues. They are
warned not to discuss things like per diem lodgings
or having fun at bars worldwide, lest they stir up
resentment. “The air wing thinks that we wake
up at 10 a.m., come in, have a cup of coffee, get a
day trap, go back home, and start boozing on the
beach,” says Eric Bromley, VRC-40’s squadron
commander. “They see you for an hour and then
you leave, and they think, ‘What the hell?’ We
have it good, I’m not going to lie about that. But
it’s not as easy as it might appear from the outside.”
The COD’s primary business is people: sail-
ors headed to or returning from leave, specialist
maintainers flying in for repairs, medical evacu-
ees and their replacements, corporate technical
representatives, visiting admirals and command
staff—anyone the battlegroup needs or no longer
needs goes by C-2, and the churn is constant. The
carrier is first a tool to spread American influence,
and the personnel of whatever nearby nation’s
political or military establishments the U.S. wants
to impress are regular passengers. The cargo they
fly can be critical and time-sensitive: rotor blades
for the HH-60 Seahawk helicopters that fly plane
guard, pipes to restore a ship’s hot water, pistons
AIR & SPACE 35
 for the carrier’s arresting gear—if it fits and the
Navy needs it, C-2 crews have flown it.
“Literally three days ago we flew out a bunch of
trash cans,” says Bromley. Other crewmembers tell
stories of flights full of fresh eggs, flowers, copy
paper, even a working car. “It was part of a con-
test,” says James Wallace, who flew Greyhounds
from 1979 to 1982. “The contest winner drove it
around on the deck for a little bit, then we put it
back on the plane and flew it back to shore.”

The Greyhound in no way resembles the sleek and

speedy racing dog it was named for. It looks more
like that other famous Greyhound—the bus. It’s a
The C-2’s small turboprop airliner, with a bulbous black nose
predecessor, the
Grumman C-1
in the front and four vertical stabilizers sprouting
Trader, takes off from the back like rear-end antlers. The C-2 squats
from the Essex in awkwardly unless otherwise directed—its beefy
1956. Like the main gear extends hydraulically by 18 inches for
Greyhound, the catapult shots—and it is so obscure an airplane
Trader was a
derivative of another
that many of its crew hadn’t heard of it before
airplane, the S-2 they received their orders.
Tracer sub-hunter. Nor is the C-2 an easy airplane to fly, partic-

“It’s to the point where it can be very confusing

ularly for new pilots fresh from smaller, newer
training airplanes. Like its direct progenitor, the
E-2 Hawkeye, it is unstable in pitch and yaw. The
Greyhound is unstable in roll as well. “Out of all
the planes I’ve flown so far in my career—which
has only been the T-6, T-44, and the T-45—this
has by far been the most challenging and physically
strenuous plane to fly,” says Masteller.
At 8,000 feet above southern Virginia, Masteller
and copilot Stovall Knight demonstrate the C-2’s
idiosyncrasies. “These props are so big and pow-
erful, every power addition requires a significant
for a pilot to fly this plane, because you’ll be in a
left-hand turn and require a significant amount
of right rudder to be coordinated.”
In the air, he pulls the power off, and the C-2’s
nose promptly drifts left and begins to fall; when
he adds power, the nose drifts to the right. The
autopilot holds only altitude and heading and, in
any case fails regularly, compelling pilots to fly
manually for the whole flight. “If you’re doing a
three-and-a-half hour flight, it’s three-and-a-half
hours of constant back-and-forth,” Masteller adds.
None of this is ideal for carrier-going airplanes,
and by carrier standards, the C-2 is enormous: on
centerline, its 81-foot wingspan leaves only about
10 feet of margin on either side when landing
aboard the ship. “It never gets old, it never gets
easy, and it’s never like the last one you just did,”
squadron commander Bromley says of landing.
“And you don’t really ever think about what you
have in the back [because] you’re focused so hard.
Self-preservation is kicking in. You do your best
to fly a safe, predictable pass at the ship.”
Masteller demonstrates this too as he turns
US NAVY

amount of rudder correction to counteract the final at Naval Outlying Landing Field Fentress,
force of the blades,” Masteller explains preflight. where Norfolk-based pilots fly pretend carrier

36 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com


The C-2—unstable approaches. After a crisp, face-draining break
in pitch, roll, and over the field, his hands and feet are in constant
yaw—is a handful to movement over the throttle, stick, and rudder.
fly, much less land
aboard an aircraft
He keeps the Greyhound on glideslope despite a
carrier, yet this crew stiff crosswind and Knight’s gentle ribbing. The
appears to execute a landing signal officer below waves us off at the
flawless approach to last second, which is typical for C-2s—why add
the Abraham Lincoln
one more stressful landing to the old airframe?
in 2018.
And the Greyhound’s age is showing. Air traffic
control tells us that our transponder is not operat-
ing; they can see only our primary radar reflection
and ask that we notify them upon reaching certain
positions and altitudes. After two mock-carrier
approaches, we are abruptly headed home after our
flaps get stuck—first partially down, then entirely
up; it’s a relatively benign issue, but we conduct
a high-speed, flaps-up landing back at Norfolk.
“Overall, this is a very reliable airplane,” Bromley
says. “They are 30 years old, however, and based on
legacy technology. Things break quite frequently,
but our mechanics are good. That’s what they’re
here to do, and they fix the airplanes.”
US NAVY/SEAMAN SHANE BRYAN
Carriers have probably always had informal
squadron “hacks,” fighting airplanes with guns
and combat equipment replaced by seats or cargo
space. But the first formal CODs didn’t come
about until after World War II, when a handful
of surplus TBM Avenger torpedo-bombers were
October/November 2019
converted to carry a maximum of six people (and
a limited amount of cargo in the bomb bay). They
were replaced in the late 1950s by larger, twin-en-
gine Grumman C-1 Traders, offshoots of a new
carrier-based anti-submarine airplane.
Early cold war strategists saw the future in bal-
listic missiles and behemoth, eternally airborne Air
Force bombers, but the Navy convinced planners
that carriers had a role in delivering tactical nuclear
weapons and that to do so required enormous
“supercarriers.” The problem was that the C-1’s
cargo bay was too small to carry either nukes
or jet engines, which early jets burned through
regularly. By 1960, a new airborne early warning
airplane, the E-2, was in the works to replace the
C-1’s progenitor, and the Navy had the idea to
repeat its earlier experiment: Rebuild the airframe
as a transport. This time the transformation was
substantial. Two of the slim E-2s were rebuilt into
prototype C-2s—one of which crashed into Long
Island Sound during testing, killing all four aboard.
The Navy pressed the remaining prototype into
service and ordered 17 more from Grumman.
Deliveries began in 1966.
The C-2 community became a backwater of
naval aviation. Navy crews rarely switch air-
planes, and the Greyhound, with its small fleet
and unglamorous role, was all but a career dead
end. That changed gradually in the 1980s as the
C-2 aircrew track was combined with that of its
E-2 brethren, which allowed a career path beyond
the COD. But it took time for their dead-end
reputation to fade, and it’s still a sore point in the
community. “It’s about changing the spin, changing
our tune a little bit, so we’re not viewed as the guys
flying rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong, like in
Top Gun,” says Bromley. (“But if they want me to
do that, then I’ll do that,” he adds.)
Carrier life is hard on airplanes, and in the early
1980s, the Navy began looking for Greyhound
replacements. None of the ideas (including a car-
rier-going 737) made it off the drawing boards.
In the end, the Navy decided to put the C-2 back
into production as the C-2A(Reprocured). More
Greyhounds were built this time—39—boasting
more powerful versions of the Allison T56 engine,
updated avionics, a new auxiliary power unit, and
tweaks to the cargo bay. Production began in 1985;
in 1990, the last-ever C-2 rolled off the Grumman
production line.
Today the C-2A(R)s need to rest. VRC-40’s
oldest bird (serial number 162144) still flies after
more than 1,000 punishing carrier landing/cata-
pult cycles and nearly 11,000 hours in the air. The
type’s retirement is scheduled for 2024, accelerated
from 2027 because the mission readiness rate, even
with money channeled to improve it, reached
only 40 percent in 2018. Today, airplanes with
AIR & SPACE 37
 major problems are retired rather than repaired. Soon the Bell-Boeing CMV-22 Osprey, a
While the Osprey One such “strike bird” resides in an NAS Norfolk bespoke COD version of the V-22, will take over.
can haul an F-35 hangar. “It needed like $2 million worth in parts,” The new CMV-22 will look a lot like the V-22s
engine in stages— says VRC-40’s Bromley. “We can resurrect that already flown by the U.S. Marine Corps and Air
proven below, in airplane if we have to, but the juice is not worth Force but will come with added internal fuel tanks,
2015—it cannot
move the assembled
the squeeze, and that airplane has been giving life a high-frequency radio, and a public address sys-
engine in its to other airplanes through cannibalization and tem, among other tweaks.
protective canister. moving parts around.” The Osprey will take some getting used to. On
the plus side, the CMV-22 will fly farther with
more weight—1,150 nautical miles with a 6,000-
pound payload on a tropical day, versus 850 nm
for the C-2. It will use a palletized cargo system
that sailors can load beforehand, meaning it will
spend even less time on deck than the bulk-loaded
Greyhound. Vertical takeoff and landing makes
for slow approaches to the carrier and ends the
need for hair-raising, airframe-stressing arrested
landings and catapulted takeoffs. The first CMV-22
pilots are training to land at night, a task all but
mythical for the C-2.
But the Osprey also has a few strikes against it. It
has less interior space, and so cannot carry as many
people or as much cargo; nor will it fit an assembled
F-35 engine inside its protective canister, one of
the COD’s primary requirements. If the tiltrotor’s
engines are left running while the engine nacelles
are in the vertical position, heat from the engine

TOP: USMC/CPL ANNE K. HENRY; BOTTOM: DOD

38 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 Where the V-22 period for a new airplane type, but the first cruise
shines is its ability to is always a learning experience and Hermann is not
land vertically—no
worried. “There’s going to be growing pains, just
C-2 could land on
the small landing like anything else,” he says. “We’re taking this out
pad aboard the with some assumptions. We’ll test the assumptions,
amphibious assault exhaust scorches the flight deck. It’s not pressurized and we’ll adjust from there.”
transport New York, and, so, can’t fly passengers above bad weather.
as this V-22 does in
2015.
Tiltrotors are more complex overall, thus requir-
ing more maintenance; CMV-22 detachments will
have to deploy with three aircraft instead of two, “It’s a hideous airplane. It’s horrible to fly, [but]
Still, the V-22 does and 88 people instead of 50. we’re traveling all over Europe, we’re flying to
not have as much Like it or not, here it comes: The first CMV-22 the boat, and we’re doing all kinds of interesting
physical space as
the C-2. The Osprey
squadron, VRM-30, was stood up in November stuff,” opines James Wallace about his time flying
was built to carry 2018 at NAS North Island. The new squadron’s the Greyhound nearly 40 years ago. After his Navy
Marines on assault pilots and maintainers are training with the Marine service, Wallace went on to set up several avia-
missions (as on this Corps V-22 training squadron at MCAS New tion companies. “One of the best things I got out
2014 training
River, North Carolina, and will receive their first of the C-2 was how to navigate, file flight plans,
exercise in
brand-new CMV-22 by the end of this month. deal with Customs, all that stuff that none of the
US NAVY/SPECIALIST 3RD CLASS JONATHAN B. TREJO

Thailand), not to
haul big cargo loads. VRM-30 commander Trevor Hermann, a vet-
The new version, the eran C-2 pilot and instructor, likes his new ship.
CMV-22, will not be “I’d never hovered before in my life prior to hov-
significantly bigger.
ering the V-22, so it was a whole new experience
to me,” says Hermann. “It’s kind of unnerving as
you’re rotating the nacelles back and bleeding off
airspeed…you almost feel like you’re going to stall,
but obviously it’s been designed to do that. It’s one
of those things that’s pretty cool.”
The CMV-22’s first operational cruise is set
to take place in 2021—a very short breaking-in
[other] guys in the service ever got,” he adds.
An old military axiom holds that amateurs
study tactics while professionals study logistics.
The Greyhound, an essential cog in the carrier
fleet’s complex logistics, has done its part quietly,
without fuss or fanfare, as professionals do. The
C-2 may never appear in Top Gun, but Maverick
dare not set sail without it. Whether the CMV-
22 can suitably replace the Greyhound remains to
be seen, but the people who keep the C-2 flying
never forget their time or what it taught them.

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 39

T H E O N LY F LY I N G Y L-1 5 S C O U T

40 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 THE ONLY FLYING WHAT?
■ BY KEN SCOTT

Keith Brunquist flies his rare

Boeing YL-15 Scout over
Minnesota farmland in
RICHARD VANDERMEULEN

September 2017. Boeing

made only 10 pre-production
models of the airplane,
which it tried—
unsuccessfully—to get the
U.S. Army to purchase as an
observation aircraft.

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 41

Nine years after the end of World War II, Keith
Brunquist’s father, Norm, took him out to an
airstrip near their Anchorage, Alaska home and
showed Keith, who was nearly three years old, a
Boeing YL-15 Scout.
Sixty-three years after his first glimpse of the
odd little airplane, Keith landed the fully restored
Scout at the world’s biggest gathering of aircraft:
the Experimental Aircraft Association’s 2017
AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. By the time
the show was over, the YL-15 was recognized as the
grand champion for post-World War II warbirds.
In addition, Keith’s workmanship in restoring the
Scout earned him a Gold Wrench award.
When Norm acquired the YL-15, he already
knew quite a bit about its background. During
the war, the U.S. Army learned the value of small
airplanes that could take off and land almost any-
where, drop dispatches, direct artillery fire and
airstrikes, and transport personnel. The unusual aircraft is a great example of how thIn a 1946 publicity
Most of the “L-Birds” (L for liaison) were com- function can determine form. Almost nothing photo, an XL-15
proof-of-concept
promises adapted from pre-war civilian designs. about the airplane looks conventional. The fuse-
prototype (serial
After the war, the Army wanted an airplane lage, which resembles a blimp gondola turned number 46-520)
designed specifically for the liaison mission. Boeing backward, is just big enough to hold two people poses with a
responded with the XL-15. in tandem—and a tiny 125-horsepower Lycoming Boeing B-29.

A disassembled
XL-15 stows easily
inside the upper
deck of a Boeing
C-97. Had the
Scout become
operational, the
C-97 had the
capability to
transport up to
four L-15s, flight
and maintenance
© BOEING (2)

crews, and their

gear to far-flung
battle zones.

42 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 THE XL-15 IS A GREAT
EXAMPLE OF HOW
FUNCTION CAN DETERMINE
FORM. ALMOST NOTHING
ABOUT THE AIRPLANE
LOOKS CONVENTIONAL.

engine. The wings span 40 feet and sport huge fla-

perons, with spoilers on the upper wing surfaces
for good measure. The observer can face forward
or aft, looking through an array of windows, which
afford a view of the landscape uninterrupted by
Brunquist’s good the tail, attached to a thin boom reaching back
friend Brian from the top of the aft fuselage. For versatility,
Porterfield, an
the landing gear can be fitted with floats or skis.
experienced
airplane mechanic, Between 1946 and 1949, Boeing manufactured
was a steady two XL-15 proof-of-concept prototypes and 10
presence during the pre-production YL-15s. These aircraft demon-
restoration. strated exceptional slow flight and short-field
capabilities, but when the Army decided to buy
the more conventional Cessna L-19, the Boeing
fleet went to Alaska’s branch of the U.S. Fish &
Wildlife Service.
As a Fish & Wildlife mechanic, Norm had
worked on them for the brief period they were
stationed in Alaska. Something about the strange
airplane appealed to him. So much so, that when
YL-15 47-432 (the last one built) came up for auc-
tion in Pierre, South Dakota in 1954, Norm bought
it. He flew it home via Oregon and Washington
state—a long way in a very slow airplane. (The
Scout cruises at 100 mph.)
In preparation for the Army contract that never
COURTESY KEITH BRUNQUIST

came, Boeing had manufactured lots of spare parts.

Norm bought them all—for $25. He also acquired
the YL-15 type certificate and the remains of two
wrecked -15s. After making his last flight in the
Scout on October 15, 1966, Norm parked it in his
front yard, which was situated on the east shore

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 43

 of Alaska’s Lake Spenard. He fully intended to
recondition the aircraft. Life, however, has a way
of interfering with intentions, and the airplane sat
in the front yard until Norm died in 1994.
Nine years later, Keith decided to fulfill his
father’s dream. He pulled the badly deteriorated
airplane into his shop in Wasilla and began a res-
toration that spanned 13 years. “My wife Kathy, my
brothers, and many friends worked with me,” says
Keith. “But I spent a lot of time alone. Then I met
Brian Porterfield [an airline pilot who is also an
experienced airframe-and-powerplant mechanic].
He came out to see my project, and for the next
one and a half years whenever I was there, he
was there. It made all the difference in the world,
having that skill and encouragement during long
nights in the shop.”
Rigging the cables controlling the flaperons,
spoilers, and rudders was the biggest challenge.
“Boeing’s Field Erection and Maintenance Manual
[provided us with] the cable tensions,” explains
The two-place
Keith. “Some of those cables were spec’d for 90
Scout’s observer
sat in a seat that pounds, which is a pretty good approximation of
could swivel a guitar string. The spoilers were especially diffi-
rearward. The aft cult—they had to sit completely flush with the top
doors could be of the wing when the stick was in neutral, other-
opened in flight had ON JULY 28, 2016, KEITH wise the airplane would try to turn continuously.”
there been a need
to drop supplies to FINALLY SOLOED THE Porterfield made the first post-restoration flight.
downed airmen. AIRPLANE HE HAD FIRST MET He then put Keith through four intense hours of
AT AGE TWO AND A HALF. “ITS re-currency flight training in a Piper PA-18 Super
Cub. On July 28, 2016, Keith finally soloed the
SLOW FLIGHT HANDLING IS airplane he had first met at age two and a half.
IMPECCABLE,” HE SAYS. “IT HAS “The Scout has a very comfortable and well
A FULL-POWER, FULL-FLAP laid-out cockpit,” says Keith. “Its slow flight han-
RICHARD VANDERMEULEN (2)

STALL SPEED OF 18 MPH!” dling is impeccable. It has a full-power, full-flap

stall speed of 18 mph! When I fly it solo, it gets
airborne at 20 mph indicated airspeed. Short of
a helicopter, I don’t think a better observation
platform has ever been designed for forward air
control and liaison work.”

44 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 Keith and Porterfield decided to introduce the Opposite:
YL-15 to a larger audience. Since the Scout was Brunquist and
his wife Kathy
designed to be transported by truck, which is almost
display the
as fast as the Scout, Keith stuffed the airplane into awards their
a 24-foot box truck and drove 3,125 miles from YL-15 won at the
Wasilla to his friend Pat Harker’s warbird resto- 2017 AirVenture
ration shop in Anoka, Minnesota. After two long in Oshkosh,
Wisconsin.
days of reassembly—“The Boeing sales brochure
says a five-man crew can assemble the airplane in
something like 45 minutes,” says Keith. “Complete
fantasy!”—he took off for the 300-mile trip to
Oshkosh, accompanied by Harker in Harker’s
Stinson L-5. Once there, the YL-15 created a minor
sensation. It’s possible that in a crowd of thousands, “THE BOEING SALES
there was nobody who’d ever seen one fly. BROCHURE SAYS A
What’s next for the Scout? Keith’s not sure. At the 2019 FIVE-MAN CREW CAN
“Who knows how many of these airplanes might AirVenture,
Brunquist ASSEMBLE THE AIRPLANE
fly again?” he says. “Mine is the only one flying
now, but Pat Harker has the remains of one XL-15 explained the IN SOMETHING LIKE 45
and three YL-15s.
instrument panel
to 11-year-old
MINUTES,” SAYS KEITH.
“As for me, it’s time to find a good home for Jayden Erickson. “COMPLETE FANTASY!”
mine,” he says. “I’ve accomplished my goals. I’ve The Scout
earned a further
CAROLINE SHEEN

honored my parents by restoring an airplane that

distinction—
was a big part of their lives, and I’ve had a chance “Returning
to fly an unusual aircraft that I first saw when I Grand
was two years old.” Champion.”

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 45

 NASA HAS
SPENT DECADES
SENDING PROBES
■ BY BRUCE LIEBERMAN
TO EXPLORE
OTHER WORLDS.
NOW, IT’S TRYING

RETURN TO BRING ONE

BACK HOME.

FROM A
MARTIAN
CRATER
ABOUT A DOZEN YEARS FROM NOW,
Martians might finally arrive on Earth. If they do,
it will be because we brought them here.

NASA/JPL/MSSS/ESA/DLR/FU-BERLIN/J.COWART, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO; INSET: NASA

NASA and the European Space Agency are plan-
ning an audacious mission to gather samples of
rock and soil from the surface of the red planet and
transport them across 34 million miles of space—
giving scientists an unprecedented opportunity to
study what Mars is made of and to search for evi-
dence that the planet once harbored life. Because
past missions have revealed signs of Martian lakes
and river deltas, the scientists believe they may find
the fossils of microscopic organisms that thrived
in those lakes and rivers before the planet became

Billions of years ago on Mars, the Jezero Crater was

home to a lake and a river delta. Did life exist there?
To find out, NASA is designing a small rocket (inset,
artist’s impression) that will launch from the crater,
bringing soil samples back to Earth.

46 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 47
 the frigid desert that it is today. Module, the planned Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV)
Next July, the three-part mission to return will have to free itself from a planet’s gravity, even
samples from Mars will begin with the launch of if the pull is only 38 percent of the surface gravity
Earth prepares to the Mars 2020 rover. While the rover is exploring of Earth. And before the ascent vehicle launches
invade Mars, as an and collecting soil, NASA engineers will continue for home, it will have had to endure a gauntlet of
engineer in the
space simulator
developing the technology for the other two physical punishments.
facility at the Jet phases of the mission—launching a rocket lifting First, as a payload aboard a lander headed to
Propulsion the samples to Martian orbit, where it will ren- Mars, the MAV will be subjected to the rough
Laboratory dezvous with a waiting return vehicle that will ride of a launch from Earth, followed by a six- to
inspects (from top ferry the precious cargo to Earth. For each of the nine-month flight through deep space, which will
to bottom) the
cruise stage and
steps in that process, the engineers at NASA’s Jet culminate in a fiery entry into the atmosphere
aeroshell of the Propulsion Laboratory are confronting a series of surrounding Mars, a supersonic descent, and a
spacecraft that daunting challenges. not-so-soft landing. After that, the craft will sit
will carry the next For starters, nobody has ever launched a rocket on the surface for half a Mars year (equal to a full
NASA rover to the from the surface of another planet. This is a very year on Earth), exposed to dust storms, ultraviolet
red planet. Its job:
gather and cache
different scenario from the one that brought Apollo radiation, and temperatures as low as minus 40
soil samples in astronauts home from the moon, just 238,900 miles degrees Fahrenheit.
sealed tubes. away. Unlike the ascent stage of the Apollo Lunar Another crucial difference from the Apollo
missions: There will be no humans on the space-
craft. And because it can take several minutes for a
transmission to reach Mars, even remote piloting
is out of the question.
“We can’t joystick it,” says Paulo Younse, an
engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“We can’t communicate with it, and we don’t have
a person on board, so it’s got to be automatic.”

On February 18, 2021, the Mars 2020 rover will

touch down in the 30-mile-wide Jezero Crater
(pronounced “YEH-zuh-roh”), where it will col-
lect samples and cache them in hermetically sealed
tubes for later retrieval. NASA spent five years
deliberating over a landing site before it settled on
Jezero. Scientists believe that between 4.1 and 3.5
billion years ago the crater was filled with a lake,
820 feet deep. Perhaps more exciting are the signs
of a river delta. A delta is “extremely good at pre-
serving biosignatures, evidence of life that might
have existed in the lake water, or at the interface
between the sediment and the lake water, or, possi-
bly, things that lived in the headwaters region that
were swept in by the river and deposited in the
delta,” said Mars 2020 project scientist Ken Farley
when announcing the landing site last November.
The rover will collect samples from at least
five different kinds of rock, including clays and
carbonates, which have high potential to pre-
serve indicators of ancient life, whether in the
form of complex organic molecules or the fossils
of microbes. The search for samples will be aided
by a suite of instruments, including SHERLOC
(Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman
NASA/JPL-CALTECH

and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals),

which uses spectrometers, an ultraviolet laser,
and a camera to detect organic compounds. But,
scientists say, this equipment will be no substitute

48 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 It will be a
high-stakes game
of catch when the
Earth Return Orbiter
(artist’s impression)
captures a
17-pound,
volleyball-size
container of alien
soil, whizzing
through space
between185 and
250 miles above
Mars.
for the more sophisticated instruments on Earth—
especially when confronted with the challenging
task of distinguishing signs of life from chemical
activity that might mimic organic processes.
“To really make the next big leap in understand-
ing Mars as a system, we want to have samples
here,” says Charles Edwards, a JPL manager for the
Mars Exploration Directorate. “By getting those
samples back to Earth, you can really unleash the
power of all the terrestrial laboratories and answer
some of the questions that we want to answer
about life on Mars—whether we’re talking about
extinct life or even extant life.”
NASA and the European Space Agency have
joined forces to plan for the later missions—not
yet scheduled—that eventually will complete Mars
Sample Return. After Mars 2020, the next step is
to send another lander to Jezero Crater carrying
a “fetch rover” and the Mars Ascent Vehicle. The
rover will fetch the tubes containing the samples of
rock and soil cached by Mars 2020, then load them
into the MAV’s payload container, a 17-pound
cylinder about the size of a volleyball. The MAV
ESA/ATG MEDIALAB
will then be raised, likely autonomously, from a
horizontal to an upright launch position and will
lift off to rendezvous with the third part of the
mission: an Earth Return Orbiter.
October/November 2019
The demands being placed on the design for
the MAV make it the riskiest part of the mission.
Ashley Karp, propulsion lead and deputy manager
for the ascent vehicle at JPL, says developing the
propulsion system for the rocket is the toughest
engineering challenge she has worked on during
her seven years at the NASA facility. “We need to
fit within the entry, descent, and landing system
to get us to Mars, and then to be able to launch,
and deliver the samples to another system as well,”
Karp says. “So there are multiple interfaces at play.”
The propulsion system will require fuel that can
withstand the temperature extremes of Mars while
also meeting the volume and weight requirements
that will allow the MAV to fit inside a Mars lander:
It can be no heavier than about 880 pounds and
no taller than around 10 feet. Over the last two
decades, NASA engineers have toyed with multiple
MAV propulsion designs and have now zeroed in
on two possibilities: a single-stage hybrid rocket
motor and a two-stage solid-fuel rocket motor.
The key advantage of solid-fuel rockets is that the
technology is well-understood, Karp says. In fact,
they’ve already been used on previous missions—
such as Pathfinder, Spirit, and Opportunity—to
land on Mars. Solid-fuel motors are less complex
than motors using liquid fuels, which require a
feed system as well as either a pressurization sys-
tem or pumps. And since solid propellant is less
corrosive and more stable than liquid fuel, it can
be easily stored for long periods.
Hybrid rockets—which store the oxidizer as a
AIR & SPACE 49
liquid or gas, and the fuel as a solid—are a tougher
problem to solve. Engineers have been tinkering
with designs ever since 1933, when the Soviet
Union launched a rocket that combined liquid
oxygen and a solid form of gasoline. But unlike
solid rockets, where the oxidizer and fuel are
already combined into a single propellant, it’s hard
to safely achieve a high thrust with hybrid rockets,
because the solid-fuel component doesn’t burn
quickly enough when the liquid oxidizer is sprayed
on separately during flight. And yet, despite being
the lesser-developed technology, NASA believes
the potential advantages of a hybrid rocket for a
Mars mission are too numerous to ignore. Once
a solid-fuel rocket is ignited, it has to stay lit. A
hybrid offers more options for maneuvers since it
can be throttled, shut down, and reignited in flight.
NASA is optimistic about a hybrid because of
a new fuel with a higher burn rate. It’s a paraffin
called SP7, a waxy solid made from a mixture of
saturated hydrocarbons. The oxidizer is called
MON25—a liquid oxidizer that contains 25 percent
mixed oxides of nitrogen.
The problem with a conventional solid pro-
pellant is that the extreme temperatures on Mars
could cause it to crack and possibly explode upon
ignition. As such, if NASA opted for a solid-fuel
rocket motor, the lander would need to devote
crucial power to keeping the MAV warm. By con-
50 AIR & SPACE
trast, the waxy SP7 used in a hybrid rocket motor Engineers at the Jet
can remain structurally sound when exposed to Propulsion
Laboratory install
wide variations in temperature and the oxidizer
the starboard
MON25 has a freezing point of minus 67 degrees wheels of the Mars
Fahrenheit, which also offers plenty of margin 2020 rover, which
for the range of temperatures expected at Jezero weighs over 2,300
Crater between the time the MAV lands on Mars pounds. If all goes
accordng to plan,
and lifts off a full Earth-year later. a second “fetch”
In late April, the hybrid rocket passed a crucial rover will be sent
threshold: a successful ignition at minus four to load the samples
degrees Fahrenheit. “It was the first demonstration gathered during
that it actually worked,” says Karp. In late July, two the 2020 mission
onto a Mars Ascent
more tests were conducted. The first tested the Vehicle.
rocket’s rapid ignition system for a second burn as
well as a new rocket nozzle, and the second tested
a tweaked SP7 formulation.
Whichever MAV design is chosen, it will require
autonomous guidance, navigation, and control
technologies to achieve the proper Mars orbit so
the Earth Return Orbiter can find it. For Evan
Anzalone, a guidance and navigation engineer at
the Marshall Space Flight Center, the toughest
challenge would be to establish initial conditions
before launch—exactly where on the surface the
MAV is in relation to its target orbit, and exactly
NASA/JPL-CALTECH
which way it is pointing (its attitude). The rocket’s
attitude is determined not only by the direction
its nose cone is pointed but also by the planet’s
rate of rotation and local gravity environment.
airspacemag.com
 “The better we can measure those things, the laborator on the capture and containment system.
better we can figure out what our initial attitude “We have this very precious thing, and it’s got
is,” says Anzalone. “The problem can be solved, some inertia to it,” Younse says. “It’s moving and
and we’ve done it with big vehicles. But when you it’s spinning at a slow rate, and the challenge is to
get down to this smaller size, having to do all this now capture this thing, robotically, on orbit, and
autonomously, with a long delay for any kind of bring it into our system, package it into a container
commands and checkouts….” so we can seal it up and bring it back to Earth. We
Anzalone and his colleagues are studying two haven’t ever done anything that complicated.”
approaches to guidance, control, and navigation. While the European Space Agency is developing
One is called “open loop” guidance, in which the
rocket is essentially preprogrammed to fly a cer-
A close-up image of tain trajectory. “You just give commands to your
a two-inch deep hole actuators and go,” Anzalone says. It’s a relatively
that the Curiosity
simple way to launch a rocket, but it carries risks.
rover drilled into the
surface of Mars in If, for example, the Mars lander carrying the MAV
2018. Although the lands at Jezero Crater so that the rocket’s attitude
Mars 2020 rover has is just one degree off, an open loop guidance sys-
sophisticated tem would launch with that initial error and the
instruments for
sniffing out organic
MAV wouldn’t reach its target orbit.
molecules, scientists By contrast, the other option is “closed loop”
say they’re no guidance, a much more complicated system. With
substitute for this approach, the rocket monitors its position,
studying soil thrust, and velocity during flight and adjusts where
samples in labs on
Earth.
it’s pointing its nozzle to tweak its trajectory.
Once the MAV reaches its designated orbit, it
should release the capsule containing the samples.
The Earth Return Orbiter, aligned in the same
orbit, would creep up on it at a closing rate of
about two inches per second. It’s likely the sam-
ple container would be light in color, possibly
with symbols resembling QR codes, says Paulo the Earth Return Orbiter, engineers at JPL are
Younse, the JPL engineer developing the capture designing the capture-and-containment system
and containment system. These features would on board that spacecraft.
allow cameras on board the orbiter to more easily At the front of that system would be a capture
find its target. Up until a separation of about 328 cone, with a suite of sensors that would detect when
feet, flight controllers would be able to monitor the container is fully inside—at which point a lid
would quickly (within two seconds) shut over the
top of the cone before the container has a chance
“THE CHALLENGE IS TO NOW CAPTURE to hit the back of the cone and bounce back out
THIS THING, ROBOTICALLY, ON ORBIT, into space. “Think of it more or less as a mouse
AND BRING IT INTO OUR SYSTEM, PACKAGE trap, but we fly to the mouse,” says Umland.
Inside the cone, a mechanical arm affixed to a
IT INTO A CONTAINER SO WE CAN SEAL
paddle would then swing over the container and
IT UP AND BRING IT BACK TO EARTH. WE push it down toward the back of the capture cone
HAVEN’T EVER DONE ANYTHING THAT and into a containment vessel. Another device,
COMPLICATED.” possibly a kind of wiper mechanism, would sweep
over the container to orient it so that the sample
tubes are stored right side up relative to the heat
shield of the spacecraft. Mission planners believe
the hermetic seals on the tubes would have the
best chance of surviving if they faced away from
the direction of travel during reentry and arrival
on Earth—possibly at a landing range in the Utah
NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS

the approach and possibly make course corrections desert.

before the rendezvous. After that, however, “it’s all It’s not the way that science-fiction authors
on board [and] the spacecraft will fly itself,” says have traditionally imagined Martians arriving on
Jeffrey Umland, chief mechanical engineer for Earth. But, if it succeeds, we might finally obtain
NASA’s current InSight mission to Mars and a col- evidence of life on another world.

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 51

52 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com
 Welcome
to the
Airport
■ CRAIG MELLOW

WHO WOULD GO to the airport these days if they

didn’t have to? Sherri Moss, for one. She took her
three-year-old niece and five-year-old nephew to
nearby Pittsburgh International Airport one recent
afternoon—a 90-mile round-trip from their home
in Irwin, Pennsylvania—not to fly but to gawk at
the airplanes and grab lunch.
“They love planes, and they are just excited to
be here,” she says. “I’m excited to be back in the
airside terminal without a plane ticket.”
That’s music to the ears of airport CEO Christina
Cassotis, who two years ago unveiled the “myPIT-
pass” program, the first initiative since September
COURTESY PITTSBURGH INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT (2)

Glenn Kaino’s 11, 2001 to permit non-passengers into secure PIT CFO Dale Cottrill
Arch, a sculpture areas at a U.S. airport. Others visiting Pittsburgh and CEO Christina
that suggests a International just to soak up the scenery include Cassotis confer at the
robot built from opening of a Primanti
sections of
the Vasiladiotis family of Bavington, about 10 Brothers—the city’s
Pittsburgh’s miles southwest of the airport. revered homegrown
bridges, stands “We come out frequently for the myPITpass sandwich chain—in
sentinel over the program because we love being at the airport,” the airport last March.
ticket counters at says Luke, the paterfamilias of the nine-strong Whatever you do,
Pittsburgh don’t order a
International
Vasiladiotis clan. “cheesesteak.” (In
(PIT). The 2001 terrorist attacks ushered in a dour era Pittsburgh, every steak
for airports around the world. Sweeping measures is a cheesesteak.)

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 53

 were taken to discourage non-passengers from
hanging around terminals. Romantic farewells at
the departure gate were relocated to the tail end of
snaking security lines under the hardened gaze of
PIT’s myPITpass
Transportation Security Administration guards.
program, allowing
non-passengers Eager relatives waited for arriving loved ones by
through security to dingy baggage carousels or camped in cellphone
enjoy the airside lots. A generation of kids grew up without an after-
restaurants and noon excursion to see big jets fire their engines and
attractions, is a
taxi toward the runway. Passengers who did cross
potential first step in
relieving U.S. the cordon found themselves in featureless spaces
airports of their where the cost of sitting down was an overpriced
post-9/11 malaise. bite at a generic chain eatery or bar.
But the memory of the pre-9/11 good old days
lived on in Pittsburgh, Cassotis discovered, when
she moved there from her native Boston in 2015.
“Wherever I would go to talk to anybody in the
community, one of the top five questions I got was,
“WHEREVER I WOULD GO TO TALK TO
ANYBODY IN THE COMMUNITY, ONE OF
THE TOP FIVE QUESTIONS I GOT WAS,
‘WHEN CAN WE GO BACK AIRSIDE?’ ”
BY “AIRSIDE,” SHE MEANS BEYOND THE
SECURITY CORDON, TO THE GATES
WHERE PASSENGERS BOARD.
‘When can we go back airside?’ ” By “airside,” she
means beyond the security cordon, to the gates
where passengers board.
Cassotis’ predecessors had already managed
54 AIR & SPACE
to institute one “open day” each year around
Christmas, replete with Santa Claus and a massive
tree, which drew crowds of up to 1,500. Pittsburgh
International was one of a few airports around
the United States linked to an on-site Hyatt Hotel
whose guests could clear security and wander the
premises. Others include the airports at Detroit
and Dallas/Fort Worth.
Cassotis decided it was time to make an air-
port visit an everyday occasion again. Thirty-
three bureaucratically arduous months later, in
September 2017, the TSA and its parent structure,
the Department of Homeland Security, agreed.
“There was no real pushback,” Cassotis says, per-
haps just a bit disingenuously, to summarize her
odyssey through Washington, D.C. in search of a
green light. “Sometimes to do something outside
the box, it takes a lot of people and departments
to sign off on it. It wasn’t like there was one guy
or woman we could go talk to.”
Her persistence paid off in a common-sense
program that parts the security curtain without
shredding it. Non-passengers can cross to airside
from 9-to-5 on weekdays, the slower hours for
flights. They check in at a separate myPITpass
counter where ID is presented and scanned against
no-fly lists, an almost instantaneous process these
days. Then they pass through TSA security like
anyone else, with the proviso they have to step
out of line if it gets too long.
That hasn’t happened yet. The going-on-two-
year experiment has added less than a blip to
Pittsburgh International’s traffic, averaging about
100 visitors a day against 25,000-plus passengers.
But that’s enough to facilitate a lot of memorable
occasions: parents at the gate to meet their arriving
daughter burdened with bags; families seeing off
soldiers on deployments; #avgeeks out in force
to admire the British Airways Boeing 787s that
recently began nonstop service to London.
Allowing non-passengers through security
looks like it might be catching on, slowly and
cautiously, with other airports more or less in
Pittsburgh’s category; that is, those attached to
mid-size metropolitan areas that don’t face the
pressure of hubs and are accessible without hella-
cious traffic. Pittsburgh International is about 16
miles west of downtown, a cruise of 20 minutes
COURTESY PITTSBURGH INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
for less than $30 via Uber at an off-peak hour.
Tampa International Airport lately kicked off
an All Access program that falls a bit short of the
name. Access is limited to Saturdays and capped
at 25 visitors to each of the four airsides that
surround the main terminal, and visitors must
register 24 hours in advance. Sea-Tac Airport,
serving Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, ran a
pilot Visitors Pass program late last year, which
opened the gates Tuesday-Saturday with a cap of
airspacemag.com
 Trans World Hotel
A DESIGN ICON OF THE MAD MEN ERA RETURNS

T H E R E A R E AT T E M P T S to make airports Connie, a Constellation Starliner reborn as a cocktail

more pleasant, and then there are $265 million
attempts to make them places you might want to
be seen. John F. Kennedy International Airport’s
TWA Terminal—commissioned by Howard
Hughes and designed by Eero Saarinen—is back
in all its swinging ’60s glory. Opening in 1962,
it served as a transatlantic hub for TWA until it
was abandoned in 2000, a year before the airline
declared bankruptcy for a third and final time.
But millionaire Tyler Morse, a one-time
baggage handler at LAX who is now CEO of a
hotel development firm, was intrigued by an
invitation circulated by New York’s Port Authority:
Who wants to turn the iconic building into a hotel?
Three years later, the dream is a red and white
reality, created in partnership with JetBlue. Late
arrival? Early morning flight? If you can spare
$139 plus taxes and fees, you’ll have a room to
crash in worthy of a Hughes-Hepburn tryst, one
where no one can hear the jets roar in because the
glass is 4.5 inches thick.
Brooklynites Erica Kenia and Jon Nicholson
opted for a “staycation” at the TWA Hotel because
they are “design geeks.” Kenia, a tattoo artist,
stayed up late the night before watching Mad Men
episodes to whet her appetite for mid-century
modern architecture, furniture, and poster art.
“It’s like a beautiful oasis in the middle of JFK,”
Kenia said. The couple sipped cocktails at the
hotel’s swanky rooftop pool, bossa nova music
competing with the roar of jet engines.
The Pool Bar is one of five within the TWA
COURTESY OF MCR (2)
lounge, is parked behind Eero Saarinen’s 1962 TWA
Terminal at JFK—now a swank destination hotel.
Below: It’s five o’clock somewhere, and at the TWA
Hotel’s Sunken Lounge, it’s also 1965, approximately.
lounge. Its post-TWA life included flying cargo to
Prudhoe Bay, Alaska and delivering marijuana for
a Colombian drug cartel. Connie was eventually
abandoned in Honduras, and bought by Maine
Coast Airlines owner Maurice Roundy for $150 in
1979. The airplane had been grounded until the
TWA restoration began in early 2018.
Connie’s hostesses, all wearing comfy red-
and-white TWA tennis shoes, have the tough
job of seating just a small percentage of folks
who wander in, and answering aviation history
questions from the vast majority of tourists who
climb the steps to Connie’s door. “Can I just take
a look around?” one potential customer after
another asks. The answer is always, “Yes.”
—Rebecca J. Ritzel

Hotel, but not the most buzzed-about. That

would be “Connie,” a repurposed Lockheed
Constellation Starliner now serving as a cocktail

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 55

75 non-passengers daily. It drew 1,100 visitors
over six weeks.
In the broader sense, though, Pittsburgh and the
others are part of a global vanguard pushing back
against the gigantic genericism of the post-9/11
era. Initiatives small and large aim to reintegrate
airports into their surrounding communities. The
most ambitious programs along these lines are
in foreign cities that are more compact and have
better mass transit than U.S. metros. Singapore’s
Changi, already widely considered the world’s
best airport, just opened the Jewel shopping mall
on ground formerly occupied by parking. The $1
billion-plus construction, which is linked to the
air terminals but separated from “sterile” areas,
boasts the world’s tallest indoor waterfall (130
feet!), flanked by nearly 300 shops and restaurants.
“Singapore discovered they have more shopping at
Jewel than on one of the main shopping streets,”
says Julian Fentress, marketing director at Fentress
Architects, the family firm that is among the leading
designers of airports. “People come there from all
over Singapore Island.”
A more modest example is the Munich Airport
Center, a mall attached to the Bavarian capital’s
1990s-vintage terminal complex. It advertises the
“largest covered open-air space in Europe”—a little
more than six square miles—including, naturally,
a big beer garden.
U.S. airports have been more focused on accom-
modating passenger volumes that have surged by
one-third over the past decade to reach one bil-
lion annually in 2018. But some thought has been
56 AIR & SPACE
spared for localization and ambiance.
Destination cities like San Francisco, New
Orleans, and Austin have led this movement,
says Henry Harteveldt, founder of Atmosphere
THE MUNICH AIRPORT CENTER IS A
MALL ATTACHED TO THE BAVARIAN
CAPITAL’S 1990 S-VINTAGE TERMINAL
COMPLEX. IT ADVERTISES THE
“LARGEST COVERED OPEN-AIR SPACE
IN EUROPE”—A LITTLE MORE THAN SIX
SQUARE MILES—INCLUDING, NATURALLY,
A BIG BEER GARDEN.
Munich Airport’s
Research Group, a market research firm that two-day
serves the global travel industry. A new termi- summertime Music
nal under construction at New Orleans Louis and Family Days
celebration lures up
Armstrong International will showcase the city’s to 25,000 visitors
musical heritage with a jazz garden accessible to per day with
the general public. An arching glass structure lets theme-park style
the southern sunlight pour in and “evokes the rides and musical
performances,
geography of the Delta region and soft curves of
along with the
the Mississippi River,” said chief architect Cesar chance to ogle
Pelli. (Pelli passed away at age 92 on July 19.) modern and vintage
“Airports today are basically dreary places that airplanes.
FLUGHAFEN MÜNCHEN
airspacemag.com

are functional but sterile,” Harteveldt comments.
“But some are doing a better job of incorporating
their communities.”
Not every American city has Mardi Gras or
SXSW to pull in visitors, though, and not every
American airport is bursting at the seams. Some
remain overbuilt from the last extended economic
boom in the 1990s.
Pittsburgh is a prime example. The current ter-
minal, 75 gates extending in an X shape around
a central core, opened in 1992 at a cost in the $1
billion range. US Airways, a rising industry star at
the time, had grown out of western Pennsylvania’s
own Allegheny Airlines, so routing flights through
JEWEL CHANGI AIRPORT DEVT
Pittsburgh was only natural. The luxurious facility
was meant to double as a regional shopping mall
and schmoozing nexus. “The geography around
here is so hilly, there aren’t that many places you
can easily get to,” Cassotis notes. “This was built
as a global megahub, and people were interested.”
October/November 2019
Singapore’s Changi
Airport is only the
world’s 19th
busiest, but its
130-foot-tall indoor
waterfall is the
world’s largest.
The 9/11 attacks brought an abrupt end to the
schmoozing and shopping, while airline economics
eroded the core business. US Airways shifted its
hubs to Charlotte and Philadelphia in 2004 after
a pricing dispute with the Pittsburgh authorities,
and was eventually folded into American Airlines.
Pittsburgh International still languished when
Cassotis arrived a decade later—most days, only
about 40 of the airport’s 75 gates are in use—despite
a spirited economic and cultural revival in the city.
“When I first got the call from Pittsburgh, I said
‘I’m not interested,’ ” Cassotis recalls. “I hadn’t seen
anything happening here for so long.”
Daughter of a Pan American Airways pilot,
Cassotis was no stranger to aviation industry
vicissitudes, having watched the extended death
throes of the fabled carrier up close through the
1980s. (Dad himself did fine, transferring to United
Airlines’ expanding Asian service.) It didn’t stop
her from getting the bug though. After majoring
AIR & SPACE 57
in English at U. Mass Boston, she landed a job in
public relations at Logan. Then she spent 16 years
at the consulting firm ICF—SH&E, rising to the
position of managing officer of airport services,
supervising a team of advisors to airport operators,
investors, and governments around the globe.
Living in southern Maine and raising a family, she
was far from craving a change of scene.
Pittsburgh’s enthusiasm changed her mind, she
says. Aside from the de rigueur meetings with the
board, she and other candidates got an earful from
business leaders who saw the airport as a key miss-
ing piece in the erstwhile Steel City’s renaissance
as a tech and brain center. “This is a community
that understood what it lost,” she recalls.
Pittsburgh’s captains of industry and philan-
thropy stayed engaged after Cassotis came on
board. “I made a statement early on that passengers
should know they’re in Pittsburgh,” she recalls.
“The head of the Richard King Mellon Foundation
called and said, ‘We want to sponsor that.’ ”
Thus was born the airport’s Creating a Sense
of Place program, the foundation combining its
financial muscle with Pittsburgh’s formidable
cultural and intellectual assets to achieve that
end. Banker Andrew Mellon and steel magnate
Andrew Carnegie were both wildly wealthy
Pittsburgh residents who acquired great influence
in the late 19th century, and whose philanthropy
helped to establish a number of the city’s cultural
CROSSING TO AIRSIDE, PASSENGERS
ARE CONFRONTED BY A 30-FOOT-
LONG TYRANNOSAURUS REX
SKELETON, JAWS AGAPE, DONATED
BY THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF
NATURAL HISTORY.

This 15-foot-tall,
30-foot-long
plaster cast of a
T-Rex has resided
at Pittsburgh
International since
2002. Until the
advent of the
myPITpass
program, only
ticketed passengers
could see it.

COURTESY PITTSBURGH INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT (2)

58 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

and educational institutions. Innovative minds at
Carnegie Mellon University outfitted the airport
with a nifty “EarthTime” installation, where a
viewer’s touch can reveal time-lapse illustrations
of, say, deforestation or refugee flows since the
1980s. Crossing to airside, passengers are con-
fronted by a 30-foot-long Tyrannosaurus Rex
skeleton, jaws agape, donated by the Carnegie
Museum of Natural History. The ticketing con-
course one flight up is graced by a monumental
hanging mobile that Alexander Calder created for
a Carnegie Institute exhibition in the late 1950s,
and titled simply Pittsburgh. The Frick Museum
unfurled a rotating exhibition space in Concourse
B. The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh created
the Kidsport lounge to keep little ones from going
crazy in case of flight delays.
One local Pittsburgh hero born later than
Carnegie and Mellon has his own place at the
airport. A tableau marked Welcome to the
Neighborhood honors Mister Fred Rogers, who
broadcast his iconic children’s show for 33 years
from the local PBS affiliate. Beloved Pittsburgh
eateries like Primanti Brothers—home to the
Almost Famous sandwich that puts the fries and
cole slaw inside the bread—and Penn Brewery,
which “adheres to the strict quality standards of
the 16th-century Bavarian Reinheitsgebot purity
laws,” have opened airport branches. About one-
third of Pittsburgh International’s 77 concessions
are locally owned or operated, the airport says.
Pittsburgh business has also boosted the airport
just by continuing to flourish. The city now houses
Google’s fifth-largest campus, for instance, which
has helped underpin two nonstop flights a week hiking the levy to $8.25 by 2021; legislators are Rachel Saul Rearick
to San Francisco. Overall passenger volume has studying the request. and Richard
Belotti, staffers at
climbed from just under eight million in 2014, There is also one economic mega-trend pushing
Pittsburgh’s city
just before Cassotis’ arrival, to 9.7 million last toward imaginative strategies for reintegrating planning office who
year, while the number of nonstop destinations airports with their surrounding communities: were involved in the
has expanded from 37 to more than 60 during parking, or rather its expected decline. Parking lots airport’s rebirth as
that period. not only take up a lot of space at the airport, they a cultural hub,
explore the
Whether Pittsburgh’s sense-of-place, back-to- produce a lot of profit, far out-earning concession sculpture Flight by
the-community ethos can catch on at an airport fees from shops and restaurants, Cassotis says. Shohei Katayama
near you depends on which airport is near you. Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft threaten and Michael
For big hubs, there is no way back to the innocent that. National statistics are hard to come by. But Neumann, made up
days of hanging around to see Dad or Grandma LAX, as good a bellwether as any, reported flat of 225 individual
aluminum paper
off. “Large airports like O’Hare or LAX have been parking revenues last year (at a cool $96.7 mil- airplanes.
reconfigured in ways that I can’t imagine greeters lion) while passenger volume rose more than
being allowed in,” says Glenn Winn, a former three percent.
chairman of the International Association of The years since 9/11 have seen a quiet sense-of-
Aviation Security Officers, who now teaches at place revolution in the United States. Anonymous
the University of Southern California. subdivisions are out, historic downtowns back in.
Another headwind facing the community Farm-to-table restaurants and microbreweries are
airport trend is stretched TSA resources. The grabbing market share. Cutting-edge companies
$5.60-per-traveler fee instituted after 9/11 to fund have junked remote office parks for walkable cam-
airport security now covers only 40 percent of the puses. Security concerns have kept airports out of
cost, according to administrator David Pekoske. this stream. But at long last, they are beginning
Congress has to fill in the rest. Pekoske proposed to experiment with airport rehumanization.

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 59

 ON MARCH 1, 1945, A YOUNG TEST PILOT
became the first human to lie on his back and wait
for a rocket engine to blast him toward the heavens.
Like those who would dare ride the fire after him,
he believed in his cause and was confident in the
success of his mission. He was mistaken on both
counts. The development of the aircraft he was
“piloting” is one of the more bizarre stories of the
last desperate days of the Third Reich, but it began
long before the Nazi war machine had collapsed,
with a proposal from Wernher von Braun.
In 1937, von Braun developed a concept for
a rocket-powered inter-
ceptor that would launch
vertically, attack Allied pany Gerhard Fieseler
bombers, and glide to a Werke (later known for
landing. Two years later, the Fieseler Storch and the
he submitted his pro- V-1 buzz bomb). Fieseler’s
posal to the Luftwaffe’s technical director—Erich
Ministry of Aviation Bachem—thought a verti-
(RLM), and the ministry cally launched interceptor
responded with a sincere was a capital idea.
nein thanks. In 1941, von Three very long years
Braun tried again—same later, Bachem had his own
proposal, same minis- company, the Bachem-
try, same answer: “We’ll Werke GmbH, a supplier
call you.” The ministry’s of spare parts for the man-
reviewers had assessed the ufacturers of combat air-
concept as “unnecessary planes. But Bachem never
and unworkable,” but the forgot the idea for a rock-
idea circulated around the et-powered interceptor,
German aircraft indus- and in the summer of
try, reaching the com- 1944, he saw his oppor-
tunity to build one.
In February of that
Emulating his year, the Allies intensified the bombing of German
fuhrer’s faith in cities and of the country’s aviation industry, forcing
unproved wonder
the Luftwaffe into the air to fight. The air campaign
weapons, SS
Chief Heinrich was costly to both sides, but the United States and
Himmler (far left) Great Britain were able to replace the aircraft they
championed the lost; the Germans were not. With strategic sup-
Bachem Ba 349. plies for the German war effort extremely tight,
the RLM issued requirements that July for an
inexpensive fighter to be made of non-essential
materials that, with the least expenditure of effort,
would bring down enemy bombers and defend
DPA/PICTURE-ALLIANCE/AP

important strategic targets.

In August, German industrialists Junkers,
Heinkel, and Messerschmitt submitted plans. And
so did Bachem. According to David Myhra, author
of a series of books on Germany’s World War II
experimental aircraft, the staff of the air ministry’s

60 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 WORLD WAR II’S
WORST
AIRPLANE
THE PRODUCT OF AN AMBITIOUS

DESIGNER AND A DOOMED

REGIME, THE BACHEM

BA 349 NATTER WAS A RADICAL IDEA

THAT ALMOST WORKED.

Dark smoke
streaming from its BY D.C. AGLE
solid boosters on its
first piloted launch—
March 1, 1945—the
Natter rose 350 feet
before turning
inverted.

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 61

 the RLM, which didn’t like the idea of the pow- Designer Erich
erful security forces horning in on their aviation Bachem was proud
of his vertically
turf. They reluctantly signed off on the concept
launched simple-
they had been saying no to for half a decade and as-a-rock aircraft.
bought 50 more. Bachem got a contract, and his The model is
airplane got a name—Natter, German for viper. mounted at a
With an order for 200 Natters in hand, Bachem 70-degree angle to
mimic the attitude
returned to his factory in Waldsee (about 100 miles of the rocket’s
west of Munich). The SS showed up soon after, ascent.
to keep an eye on the Natter’s 300 engineers and
factory workers and to “recruit” support from the
nearby population in the form of materials, food,
fuel, and transportation.

In just a few months—by November 1944—Natter

prototypes were ready for wind tunnel and flight
testing. One reason for the program’s rapid prog-
Although a
ress—besides its highly motivated workforce—was sophisticated metal
that the vehicle was drop-dead simple to make. launch tower had
The Natter’s wings were rectangular slabs of timber been constructed
with no slats, flaps, or ailerons. Its 18.7-foot-long for the Natter, some
tests relied on a
fuselage was unremarkable other than the firing
telephone pole-like
system for the 24 air-to-air missiles stuffed in gantry, made from a
its nose. The cockpit was cramped and carried pine tree stripped
technical division reviewed Bachem’s uninvited minimal instrumentation. The closest thing to of its limbs.
submission, with its simple plans for a rocket
interceptor made of wood pieces nailed together,
and laughed him out of the room. But Bachem had
connections—made perhaps through his work on
the V-1 terror weapon—and through them, he
presented his idea to Germany’s most sociopathic
and least aeronautically discerning powerbroker:
the head of the Nazi SS, Heinrich Himmler.
Bachem’s pitch included visions of missile-laden
plywood rocketships built on the cheap by former
furniture makers working in meagerly equipped
shops. The aircraft, flown by minimally trained
pilots who had only to guide the craft during the
last few seconds of flight, would be launched en
masse toward the hundreds of invading bombers
that by that time were meeting little resistance
from conventional Luftwaffe fighters. And the
interceptors would be disposable! No gliding to
an airbase—each pilot would bail out after flinging
the two dozen high-explosive rockets carried in
the airplane’s nose, then the airplane would crash.
Himmler loved it. He ordered 150.
“The SS under Himmler’s leadership felt it was
the true representative of national socialism,” says
Michael Neufeld, a senior curator at the National
Air and Space Museum and author of the biogra-
phy Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War.
LUFTWAFFE PHOTOS

“They believed they were really the organization

that was going to save Germany from disaster and
began funding a lot of strange projects.”
Himmler’s approval, in turn, forced the hand of

62 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 A 1944 ground test of the
Schmidding solid-fuel
motors that helped
heave the Bachem
interceptor skyward.

elegance in engineering appeared in the Natter’s for the first critical 10 seconds of flight.
cruciform tail, where the control surfaces on the Team Natter carried out the first flight test on
four fins acted in concert to provide yaw, pitch, November 3, 1945, when a prototype glider was
and roll control. carried aloft behind a Heinkel He 111. Several
The HWK 109-509 liquid-fuel rocket engine— towed and free-flight glide tests followed over the
the same that powered the Messerschmitt Me 163 next two months. Although there were several
Komet fighter—was designed by Hellmuth Walter, close calls, the Natter was judged to have excellent
flying characteristics.
On December 18, the team attempted the first
THE COCKPIT WAS CRAMPED AND unpiloted vertical launch at a pad in Heuberg,
CARRIED MINIMAL INSTRUMENTATION. about 40 miles west of Waldsee. The wooden
THE CLOSEST THING TO ELEGANCE interceptor, with wingtips and ventral fin sliding
IN ENGINEERING APPEARED IN THE along guide rails, got stuck halfway up the 79-foot
NATTER’S CRUCIFORM TAIL, WHERE launch tower and burned like the kindling it
was made of. More unmanned vertical launches
THE CONTROL SURFACES ON THE FOUR were conducted over the next three months with
FINS ACTED IN CONCERT TO PROVIDE Natters flying off course, blowing up, and gen-
YAW, PITCH, AND ROLL CONTROL. erally behaving atrociously. Then, on February
25, 1945, a Natter bearing serial number M22
lifted off with a dummy pilot and performed the
entire mission sequence. After leaving the tower,
the aircraft climbed for 10 seconds then received
autopilot steering guidance from a ground radio,
and climbed another 30 seconds to the altitude at
which it would encounter bombers—about 20,000
an engineer who invented submarine and torpedo feet. In a real mission, the pilot would have then
DEUTSCHE LUFTWAFFE

engines and later worked for the British navy.
The HWK engine generated about 3,700 pounds
of thrust, not enough to launch a loaded Ba 349.
Bachem’s team bolted four Schmidding solid-fuel
rockets to the aft fuselage to provide more oomph
jettisoned the nose cone and fired the rockets. Fuel
expended (after 80 seconds), the Natter would
have entered a dive, and at 4,500 feet, the pilot
would have fired explosive bolts to jettison the
entire nose section. He would have also released

October/November2019 AIR & SPACE 63


7
6 chamber
9 5
8
BACHEM Ba 349 A (BP 20A NATTER)
a braking parachute from the rear fuselage. The
sudden deceleration was designed to throw the
pilot from the vehicle. He would then open his
own parachute for landing.
After M22’s success, Himmler wanted piloted
tests ASAP. Although Bachem felt he needed more
time before strapping a human into a Natter cock-
pit, the next launch, M23, would be Lothar Sieber’s.
The young Dresden native once shook the hand
of Luftwaffe commandant Hermann Göring at
a rally in Dresden in 1936 and ever afterward
wanted only to fly—which he did quite well until
one evening in 1943, when he was busted for
drinking on duty.
Demoted to corporal, Sieber began a two-
year odyssey to regain his officer’s rank and his
self-respect. He flew hazardous, secret missions,
including one to penetrate deep behind enemy
lines on the Eastern Front to evacuate a group of
German officers who had been encircled by Soviet
troops. The deed earned him an Iron Cross but
no promotion.
Sieber was not the first choice to fly the Natter,
but the primary pilot had hurt his back during
parachute training. Soon the SS came calling with
an offer for an Oberleutenant’s rank—if Sieber
would climb into the cockpit of an experimental
aircraft undergoing tests.
The evening of February 28, 1945, Sieber had
dinner with some of his coworkers during which
he professed a confidence in the coming day’s
assignment. Then he wrote a last will and testa-
ment—leaving everything to his fiancée.
The next morning—as General Omar Bradley’s
First Army launched a campaign to capture the
west bank of the Rhine, and the Russians, drawn
to within 37 miles of Berlin, prepared to advance
64 AIR & SPACE
1 Föhn 73mm missiles
2 Ring firing sight
3 Hinged canopy
4 C-Stoff tank
5 T-Stoff tank
3
6 Fuselage break point
(with explosive bolts)
7 Combustion
8 Ventral fin with
rudder
9 Solid-fuel boosters
1
on the city—Sieber stood in a clearing in Heuberg,
getting a few final tips from Bachem and from
Natter development chief Willy Fiedler. Then
they waited for the weather to clear.
In a 1979 letter, Fiedler wrote, “Before Sieber
climbed into the craft and was buckled up, I talked
to him about the launch procedure/sequence. I
LOTHAR SIEBER SHOOK THE HAND OF
LUFTWAFFE COMMANDANT HERMANN
GÖRING AT A RALLY IN DRESDEN IN 1936
AND EVER AFTERWARD WANTED ONLY TO
FLY—WHICH HE DID QUITE WELL UNTIL
ONE EVENING IN 1943, WHEN HE WAS
BUSTED FOR DRINKING ON DUTY.
said: ‘If the machine tries to turn upside down
after liftoff, do a half-roll maneuver. Then you
would be in a steep climb and would be better
able to orient yourself.’ ”
Eventually the fog burned away—but low-hang-
ing clouds remained. “There was a high, fog-like
cloudiness above the Ochsenkopf,” remembered
Karl Mielenhausen, a member of the Natter ground
support crew, referring to a small mountain in the
distance. After handshakes and good wishes, Sieber
BUNDESARCHIV
climbed the gantry, shoehorned himself into the
rocket, and prepared to make history.
According to Brett Gooden’s Projekt Natter: Last
airspacemag.com
 of the Wonder Weapons, Sieber was not intimidated “The machine tilts and begins to fly in a slightly
by the task before him. “In the course of this war I upside-down position. But what is this? A dark
have already done riskier things,” he told Bachem. object detaches from the machine and falls tum-
“Let me worry about this. I look upon the testing bling to the ground.”
of this device as a self-imposed task that I would M23 flew straight until it reached about 350
like to accomplish and I firmly believe in the suc- feet, where, the official post-flight report stated,
cessful outcome.” it made a sharp curve into the inverted position.
At a little after 11 a.m., Sieber heard the tur- The Natter disappeared into the low cloud. What
bine of the Walter’s electric start-up motor and happened next, no one is certain. Did all four
watched its gauge climb to 9,000 rpm. Behind
him, T-Stoff (a highly caustic solution of hydrogen
peroxide and a stabilizing chemical) and C-Stoff
(a hydrazine hydrate/methanol/water mixture),
began to annihilate each other on contact in the
Walter’s combustion chamber. The turbine wound
up to 16,000 rpm. Just then, the four solid booster
After climbing the rockets fired.
metal, launch-tower The young pilot was pushed back in his seat by
scaffolding, Lothar
Sieber gets help
the force of 2.2 Gs. Sixteen years before Gagarin
from engineers to and Shepard took their rides, Lothar Sieber became
install himself in the the first person to ascend vertically on a rocket.
Natter’s cockpit. “From a strong cloud of smoke that wrapped
Below: Sieber (left) the whole machine, the Natter slowly rises and
confers with Erich
Bachem about
departs perpendicularly from its mount. The
the rocketplane booster rockets detach according to plan and
handling qualities. fall reeling to the ground,” wrote Mielenhausen.
MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY (2)

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 65


booster rockets fall away or did only three of them
jettison? Did the Walter rocket continue to fire or
did it cut out early? Fiedler says the rocket engine
stopped about 15 seconds into the flight. Others,
like Mielenhausen, say it was firing all along.
One thing is certain: During the flight, M23’s
canopy ripped away. One theory is that Sieber
opened the hood because of fumes in the cockpit
(also reported by Me 163 pilots). Another is that
he lost consciousness, and the aircraft’s roll forced
him against the canopy causing it to break away.
Wrote Mielenhausen: “After a short time, we
saw the Natter some kilometers in the distance
going vertically downwards after coming out of the
clouds again. And with the engine still running it
hit the ground. The impact sound could be heard
at the Ochsenkopf.” Bachem and his team waited,
hoping the test pilot had parachuted to safety.
After an hour they set out for the crash site, in a
farmer’s field in nearby Nusplingen where they
found a scorched crater 15 feet deep and a debris
field that included parts of Sieber’s body.
M23 was the only piloted Natter launch. Despite
the hazards, more pilots volunteered, but only a
few unpiloted tests were conducted after March 1.
Strategic materials were so scarce that something
as trifling as a shortage of cement kept the remain-
ing vehicles grounded. (Small cement blocks were
to be used to provide the weight of the air-to-air
missiles that couldn’t be risked for test flights.)
Of the contracted 200 Natters, only 36 were built.
Eighteenwereexpendedinunmannedtests.Onewas
66 AIR & SPACE
In 1945 Austria,
after the German
surrender, a U.S.
engineer lifts the
hinged canopy of a
captured Bachem
Ba 349 to take a
look inside the
cockpit.
allowed to crash after a glide test, one was atomized
in the Sieber flight, and six were destroyed by Bachem
employees before Allied troops could get their hands
on them. But in May 1945—after the remaining
aircraft along with pilots and workers had been
THE NATTER DISAPPEARED INTO THE
LOW CLOUD. WHAT HAPPENED NEXT, NO
ONE IS CERTAIN. DID ALL FOUR BOOSTER
ROCKETS FALL AWAY OR DID ONLY THREE
OF THEM JETTISON? DID THE WALTER
ROCKET CONTINUE TO FIRE OR DID
IT CUT OUT EARLY? FIEDLER SAYS THE
ROCKET ENGINE STOPPED ABOUT 15
SECONDS INTO THE FLIGHT.
moved to St. Leonhard, Austria—American soldiers
captured four complete Natters, along with construc-
tion documents, rockets, and spare parts. In 1949,
the U.S. Air Force transferred one of the captured
rocketplanes to the Smithsonian Institution, where
it was displayed for many years. It is now in storage,
NATIONAL ARCHIVES (2)
awaiting restoration. The Deutsches Museum in
Munich also owns a Natter. It was recently removed
from view while a new exhibition about German
aviation between 1919 and 1945 is being created.
The exhibit is expected to open in 2021.
airspacemag.com
 “We will hang it just above the floor in a
70-degree angle to create the impression of its
steep, rocket-powered ascent,” says museum his-
torian Andreas Hempfer. “The red booster rockets
will too be hung as if they were just jettisoned. This
much more dynamic presentation of the Natter
will hopefully draw some interest even from a
distance and make the people wonder what this
strange machine was.”
However dramatic the presentation, the goal
of the Deutsches Museum exhibit is less about a
unique aeronautical achievement than the hubris
of those who made it possible.
“The Natter will be part of the section ‘Far
American soldiers
outside St.
Leonhard, Austria,
take Natters and
rocket engine parts
into custody in May
1945 for shipment
back to the United
States.
October/November2019
from Superior Weapons,’ ” says Hempfer. “I want
the Natter to be a symbol for the irresponsible
willingness of German engineers and elites in
the last months of the war to build weapons that
only seemed to be superior but were primitive in
many respects and based on half-baked ideas. They
were fighting a lost war for the national socialist
regime. This is the message I want people to take
home from the Natter.”
Lothar Sieber received his promotion. The
first lieutenant was buried on March 3, 1945 at
a cemetery in Nusplingen. His father and fiancée
were in attendance. Two months and four days
later, Germany surrendered.
AIR & SPACE 67
 SIGHTINGS

Celestial Fireworks
FOR 20 YEARS, THE CHANDRA X-RAY OBSERVATORY HAS BEEN
REVEALING A VIOLENT UNIVERSE INVISIBLE TO THE NAKED EYE.

When the Chandra X-Ray Observatory
was launched into orbit aboard the space shuttle
Columbia on July 23, 1999, NASA anticipated it
would have a lifetime of five years.
Two decades later, Chandra is still performing
its mission, looking at celestial X-rays that are,
for the most part, absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere
and undetectable by ground-based telescopes.
The observatory has laid claim to several notable
discoveries, such as studies of colliding clusters of
galaxies that support the existence of dark matter.
NASA celebrated Chandra’s 20th anniversary by
releasing a collection of new images that combine
X-rays with visible light and radio waves to create
vivid celestial panoramas of objects, such as the
Messier 33 galaxy, a “mere” 2.73 million light-years
from Earth (right), which contains a star-forming
region where some 200 hot, young, massive stars
reside. In between wispy filaments of dust are giant
voids filled with hot, X-ray-emitting gas.
A supermassive black hole sits at the center of
the Milky Way, and the region around it (below)
contains an exotic collection of objects—including
clouds of hot gas and super-dense neutron stars
tearing material from their stellar companions—
that reveal themselves as swirls of color.

68 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 TOP: X-RAY: NASA/CXC/CFA; OPTICAL: NASA/AURA/STSCI. BOTTOM:
X-RAY: NASA/CXC/UMASS; RADIO: NRF/SARAO/MEERKAT.

October/November 2019
AIR & SPACE
69
 R E V I E WS
How Dangerous
Are Asteroids?
A NEW BOOK EXPLAINS THE RISK, TELLS US ABOUT THE
SCIENTISTS TRACKING NEAR-EARTH ASTEROIDS, AND
OFFERS ADVICE ON HOW TO DEFEND THE PLANET.
THE BOOK Gordon L. Dillow, a former newspaper reporter
and war correspondent, has written a well-researched book
about the natural disaster that poses the gravest threat to
Earth: collision with a large asteroid. Though writing about
a serious subject, Dillow has turned his reporting into a
scientific adventure story as he takes readers into the desert
to examine asteroid impact sites and pulls all-nighters with
the scientists who search the skies for new asteroid threats.
WHY THE AUTHOR DECIDED TO WRITE IT
“I like to joke that I got a sign from the heavens. At 4 a.m.
one morning in June 2016, I was having a cup of coffee on
the back porch of my home in Arizona when suddenly the
70 AIR & SPACE
nighttime sky lit up in this weird, oth-
er-worldly red glow. Moments later, off
to the northeast, there was a tremen-
dous flash—a brilliant explosion that
briefly turned night into day. NASA
later explained that the flash of light was
caused by a small asteroid—only five or
six feet wide—that had hurtled through
the atmosphere at 40,000 mph and then
blew up with the explosive force of
half a kiloton of TNT. But for me that
just raised more questions. The more
I looked into it, the more fascinating it
was. I was hooked on asteroids—and
I still am.”
A CHAT WITH GORDON DILLOW
How worried should we be about
the possibility of a collision with an
asteroid?
The chances of a civilization-ending
collision with a large asteroid or comet—
like the six-mile-wide asteroid that
apparently wiped out the dinosaurs 65
million years ago—within our lifetimes
or even our grandchildren’s lifetimes are
really very small. At the other end of the
size scale, Earth is bombarded all the
time by small asteroids that burn up or
explode harmlessly in the atmosphere,
like the one I saw in Arizona. So it’s
not the biggest asteroids or the littlest
asteroids we need to worry about: It’s the
ones in between. Unless we can figure
out a way to stop it, someday our planet
will be hit by an asteroid big enough to
cause local or regional destruction—or
even worldwide climate change from
the dust and gases an asteroid impact
can kick up. It’s not a matter of if, but
only a matter of when. It could happen
500 years from now, or it could happen
next Tuesday.
TO ORDER
To order these books
from Smithsonian Shops
call 202-633-4510.
airspacemag.com
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Are we investing enough in research and development Is the media providing balanced
to defend Earth against an asteroid impact? coverage of the asteroid threat?
In a word, no. It’s true that over the past two decades, NASA Actually, the asteroid threat is being
funding for planetary-defense programs against potentially over-reported—and badly reported—at
Earth-threatening asteroids has increased dramatically. But least on social media and in the tabloid
it’s not enough. This year press. Hardly a day goes by that you
NASA will spend $150 mil- don’t see a tabloid headline declaring
lion on near-Earth-object “NASA Spots Monster Asteroid Headed
NASA FUNDING FOR detection and related pro- Toward Earth.” You have to get to the
PLANETARY-DEFENSE grams, but that’s less than bottom of the story to learn that the
PROGRAMS AGAINST one percent of NASA’s asteroid in question will actually miss
POTENTIALLY EARTH- $21.5 billion budget. Earth by millions of miles, which is
THREATENING ASTEROIDS close in space terms, but not really
HAS INCREASED What are some of the a threat. When you have too many
more interesting ideas headlines like that, there’s a boy-who-
DRAMATICALLY. BUT IT’S being proposed as a cried-wolf effect.
NOT ENOUGH. defense against an That’s not to say that potentially
asteroid collision? dangerous asteroids don’t come close
There have been a lot of to Earth. The bottom line is that the
really cool theoretical pro- asteroid threat is real, and it requires
posals about how to deflect an asteroid. You could bombard serious attention. But we don’t need
it with white paintballs to change its reflectivity, which could hyped-up headlines and unfounded
gradually nudge it off course. You could park a large object rumors to make the asteroid threat
next to it, and let the object’s own gravity pull the asteroid scary. The actual science is scary enough.
slightly off its Earth-threatening track. And on and on. The
■ DIANE TEDESCHI IS A SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR
problem with those ideas is that they would require a lot of AT AIR & SPACE/SMITHSONIAN. ■ READ THE FULL
time to deflect the asteroid—decades in some cases. INTERVIEW AT AIRSPACEMAG.COM/DILLOW.

Out of the Vault

STRATEGIC
AIR COMMAND
PARAMOUNT, 1955. COLOR, 114 MINUTES,
NOT RATED.
If anyone can pull off playing a starting third
baseman for the Saint Louis Cardinals who gets
called to active duty in the Air Force—at age
46—it’s James Stewart. If you can get over your
concerns about the Cardinals’ apparent farm-
system problems, Strategic Air Command is a fun
way to spend close to two hours.
In Strat, a post-It’s a Wonderful Life, pre-The
Shootist Stewart plays Robert “Dutch” Holland,
a World War II retread not happy with the idea of
trading in his cleats and cup for a blue suit. His
dutiful wife, played by smoky-voiced June Allyson
would also prefer Rawlings and Wilson to Convair
and Boeing. But a hard-nosed Air Force general
has bigger concerns. He wants old hands to help
guide his beloved Strategic Air Command so that
America’s enemies (I’m looking at you, Nikita
Khrushchev) don’t try any funny business.
On the way to Dutch’s realization that there is
more to life than turning a double play, he gets
to fly Convair B-36s and Boeing B-47s—and
survive a snowy crash in one over Greenland. For
viewers, it’s satisfying to see old friends like a pre-
“Dragnet 1967” Harry Morgan as an affable flight
engineer. Even better is watching other characters
(in VistaVision) man their posts inside the
cavernous cabin of the “six-turning, four-burning”
Peacemaker and performing jet-assisted takeoffs
(JATO) in the plain-old-six-burning Stratojet.
That plus the air-to-air filming of these cold war
legacies make Strategic Air Command a strategic
choice for the discerning aviation cinephile.
■ SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WRITER D.C. AGLE THINKS JIMMY
STEWART CAN DO NO WRONG—NOT EVEN AIRPORT ’77.

72 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 Sun and Moon: A Story of Astronomy,
Photography and Cartography
BY MARK HOLBORN. PHAIDON PRESS, 2019. 376 PP., $79.95.

If you needed proof that the sun and moon have captivated
humankind for centuries, Sun and Moon provides solid
evidence. Drawing from the collection of the Royal
Astronomical Society, the book features maps and vintage
CLOCKWISE: RIJKSMUSEUM, AMSTERDAM; NASA; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, WASHINGTON, DC; NASA; CENTER: PURCHASE, ROGERS FUND, AND GIFT OF THE SCHIFF FOUNDATION

books inspired by these two dominant celestial objects. Sun

and Moon also includes photographs documenting NASA’s
crewed spaceflight programs, from Mercury to the Apollo
moon landings. Taken as a whole, the book shows how
dreary life on Earth would be without the beauty of the sun
by day and the splendor of the moon at night.

3
Clockwise from top left: (1) A book about the moon published in
London in 1874. (2) The assembly of the Saturn V first stage at the
Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. The Saturn V rocket was
used for the Apollo lunar missions. (3) Lick Observatory on top of
California’s Mount Hamilton in 1902. (4) A gimbal rig used to train
Mercury astronauts to control pitch and roll during spaceflight. (5) A
bowl with astrological motifs, including the sun and moon, made in
4 northern Iran in late 12th or early 13th century.

October/November 2019 AIR & SPACE 73

 R E V I E WS

Luftwaffe Eagle
BY ERICH SOMMER. GRUB STREET, 2018.
211 PP., $35.

There’s an old saying that history is

written by the victors, and it’s certainly
true when it comes to the aviation
history of World War II. There are
thousands of books about the exploits of
American and British pilots and airmen
during the war. In contrast, there are rel-
atively few books written from the per-
spective of German and
Japanese pilots. That’s
both because many of
them were killed, and
there was relatively little
interest in their home
countries or elsewhere
for their stories.
Luftwafe Eagle by
Erich Sommer recounts
his exploits in Germany’s
air force. He first flew as a navigator in
the somewhat obscure Junkers Ju 86.
Later in the war, after receiving pilot
training, Sommer flew the Arado Ar 234
jet, performing reconnaissance missions
over Allied forces as they advanced
toward Germany. As the war progressed,
he increasingly returned to bases that
had been bombed by U.S. B-17s.
Sommer doesn’t reveal much emo-
tion throughout the book—despite
the increasing amount of death and
destruction he witnessed. He survived
the war and later moved to Australia,
where he died in 2005. The book was
prepared from his memoirs by British
aviation writer J. Richard Smith.
Today only one Ar 234 survives. It
was beautifully restored by the National
Air and Space Museum in the 1980s,
and is currently on display at the Steven
F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia.
Sommer’s book provides unique insight
about these airplanes—and their pilots—
but if you’re looking for an apology for
bombing Britain on behalf of Hitler, you
won’t find it in this book.
■ DWAYNE DAY FREQUENTLY REVIEWS BOOKS FOR
AIR & SPACE.

74 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

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REQUEST A FREE CATALOG
SMITHSONIANJOURNEYS.ORG / 877.338.8687
PREVIEW
Extras
Special Edition on
Carrier Aviation
More than 6,000 people
(air wing included) crew the
mightiest tool in the U.S.
arsenal: the aircraft carrier.
A new collector’s edition
showcasing life among the
ships’ complex systems hits the
newsstand on November 6.
In the next issue
Holly Ridings
The first woman chief mission
controller has her job cut out for
her: She supervises 32 other mission
controllers and bears ultimate
responsibility for the humans in
BILL STAFFORD/NASA/JSC
U.S. human spaceflight—including
upcoming commercial crews and Orion
capsule launches. A profile will explore
just how Ridings plans to oversee a
tumultuous new era of missions to the
space station and the moon.
76 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com
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AIR & SPACE/SMITHSONIAN; OCTOBER/NOVEM-
BER 2019, VOL. 34, NO. 5 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 of
fices. POSTMASTER: Send change of address to Air
& Space/Smithsonian, PO Box 420300, Palm Coast,
FL 32142 0300. Printed in the USA. Canadian pub
lication agreement no. 40039324. Canadian return
address: Asendia, USA, PO Box 1051, Fort Erie, ON
L2A 6C7 Canada. ©Smithsonian Institution 2019.
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 sub
scribers to Air & Space/Smithsonian are Air & Space
National Associate members. Ninety nine percent of
dues is designated for magazine subscription. Ad
dress 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 inter
est 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 (cur
rent $6.99, back issue $7), please write Air & Space/
Smithsonian, 420 Lexington Ave., Suite 2335, New
York, NY 10170, or call (212) 916 1323.
C O N T R I B U TO R S
HANDLE WITH CARE. Rebecca Maksel is
a senior associate editor at Air & Space/
Smithsonian.
JUST THE RIGHT WORD. Jim Vespe is
a retired medical writer who has sold
one-liners to Joan Rivers and Jay Leno.
He has written for political candidates
of both parties, beginning with John
Glenn’s brief presidential campaign
in 1984.
THE 21 ST CENTURY MOON SUIT. Marc
Kaufman is the founder of the online
column Many Worlds, manyworlds.
space. He also reported on NASA for
the Washington Post.
THE GREYHOUND AND THE OSPREY.
Zach Rosenberg is an Air & Space asso-
ciate editor. Though he crossed off a
major bucket list item by trapping aboard
and catapulting from an aircraft carrier,
he prefers the dry, immobile land of
Washington, D.C., where he resides.
THE ONLY FLYING YL-15 SCOUT. Ken
Scott lives on a rural airstrip in western
Oregon where he builds, flies, and writes
about airplanes.
RETURN FROM A MARTIAN CR ATER.
Bruce Lieberman is a freelance science
writer in Carlsbad, California. His work
can be found at blieberman.com.
W E L C O M E T O T H E A I R P O R T.
Craig
Mellow is a global economics journalist.
He contributes frequently to Institutional
Investor and Barron’s.
WORLD WAR II ’S WORST AIRPL ANE .
D.C. Agle, an aerospace writer living
in southern California, has chronicled
many air- and spacecraft for Air & Space,
but this is his first story on a rocket
whose principal ingredient is tree.
Further reading: Bachem Ba 349 Natter,
David Myhra, Schiffer Publishing, 1999.
German Rocket Fighters of World
War II, Hans-Peter Diedrich, Schiffer
Publishing, 2005.
78 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com
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 I D E AS T H AT D E F Y

Sally Ride’s Jacket

PIONEER STYLE

SALLY K. RIDE might have been a pro- Her official NASA jacket, on the other hand, is
fessional tennis player—she was nationally ranked The patch on the unambiguous, a wearable résumé adorned with
when she played for Stanford University, and no left breast of Ride’s patches to be worn for the inevitable public appear-
crew jacket had her
less an authority than Billie Jean King urged her to first and last name
ances that are part of the astronaut job description.
turn pro. Instead, the Ph.D. astrophysicist answered per protocol, but As an inspiration to young women, Ride made plenty
an ad in the Stanford Daily seeking women to on the workaday of those appearances. After her second mission,
apply to NASA, and five years later, she became flightsuit she wore STS-14, Ride served on the commission appointed to
beneath it, the name
the youngest American to fly in space, and, more uncover the cause of the 1986 Challenger disaster and
tag was less formal:
critically, the first U.S. woman. Upon her return “Sally.” in 2001, on the panel that investigated the tragedy
to Johnson Space Center after the completion of of Columbia. Ride’s partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy,
STS-7, the first of her two missions aboard the donated the jacket to the National Air and Space
Challenger, a NASA official handed her (but not Museum in 2013, the year after Ride’s death. It is
DANE PENLAND/NASM

her crewmates) a bouquet of flowers. She accepted
them and then, wishing to free her hands—not,
she said later, to send any kind of message—she
handed them right back. Inevitably, her every
gesture would be parsed for its meaning.
just like all the other jackets worn by the astronauts
of the shuttle era—and it is one-of-a kind.
■ CHRIS KLIMEK IS AN AIR & SPACE/SMITHSONIAN ASSOCIATE
EDITOR.

80 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

 the story of the building,
the building of the story

“Like the Smithsonian National Museum of

African American History itself, its inaugural
director’s memoir tells a challenging
and ultimately inspiring story of struggle,
perseverance, and uplift.” --Booklist

Founding Director Bunch shares the triumphs and challenges

of building the National Museum of African American History
and Culture, and taps into broader questions of the role of
race in America—past, present, and future.

A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American

History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump
By Lonnie G. Bunch III
HC | $29.95 | ISBN 9781588346681

available wherever books are sold