[meteorite-list] Shuttle Carry

Thu Jun 18 18:43:09 EDT 2009

I loved this e-mail and I'm sure I speak for many on this list when I say a big thanks for it being shared with us.
I saw Columbia on the back of the 747 when it did an overfly of Manchester (Ringway) back when I was a kid in the '80s and it's a memory I will never forget.

Hats off to the pilot.

Rob McCafferty

--- On Thu, 6/18/09, Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Shuttle Carry
> To: cdtucson at cox.net, "Simon" <sbdeboer at wightman.ca>, "meteoritelist" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Date: Thursday, June 18, 2009, 12:01 AM
> The original NASA e-mail that Carl
> forwarded
> to The List can be found here:
> http://infinite-frontier.blogspot.com/2009/06/nasa-747-pilot-shares-experience.html
> 
> An article about James Nickel can be found here:
> http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-space/article/2002-02/twinkle-twinkle
> 
> 
> Sterling K. Webb
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----- Original Message ----- From: <cdtucson at cox.net>
> To: "Simon" <sbdeboer at wightman.ca>;
> "meteoritelist" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 2:20 PM
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Shuttle Carry
> 
> 
> > Simon, List,
> > Thank you for that but many on this list know me and
> unfortunately I was not the author or pilot. This was a
> forward intended only to share with the List. Sorry for any
> confusion. Thanks Carl
> > 
> > ---- Simon <sbdeboer at wightman.ca>
> wrote:
> >> HI Carl :  I am an  organic farmer in
> Ontario Canada,  I really enjoyed
> >> your account of  bringing the shuttle 
> back on the 747, I guess we're all
> >> good at  whatever we do but I can just
> imagine the stress  involved in your
> >> mission. You must be well paid  to be able to
> do an assignment  like that.
> >> Thanks for giving us an inside  feel of your
> job .
> >> 
> >>  Regards
> >>  Simon
> >> 
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
> >> [mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com]
> On Behalf Of
> >> cdtucson at cox.net
> >> Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 1:42 PM
> >> To: meteoritelist
> >> Subject: [meteorite-list] Shuttle Carry
> >> 
> >> Enjoy.
> >> 
> >> Well, it's been 48 hours since I landed the 747
> with the shuttle Atlantis on
> >> top and I am still buzzing from the experience. I
> have to say that my whole
> >> mind, body and soul went into the professional
> mode just before engine start
> >> in Mississippi, and stayed there, where it all
> needed to be, until well
> >> after the flight...in fact, I am not sure if it is
> all back to normal as I
> >> type this email. The experience was surreal.
> >> > >> >
> >> > >> > ?Seeing that "thing" on top of
> an already overly huge aircraft
> >> boggles my mind. The whole mission from takeoff to
> engine shutdown was
> >> unlike anything I had ever done. It was like a
> dream...someone else's dream.
> >> 
> >> > >> >
> >> > >> > ?We took off from Columbus AFB
> on their 12,000 foot runway, of > >> > which
> >> I used 11,999 1/2 feet to get the wheels off the
> ground. We were at 3,500
> >> feet left to go of the runway, throttles full
> power, nose wheels still
> >> hugging the ground, copilot calling out decision
> speeds, the weight of
> >> Atlantis now screaming through my fingers clinched
> tightly on the controls,
> >> tires heating up to their near maximum temperature
> from the speed and the
> >> weight, and not yet at rotation speed, the speed
> at which I would be pulling
> >> on the controls to get the nose to rise. I just
> could not wait, and I mean I
> >> COULD NOT WAIT, and started pulling early. If I
> had waited until rotation
> >> speed, we would not have rotated enough to get
> airborne by the end of the
> >> runway. So I pulled on the controls early and
> started our rotation to the
> >> takeoff attitude. The wheels finally lifted off as
> we passed over the stripe
> >> marking the end of the runway and my next hurdle
> (physically) was a line of
> >> trees 1,000 feet of
> >>  f the departure end of Runway 16. All I knew
> was we were flying and so I
> >> directed the gear to be retracted and the flaps to
> be moved from Flaps 20 to
> >> Flaps 10 as I pulled even harder on the controls.
> I must say, those trees
> >> were beginning to look a lot like those brushes in
> the drive through car
> >> washes so I pulled even harder yet! I think I saw
> a bird just fold its wings
> >> and fall out of a tree as if to say "Oh just take
> me". Okay, we cleared the
> >> trees, duh, but it was way too close for my
> laundry. As we started to
> >> actually climb, at only 100 feet per minute, I
> smelled something that
> >> reminded me of touring the Heineken Brewery in
> Europe...I said "is that a
> >> skunk I smell?" and the veterans of shuttle
> carrying looked at me and smiled
> >> and said "Tires"!
> >> > >> >
> >> > >> > ?I said "TIRES??? OURS???" They
> smiled and shook their heads > >> > as if to
> >> call their Captain an amateur...okay, at that
> point I was. The tires were so
> >> hot you could smell them in the cockpit. My mind
> could not get over, from
> >> this point on, that this was something I had never
> experienced.
> >> > >> >
> >> > >> > ?Where's your mom when you
> REALLY need her?
> >> > >> >
> >> > >> > ?The flight down to Florida was
> an eternity. We cruised at 250 > >> > knots
> >> indicated, giving us about 315 knots of ground
> speed at 15,000'. The miles
> >> didn't click by like I am use to them clicking by
> in a fighter jet at MACH
> >> .94. We were burning fuel at a rate of 40,000
> pounds per hour or 130 pounds
> >> per mile, or one gallon every length of the
> fuselage. The vibration in the
> >> cockpit was mild, compared to down below and to
> the rear of the fuselage
> >> where it reminded me of that football game I had
> as a child where you turned
> >> it on and the players vibrated around the board. I
> felt like if I had
> >> plastic clips on my boots I could have vibrated to
> any spot in the fuselage
> >> I wanted to go without moving my legs...and the
> noise was deafening. The 747
> >> flies with its nose 5 degrees up in the air to
> stay level, and when you
> >> bank, it feels like the shuttle is trying to say
> "hey, let's roll completely
> >> over on our back"..not a good thing I kept telling
> myself. SO I limited my
> >> bank? angle to 1
> >>  5 degrees and even though a 180 degree
> course change took a full zip code
> >> to complete, it was the safe way to turn this
> monster.
> >> > >> >
> >> > >> > Airliners and even a flight of
> two F-16s deviated from their > >> > flight
> >> plans to catch a glimpse of us along the way. We
> dodged what was in reality
> >> very few clouds and storms, despite what everyone
> thought, and arrived in
> >> Florida with 51,000 pounds of fuel too much to
> land with. We can't land
> >> heavier than 600,000 pounds total weight and so we
> had to do something with
> >> that fuel. I had an idea...let's fly low and slow
> and show this beast off to
> >> all the taxpayers in Florida lucky enough to be
> outside on that Tuesday
> >> afternoon. So at Ormond Beach we let down to 1,000
> feet above the
> >> ground/water and flew just east of the beach out
> over the water. Then, once
> >> we reached the NASA airspace of the Kennedy Space
> Center, we cut over to the
> >> Banana/Indian Rivers and flew down the middle of
> them to show the people of
> >> Titusville, Port St.Johns and Melbourne just what
> a 747 with a shuttle on it
> >> looked like. We stayed at 1,000 feet and since we
> were dragging our flaps at
> >> "Flaps 5", our spee
> >>  d was down to around 190 to 210 knots. We
> could see traffic stopping in the
> >> middle of roads to take a look. We heard later
> that a Little League Baseball
> >> game stop to look and everyone cheered as we
> became their 7th inning
> >> stretch. Oh say can you see...
> >> > >> >
> >> > >> > ?After reaching Vero Beach, we
> turned north to follow the > >> > coast line
> >> back up to the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF).
> There was not one person
> >> laying on the beach...they were all standing and
> waving! "What a sight" I
> >> thought...and figured they were thinking the same
> thing. All this time I was
> >> bugging the engineers, all three of them, to
> re-compute our fuel and tell me
> >> when it was time to land. They kept saying "Not
> yet Triple, keep showing
> >> this thing off" which was not a bad thing to be
> doing. However, all this
> >> time the thought that the landing, the muscling of
> this 600,000 pound beast,
> >> was getting closer and closer to my reality. I was
> pumped up! We got back to
> >> the SLF and were still 10,000 pounds too heavy to
> land so I said I was going
> >> to do a low approach over the SLF going the
> opposite direction of landing
> >> traffic that day. So at 300 feet, we flew down the
> runway, rocking our wings
> >> like a whale rolling on its side to say "hello" to
> the people looking on!
> >> One turn out
> >>   of traffic and back to the runway
> to land...still 3,000 pounds over gross
> >> weight limit. But the engineers agreed that if the
> landing were smooth,
> >> there would be no problem. "Oh thanks guys, a
> little extra pressure is just
> >> what I needed!" So we landed at 603,000 pounds and
> very smoothly if I have
> >> to say so myself. The landing was so totally
> controlled and on speed, that
> >> it was fun. There were a few surprises that I
> dealt with, like the 747 falls
> >> like a rock with the orbiter on it if you pull the
> throttles off at the
> >> "normal" point in a
> >> > >> >
> >> > >> > landing and secondly, if you
> thought you could hold the nose > >> > off the
> >> ground after the mains touch down, think
> again...IT IS COMING DOWN!!!
> >> > >> >
> >> > >> > ?So I "flew it down" to the
> ground and saved what I have seen > >> > in
> >> videos of a nose slap after landing. Bob's video
> supports this! :8-)
> >> > >> >
> >> > >> > ?Then I turned on my phone
> after coming to a full stop only to > >> > find
> >> 50 bazillion emails and phone messages from all of
> you who were so super to
> >> be watching and cheering us on! What a treat, I
> can't thank y'all enough.
> >> For those who watched, you wondered why we sat
> there so long.
> >> > >> >
> >> > >> > ?Well, the shuttle had very
> hazardous chemicals on board and > >> > we had
> >> to be "sniffed" to determine if any had leaked or
> were leaking. They checked
> >> for Monomethylhydrazine (N2H4 for Charlie Hudson)
> and nitrogen tetroxide
> >> (N2O4). Even though we were "clean", it took way
> too long for them to tow us
> >> in to the mate-demate area. Sorry for those who
> stuck it out and even waited
> >> until we exited the jet.
> >> > >> >
> >> > >> > ? I am sure I will wake up in
> the middle of the night here > >> > soon,
> >> screaming and standing straight up dripping wet
> with sweat from the
> >> realization of what had happened. It was a thrill
> of a lifetime. Again I
> >> want to thank everyone for your interest and
> support. It felt good to bring
> >> Atlantis home in one piece after she had worked so
> hard getting to the
> >> Hubble Space Telescope and back.
> >> > >> >
> >> > >> > ?Triple Nickel
> >> > >> >
> >> > >> > ?NASA Pilot
> >> 
> >> Carl Esparza
> >> IMCA 5828
> >>
> ____________________________________________________________
> >> > Digital Photography - Click Now.
> >> >
> >> 
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