nasas shuttle carrier aircraft part 2

NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (Part 2) - Interview with SCA Pilot and

Former Astronaut Gordon Fullerton

Subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher

using the feed http://airspeed.libsyn.com/rss or listen to audio at

http://airspeed.libsyn.com.

Welcome to the second episode in our two-part series covering the

modified Boeing 747s that NASA uses carry the space shuttle orbiters

when they need to be repositioned between Edwards Air Force Base in

California, Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and other locations.

We talked about the basics of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, or "SCAs"

in Part One, in which we also interviewed SCA crew chief Pete Seidl.

If you missed that episode or if you're a recent subscriber, please be

sure to download that episode as well.

Today we're going to talk to one of the pilots who flies NASA's SCAs.

To say that Gordon Fullerton is an SCA pilot would be true, but to

stop there would be to fail to outline as rich an aviation and

aerospace career as anyone could claim.

He's presently associate director of flight operations at NASA's

Dryden Flight Research Center in Southern California. In addition to

flying the SCAs, his assignments include a variety of flight research

and support activities piloting a variety of multi-engine and high

performance aircraft.

Fullerton entered the U.S. Air Force in 1958. After primary and basic

flight school, he trained as an F-86 interceptor pilot and later

became a B-47 bomber pilot. In 1964, he attended what is now be called

Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base and was later

assigned as a test pilot with the Bomber Operations Division at

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

While still in the Air Force, he went on to become a NASA astronaut

and served on the support crews for the Apollo 14, 15, 16 and 17 lunar

missions.

[Audio]

The voice there saying "Roger, you have good thrust" is Fullerton, who

was the man at the CAPCOM station in Houston for Gene Cernan and Jack

Schmidt's liftoff from the Taurus Littrow Valley as part of Apollo 17

- the last manned mission to the moon.

In 1977, Fullerton joined one of the two two-man flight crews that

piloted the Space Shuttle prototype Enterprise during the Approach and

Landing Test program, which involved flying the orbiter to altitude on

an SCA, separating the orbiter from the SCA, and then gliding the

orbiter to a landing to validate landing procedures.

Fullerton logged 382 hours in space during two space shuttle missions.

He was the pilot for the eight-day STS-3 orbital flight test mission

in 1982. STS-3 landed at Northrup Strip at White Sands, New Mexico

because Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards Air Force Base was wet due to heavy

seasonal rains. He was also the commander of the STS-51F Spacelab 2

mission in 1985, which landed at Edwards.

Fullerton has logged more than 16,000 hours of flying time and flown

114 different types of aircraft, including full qualification in the

T-33, T-34, T-37, T-38, T-39, F-86, F-101, F-106, F-111, F-14, F/A-18,

X-29, KC-135, C-140 and B-47.

Since joining Dryden as a research pilot, Fullerton has piloted nearly

all the research and support aircraft flown at the facility and

currently flies the center's Beech King Air 200 as well as the B-747

Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.

He was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2005, and the

International Space Hall of Fame in 1982.

We started the research for this episode intending to focus on the

SCAs themselves. We were delighted to have access to one of the pilots

of these magnificent machines. But we had no idea when we submitted

the initial inquiry that that we'd end up talking to a man whose

career has been so intertwined with the space program and the national

dream that has captured so many imaginations. With your indulgence,

then, we couldn't help also asking Gordon for his thoughts about the

space program - where it's been and where it's going.

We caught up with Gordon by phone at his office at NASA's Dryden

Flight Research Center in Southern California.

[Interview audio.]

Image used per NASA's policy entitled Using NASA Imagery and Linking

to NASA Web Sites (October 13, 2005) located at

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.htm

l. NASA does not endorse Airspeed or any commercial good or service

associated with Airspeed.

See more pictures of the SCA at

http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/STS-Ferry/index.html.