Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Look! What is that in the sky?....


Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, its....oh wait....what is that thing?!?!?!?!


Ok, so I driving home from Houston last week. I had to go for a couple of days of training for my job. Those couple of days only reinforced my happiness over NOT having to move back to Houston!!
The traffic was horrendous!


Anyway so, getting off of Beltway 8 onto Hwy 90, I look up and see what I first think must be a UFO!


I looked again and now it looks more like a big, silver whale....but whales cannot fly.


(Except this one! LOL) 
Now I am craning my neck and blocking the traffic to see this incredibly cool THING!


I look it up on Google (of course, don't we all?) and it turns out to be a NASA plane that is used to shuttle around spacecraft parts and parts for the International Space Station. This sucker is HUGE!!!! It is called the Super Guppy Turbine, or the B-377SGT, and it is made by Aero Spacelines Inc. There were 5 of these, beginning in the 1960's and the first four have been either dismantled or taken out of service. The last one, seen below, has been used by NASA since the late 1970's to move rockets, parts and other stuff around.


If you are wondering why the weird shape, take a look at how the cargo is loaded and unloaded.


Just to give you some perspective on how BIG this thing is....


All I can say is....

WOW!

Blessings!

Shannon

2 comments:

XxJULESxX said...

wow dont think we will ever see this here in the uk?!

Shannon said...

@Jules: Actually, there is at least one of the older ones in storage in the UK. I heard they are maybe going to refurbish them someday...