Aero Spacelines

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This article is about the airplane manufacturer. For aerospaceline, see airline and spaceline.

Aero Spacelines Inc.
Founded1960; 64 years ago (1960)
FounderJohn M. Conroy
Defunct1968 (1968)
Products
Super Guppy F-BPPA operated for Airbus

Aero Spacelines Inc. was an American aircraft manufacturer from 1960 to 1968 that converted Boeing 377 Stratocruisers into the famous Guppy line of airplanes, re-engineered to transport oversized cargo such as space exploration vehicles.

History

Aero Spacelines was formed with only one customer in mind: the

Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida
. These items were too large to be safely transported by rail or truck. Shipping by sea was time-consuming, expensive, and risky, with the danger of damaging the cargo on turbulent seas. But no aircraft of the day was large enough.

Boeing 377 airliner into the Pregnant Guppy.[1]

NASA's Project Gemini made early use of the Pregnant Guppy to transport the first and second stages of Titan II GLV from the Martin Co. in Baltimore, Maryland, to Cape Canaveral, Florida. Subsequent versions of the Guppy series hauled the S-IVB, the third stage of the Saturn booster from California to Florida.[citation needed]

In 1967, Aero Spacelines encountered financial difficulties and was acquired by Unexcelled Inc. That corporation was sold to Tracor Aviation.[citation needed] Conroy organized a new company, Conroy Aircraft, which built more airplanes for transporting oversized cargo.[citation needed] By November 1968, NASA had paid Aero Spacelines $11,591,633 in contracts.[2] Conroy ceased operations in 1972.

As of March 2021, one Super Guppy was still in operation. NASA uses it to transport vehicles, and leases it to third parties when not in use.[3]

In early 2016, NASA used that aircraft to transport the main structure of Orion crew capsule, from its Michoud Manufacturing Facility in New Orleans, Louisiana, to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the capsule underwent its first uncrewed test flight aboard the Space Launch System rocket.[4] In November 2019, NASA used the aircraft to transport the Orion capsule from the Kennedy Space Center to the Mansfield Lahm Airport in Ohio for thermal and vacuum tests.[5]

List of aircraft

Aero Spacelines produced three Guppy aircraft models.

See also

References

  1. ^ Mondey, p. 9
  2. ^ NASA.gov
  3. ^ "NASA website, updated 12 July 2012: 377SG-201 is still in use". Archived from the original on February 15, 2013. Retrieved February 11, 2013.
  4. ^ "NASA transports its Mars crew capsule in the belly of a really weird cargo plane". February 2016.
  5. ^ NASA.gov

External links

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