Queen of the Sky 747 Last Call

[kkleinschmidt]

Boeing has been delivering 747s since 1969 just after Neil and Buzz landed on the moon but the end of the line is here after over 1500 were produced the final plane left Boeingland for CVG (which is a big airport for cargo now thanks to Amazon). Along the way they had some fun and scripted out 747 inside a crown over eastern Washington and it looks pretty darn cool on flight radar...

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/n863gt#2f0b1162

I was only able to fly on a 747 three times, and two of those flights were to and from Paris with TWA on the flight that exploded just after I flew on it because of electrical issues. To me the 747 is the kind of airplane that when you look at it it looks beautiful and it will be a sad day for me when the last one is mothballed. One of the engine variants is made here in Cincinnati at General Electric which might be why it flew here first (it did not do a pass over the factory but it does look like it did a low altitude flyby at CVG before coming back for a landing).

Enjoy them while they last!

P.S. When the Airbus A380 was a new plane it did a tour of US airports including CVG, and as part of that it did a low pass over the GE factory (and the engines were made there for sure) which we all went out to see. It was pretty darn cool seeing that huge airplane hanging in the air so close to the ground doing a wing wiggle for us but it freaked out people pretty good who didn't know what was going on. I got to fly on an A380 one time and got on the upper deck which I was never able to do on a 747, and it is a nice airplane indeed although it's pretty darn ugly as those things go.

[alex peters]

Boeing has been delivering 747s since 1969 just after Neil and Buzz landed on the moon but the end of the line is here after over 1500 were produced the final plane left Boeingland for CVG (which is a big airport for cargo now thanks to Amazon). Along the way they had some fun and scripted out 747 inside a crown over eastern Washington and it looks pretty darn cool on flight radar...

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/n863gt#2f0b1162

I was only able to fly on a 747 three times, and two of those flights were to and from Paris with TWA on the flight that exploded just after I flew on it because of electrical issues. To me the 747 is the kind of airplane that when you look at it it looks beautiful and it will be a sad day for me when the last one is mothballed. One of the engine variants is made here in Cincinnati at General Electric which might be why it flew here first (it did not do a pass over the factory but it does look like it did a low altitude flyby at CVG before coming back for a landing).

Enjoy them while they last!

P.S. When the Airbus A380 was a new plane it did a tour of US airports including CVG, and as part of that it did a low pass over the GE factory (and the engines were made there for sure) which we all went out to see. It was pretty darn cool seeing that huge airplane hanging in the air so close to the ground doing a wing wiggle for us but it freaked out people pretty good who didn't know what was going on. I got to fly on an A380 one time and got on the upper deck which I was never able to do on a 747, and it is a nice airplane indeed although it's pretty darn ugly as those things go.

Do you think Buzz and Neil really landed on the moon in 1969 with that technology and just a couple of years after Grissom, Chaffee, and White died in the capsule on the ground?
And if you believe they did land on the moon in 1969 why did a NASA engineer say 2 years ago that they were not ready to go back as they were not comfortable that today's technology could get the astronauts home?

[kkleinschmidt]

Do you think Buzz and Neil really landed on the moon in 1969 with that technology and just a couple of years after Grissom, Chaffee, and White died in the capsule on the ground?
And if you believe they did land on the moon in 1969 why did a NASA engineer say 2 years ago that they were not ready to go back as they were not comfortable that today's technology could get the astronauts home?

Yes I do! And it's really one of the most amazing stories of our lifetimes. Neil used to live in the town right next to me (Indian Hill, OH) and we would see him now and then at our local grocery store, and he used to be a professor at U Cincinnati where he taught engineering to a whole bunch of folks I have known over the years. Watching and listening to the video of the landing still gives me goosebumps especially when they start counting down the number of seconds of fuel they have left in the Eagle before they finally landed safely. The command module from Columbia was in Cincy relatively recently, which of course is what they flew in along with Mike Collins, and it was amazing to be so close that you could see inside where they signed the walls. They also had all sorts of other fun stuff along with that exhibit including high res pictures of the moon landing sites (with rover tracks and gear they left there laying around), and moon rocks.

The Apollo 1 disaster was all about stupidity frankly, which is in line with the other disasters NASA has had (they destroyed 40% of their space shuttle fleet after all). Filling the command module with pure oxygen was a horrible idea and they paid for it with their lives, but NASA did learn from that mistake and it never happened again. And if I was a NASA engineer today I would certainly have questions about the safety of a brand new space launch system and lunar lander setup! But Alex this is exploration and with it comes risk but there are also rewards, and to me our moon is the next high ground and having our team leading us into our future there seems like a really good idea.

[alex peters]

Yes I do! And it's really one of the most amazing stories of our lifetimes. Neil used to live in the town right next to me (Indian Hill, OH) and we would see him now and then at our local grocery store, and he used to be a professor at U Cincinnati where he taught engineering to a whole bunch of folks I have known over the years. Watching and listening to the video of the landing still gives me goosebumps especially when they start counting down the number of seconds of fuel they have left in the Eagle before they finally landed safely. The command module from Columbia was in Cincy relatively recently, which of course is what they flew in along with Mike Collins, and it was amazing to be so close that you could see inside where they signed the walls. They also had all sorts of other fun stuff along with that exhibit including high res pictures of the moon landing sites (with rover tracks and gear they left there laying around), and moon rocks.

The Apollo 1 disaster was all about stupidity frankly, which is in line with the other disasters NASA has had (they destroyed 40% of their space shuttle fleet after all). Filling the command module with pure oxygen was a horrible idea and they paid for it with their lives, but NASA did learn from that mistake and it never happened again. And if I was a NASA engineer today I would certainly have questions about the safety of a brand new space launch system and lunar lander setup! But Alex this is exploration and with it comes risk but there are also rewards, and to me our moon is the next high ground and having our team leading us into our future there seems like a really good idea.

Moon 1st again then Mars? When do you think Mars? Is not the problem with Mars the year or so it will take to get there and the hardship on the astronauts with being cooped up that long?

What do you think?

Also, did not Gus Grissom warn beforehand of the safety of the mission and he expressed doubts he would ever return home?

[kkleinschmidt]

One of the big reasons I am an aviation geek is because of my time growing up in Ohio. It still blows my mind that three Ohio boys were true leaders in the world of aviation. You can go to the spot in Dayton, OH where the Wright brothers did their work figuring out flight controls and look up into USAF's Wright Patterson Air Force Base. We went from that to another Ohio guy landing and walking on the moon in less than 70 years! I would think that as Americans we would find a sense of pride in that. Also my grandfather was a pilot. He flew B-17s in WW2 and into the 50s including flying Eisenhower (who was a big reason we have a space program) to Moscow and flying in the Berlin airlift. After that he got a job with P&G flying DC-3s until he led the purchase of their first jet (a Gulfstream 2 I think).

As to going to Mars all I can say is that's a big leap and it's going to take some absolutely special (crazy?) folks to make that flight especially the first one. Moon is one thing because it's only a couple of days away but like you said it's something like 1.5 years just got get to Mars and it sure does seem like a lot can go wrong in that amount of time with both equipment and people (look at some of the weird stuff that happens on ISS).

Not sure what Gus said about returning but I do know that Neil took a whole pile of stuff to the moon and back as an insurance policy of sorts in the event that he didn't return. And I know if I was in their shoes I would be thinking the same thing. Another really fun aviation event I went to was with Cisco and they had Jim Lovell and Gene Kranz of Apollo 13 fame talking about working under pressure (!), and another year Cisco had Chuck Yeager giving a talk about pretty much the same thing and the line that stuck in my head was "I (Chuck) have flown over 450 types of aircraft, most of them being flown for the first time." Wow! These folks just have a different mentality is all I can say, and I thank them from the bottom of my heart for their service.

[alex peters]

One of the big reasons I am an aviation geek is because of my time growing up in Ohio. It still blows my mind that three Ohio boys were true leaders in the world of Aviation. You can go to the spot in Dayton, OH where the Wright brothers did their work figuring out flight controls and look up into USAF's Wright Patterson Air Force Base. We went from that to another Ohio guy landing and walking on the moon in less than 70 years! I would think that as Americans we would find a sense of pride in that.

David McCullough's book on the Wright Brothers was a good read

[kkleinschmidt]

David McCullough's book on the Wright Brothers was a good read

If you ever get to this part of the world you would probably enjoy checking out some of the aviation heritage sites. Their workshop is a museum and you can go to Huffman Prairie to check that out, and just down the hill from that is the National Museum of the USAF which has all sorts of super cool stuff (and it's free!). And if you do it at the right time Dayton has a world class air show that includes static airplane displays some of which you can go though (there's nothing like walking around inside a cargo version of the 747).

[alex peters]

If you ever get to this part of the world you would probably enjoy checking out some of the aviation heritage sites. Their workshop is a museum and you can go to Huffman Prairie to check that out, and just down the hill from that is the National Museum of the USAF which has all sorts of super cool stuff (and it's free!). And if you do it at the right time Dayton has a world class air show that includes static airplane displays some of which you can go though (there's nothing like walking around inside a cargo version of the 747).

Thanks!

If you ever get to the Los Angeles area in Chino is the Planes of Fame air museum. You will love it

[hammerhead]

The Boeing factory tour in Seattle was really cool. There aren't many places where you can walk into a tunnel that is a half mile long and is perfectly strait. We had to leave our phones and cameras in lockers before the tour and I'm guessing they now use one of those locking devices where your phone gets locked in a little pouch you carry with you. Those phone pouches were used on the Paisley Park tour with Prince's stuff.

[kkleinschmidt]

Betsy's brother lives in Seattle so we definitely owe ourselves a visit, and I haven't been there since 1980 just after their volcano fun (I still have a jar of ash from Mount St. Helens). Definitely will keep the Boeing tour on the list. We also owe ourselves a visit to LA and I would love to see a space shuttle so maybe we'll catch that and the Chino Planes of Fame museum too (thanks Alex!).

I used to work in the basement of GE and there are tunnels everywhere but they aren't straight it's a bizarro world underground there actually. The had a little storage space/museum in the basement by us that had an engine from the XB-70 Valkyrie which is the first plane to fly mach 3. GE made the engines of course and they wanted a photo op so they setup a flight which is documented in this video...

Needless to say this was completely unnecessary and incredibly sad on so many levels. The last surviving XB-70 is in Dayton at the USAF museum.

[Gilly Goodness]

When I saw thread title I thought you meant this...





but now I know you meant this....





both blue and curvy 😉

[pianozach]

Do you think Buzz and Neil really landed on the moon in 1969 with that technology and just a couple of years after Grissom, Chaffee, and White died in the capsule on the ground?
And if you believe they did land on the moon in 1969 why did a NASA engineer say 2 years ago that they were not ready to go back as they were not comfortable that today's technology could get the astronauts home?

Jeez. You're a moon-landing-denier? Lordy Lordy.

[alex peters]

Jeez. You're a moon-landing-denier? Lordy Lordy.

I did not say I was. Just asking a question to someone who has more knowledge than me on the subject.

[pianozach]

I did not say I was. Just asking a question to someone who has more knowledge than me on the subject.

Got it.

You're just "asking questions".

Uh-huh.

[alex peters]

Got it.

You're just "asking questions".

Uh-huh.

In this particular instance I was just asking a question. I have come to the conclusion that the woman with the shaking hands that got to Big George in Zaire has gotten to you also