747 Pilot comments about carrying the Shuttle

This was circulated in email at work, from United Technologies corporate.

A quick "trip report" from the pilot of the 747 that flew the shuttle back to Florida after the Hubble repair flight. A humorous and interesting inside look at what it's like to fly two aircraft at once . . .

Walt and all,

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 off 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 15 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 speed 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