Imagine
flying from Florida to D.C. with nowhere to sit, no air conditioning, no place
to store your bags -- not even a bathroom. Imagine flying anywhere under those
conditions.
--Three
struts with associated interior structural strengthening protrude from the top
of the fuselage (two aft, one forward) on which the orbiter is attached.
--Two
additional vertical stabilizers, one on each end of the standard horizontal
stabilizer, to enhance directional stability.
--Removal
of all interior furnishings and equipment aft of the forward No. 1 doors.
--Addition
of instrumentation used by SCA flight crews and engineers to monitor orbiter
electrical loads during the ferry flights and also during pre- and post-ferry
flight operations.
And, perhaps in a scenario familiar to many air travel passengers arriving in New York, the shuttle appeared to be taking its time meandering over the area.
Crowds of people lined various vantage points across the area to get a glimpse of the shuttle, which flew up from Dulles Airport near Washington on 27 April 2012morning.
The 150,000-pound shuttle soared over New York Harbor,
past the Statue of Liberty and up the Hudson River. After passing over the
George Washington Bridge, the flight continued north to the Tappan Zee Bridge
before making another pass over the city. And then it made the same loop,
heading back up the Hudson again.
The flight is supposed to be the last time in the sky for
Enterprise, which never flew in space but did glide to the ground on its own
several times a few decades ago. The prototype is eventually destined for the
Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, which is paying the National Aeronautics
& Space Administration more than $9 million for the delivery. NASA awarded
Enterprise to the museum last year when it was giving away all of the remaining
orbiters after ending the shuttle program.
Last week, the same old 747 ferried the shuttle Discovery
to Dulles so that it could replace Enterprise at the nearby satellite site of
the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum. Once Enterprise is lifted off
the 747 by cranes - a process NASA calls "demating" - it will be
loaded onto a barge this summer and floated from Kennedy to the Intrepid, a
retired aircraft carrier docked in the Hudson in Midtown Manhattan.
In short, an antique airplane is carrying an antique
spacecraft to New York, where it will wind up on the deck of an antique
warship.
