An Eventful Saturday (1/2): Plane Crazy

Last Saturday was just plain crazy! That is, Plane Crazy, a periodic event at the Mojave Spaceport where people will show off their airplanes that they've built or collected and just hang out. The main event was a presentation on rocket photography by Mike Massee, XCOR's photographer/videographer. It was fun going to the Spaceport on a Saturday, just chilling, setting up the Lynx model and showing people around. My co-intern Parag and I got to play around with the Lynx when there was nothing else to do. This thing is an epic full-scale mock-up of what the Lynx will actually be, and instills great inspiration for space travel in whoever climbs into the cockpit. Not having ever even flown in a rocket powered vehicle before, I already have the "Rocket Grin:"

(My friend Parag is on the right in this one).

Some other planes that were there:

Long EZ, the type of airplane that XCOR converted to a rocket plane back in the early 2000's. I didn't quite realize how tight the cockpit was!

Below is an F86 Sabre.

Every day at Mojave is new and exciting. Most days you can look up and see the Air Force flying something cool like an F18, even on rare occasions an F22.

(I'm told the above is an F18. You can't expect a rocket scientist to know all the airplane names).

It was a packed day! After Plane Crazy I decided to try another Miniadventure and find some Amateur Rocketeers... (Stay tuned for the next post)

First Time Flying

Aerospace engineering at Iowa State has a requirement that each student needs to gain at least two hours of flight experience. So I got to fly a plane for the first time last Tuesday, along with one other student. Basically I got to do all the controls except the throttle, and controlled the plane from takeoff to final approach (instructor did the tricky touch-down part). We even got to do some maneuvers such as stall recovery, rapid descent, slow flight, and some other basic stuff. It was a blast, and an interesting day for it too, with the clouds and the rain.

I don't have any video of me actually flying the plane (too busy flying to work a camera) so this entire video I am sitting in the back seat while the other student is flying.

Now I want to do it again. I've already been planning to get my pilot's license someday, but actually getting to fly makes me want to get it sooner rather than later. The plan is to be an engineer, work for awhile and earn money, then move to Alaska and be a bush pilot for awhile.

A Saturday Afternoon Well Spent

Very Lucky Photograph

A very lucky photographer camped out under high-traffic airspace with a moon-tracking camera and happened to catch this picture.

Taken from Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD).