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…But not necessarily in that order, when you’re dealing with the world’s largest solid rocket motor. In fact, engineers who tried last Thursday to light the ATK five-segment motor planned for NASA’s Ares I rocket, were in an underground bunker half a mile away when ignition was to occur at a quarter past 1:00 in the afternoon (15 minutes past the planned time). I was standing above ground about a mile away under a brilliant Utah sun with temperatures in the mid-90s and the wind blowing away from us. This was to be the first static firing of the five-segment booster derived from the space shuttle’s twin, four-segment boosters. The new booster will loft NASA astronauts to orbit after the shuttle retires.

Instead, a hold was called with just 20 seconds to go, and an announcer shortly informed a crowd of 50 journalists and 500-plus NASA and ATK brass assembled at Promontory, Utah, two hours northwest of Salt Lake City, that the test was canceled. The problem was a faulty valve that feeds an auxiliary power unit that spools up a few tens of seconds prior to ignition and drives a hydraulic system in the booster’s aft skirt that gimbals the exhaust nozzle, which is how the rocket steers itself in flight. It was a critical part of the test, as engineers were going to run the nozzle, which is 18 inches longer than a shuttle booster nozzle, through some vigorous motions to see how it holds up under 24 percent more thrust than that produced by a shuttle booster.

In the press conference an hour later, one journalist asked a slightly weary-looking Pat Lampton, NASA’s chief engineer on the program, about all the “bureaucrats” who would be involved in the Monday-morning quarterbacking. He calmly replied, “Fortunately, at NASA, most of the bureaucrats are engineers.”

What it should have looked like. Photo: ATK

By 5:00, ATK dashed any remaining hopes for a test the next day. There were plenty of murmurs throughout the press corps about the timing of the test: A matter of days before the Augustine panel’s end-of-the-month  deadline to the White House, with a printed report ready by late September. The panel’s conclusions were becoming an open secret: Not only will NASA’s paltry 18-billion-dollar budget fail to return astronauts to the moon by 2020, but we may need a cheaper rocket, such as Elon Musk’s Falcon Nine, or Deltas and Atlases that have been building a strong record lofting satellites. That’s not what NASA and ATK want to hear after developing Ares I for the past five years.

As luck would have it, the space shuttle Discovery blasted off the next day, just before midnight on the 28th. On the 29th, ATK distributed a press release stating, “More than 100 RSRM (reusable solid rocket motor) flight sets have been launched to date, marking a two-decade track record of flawless performance.” Blake Larson, ATK Space Systems President, was quoted in the release, saying, “The launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery and the upcoming fall launch of the Ares I-X [a four-segment booster topped by a fifth empty segment], highlight the capabilities and progress ATK and NASA have made in developing the most reliable and affordable family of solid rocket motors ever produced….They will continue to be instrumental to the success of the remaining shuttle flights as well as the future human spaceflight programs.”

Earlier that day, we’d been piled into a bus and carted up the hill for a closeup look at the 12-foot-diameter, 154-foot-long booster, bolted horizontally to the ground for the static test. These ground connections keep it still while the real anchor, a house-size block of concrete weighing several million pounds, endures 3.6 million pounds of thrust via an Erector-Set-like assembly of steel beams sandwiched between the nose of the motor and the concrete. We wouldn’t have seen the rocket move forward, but it would have, about an inch at most points along its frame. If that flex weren’t designed in, the motor might rip itself apart. Its five reusable segments are durable—they’ve flown in space a total of 48 times. The rear segment flew on the very first shuttle mission in April 1981.

Twenty yards behind the exhaust cone, a mirror roughly eight feet square awaited obliteration atop a metal pole that emerged from its own block of concrete set firmly in the ground. Cameras forward of the motor are pointed at the mirror and record the first milliseconds of the ignition as the gases roar out the nozzle. Milliseconds later, the mirror gets annihilated, its pole and concrete pedestal uprooted and flung 50 yards up the barren hill where others lay after earlier tests. A large, foil-wrapped swing arm with a CO2 delivery system stood ready to insert a probe into the nozzle immediately after the test to cool the motor’s interior. This substitutes for frigid altitude and seawater that cools an operational booster. A six-inch blanket of gray sand covered the entire concrete terrace behind the motor. Some of the sand would be blown up onto the hillside, but much of it would remain and turn to glass in the 6,000-degree heat.

All I saw on Thursday was the sleeping rocket, not the one belching fire and smoke. I was still impressed. This hydraulic glitch had not caused a scrub of a static test or a shuttle launch that anyone could remember. Murphy’s Law had followed me to Utah.

But I had to remind myself that the one shuttle launch I’ve witnessed, a night launch with a full moon hanging above the Atlantic in a cloudless November sky, had gone off without a problem. I’ll admit, I’d rather see the shuttle fly any day than a rocket motor chained to the desert floor.

Weather permitting, a World War II-era B25D Mitchell bomber nicknamed “Grumpy” will take off tomorrow from Duxford, England and retrace (in reverse) the historic lend-lease route by which U.S. airplanes were delivered to Europe in the 1940s. The airplane, which saw its first duty with the Royal Canadian Air Force, is now owned by the Historic Flight Foundation in Seattle, and will end up at Paine Field in Everett, Washington.

Follow the six-day flight here.

A "special" population? (USAF Photo)

Clinical depression is a significant health problem in America; even by low estimates, it afflicts 6.7 percent of the general population in a typical year.

For military pilots, it can be a career-ender. Air Force pilots and navigators diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) are taken off flight status, and pilots on flying duty aren’t allowed to use common antidepressants like Zoloft and Prozac, even when effective, for fear of possible side-effects.

That policy may change, however. Canada already allows some military pilots to use antidepressants if their depression is in remission, as does Australia (which has seen no attendant drop in safety). The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is considering whether private pilots should be allowed to fly while taking antidepressants. Should the Air Force follow suit?

Before deciding, it might be useful to know how common depression is among military pilots and navigators. So Blake Lollis and his colleagues at the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine in San Antonio, Texas, took a look at the data. Their results, published in the August issue of Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine, suggest that military aviators are a pretty happy bunch. After searching through electronic medical records for Air Force pilots and navigators (who numbered about 18,000 during the study period), the researchers found just 51 reported cases of major depression, 43 of which were non-recurring, over a five-year period. The annual prevalance of major depression among pilots and navigators was just 0.056%, far lower than the rate in the general population, and lower than the 2.8% rate for civilian executives and administrators.

Why? Lollis and his colleagues allow that some cases of depression may go undetected or misdiagnosed. Some pilots may practice “reverse malingering,” faking their test results to stay on flight status (some aviators have been known to memorize eye charts to get around vision requirements). It may be that pilots just don’t report their depression to Air Force doctors, and seek help on the sly.

But it’s also likely, write the authors, that “the mental ‘make-up’ or status of USAF pilots and navigators is significantly different from that of the U.S. general population.” For one thing, they’re all college graduates, with an average IQ of 124 (vs. 98 for the general population). They’ve had to “successfully overcome physical, behavioral, emotional, and academic hurdles.” Pilots work in a field that demands focus and self-confidence, and people with personality disorders are selected out. Surveys also show that successful military pilots have “exceptional consistency of background and better than average social and socioeconomic conditions when growing up.”

Considering these and other factors, the authors conclude, “it is highly likely that [military pilots] are a special population who…are less prone to psychiatric illness, including [depression] than the general population.”

Members of the Black Wolf Squadron (St. Clair Streett at far left). Photo courtesy Kay J. Kennedy Aviation Photograph Collection, University of Alaska Fairbanks (Photo #UAF-1991-98-753)

In the early days of aviation, any wilderness was a challenge for propeller-driven airplanes made of wood and fabric. And in 1920, there was hardly a territory more rugged and fraught with danger than Alaska.

So it was that Billy Mitchell of the Army Air Service, who was always anxious to show off the power and reach of his airplanes, sent the eight-member “Black Wolf Squadron” on a month-long journey from New York to Nome, Alaska in four de Havilland DH-4 biplanes.

The expedition, led by Captain St. Clair Streett, left on July 15 and reached Nome on August 24. Then it was on to Fairbanks, where, Streett wrote later in National Geographic, the old “sour-dough” settlers “could not believe that we had covered the distance from New York in 50 hours [of flying], when they had spent 18 or 20 months reaching there by way of the Yukon in the gold-rush days.” For many of the spectators, it was the first time they had seen an airplane.

Along the 4,500-mile route, the pilots had to contend with the elements, the lack of landing fields, and the constant worry that they’d have to come down in some remote stretch of forest or mountain. “The odd noises coming from the roaring motors made our hearts quail,” Streett confessed. But the engines never gave out, and he wrote, “The reputation of the Liberty motor can never again be immoderately criticized within our hearing.”

You might have the right stuff to be a Blue Angel pilot: a computer and a broadband connection. That’s what the Virtual Blue Angels use to fly formation and dazzle online crowds.

Established five years ago by former (and real) Marine Corps pilot Bob “Kato” Tyler, currently the number four (slot) virtual pilot, and former Virtual boss Jeremy “Alias” Keelin, who has moved on, the Virtual Blues are a group of Blue Angels enthusiasts sprinkled across the U.S., along with one pilot in Australia and a female pilot in Canada. They form up and fly formation online with a simulation software called Lock On: Flaming Cliffs, modified with a proprietary Blue Angels twist. They hosted the real U.S. Navy Blue Angels when they were in Davenport, Iowa, last June for a real performance. Davenport is the home of Nathan “Rhino” Truninger, currently flying the number one Virtual aircraft and a member since 2006. There, the real pilots sat with the Virtual ones and tried their hands at putting the Virtual F/A-18s through their paces. No ejections recorded.

Lt. Frank Weisser (seated, foreground), the real Blue Angel #6 pilot, flies virtual #6, as Lt. Amy Tomlinson and flight surgeon Lt. Johannah Valentine note his performance.

Turns out there can be fringe bennies to being a Virtual Blue: some Virtual guys were recently treated to a wild ride on Fat Albert, the C-130 that tours with the real Blues, hauling their ground crews and supplies and performing its own routine at each airshow. Fat Albert’s pretty agile with the help of JATO (Jet-Assisted Take-Off) units, which are actually solid rocket motors strapped onto its flanks.

So, if you think you’re worthy, apply. It’s not even a job, it’s a joint venture. (Not quite. The Virtuals are an LLC, entirely independent of the U.S. Navy.)