AirSpaceMag.com

Most histories of space travel credit the first use of the rocket countdown to a work of fiction: Fritz Lang’s 1929 science fiction film, “Frau im Mond” (Woman in the Moon).

Maybe not, though. British science fiction writer George Griffith used the same dramatic device in his 1897 story “The Great Crellin Comet,” about an attempt to stave off a comet collision with Earth by firing a cannon load of explosives at the intruder. Here’s an excerpt from the story:

The chronometers ticked off the seconds, each one seeming more like eternity than the one before it. The comet grew bigger and bigger, and its flaming nucleus blazed out brighter and brighter. A vague, low, wailing sound seemed to be running round the circle of the hills. It was the first utterance of the unendurable agony of the multitudes.

At last Lennox looked up from his chronometer at Auriole, and said in a quiet, dry voice—…

“Ten seconds!”

Then he began to count: “Nine—eight—seven—six—five—four—three—two—NOW!”

Note that the final word is NOW, not “Liftoff,” or “Blastoff!”, just as it was in Lang’s film (at the 8:45 mark in the above clip).

Griffith is not as well known today as H.G. Wells or Jules Verne, but he was cut from the same cloth. He was a character in his own right, and in 1894 recreated the round-the-world trip of Verne’s Phileas Fogg. Space writer and publisher Robert Godwin will be talking about Griffith’s life and works on tomorrow’s edition of The Space Show.

And the winner is: The Boeing Company.

Michael Donley, Secretary of the Air Force, announced today that Boeing will supply the U.S. Air Force with 179 tankers derived from the company’s 767 widebody to replace the aging KC-135 refueler fleet. The contract is estimated at $35 billion and is expected to generate 50,000 jobs. If the Air Force exercises options to buy additional tankers down the road, the contract could grow to as much as $100 billion.

In response to reporters’ questions, Air Force officials admitted that the loser, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, which had proposed a derivative of the Airbus A330, has the right to protest the decision. The Air Force claims that the selection process, the third tanker selection in the past decade, was transparent and well communicated from the start, and that this should head off any protest by EADS.

The Air Forces of Italy and Japan have each ordered four of the KC-767 tankers.

An Italian Air Force KC-767 tanks a U.S. Air Force B-52 in 2007. Photo: U.S. Air Force.

Delivery coming: The Johannes Kepler cargo vehicle as seen from the space station.

Busy days in Earth orbit.

Space Shuttle Discovery is set to make its last voyage tomorrow, with liftoff planned for 4:50 p.m. Florida time. If all goes according to plan, Europe’s Johannes Kepler unmanned cargo vehicle will have docked with the space station earlier in the day (at 10:45 U.S. Eastern time—watch the docking live here). Astronaut Paolo Nespoli took this terrific snapshot of the cargo craft from onboard the space station, shortly after its launch on February 16.

The two launches follow dockings to the space station by Japanese and Russian supply vehicles in recent weeks. In fact, there’s been so much traffic lately that Russian and U.S. space station managers are considering a plan to have astronauts fly around the station in a Soyuz vehicle next month to take first-time photos of all the international partners’ vehicles docked to the station at the same time.

Neil Armstrong at the National Air and Space Museum in July 1976, on the 10th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing. (Detail of a photograph of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, courtesy NASM.)

You’re the first man to set foot on the Moon. You’re also a Korean War veteran, and a former test pilot who has flown more than 200 types of aircraft. What do you do for fun?

Well, we don’t know what he does for fun nowadays, but for two days in February 1979, Neil Armstrong set five world records for business jets, flying a Gates Learjet Longhorn 28.

Armstrong served on Learjet’s Board of Directors, so maybe that’s why he got the gig. On February 19, 1979, he set three records in the 28: (1) altitude in horizontal flight (15,584.6 meters, or 51,130 feet); (2) altitude; and (3) time to climb to a height of 15,000 meters (12 minutes, 27 seconds). The next day he broke his just-set altitude records, climbing to 51,131 feet (15,585 meters).

The Gates Learjet Longhorn 28. Courtesy NASA.

“The record time,” notes a Gates Learjet press release dated February 21, 1979, “would not have been possible without the refined high aspect ratio wing and winglets incorporated on the model 28.”

Besides Armstrong, crewmembers included Peter Reynolds (copilot and project test pilot during development of the Learjet 28/29) and Don Berliner (an official observer of the National Aeronautic Association).

The records stood for several years; William Benton set a new altitude record of 16,637 meters in 1988 —also with a Learjet 28 —which stood until Michael Melvill’s 2000 flight in Scaled Composites’ Model 281 Proteus (altitude: 19,277 meters).

Armstrong has had four other records registered with the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, all set during the July 1969 Apollo 11 mission, including “Extravehicular duration in space,” “Duration of stay on the surface of the celestial body,” “Extravehicular duration on the surface of the celestial body by an astronaut,” and “Greatest mass landed on the celestial body.” (See who holds the current records, here.)

Walter Windham drew the postmark: a "silhouette of a biplane in flight over the mountains of Asia." Courtesy of the National Postal Museum.

India is an air-minded nation. Philatelist Pradip Jain notes in his 2002 book Indian Airmails that the Ramayama, the ancient Sanskrit epic, includes references to King Nala and Princess Damayanti sending “amorous messages to each other through the medium of a flying, talking swan.” During the Mauryan dynasty (320-185 B.C.), rulers employed homing pigeons to communicate with the far reaches of their empire. “I am sure it would surprise many of my readers,” continues Jain, “to know that to this day, the police of Orissa employ pigeon-mail to communicate with remote, backward and inaccessible areas to the state.”

So it makes sense that India was home to one of the first airmail flights using an airplane. On February 18, 1911, French pilot Henri Péquet stuffed a sack of more than 6,000 postcards and letters into his Humber biplane, took off from a polo field in Allahabad, India, and headed for Naini, just five miles away. (The first recorded airmail flight using an airplane had taken place in Petaluma, California, just one day earlier.)

Philatelists rejoice: France will mark the centenary of Péquet's flight on February 18, 2011.

Péquet was in India at the request of Walter Windham, who had organized a series of demonstration flights. (Windham founded Great Britain’s Aeroplane Club in 1908, and, in 1909, presented the gold cup to Louis Blériot for making the first successful flight across the English Channel.) Péquet arrived in India with a pair of mechanics and a crated airplane; the three represented the Humber Motor Company of England. “Humber…had earlier manufactured single-winged airplanes based on a Blériot design [but] now produced what they called a Roger Sommer craft,” notes the National Postal Museum’s Web site. “The Sommer biplane, a modified Farman biplane…had a 50 horsepower, seven cylinder, Gnome rotary engine.”

Courtesy of the National Postal Museum.

Jain writes that “the [Sommer-type] biplanes performed well at Allahabad, but the [Humber Blériot] monoplane, with lower engine output, did not seem to operate well in the heavy warm air.”

Péquet described his “instruments” to Edmond Petit of French Air Forces [date unknown]: “You would not believe it but our planes at this time were a sight. Before us was just space. I had a watch on my wrist and an altimeter on my left knee.” When asked if he had any special recollections of the flight, Péquet replied, “No, only the buffaloes. Before landing I flew over the Ganga and I was not quite sure that I would make it. [It was] about 3 or 400 metres [wide]. But it was not the unexpected bath but the crocodiles that I feared.”

Péquet went on to become a test pilot; by 1934 he was the chief pilot of the Aero Club of Vichy. He died at age 86, in 1974.

India Post staged a reenactment of Péquet’s flight on February 12, 2011—using a Chetak helicopter, of all things—and has issued a set of stamps commemorating the historic flight.