AirSpaceMag.com

I learn something new about the astronaut business on every mission. During their spacewalk last week, space station residents Mike Fossum and Ron Garan did some whistling while they were inside the Quest airlock in their spacesuits, waiting for the pressure to drop before heading outside. I’ve queued this video up to the whistling sequence, which ends at about the 5:40 mark. You’re looking at the outside of the airlock.

During a news conference with the Atlantis astronauts, Fossum explained what he and Garan were doing:

Today I read, with some head-scratching, about Burt Rutan’s latest creation, a “roadable aircraft” called Bipod. Flying cars have been built, flown, driven, and failed to sell since dinosaurs roamed the earth, yet here was the monumentally gifted designer and his company, Scaled Composites, introducing a particularly homely vehicle (twin fuselages simply make it twice as ugly).

Photo: Scaled Composites

But further reading revealed that the whole Bipod exercise is more of a shop-class project than an attempt to produce the ultimate roadable aircraft. According to AvWeb, “The four-month project was valued as a last chance for young engineers at the company to work with the legendary designer before his departure” (Rutan recently retired), and “Scaled is reportedly not interested in completing the prototype.”

Well, okay, then.

Escalating baggage fees. No more in-flight meals. Delayed flights. Loud cell-phone talkers. And let’s not forget the drunks.

It may be that intoxicated passengers are the most dangerous of all. AvWeb recently reported that drunk passengers caused the crash of a Cessna 185 in 2010. (“The [Transportation Safety Board] postulates that a rear-seat passenger pushed the pilot’s seat forward with his or her feet and held him and the control column pinned to the panel until the Atelo Air Services aircraft dove at a 45-degree angle into the ocean.” See the full report here.)

The flight crew gets tough: Practicing how to disable drunks. Photograph courtesy Hong Kong Airlines.

Oh, sure, there are other kinds of “air rage”—remember the guy who punched a 15-year-old teenager for not turning off his cell phone? Or the passenger who started flinging foot powder because his flight was delayed?

It wasn’t until 1949 that domestic airlines began serving alcohol, writes Daniel Rust, assistant director of the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who has done some research into the matter. “In the United States a Commerce Department rule against the transportation of intoxicating liquor or drunk passengers aboard commercial airplanes—a product of the Prohibition era—coupled with the fear that critics would decry the mixing of flying and alcohol, prompted U.S. airlines to steer clear of alcohol,” he writes in Flying Across America: The Airline Passenger Experience. (Rust includes this bizarre story: In 1938, Olympic swimmer Eleanor Holm smuggled alcohol aboard an American Airlines flight. Arriving in Tucson completely drunk, Holm emerged from the airplane stark naked. The flight crew “tied her to a tree so she would not wander off before coming out of her drunken stupor.”)

In the mid-1950s, American and TWA began serving alcoholic beverages to passengers. United was next to add cocktails on its men-only Executive flights, and Western Airlines added “champagne flights” in 1954. But by 1955, the Airline Stewardess Association began to petition for an end to in-flight liquor service, citing unruly passengers as the reason. In the fall of 1955, the Air Transport Association recommended that airlines not allow intoxicated passengers to board flights, and to not serve alcohol on flights under two hours in length. (The airlines refused.)

In 1956, says Rust, “a House committee set forth a bill requiring prohibition of all in-flight alcohol service on domestic flights. Under pressure, six U.S. airlines voluntarily agreed….to [limit] individual passengers to two 1.6-ounce containers of hard liquor per trip. The airlines noted, however, that they would not restrict beer and wine service.” Even after Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn was attacked by a drunken passenger on a domestic flight, a bill restricting alcohol service died in the Senate.

In 1960, the Federal Aviation Agency, giving in to pressure from pilots and flight crews, ruled that passengers could not bring their own alcohol on board flights, and could only drink the alcohol being served by the flight crew. The agency also stated that airlines could not serve alcohol to any passenger who appeared to be intoxicated.

Not that this would have helped the Cessna 185, mentioned above, as the passengers were already drunk. “The passengers were intoxicated,” the report notes, “however they were able to walk and were sufficiently coherent to argue about the price of the charter.”

"Task Force Hornets" by Lawrence Beal-Smith, 1943. Painting courtesy Naval History & Heritage Command.

“The Battle of Midway was probably the most important battle in the Pacific war during World War II,” says Russell Lee, a curator in the aeronautics division at the National Air and Space Museum. “On that day, American carrier forces defeated the Japanese, and stopped permanently their westward expansion.” Prior to the battle, Japan possessed naval superiority over the United States; after Midway, the two powers were essentially equal.

Lee recently gave a lecture on the subject as part of the Museum’s Ask an Expert series. “Unbeknownst to the Japanese, late in March 1942, U.S. code breakers had broken the Imperial Navy code, and were able to translate between 10 and 20 percent of that code. So American forces knew that the Japanese were headed for Midway, although they didn’t know exactly when they were going to arrive. That allowed [Fleet Admiral] Nimitz to position three aircraft carriers—Yorktown, Enterprise, and Hornet—a couple of hundred miles northwest of Midway.”

The USS Yorktown hit by Japanese bombers, June 4, 1942. Photograph courtesy Naval History & Heritage Command.

Japan sent four aircraft carriers to Midway (two others had been damaged in the Battle of Coral Sea). “A great deal of luck was involved in the American victory,” Lee continued. “Forces were still getting trained, and becoming familiar with the equipment they were using. Throughout the whole morning, they launched one strike after another, using various types of airplanes. This included Air Force B-17s—they made no hits. Also launched from Midway were Army Air Force B-26 Marauders. Three were shot down, one managed to limp back—no hits. Torpedo bombers took off from Midway. They, too, scored no hits. What all these air attacks did, however, was bring the Japanese carrier combat air patrol—airplanes assigned to defend the carriers—down to low level, and into one end of the battle area. So when the American carrier-based dive-bombers showed up, they could dive down unopposed and the Japanese were completely surprised.”

The SBD Dauntless changed the course of the battle. “In the space of five minutes, with these Dauntlesses diving down on them, three of the Japanese carriers were hit. The fourth managed to escape, but later in the day the Americans sank [it],” said Lee. “The Dauntless could go as low as 500 feet, and then the pilot could do a high-G pullout and escape. It was almost like having a cruise missile.”

The Dauntless on display at the Museum was the sixth SBD-6 model produced. The Museum’s database notes that the aircraft spent its career at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, in Maryland. From August to September 1944 it was used in tactical tests, and in flight tests from October 1944 to April 1948. It was then put into storage and earmarked for the Smithsonian. It may be the last SBD to serve with the U.S. Navy.

The Douglas SBD-6 Dauntless on display in the Sea-Air Operations Gallery, National Air and Space Museum. Photograph courtesy NASM.

“How does it feel to be part of history?” some reporter asked the STS-135 astronauts during an onboard press conference this afternoon.

Weightless plumbing: Garan studies the manual.

Well, some days probably feel more historic than others. Yesterday, for example, space station astronaut Ron Garan was on a spacewalk (above), wrestling a refrigerator-size piece of hardware into the shuttle cargo bay while orbiting Earth at 17,500 miles per hour.

Today he’s trying to fix the space station’s toilet. All part of the same job.