Aero Spacelines, Inc. was an American aircraft manufacturer from 1960 to 1968 that converted

Boeing 377 Stratocruiser The Boeing 377 Stratocruiser was a large long-range airliner developed from the C-97 Stratofreighter military transport, itself a derivative of the B-29 Superfortress. The Stratocruiser's first flight was on July 8, 1947. Its design was advanced ...

s into the famous

Guppy The guppy (), also known as millionfish and rainbow fish, is one of the world's most widely distributed tropical fish and one of the most popular freshwater aquarium fish species. It is a member of the family Poeciliidae and, like almost all ...

line of airplanes, re-engineered to transport oversized cargo such as space exploration vehicles.

History

Aero Spacelines was formed with only one customer in mind: the

National Aeronautics and Space Administration The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding th ...

. NASA needed to transport

outsize cargo Outsize cargo is a designation given to goods of unusually large size. This term is often applied to cargo which cannot fit on standardized transport devices such as skids (pallets) or containers. This includes military and other vehicles. In ex ...

from manufacturing plants such as the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Louisiana, to

Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) is an installation of the United States Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45, located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida. Headquartered at the nearby Patrick Space Force Base, the statio ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

. These items were too large to be safely transported by rail or truck. Shipping by sea was time-consuming, expensive, and risky, with the danger of damaging the cargo on turbulent seas. But no aircraft of the day was large enough. John M. "Jack" Conroy, a retired

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

pilot, and Lee Mansdorf, an aircraft salesman and entrepreneur, formulated the Guppy concept one evening over dinner. They decided to create a company to manufacture outsized aircraft. Conroy hired Robert W. Lillibridge as vice president of manufacturing and engineering, and a team was assembled for the project. Financing was provided by venture capitalist William Ballon, a

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

combat veteran also from the

Army Air Corps Army Air Corps may refer to the following army aviation corps: * Army Air Corps (United Kingdom), the army aviation element of the British Army * Philippine Army Air Corps (1935–1941) * United States Army Air Corps (1926–1942), or its p ...

. In 1960, Aero Spacelines began working at

Van Nuys Airport : ''For the United States Air Force use of the airport (1942–1990), see Van Nuys Air National Guard Base'' Van Nuys Airport is a public airport in the Van Nuys neighborhood of the City of Los Angeles. The airport is operated by Los Angeles Wo ...

, California, to transform a

Boeing 377 The Boeing 377 Stratocruiser was a large long-range airliner developed from the C-97 Stratofreighter military transport, itself a derivative of the B-29 Superfortress. The Stratocruiser's first flight was on July 8, 1947. Its design was advanced ...

airliner into the

Pregnant Guppy The Aero Spacelines Pregnant Guppy was a large, wide-bodied cargo aircraft built in the United States and used for ferrying outsized cargo items, most notably components of NASA's Apollo program. The Pregnant Guppy was the first of the Guppy l ...

. NASA's

Project Gemini Project Gemini () was NASA's second human spaceflight program. Conducted between projects Mercury and Apollo, Gemini started in 1961 and concluded in 1966. The Gemini spacecraft carried a two-astronaut crew. Ten Gemini crews and 16 individual ...

made early use of the Pregnant Guppy to transport the first and second stages of Titan II GVL from the Martin Co. in Baltimore, Maryland, to Cape Canaveral, Florida. Subsequent versions of the Guppy series hauled the

S-IVB The S-IVB (pronounced "S-four-B") was the third stage on the Saturn V and second stage on the Saturn IB launch vehicles. Built by the Douglas Aircraft Company, it had one J-2 (rocket engine), J-2 rocket engine. For lunar missions it was fired twi ...

, the third stage of the Saturn booster from California to Florida. In 1967, Aero Spacelines encountered financial difficulties and was acquired by Unexcelled Inc. That corporation was sold to Tracor Aviation. Conroy organized a new company,

Conroy Aircraft Conroy Aircraft was an American aircraft manufacturer founded by John M. Conroy in Goleta, California, in 1968 after he resigned as president of Aero Spacelines. The company imitated Aero Spacelines' success with its Guppy aircraft by converting ...

, which built more airplanes for transporting oversized cargo. By November 1968, NASA had paid Aero Spacelines $11,591,633 in contracts. Conroy ceased operations in 1972. As of March 2021, one Super Guppy was still in operation. NASA uses it to transport vehicles, and leases it to third parties when not in use. In early 2016, NASA used that aircraft to transport the main structure of Orion crew capsule, from its Michoud Manufacturing Facility in New Orleans, Louisiana, to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the capsule underwent its first uncrewed test flight aboard the

Space Launch System The Space Launch System (SLS) is an American super heavy-lift expendable launch vehicle developed by NASA. As of 2022, SLS has the highest payload capacity of any rocket in operational service, as well as the greatest liftoff thrust of any r ...

rocket. In November 2019, NASA used the aircraft to transport the Orion capsule from the Kennedy Space Center to the Mansfield Lahm Airport in Ohio for thermal and vacuum tests.NASA.gov
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List of aircraft

Aero Spacelines produced three Guppy aircraft models. *

(1962) - 1 built * Super Guppy (1965) - 5 built * Mini Guppy (1967) - 2 built

References

External links

'' Pregnant Guppy : THE PLANE THAT WON THE SPACE RACE''
Bloom, Margy. May / June 2010, PILOTMAG Magazine
''It's a Plane: One man's obsession, it helped get us to the moon''
Tripp, Robert S. Spring 2002, American Heritage of Invention and Technology
Site about The Guppy Family of Aircraft
{{Aero Spacelines aircraft Defunct aircraft manufacturers of the United States

History

List of aircraft

See also

References

External links