The Super Guppy

A couple of weekends ago several aircraft were on display at Hobby airport, including NASA's famous Super Guppy. Kirby and I went to check it out.

The Super Guppy is, needless to say, a rather unique-looking aircraft. It is used to transport outsized cargo for the space program. The interior cargo space is 25 feet in diameter at its widest and 111 feet in length. The aircraft's nose is hinged and opens to allow easy loading and unloading of cargo.

Four Super Guppies of this particular type were built and were used by NASA, the European Space Agency, and Airbus. This particular Super Guppy, which was actually built in Europe, is the only one still in use today. It is stationed at Ellington Field, so it didn't have to travel very far to be put on display at Hobby.

Admittedly, I was probably more impressed by it than Kirby. Still, it was nice to finally see this aircraft up close.