NASA's SOFIA observatory:
SOFIA is a heavily-modified 747SP. As airliners go, the 747SPs were pretty rare. I don't believe I've ever seen one.
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We had a sports delegation from the kingdom of Bahrain visiting us here in Pensacola for a week. Their "Air Force One" equivalent is a 747SP... which they left parked smack-dab in the middle of our terminal apron the entire time. It blocked the primary taxiway in and out of the terminal, and we couldn't taxi between it and the terminal.
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing is that it was right outside the range of the terminal lights. At night, even though it was painted white, you couldn't see the thing, except when the airport beacon would flash across it. It was like a stealth 747.
Spots around the door are to make any distortion noticeable, maybe? Noticeable upward curve of the wing in one shot.
ReplyDeleteWhen I looked it up I found that Fry has one he uses for the San Jose Ballet.
The core problem with the 747SP is that the frontal area is that of a 747, meaning that fuel consumption is correspondingly higher than that of single-deck long range competitors with less frontal area. When fuel became expensive airlines looked at that, looked at the new fuel-efficient long range airliners that various venders were promising, and decided to wait for the new airliners instead. The only people who still fly these as airliners are in the Middle East where fuel is cheap.
ReplyDeleteThe DC-10 variant of that bird is sitting at LAX, and available for contract... :-)
ReplyDeleteIt used to be at Ames, so we got to see it on a regular basis!
I always liked the look of the SP. In Joe Sutter's memoir, he explains that they built it to get really long range (think NY-Tokyo). At the time the truncated 747 was the only way to get that. PanAm was the launch customer; they built 45 of 'em.
ReplyDeleteJoe had a bet with the PanAm rep; if the airplane came in overweight, he'd pay out $0.10/lb...if it was below target weight,the payoff went to Joe. The PanAm guy wound up Joe Sutter a sack of 6,500 dimes.
The book is "747: Creating the World's First Jumbo Jet..." Recommended.
FVH