Super Guppy delivers Shuttle Trainer to Boeing Field for Shuttle Fest

NASA Super Guppy taxiing to Museum of Flight with Shuttle Trainer aboard
Photo by Steven H. Robinson

By Steven H. Robinson

ShuttleFest was sponsored by Boeing and BECU at the Museum of Flight Saturday, June 30, 2012.

The flight arrived about an hour late.  The shuttle was flown from Travis Air Force Base in California on the NASA Super Guppy, the only plane of its type still flying.  The Super Guppy was built in 1962 using a Boeing StratoCruiser air frame.

NASA Super Guppy opening to reveal the Shuttle Trainer
Photo by Steven H. Robinson

The Shuttle Trainer Crew Compartment is 28.75 feet long, 19 feet wide and 23.5 feet high.  The Trainer crew compartment was removed from the Super Guppy using a Joint Base Lewis McChord "Tunner 60K Loader" and delivered to the Museum of Flight's Charles Simonyi Space Gallery just west of the main museum.

The Shuttle Trainer is being delivered in several stages over the coming months, with the Payload Bay also arriving aboard the Super Guppy in two stages later this summer.

NASA Shuttle Trainer moving onto Tunner for removal from Super Guppy

Built in the 1970s, the Shuttle Trainer is the only one of its kind in the world and is the simulator in which each of the 335 space shuttle astronauts trained.  It will be on display in the 15,500-square foot Charles Simonyi Space Gallery, where it joins a collection of other rare space artifiacts including Simonyi's Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft and interactive exhibits showcasing space travel from the earliests days of the space shuttle program to the future of commercial space flight.