Chegando em Fortaleza com o capitão Noonan. (Fortaleza Nobre)
4 June 1937: On Leg 8 of their around-the-world flight, Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, fly the Lockheed Electra 10E, NR16020, from Paramaribo, Nederlands Guiana (today, Suriname), to Fortaleza, Brazil, a distance of 1,330 miles (2,141 kilometers). They stay there to rest for a day.
“The weather at Paramaribo was perfect except for a morning mist from the Surinam River, when we took off to skim the tree-tops and then pull up. Speaking of trees, we had plenty of them on this jump to Fortaleza in Brazil – trees and water. During the day we flew over 960 miles of jungle, added to hops of 370 miles by compass course over open sea, a total of 1,330 miles, or a trifle more than half the transcontinental distance between New York and Los Angeles. . . After about ten hours’ flying I was glad to see Fortaleza sitting just where it should be, according to the maps, between the mountains and the sea, on a brown, sandy plain, in the arc of a crescent-shaped indentation just west of Cape Mucuripe. . . Fortaleza is a town of 100,000 people, a potent metropolis whose name few of us in North America have even heard. In my own ignorance I had thought of Natal as a more important place. That, of course, because Natal figures so largely in aviation matters. Fortaleza’s airport was so fine we decided to make final preparations for the South Atlantic hop there rather than at Natal, the actual jumping-off place for that much-flown stretch. . . .”
—Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed L-10E Electra NR16020 at Fortaleza, Brazil. (Fortaleza Nobre)Great Circle route from Paramaribo, Suriname, to Fortaleza, Brazil, 1,142 nautical miles (1,314 statute miles/2,114 kilometers). (Great Circle Mapper)
3 June 1973: While maneuvering at low altitude at the Paris Air Show, the first production Tupolev Tu-144S, CCCP-77102, Aeroflot’s new Mach 2+ supersonic airliner, broke apart in midair and crashed into a residential area. All six crew members and eight people on the ground died. Another 25 were injured.
The Tu-144 was built by Tupolev OKB at the Voronezh Aviation Plant (VASO), Pridacha Airport, Voronezh. It was a large delta-winged aircraft with a “droop” nose for improved low speed cockpit visibility and retractable canards mounted high on the fuselage behind the cockpit. It was flown by a crew of 3 and was designed to carry up to 140 passengers.
77106 is 65.50 meters (215 feet, 6.6 inches) long, with a wingspan of 28.00 meters (91 feet, 10.4 inches). The tip of the vertical fin was 11.45 meters (37 feet, 6.8 inches) high. The 144S has a total wing are of 503 square meters (5,414 square feet). Its empty weight is 91,800 kilograms (202,384 pounds) and the maximum takeoff weight is 195,000 kilograms (429,901 pounds). (A number of Tu-144S airliners had extended wing tips, increasing the span to 28.80 meters (94 feet, 5.9 inches) and the wing area to 507 square meters (5,457 square feet).
The Tu-144S was powered by four Kuznetsov NK-144A engines. The NK-144 is a two-spool axial-flow turbofan engine with afterburner. It uses a 2-stage fan section, 14 stage compressor section (11 high- and 3 low-pressure stages), and a 3-stage turbine (1 high- and 2 low-pressure stages). It is rated at 147.0 kilonewtons (33,047 pounds of thrust) for supersonic cruise, and 178.0 kilonewtons (40,016 pounds of thrust) with afterburner for takeoff. The NK-144A is 5.200 meters (17 feet, 0.7 inches) long, 1.500 meters (4 feet, 11.1 inches) in diameter and weighs 2,827 kilograms (6,233 pounds).
The 144S has a cruise speed of Mach 2.07 (2,200 kilometers per hour/1,367 miles per hour) with a maximum speed of Mach 2.35 (2,500 kilometers per hour/1,553 miles per hour). The service ceiling is approximately 20,000 meters (65,617 feet). Its practical range is 3,080 kilometers (1,914 miles).
In actual commercial service, the Tu-144 was extremely unreliable. It was withdrawn from service after a total of just 102 commercial flights, including 55 passenger flights.
The cause of the accident is not known, other than the obvious structural failure, but there is speculation that the Tu-144 was trying to avoid another airplane.
Gemini IX-A launch from LC-19, 13:39:30 UTC, 3 June 1966. (NASA)
3 June 1966: NASA Astronauts Thomas P. Stafford and Eugene A. Cernan launched from Launch Complex 19, Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 13:39:33 UTC, aboard Gemini IX-A. The Gemini was a two-man space capsule built by McDonnell Aircraft Corporation of St. Louis. The launch vehicle was a Titan II GLV rocket. Stafford and Cernan were the original Gemini IX back up crew, but the primary crew, Charles Bassett and Elliott See, were killed in an aircraft accident three months earlier.
Thomas P. Stafford and Eugene A. Cernan. (NASA)
The three-day mission was to rendezvous and dock with an Agena Target Docking Adapter in low Earth orbit, and for Gene Cernan to perform several space walks and to test a back pack maneuvering unit.
Gemini IX-A successfully rendezvoused with the ATDA at 17:45 UTC, 3 June. However, the protective shroud had not separated from the Agena and docking with it was not possible.
Gemini 4 lifts of at Launch Complex 19, 15:15:59 UTC, 3 June 1965. (NASA)
3 June 1965, 15:15:59.562 UTC: Gemini 4/Titan II GLV ¹ lifted off from Launch Complex 19 at the Cape Kennedy Air Force Station, Cape Kennedy, Florida. On board were Major James Alton McDivitt, United States Air Force, command pilot; and Major Edward Higgins White II, U.S.A.F., pilot.
The mission was planned to include an orbital rendezvous with the Titan II booster, and an Extravehicular Activity (“EVA”). For a number of reasons, the rendezvous attempt was not successful.
James Alton McDivitt (left), and Edward Higgins White II, photographed 7 May 1965. (NASA)
Unusually, the flight crew were not allowed to name their spacecraft, and there was no mission patch worn on their pressure suits.
The Gemini IV spacecraft separated from the Titan II GLV launch vehicle 6 minutes, 5.6 seconds after liftoff at an altitude of 532,349 feet (162,260 meters) traveling 25,743 feet (7,846.5 meters) per second. It entered a 152.2 × 87.6 nautical mile (281.9 × 162.2 kilometers) orbit with a period of 1 hour, 28 minutes, 54 seconds.
Gemini 4 returned to Earth on 7 June, “splashing down” in the North Atlantic Ocean at 17:12:11 UTC. The mission duration was 4 days, 1 hour, 56 minutes, 12 seconds. The recovery ship was the United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Wasp (CVS-18).
The Gemini 4 spacecraft is on display at the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum.
Gemini Spacecraft.
The two-man Gemini spacecraft was built by the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation of St. Louis, the same company that built the earlier Mercury space capsule. The spacecraft consisted of a reentry module and an adapter section. It had an overall length of 19 feet (5.791 meters) and a diameter of 10 feet (3.048 meters) at the base of the adapter section. The reentry module was 11 feet (3.353 meters) long with a diameter of 7.5 feet (2.347 meters). The weight of the Gemini varied from ship to ship but was approximately 7,000 pounds (3,175 kilograms). At launch, Gemini IV weighed 7,879.05 pounds (3,573.88 kilograms).
NASA Mission Report, Figure 3-1, at Page 3–23
The Titan II GLV was a “man-rated” variant of the Martin Marietta SM-68B intercontinental ballistic missile. It was assembled at Martin’s Middle River, Maryland, plant so as not to interfere with the production of the ICBM at Denver, Colorado. Twelve GLVs were ordered by the Air Force for the Gemini Program.
The Titan II GLV was a two-stage, liquid-fueled rocket. The first stage was 63 feet (19.202 meters) long with a diameter of 10 feet (3.048 meters). The second stage was 27 feet (8.230 meters) long, with the same diameter.
The 1st stage was powered by an Aerojet Engineering Corporation LR-87-7 engine which combined two combustion chambers and exhaust nozzles with a single turbopump unit. The engine was fueled by a hypergolic combination of hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide. Ignition occurred spontaneously as the two components were combined in the combustion chambers. The LR-87-7 produced 430,000 pounds of thrust.² It was not throttled and could not be shut down and restarted. The 2nd stage used an Aerojet LR-91 engine which produced 100,000 pounds of thrust.³
The Gemini/Titan II GLV combination had a total height of 109 feet (33.223 meters) and weighed approximately 340,000 pounds (154,220 kilograms) when fueled.
¹ When identifying spaceflight missions, NASA was inconsistent in using Roman numerals (Gemini IV) or Arabic (Gemini 4), even switching from one to the other in consecutive paragraphs in official reports.
² The Gemini IV first stage engine produced a flight average of 467,870 pounds of thrust (2,081.19 kilonewtons).
³ The Gemini IV second stage engine produced a flight average of 103,103 pounds of thrust (458.63 kilonewtons).
