Interational Space Station Rendezvous | The JetAv Blog by Jack Schweibold | Premier Jet Aviation
Last week a trio of astronauts traveling onboard a Russian-made Soyuz capsule reached the International Space Station, two days after launching from the Baikonur cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan. As aviators we tend to focus our interest on the Soyuz capsule, space station or the crewmen: NASA astronaut Suni Williams, veteran Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Aki Hoshide of Japan. Today my interest reflects on the cosmodrome or our own space centers … Cape Canaveral on the east coast and Vandenberg on the west coast. These vast complexes didn’t just spring up as an extension of a pony express office; they came after detailed planning, BLOOD, sweat and tears.
Some fifty years ago I was assigned to help cleanout rattlers and un-detonated artillery shells on a site 80 miles north of our base in California, at what would become Vandenberg AFB. Our job with two pilots, a crew chief and an old H-19 Sikorsky helicopter, would be to burn off several thousand acres of California coastland mountain brush, trees, snakes and shells. This area had been an offshore practice gunnery range for our Navy ships during WW-II. Now, they were losing construction crews to a multitude of venomous snakes and shell explosions as earthmovers leveled the region.
It looked like a David and Goliath task . . . and we weren’t David or even Goliath, we were the slingshot! Our first pebble would be a phosphorous hand grenade, thrown from our chopper by an explosives expert. WHOA! What happens, if the guy fumbles a pass out the door . . . our ship is made of magnesium . . . same stuff as a 4th of July sparkler. We would burn even underwater! Having a safe flight and long life demands sensible risk management. As captain of the ship, I hung the “expert” on the rescue hoist 50 feet below the ship, cutting potential loss through a fumble by at least 75%! The ordnance man thought it was great sport. They have a crazy, crazy job.
What a joke! Lobbing these babies into this miniature rain forest was like throwing a match in the ocean . . . nothing happened. We failed, even with bigger shells strapped to cans of gasoline. Military’s answer? Call in the Marines! The project commander climbed aboard and we became the airborne command center, vectoring Marine fighters to drop napalm bombs on the mountain and valley foliage. Again, little was accomplished . . . except to singe a 50’ x 200’ swath through saturated foliage. This should have been a foreteller of our inability to conquer the Vietnamese jungle by air. The Air Force and Marines surrendered. The Seabees assumed the fight, hand-to-snake and hand-to-shell combat with bulldozer and shovel, a credit to their skill and tenacity.
A year later, we saw the inter-continental missile silos that rose (actually submerged) at this facility when we flew President Eisenhower and Vice-President Nixon to view the first operational Atlas. This IBM (Inter-continental Ballistic Missile) would propel our early astronauts into space, Not much credit is given to launch and landing sites, but I’ll bet Eisenhower appreciated the 160,000 men who paved the Normandy landing sites with their blood, sweat and tears … so today, we can have an “International” Space Station.