Meet NASA’s giant ‘Guppy’ cargo carrier which is big enough to fit an entire spaceship in its ‘teardrop-shaped’ cargo hold and looks like a Guppy fish.
The primary function of Guppy is to transport spaceship parts around the world, including parts of International Space Station (ISS).
This cargo carrier is 25 feet in width and 111 feet in length and it can carry a maximum payload of 26 tons. Meanwhile military grade cargo carriers like Hercules C-130 can hold only 22.6 tons of weight.
The super Guppy loading mechanism also unique and it takes almost three hours to load the cargo. The nose of the plane is hinged and sits atop wheels that can open the cargo hold to up to 200 degrees.
Image courtesy: Business Insider
Though the super Guppy is European made, it ancestor -pregnant Guppy was US made.
Image courtesy: http://www.allaboutguppys.com/
“The Pregnant Guppy had humble beginning on the proverbial cocktail napkin,” writes a website dedicated to the history of the Guppy family of aircraft.
The ‘Pregnant Guppy’ which was made from Boeing parts, first flew in 1962. Reportedly it carried the components of Apollo space missions. Pregnant Guppy was dismantled in 1979.
