Most pilots prep for flight by going over some paperwork, checking some numbers, maybe packing a few granola bars if there's no meal service. Stu Broce climbs into a spacesuit, spends an hour breathing pure oxygen to ward off decompression sickness, and thinks about the flavored goop he'll suck through a straw as he gazes at the curvature of the Earth from 70,000 feet up.
That's because Broce flies an ER-2, a modified version of the famed U-2. And while Lockheed Martin designed the long-winged, high-flying aircraft for Cold War spy missions, Broce flies for NASA---and for science.
The traits that make the U-2 great for military reconnaissance apply to scientific research, too. That's why NASA operates two special versions of the single-engine jet out of its Armstrong Flight Research Center in Southern California. The ER-2 has four pressurized compartments, with electrical supplies, which scientists can equip with instruments to measure what’s happening on Earth, in the oceans and atmosphere, and in space.
Unlike a satellite, the plane can be deployed and moved over targets quickly, giving it a major advantage over purely space-based observations. Measurements made by an ER-2 flying out of Chile in 1987 helped confirm that chlorofluorocarbons were causing a hole in the ozone layer. More recently, they’ve flown over developing hurricanes, helping forecasters calculate their paths. Flying in the stratosphere, above 99 percent of the atmosphere, the ER-2 can also be used to test instruments that will eventually end up on satellites---and bring them back to the earthbound engineers for the necessary adjustments.
So join us as we follow Broce from suit-up to takeoff, and find out what he thinks about that goop he's eating.
