Maiden Flight of the Mated Birds

Inevitably, the strange sight of the two ungainly aircraft, one on top of the other, inspired a steady stream of barnyard jokes. In the Los Angeles Times, Cartoonist Paul Conrad sketched the intertwined pair perched on a runway and captioned his drawing: "Not tonight, Dear, I have a headache ..."

Yet the odd couple last week marked another milestone in the space age. For the first time, a vehicle designed to orbit the earth, land and fly again was flight-tested--but not alone. As 10,000 people watched, the U.S. space-shuttle orbiter Enterprise soared off a runway at Edwards Air Force Base in California, while locked tenaciously atop a huge and expensively modified Boeing 747 jumbo jet. The combined load of 293 tons (72 of them in the 122-ft.-long Enterprise] not only rose smoothly ("No tail shake at all," reported 747 Pilot Fitzhugh Fulton Jr.) but maneuvered as gracefully as two such ponderous mating birds could. The vital 2-hr. 5-min. test was declared a complete success. -

The coupled craft lifted to 16,000 ft., banked both left and right at 300 m.p.h. to test the ability of the 747 to carry its historic passenger in a stable fashion. At 10,000 ft., Pilot Fulton ran through other tests, including shutting off one engine and lowering the landing gear. Fulton's only unusual sensation was "a slight buffeting" caused by the bird perched on his plane's back. The touch down looked every bit as smooth as a commercial 747 landing at New York's J.F.K. Airport.

The next crucial phase comes in July, when the Enterprise, while aloft, will fire charges to release itself from the three pylons that hold it to the 747. The orbiter will then glide to earth to test a landing on its own. If all goes well, the Enterprise will be rocketed into space from Kennedy Space Center in 1979 (TIME, Feb. 14). It will land at Edwards, then be shuttled back to Florida atop the 747 for more launchings. Eventually the Enterprise and its successive sister ships should be able to wing their own way back to runways near their launching pads.

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