SA Flyer — Edition 263 — September 2017

78 SA Flyer Magazine

will move and settle on Mars, and people
will go there and will spend the rest of their
lives there. ... I think that is our destiny.”
When summing up what space travel
taught him, Lovell memorably said, “We
hope to go to heaven when we die. Ladies
and gentlemen, you go to heaven when
you’re born. You arrive on a planet with
the positive mass that provides the gravity
that contains the water and an atmosphere
and the essentials of life. ... God has given
mankind a stage that we saw out there for
us to perform on. How that play turns out is
up to us.”
There was even a genuine Blue Origin
Rocket on display throughout the week.
This particular rocket has already made
three trips into orbit. Blue Origin is an
American privately funded aerospace
manufacturer and spaceflight services
company set up by Amazon.com founder
Jeff Bezos.

OTHER DISPLAYS
AirVenture brought many other great
events and days. We celebrated the 80th
anniversary of the Piper Cub, the 40th
anniversary of the Christen Eagle, the
launch of the new Vans RV-12 Skyview,
and 25 years of the Young Eagles, in which
Marvel Comics Founder, Stan Lee, flew in
personally to attend.
One of the most intriguing designs I
saw there was the QueSST programme.
Lockheed Martin are working alongside
NASA to produce the next generation of
commercial supersonic travel. The aircraft
will generate a sonic boom that will, for
all intents and purposes, be unheard,
making supersonic commercial travel
possible again. The QueSST X-Plane

accomplishes this by tailoring the volume

and lift distribution to separate the shock

waves associated with supersonic flight.

The resulting supersonic ‘heartbeat’ is

dramatically quieter than the disruptive

N-Wave boom generated by today’s

supersonic aircraft. According to NASA, a

smaller prototype should be ready to fly at

Oshkosh by 2019.

Notable too were tributes to Bob

Hoover, Charles Lindbergh and Ryan

aircraft, the 80th anniversary of the Wittman

Buttercup, and the 50th anniversary of

Rotorway.

Daily arrivals were always a surprise,

Airbus’s A400M, an F-16, an F-15, A-10s,

UPS’s Boeing 767, a KC-135, F-22 Raptors

• the list just goes on. I’ve always said that
  AirVenture is an overload of aviation.
  One sad mishap this year was an
  accident at the Seaplane Base involving
  a six-seater Lake Renegade with three on
  board. Sadly, one of the passengers passed
  away.
  Other than that, the event went
  off extremely well. AirVenture is well
  organised, very professional and a must
  for anyone that has even the slightest bit of
  Avgas or Jet A1 in their blood.

Airshows

The Patriot Parachute Demo Team

kicked off the show everyday with

this spectacular stunt.

Heritage Flight consisting

of an F35A, an A10 Warthog

and two P51Ds.

MiG 17 takeoff with full afterburner.