<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>The third stages were transported by a bloated aircraft called the super guppy<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Minor nitpick because I have a thing for these weird-looking airplanes....<br /><br />The one that transported the S-IVBs was affectionately called the Pregnant Guppy. (It also appears slightly out of period and operated by the wrong people in the Dr Who novel "First Frontier", an otherwise enjoyable book about what *really* happened at Roswell, supposedly.) The Super Guppies are a little bit bigger and more capable, built to meet demand for oversized cargo shipping following the high-profile success of the Pregnant Guppy. They are all operated by Aero Space Lines, which developed the aircraft. It has a connection of sorts to the Airbus Beluga as well.<br /><br />Somewhere on the web I saw a video of an S-IVB being stuffed into the original Pregnant Guppy. It's quite impressive. You seriously wonder how that thing gets off the ground; it almost looks like a cartoon airplane, with its huge fuselage and tiny little wings. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em> -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>