Another BIG Airplane

Another cargo plane we got to learn about is the C-17 Globemaster.  It is even bigger than the Hercules!!  The C-17 is one of the very best cargo planes in the entire world because it can do almost anything!  This airplane flies lots and lots of people and big, heavy equipment from Christchurch to McMurdo to be distributed all across Antarctica.  We will see lots of C-17's in McMurdo, too!

This is one of the fire trucks we saw at the airport.  It was very futuristic looking!  I didn't get a picture of it before it drove away, but the seats inside look a lot like pilot's seats!

This is the C-17!  It's the big, grey airplane I told you about.  It can carry lots and lots of things!  It can carry several big trucks side-by-side.  It can even carry helicopters inside!  Can you imagine an airplane flying with a helicopter inside of it?  It is so strong, it can even carry 27 elephants if they wanted to!

We got there right after it had landed and they started unloading some of its cargo.  The orange generators are being unloaded onto a big machine called a K-Loader.  The K-Loader is a kind of special machine that has a flat bed with rollers on it.  Pallets can be pushed out of the airplane straight onto the K-Loader.  Then the K-Loader can drive around to wherever they need to put the pallets down at!  It helps make things go very fast!

This is the inside of the C-17!  See how big it is?  The back of the airplane has a giant door that can open up so things can be loaded and unloaded.  On the floor are lots and lots of rollers that help things slid in and out.  If they don't need the rollers for boxes, and they want to loads cars and trucks, they just walk through the airplane really fast and flip the rollers over.  Then the floor of the airplane is nice and smooth for tires to drive on!  Members of the New Zealand Air Force are helping the crew members of this airplane to unload.

 These pallets are holding "fruit roll ups"! They are big, thick rolls of heavy plastic. These will go down to Antarctica and become sleds! Machinists will unroll them and attach heavy metal frames to the front, just like an old fashioned tobaggan! Then they will put lots of fuel drums and equipment on on top of them and hitch them on to the back of lots of Hagglunds. Then drivers will take the sled trains over 800 miles from McMurdo, over the glaciers and moutains, all the way down to the South Pole! The mountains and glaciers have very deep holes and cracks in them called crevasses, so the drivers have to be extra, extra careful and drive very slow so they don't fall down inside one of them! It is also very, very cold and windy on the drive so it takes them a long time to get there! Last year it took 27 days for them to drive to the South Pole!!



This is how tall the inside is!  Can you see the ladder in the very front of the airplane?  What do you think is at the top of the ladder and behind the doors?

The back of the airplane is very special.  The ramp is also the back door of the airplane.  It can close very fast to help them do their work quickly!

And just as fast as they can close the door, they can open it again.  The door becomes a ramp for vehicles and people to come up on!

These are all the people I've been going to class with.  Many of them will be my co-workers in McMurdo.  Can you find me?

The New Zealanders like Americans.  They are our good friends.  They are all very excited about Antarctica and they like to ask us lots and lots of questions about Antarctica and how they can go down there, too!  The airport was having an Open House yesterday, and lots of people were "queing up" to see the great, big American cargo planes.  They were very excited to go visit them!