Flying High -- and Hairy

From preflight preparation to landing, piloting NASA's specially equipped ER- 2 high-altitude research aircraft is not for the fainthearted. The three pilots who flew the twelve solo missions through the Antarctic ozone hole found the task grueling. An hour before zooming into the stratosphere, each had to don a bright orange pressure suit and begin breathing pure oxygen to remove nitrogen from the blood and tissues, thus preventing the bends, which can result from rapid reductions in air pressure. Once airborne, "you have to have patience," says Pilot Ron Williams, who flew the first mission. "You're strapped into a seat and can't move for seven hours."

Although the pilots had been briefed by meteorologists on what to expect, they still found conditions aloft astonishingly harsh. Accustomed to clear, broad vistas at high altitudes, the pilots -- who took the ER-2 as high as 68,000 ft. -- were startled to encounter layers of translucent mist composed of tiny ice particles. "I went into clouds at 61,000 ft., and I didn't come out the whole time," says Williams of the first flight. Another surprise: temperatures did not warm when the plane soared into the stratosphere. Instead, they plummeted to -130 degreesF, low enough to cause worries about a fuel freeze-up.

At 60,000 ft., winds as high as 150 knots buffeted the aircraft. Even so, the real difficulty came from 40-knot gusts that tossed the plane around during landings. With special scientific instruments installed in pods on its long, droopy wings, the ER-2 is "like a big albatross -- it's heavy-winged," says Operations Manager James Cherbonneaux of NASA's Ames Research Center. While watching a particularly hairy approach to the runway at Punta Arenas, he recalls, "I chewed a little bit of my heart out."

Conditions aboard the DC-8 were considerably better. The plane, which carried up to 41 scientists, flew no higher than 42,000 ft. on its 13 missions, and those on board were free to move about. But heavy clouds obscured views of Antarctica most of the time, and the flights were a tedious eleven hours long. Observes Atmospheric Scientist Ed Browell, of NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia: "I sort of likened what we were doing to taking off from the East Coast, flying to the West Coast to do our work, then flying back East to land."

To break the monotony, scientists took aboard a variety of stuffed animals, including a seal, cat and penguin, and warmed up snacks of pizza, empanadas, popcorn and hamburgers in the microwave oven. Cabin temperature was kept cool to avoid overheating the high-tech instrumentation. Says Atmospheric Physicist Geoffrey Toon, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.: "If you tried to sleep during your off hours, usually you froze."