2013 Issue

29 flight experience, Maj. Hill’s experimental plane would eventually become the famous B-17 Flying Fortress. Later, in February 1948 Hill Field officially became Hill AFB to coincide with the Army Air Corps’ transition to the United States Air Force (USAF). In October 1949, Hill AFB grew to encapsulate Wendover AFB, the training grounds for the famous Enola Gay mission inWorldWar II and now known as the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR). Utah’s role in our nation’s most critical weapon systems didn’t end in the 1940s though. With the closure of Norton AFB in 1995, the Air Force’s ICBM System Program Office moved to Hill AFB for management of theMinuteman and Peacekeeper weapon systems. Currently Hill AFB employs over 20,000 people, has hosted virtually every major aircraft in the USAF fleet, and continues to play a pivotal role in our nation’s nuclear enterprise. In recent history, UTTR has served as more than a military proving ground. In January 2006, NASA’s Stardust space capsule blazed into reentry at over 28,000 miles per hour, landing successfully at UTTR with valuable cometary and interstellar dust samples. This success was a breath of fresh air after failed pyrotechnics caused the Genesis spacecraft to crash at UTTR in 2004. Utah’s work for NASA encompasses much more than as a satellite crash pad though. ATK’s static fires of solid rocket boosters have become a welcome familiarity in the Promontory countryside. Its predecessors, Thiokol and Hercules, were specialists in solid rocket fuels, not only power- ing missiles for the Air Force, Army, and Navy, but also enabling nearly everymajor NASAprogram. Furthermore, Utah’s expertise to NASA also includes Thiokol’s gas generators in the airbags used to help Pathfinder land on Mars, Hexcel’s carbon fiber materials used in the struts of the Apollo 11 lunar landing module, and simulated mannedmartianmissions in theHanksville area by theMars Society. Of course, no engineering industry would be able to survive in Utah were it not for its excellent educational institutions here, four of which have organized themselves into official AIAA branches. The University of Utah was the first to establish its engineering de- partment in 1896 and has since graduated over 12,000 engineers. BrighamYoung University boasts over 500 capstone projects rang- ing from space gloves to Apache helicopter nacelles. Weber State University recently graduated its first engineering students and is currently awaitingword onAccreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) accreditation. Utah State University claims to have sent more experiments into space than any other university in the world, thanks largely due to the renowned Space Dynamics Laboratory. Each of these schools has greatly contributed to Utah’s rich past and will continue to do so as we look towards the future. OUT OF THE PAST | continued on page 30 Salt Lake City International Airport in 2010. Photo credit: Doc Searls.