“Tranquility Base here, the Enterprise has landed.”
While it might not have been as dramatic as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touching down on the moon, for New York City, April 27 was known as the day the city got a space shuttle. I had hoped to personally view the arrival of the space shuttle Enterprise piggybacked on its modified 747 carrier, but several days of weather-related delays made it unworkable in my schedule. Instead I listened to the radio as reporters breathlessly described the sight. It zoomed majestically down the Hudson River and had I been home at the time I would have had a view very much like this gorgeous photo taken by the friend of an AIN staffer at Liberty State Park in New Jersey. It may be the last time Enterprise feels the rush of wind under her wings, but at least she had the world’s biggest stage, as millions craned their necks upwards to watch as she made her way to John F. Kennedy International Airport.
A lifelong aviation enthusiast who joined AIN in 2007, Curt came to the publication from the broadcast industry where he was a national science and technology television reporter and producer. He writes on the FBO field, aviation finance, and sustainable aviation and occasionally contributes to AIN sister publication Business Jet Traveler. Curt was a member of the AINtv reporting staff that won the 2008 Aerospace Journalist of the Year award for Best Airshow Daily. That same year, he was a finalist for another AJOYA award. He earned an AJOYA for Best Business Aviation Submission in 2018 and was a finalist in that category in 2021. He received the National Air Transportation Association’s Aviation Journalist Award in 2012 and won a Pegasus Sapphire Business Aviation Award for outstanding journalism in 2021.
Before joining AIN, Curt worked with Consumer Reports’ television division, CRTV, and for several local television news staffs. An honors graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University in 1995. Curt lives in New York State with his wife and two young sons.
