in the summer of 1963, the pregnant guppy began flying nasa cargo. among its early duties was transporting the first and second stages of the gemini program's titan ii from the martin co. in baltimore, maryland, to cape canaveral. as the space program grew through the late 1960s, this one aircraft clearly could not handle the whole transport load, so 25 more stratocruisers and ex-usaf c-97s were purchased to construct four super guppy aircraft, which were even longer and larger than the original.