Refueling the Air Force

Around 10,000 feet above some indiscriminate government-owned tract of Indiana, a 182-foot, 33-year-old air tanker carrying 170,000 pounds of fuel when it left New Jersey's Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst that morning just docked a 50-foot metal tube into a receptacle in the nose of another aircraft while flying at around 200 mph.