Posted on 01/11/2011 10:12:06 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
Astronauts Urge Preservation Of T-38s
Jan 10, 2011
By Mark Carreau
HOUSTON — Though the 30-year-old space shuttle fleet is headed for retirement this year, NASA’s director of flight crew operations and chief astronaut believe the agency should continue to fly a reduced fleet of aging T-38 supersonic jet aircraft based near Johnson Space Center as an essential part of future astronaut training.
Brent Jett, a two-time shuttle commander who oversees the directorate responsible for NASA’s astronaut corps and aircraft operations at Houston’s Ellington Field, and Chief Astronaut Peggy Whitson, who served as commander during the most recent of her two six-month expeditions to the International Space Station, pressed the case for continued NASA operation of the vintage two-seat trainers during a Jan. 5 presentation to the Committee on Human Spaceflight Crew Operations.
The 14-member panel, selected by the National Academies, is charged with assessing the future of NASA’s astronaut corps, including its post-shuttle training requirements, in a report due by Aug. 31. The assessment comes at a time of prolonged uncertainty over NASA’s future and mounting congressional sentiment to harness the federal deficit.
“We don’t fly the T-38 to be good pilots. We fly them to stay proficient in a fast-paced environment,” Jett told a panel co-chaired by former NASA astronaut and deputy administrator Fred Gregory. “I can’t get that any place else.”
Good Prep
Whitson, a biochemist, told committee members that without her training as a T-38 “back seater” she would have been ill-prepared to command the station during a 192-day mission that included five spacewalks. Her latest flight concluded in April 2008 with a suspense-filled ballistic landing aboard a Soyuz spacecraft.
The agency spends between $25 million and $30 million annually to fly and maintain its current fleet of 21 upgraded 1960s vintage T-38s, down from the 30-35 aircraft NASA maintained between 1995 and 2000. NASA’s current projections show the number of jet trainers falling to 16 by about 2015.
While it intends to retain the T-38s, NASA’s flight crew operations directorate plans to dispose of four Grumman Shuttle Training Aircraft used to train astronauts for the steep runway approach of the winged orbiters; and a pair of Boeing 747 jumbo jets outfitted to ferry the orbiters between Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
Isn’t the T-38 the same as the F-5? And doesn’t Iran make them indigenously now? Or maybe NASA could buy some back from Vietnam.
It is. I saw [almost got hit at the end of the runway on a perimeter road] on aborted takeoff and slide off the runway....a Belgian F-5, I think.... [He punched out, but got hurt pretty bad]
Ping.
It's essentially the two-seat trainer version. The F-5, likewise was being upgraded to become the F-20 Tigershark, but the program fell through...
It’s one of the best looking aircraft you’ll ever see, especially considering how long ago it was designed. I believe some are in private hands.
I was an IP in this at the AF Flight Test Center years ago. Magnificent machine. 720 degree per second roll rate at full stick deflection. Loved every minute of it.
Well, if you’re:
(A) going to have astronaut pilots, and
(B) expect them to fly anything, then:
(C) you’ve got to keep them current in something.
TC
I empathize with this statement. I also was very upset with the astronaut on the space station blaming political discourse for the shooting in Arizona. Talk about a bully pulpit...
Believe it or not the F-5/T-38 started life as a potential jet aircraft to be flown off of escort carriers. Most likely the Commencement Bay class, don’t know about the other, smaller classes. Then in the late fifties the USN decided there was no further need for any of the leftover CVE’s. Northrop then presented the N-156 as a possible advanced jet trainer. The Air Force chose it to replace the T-33’s
If they want to restore t models that is fine as long as they do it with their money. Rockets don’t have manual controls. The jet boys wants the sucker tax payer to pay for their joy rides.
Iran (HESA) has built F-5 conversions.
The USAF still has 450 T-38 variants flying.
The fuel crisis of the early 1970s resulted selection of the Northrop T-38A Talon, a supersonic trainer. Five T-38s used the same amount of fuel needed for one F-4 Phantom, and fewer people and equipment were required to maintain the aircraft. Although it met the criteria of demonstrating the capabilities of a prominent Air Force aircraft, the Talon did not fulfil [sic] the Thunderbird tradition of flying front-line jet fighters. The team flew the Talon from 1974–1981.It is one good-looking bird.
The Thunderbirds “diamond crash” incident also involved the T-38 :(
Well put, NASA is not what we grew up with. Now it’s a PC global warming agency who’s chief “astronaut” is a woman biologist. (who likes riding around in a T-38)
Read Buzz Auldrin’s book too,, they used those as their personal fun jets, calling personal trips to meet a girlfriend “training” flights.
Dang, that’s a beautiful airplane!
Interesting. I was not aware of that. Thanks!
There were a bunch of them at Williams AFB. I loved watching the trainees zoom overhead in formation. A couple times I stopped on Ellsworth Road to watch their touch and go training. They’d come in so low at about 150 mph that I thought they’ strike the fence!
Just a few months before that crash, I was able to take my, then, five year old son to see the Thunderbirds. They were preparing to perform at Rosecrans Airfield, a small ANG airfield across the river from St. Joseph, MO. They had a small resturant at the old tower building and just on a hunch, I went to the resturant at lunch with my son three hours prior to the show, prior to the gates getting set up.
We ended up meeting and eating lunch with the bulk of the pilots and crew team. They took my son and I out to the flightline and right up to the planes we watched them fly a few hours later. My son was on top of the world to see it all.
A few months later when the crash victims were announced, I was sad to see names that I remembered and glad that my son was young enough to have not heard about and understood the tragic loss.
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