T-38s as Astronaut aircraft: how much longer in service?

Henry Spencer wrote:

Most any actual flying -- especially in a relatively hot, high-performance
aircraft -- contributes well to maintaining proficiency.

Which is not to say that they weren't also status symbols.



I was surprised to find out that Shuttle commanders complete 1,000
landings in the Shuttle Training Aircraft as part of their training.
Practice is a good thing, but 1,000 landings seems a bit much.
The downside of the T-38 is that four astronauts have been killed in
crashes of them over the years.
At least they are safer than the LLRV/LLTV, which was a bad idea from
the get-go IMHO:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/a17-lltv.html

Pat

Pat

"Matt Wiser" writes:

Given that NASA has been flying T-38s as Astronaut proficency aircraft since the 1960s, and
although they haven't seen as much stress on the airframe as USAF T-38s, they won't last
forever. Any idea as to how long the T-38 will be in NASA service, and what would be a likely
replacement? Demilitarized F-16Bs or -Ds, perhaps?


As I recall, NASA borrowed the first lot, and at some point the USAF
had the audacity to want them back..
--
A host is a host from coast to
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

A-4 slow and plodding? Not at all. It was nick-named "Heinemann's
Hot-Rod" due to it's fighter-like performance, good enough to be used
by the US Navy in dissimilar air combat exercises flying against F-4 ,
F-8, F-14 and F-18 crews to teach them how to deal with hard to kill
opponents in close quarters combat that are using small, fast, agile
aircraft. It also had performance impressive enough to be used by the
Blue Angels demonstration team:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-4_Skyhawk

Among the aircraft operated by the US Navy in the early 1960s, the only
real slouches I can think of are the A-1 Skyraiders (a prop attack
aircraft) and the A-3 Skywarrior:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-1_Skyraider

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-3_Skywarrior

and various other cargo, anti-submarine and utility aircraft.

Perhaps you were thinking of the A-6 Intruder which, while not exactly
"fighter-like" in its performance, was still regarded by it's crews as
a "hot" aircraft. Several shuttle-era astronauts from the Navy flew it
(Fred Hauck, Dan Brandenstein and Mark Kelly come to mind);

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-6_Intruder

Among other attack aircraft of questionable slouchiness flown by the
Navy during the 1960s are the high subsonic and agile A-7 Corsair II:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-7_Corsair_II

and the supersonic (Mach 2) A-5 Vigilante beastie:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-5_Vigilante

KMM

Henry Spencer wrote:
In article .com,
Gene DiGennaro wrote:
...I often wondered considering the abundance of
Navy/Marine aviators as early astronauts why the TA-4 wasn't considered.

Probably because it wasn't supersonic, at a time when that still had a lot
of technological sex appeal.

Remember also that the Navy pilot fraternity was then split into fighter
pilots and bomber pilots (aka "attack aircraft" pilots, because "bomber"
was a registered trademark of SAC :-)). Those Navy/Marine aviators came
almost entirely from the fighter-pilot side of the house, whereas the A-4
was one of those slow, plodding aircraft that the bomber guys flew.
--

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
At least they are safer than the LLRV/LLTV, which was a bad idea from
the get-go IMHO...

Well, unfortunately Neil Armstrong disagreed with you, and I'm inclined to
weight his opinion a bit more heavily. :-)

(While recognizing the hazard -- having ejected from one of them -- he,
like other Apollo commanders, said there was nothing else in the training
program that simulated the landing nearly as well.)
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

wrote:

A-4 slow and plodding? Not at all. It was nick-named "Heinemann's
Hot-Rod" due to it's fighter-like performance, good enough to be used
by the US Navy in dissimilar air combat exercises flying against F-4 ,
F-8, F-14 and F-18 crews to teach them how to deal with hard to kill
opponents in close quarters combat that are using small, fast, agile
aircraft. It also had performance impressive enough to be used by the
Blue Angels demonstration team:



I think Henry was being a little sarcastic there. By fighter pilot's
standards if it wasn't capable of Mach 2 is was slow and plodding. :-)


and the supersonic (Mach 2) A-5 Vigilante beastie:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-5_Vigilante




You want to see something that really would have moved, check out the
three engined interceptor proposal using a modified A-5 Vigilante.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:



mike flugennock wrote:


Y'know, I was wondering, myself, lately -- _were_ they ever any help
for astronauts' flying skills or were they, in fact, "flying Corvettes"?


They'd be helpful as far as general flying skills and for building up a
tolerance for maneuvers and G forces, but they wouldn't handle at all
like a Shuttle.
It would make more sense to ferry the astronauts around in the Shuttle
Training Aircraft, where every landing could serve as a practice Shuttle
landing.

Pat, you've descended into Stuffie territory. His first appearance in this
group was on just that subject, voicing just that opinion.
(Are you sure you want to go down this road?)

Statistically, the STA's much more dangerous. Of the two that were built,
one was lost, with all hands.

My comments from back then:
BTW, the Shuttle Training Aircraft conversions of the Gulfstram II
were entirely gutted to allow for the computers and systems required
to make all the added flappery and thrust reversers & oddball controls
& stuff required to make it behave like a landing Shuttle. The crew
consists of the Simulator Pilot (Shuttle Pilot), the Instrustor Pilot,
who is the conventional controls pilot and safety lookout, and the
Flight Simulation Engineer, who keeps everything behaving, hopefully.
The STA doesn't land when simulation the Shuttle - the approach is
flown down to where the Shuttle Pilot's eyes would be in the real
thing, and then the IP performs a go-round. (BTW, the STA flights are
chased, usually by a (Wait For It!) T-38. The Shuttle approach would
never be allowed at any sort of regular airport- it's too disruptive to
the normal flow of traffic and would jeapordize safety.
--
Pete Stickney
Without data, all you have is an opinion

Henry Spencer wrote:

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:


At least they are safer than the LLRV/LLTV, which was a bad idea from
the get-go IMHO...



Well, unfortunately Neil Armstrong disagreed with you, and I'm inclined to
weight his opinion a bit more heavily. :-)

(While recognizing the hazard -- having ejected from one of them -- he,
like other Apollo commanders, said there was nothing else in the training
program that simulated the landing nearly as well.)


If you note those reminisces about the device though, one reason more
training wasn't down with them is that they were considered dangerous:

"Cernan - "The reasoning behind giving only Commanders LLTV training, as
best I can remember, was a combination of time, cost, and, quite
frankly, safety. All the lunar module pilots wanted to fly the LLTV,
strictly from a piloting point of view. When I was a lunar module pilot,
I wanted to fly it. But, because we didn't have plans to land on Apollo
10, there wasn't any point in either Tom Stafford or I training in the
LLTV; and, even for the actual landing missions, quite frankly, there
was no need for LMP LLTV training. It would have been nice gravy to put
on a chicken fried steak if the LMPs could have flown it as well as the
Commanders; but, in reality, there was no need. There were two people to
train for each flight anyway: the Commander and the Back-up Commander;
and that pretty much took up all the time that was available. There were
also some very real safety issues. We started out with four training
vehicles, I believe, and we ended up with one. Joe Algranti
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/JSC-OralHist.html (a NASA test pilot)
ejected out of the first one. He was heading our aircraft operation
before Neil ever flew the LLTV. And then two other people had to eject.
So I was the last to fly the last one. It was a very unstable vehicle."

(There were actually five built of which three crashed)
The vehicle was sort of an afterthought to the main program, and didn't
cost all that much to make- they only cost 2.5 million each for the
three LLTV "production" versions, and only 1.8 million each for the two
LLRV prototypes.
When you think about it, what Bell had to do was build a single seat
VTOL aircraft using jet thrust for lift, something that we had not had a
heck of a lot of luck with over the years, then stick rockets on it
besides, and have it ready to go in 14 months:
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/apoollrv.htm
This all was a very challenging specification in its own right, although
I imagine Bell's success with the ATV and X-14 played a major part in
them getting the contract, as well as the British Rolls-Royce "Flying
Bedstand"s success, and Bell seems to have had a great deal of input in
getting the thing contracted for in the first place, having come up with
the idea at around the same time NASA's Flight Research Center did so
independently, and already having drawn up plans for it.
If you go down to the July 27th and November 7th, 1967 entries in that
article, it also seems that the work on these vehicles might have been
sloppy, probably due to the timeline and fairly meager funding.
The Soviets had built a vehicle somewhat similar to the LLTV in their
"Turbolyot" VTOL jet lift research vehicle:
http://www.moninoaviation.com/31a.jpg
....yet, despite its obvious simultaneously to a lunar lander they did
not use it to train cosmonauts, relying on helicopters instead.

Pat

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
When you think about it, what Bell had to do was build a single seat
VTOL aircraft using jet thrust for lift, something that we had not had a
heck of a lot of luck with over the years, then stick rockets on it
besides, and have it ready to go in 14 months...

There was one further subtlety that the VTOL aircraft never had to contend
with: the need for the jet engine to be gimbaled and gyro-stabilized, so
that it stayed vertical as the vehicle maneuvered.

Against that, not having to fly fast or far or efficiently was a big
advantage.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

In article .com,
wrote:
A-4 slow and plodding? Not at all. It was nick-named "Heinemann's
Hot-Rod" due to it's fighter-like performance, good enough to be used
by the US Navy in dissimilar air combat...

Slow and plodding, by the standards of the *fighter* pilots in the early
1960s -- well before Vietnam woke the military up to the need for
dissimilar air combat training. People, especially fighter pilots, hadn't
yet realized that absolute maximum straight-line speed was not the only
important figure of merit. This was at a time -- if I'm remembering the
timing correctly -- when the fighters in the pipeline included the Mach 3
F-108 and the Mach 4 F-103, and the USAF was considering demanding that
the replacement for the F-105 be supersonic at sea level (a requirement
that became a millstone around the neck of the F-111 developers). All
subsonic aircraft were slow and plodding by definition, if you asked a
fighter pilot. :-)
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Peter Stickney wrote:

Pat, you've descended into Stuffie territory. His first appearance in this
group was on just that subject, voicing just that opinion.
(Are you sure you want to go down this road?)

Statistically, the STA's much more dangerous. Of the two that were built,
one was lost, with all hands.


If every one of our Shuttle commanders has flown 1,000 test approaches
in them, they can't be all that dangerous, even with one being lost.
They do have limitations as far as passenger carriage, but the T-38 does
also. ;-)
Both of them will be moot once the Shuttle is retired, as "flying" the
CEV during reentry isn't going to be anything like flying a Shuttle,
STA, or T-38.
Save the taxpayers some money, and get the astronauts a nice Lear Jet or
Gulfstream to get around in.
It'll be safer and more economical to operate, and will also have
considerably less maintenance requirements and greatly improved crew
comfort. On the business jet, the astronauts can actually discuss things
and go over written material while going from point-to-point, which is
sort of difficult in a Talon.

Pat