LOL. Hey Johnny, the line shack has E-3 evals due next week. 614 needs to be preflighted and fluffed for the event later tonight. Oh, btw you have to fcf tomorrow. 0400 brief.
-
Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?
Go here:
Edit Account Details and Profile
LOL. Hey Johnny, the line shack has E-3 evals due next week. 614 needs to be preflighted and fluffed for the event later tonight. Oh, btw you have to fcf tomorrow. 0400 brief.
NASA doesn't have its own flight school, astronaut training includes some flight training specifically for familiarization and emergency procedure training but they don't do pilot training (there was a study a few years ago about whether NASA should retain its T-38 fleet and the decision was they should, especially as it provided realistic emergency procedure training for astronauts and candidates).
In the 60's if astronauts weren't qualified aviators yet NASA sometimes sent them through military flight school, I think USAF, but that stopped I believe in the 70's or 80's. Since then astronauts will sometimes gain flight experience in addition to their T-38 familiarization and EP training in other NASA and government aircraft but that is in addition to their main astronaut duties. Johnny Kim is a bit of an exception to the rule, and since he is Navy he went through Navy flight training.
I think it’s awesome that he winged, especially in helos. But I can’t help but wonder what for? The pilots that NASA selects as astronauts have thousands of hours and Johnny now has enough flight experience to be dangerous. And, as you said, NASA already has a program in place for astronauts to get flight exposure and EP training.
Doesn’t diminish his accomplishment, but this feels more like a ‘nice to have’ than a ‘need to have’ for him.
Correct. A number of the astronauts in NASA Astronaut Group 6 were scientists that NASA sent to AF pilot training for a year. My dad was an engineer in Apollo and I went to school with a bunch of the astronaut kids, including Bill Lenoir and Story Musgrave's kids. I believe both of them went to UPT in the late 60's after joining NASA.
It's been too long to remember, but I don't think there were other non-pilot astronauts that did this outside of the Group 6 guys... though it's likely I'm wrong.
From the press release, he got his wings as part of the dual-qual flight surgeon/pilot program. I knew the AF and Army had that, didn't know the Navy did. Anyway, sounds like NASA wants him for their internal flight doc/astronaut track, which I guess makes sense. CAPT Joe Kerwin was the first one, back in the 60's, he later flew on Skylab and headed the crew survivability program for the Shuttle.
Yeah, I saw he did the dual designator program. I guess that’s where my original statement came from. We send normal Navy docs through the flight surgeon course, but don’t give them the training to dual designate them as full on Naval aviators and also flight surgeons. All the stories I’ve ever heard of dual designated folks, they originally started as pilots and then switched to the medical field, not the other way around.
The follow on, now does he go learn to fly gray aircraft? Does NASA put him through a T-38 course, which if so, why learn helos? How does he keep current and proficient now that he’s an actual pilot and not the traditional flight surgeon we are all used to? I don’t think NASA owns any helicopters (could be wrong, of course)
Johnny is different than everyone else in many ways so I’m sure NASA has some long term plan for him, but without knowing the Paul Harvey ‘rest of the story’, it really does just seem like he got a good deal by doing the full program. I will never hate on someone getting a good deal, so good for him earning his wings.
Again, not disparaging him, his career and accomplishments are enviable, I just can’t see what this accomplishes for him as a doc that wasn’t already accomplished if he had gone through the normal Navy flight surgeon course.
Last edited:
. I suspect he has lots more NASA training to go.
Good question on "why helos?"
But in his previous astronaut training, he flew (and still flies) the T-38 a lot... but always in the rear cockpit.
Just spit-balling, but maybe the hovering experience has some eventual applicability toward lunar landers?
Well, the Army/AF has such a program to train MDs as "full up round" winged pilots, with the intent that they focus on aeromedical test flying. I assume the idea is to use him for something similar. I doubt NASA does "good deal hook-ups" just for the hell of it.
Also wouldn't surprise me if they'd put other docs through a similar course in the past. Dr Kim just gets more press time because of his "what the hell hasn't this dude done?" CV.
And yes, NASA apparently does have helos. They just picked up three H135s to replace their old Hueys.
You're probably right. I had just read that the Apollo astronauts did helicopter training before flying the LLRV.
Whoever operated that camera was brilliant. Captured both Armstrong's ejection and the subsequent landfall and vehicle crash.