Why I flew in a fighter jet! Commercial Astronaut training with the Polaris Dawn Crew!

Intro Hi, it's me Tim Dodd the Everyday Astronaut. This is an Alpha jet. It's a light fighter jet capable of flying at almost 1,000 kilometers an hour, so just shy of Mach 1. This baby can pull about eight Gs today. I'm gonna see if I can do that because I get to ride in this thing. Welcome to Bozeman, Montana. I'm out here with the crew of the Polaris Dawn Mission for a weekend of fighter jet training. In case you're unfamiliar with the Polar Dawn mission, this is the second mission funded by Jared Issacman and this one is extra exciting because they're actually going to be performing the first EVA or Extra Vehicular Activity in SpaceX's history. So that means they're actually going to depressurize the Crew Dragon capsule, they're gonna open up the docking port, and then some of the crew will be able to go out and just float in space. Which isn't just for fun. They're currently studying if Dragon can be used to help reboost and service the beloved Hubble Space Telescope. Yes, that's right. This is being looked at by NASA and SpaceX as we speak and very well could be the next mission in the Polaris program after Polaris Dawn, which would be absolutely incredible. But an EVA like this where you depressurize the entire vehicle hasn't been done since the Gemini and Apollo program. And doing an EVA is actually a really big deal. It's actually a really risky thing to do, which is exactly why Jared Isaacman thinks it's important to train his crew under some stressful and high risk real world situations. So join me today as we do something a little bit different. We're gonna be talking to some of the crew of the Polaris Dawn mission. We're going to be going over the history of fighter jet training and why they do it. We'll also be talking about the jets and some of the physics involved and then looking at some of the aerospace engineering aspects of these planes. And just in case you're here to see me get thrown around in a fighter jet, I totally understand. I've got timestamps below and the YouTube time bar is broken up into sections as well. So you can skip right past all the nerdy stuff and get to the action. Okay, let's get started. 3, 2, 1. History of Fighter Jet Training Okay, I'm not gonna lie, I wasn't even thinking about or planning on wearing this Space Shuttle ejection suit hoodie this weekend. I just happened to... that's the only thing I packed and it was chilly all weekend. But it's funny because I ended up riding in a vehicle that has an ejection seat and this hoodie's actually inspired by the S1030A, a space suit, which is flown on the first four Space Shuttle missions that had an ejection seat. And this is based off of the SR-71's flight suit. Because that's a fun fact; the first four Space Shuttle missions had ejection seats for the pilot and the commander after that they were disarmed and then totally taken out eventually. Anyway, check out this hoodie and other cool stuff ar everydayastronaut.com/shop. Okay, now that we've got our history chops warmed up, let's actually keep going with a little bit of history. Fighter jet training has been at the heart of human space flight since the very beginning. In fact, early Mercury astronauts and Soviet astronauts were all test pilots, so you really couldn't even have one without the other. But as NASA moved into the Space Shuttle program, we'd soon see astronauts that weren't test pilots. Well, we actually saw it in in the Apollo program too, but the point is the Space Shuttle program was going to have a lot more civilian astronauts. So even mission specialists who would never actually be in control of a Space Shuttle were required to fly at least four hours per month in the T-38. And mission commanders and mission pilots were actually required to fly about 15 hours per month. And believe it or not, that's actually still true today even with the commercial program. Now, the number one reason why they still continue to do fighter jet training today is so that astronauts are used to things like checklists and communication and situational awareness and just all sorts of other things in a real world dynamic situation. But fun fact about the T-38, it was actually specifically helpful when trying to practice the landing approach with the space shuttle. They actually modified the T-38 to have a little bit larger air brakes. They'd have the gear out and this all allowed astronauts to practice that really steep approach angle of the 80 metric ton flying brick that was the Space Shuttle. But the T-38 was also useful during actual Space Shuttle missions. You would see them flying along as the Space Shuttle was coming in for its landing. But the T-38 wasn't actually the best analog for flying the Space Shuttle for this NASA employed the STA or the Shuttle Training Aircraft. This was the C-11A, which was a modified Grumman Gulf Stream II. It was outfitted with Space Shuttle controls and instrumentation on the commander side so they could practice, but the pilot seat on the right was actually the normal control sticks. But my favorite thing about the STA is what it actually took to match the Space Shuttle's landing profile. At about 11 kilometers, they would deploy the rear landing gear and only the rear landing gear 'cause the front gear couldn't actually handle those wind loads, but they would deploy the rear gear for increased drag. Then the flaps could actually be deflected upward to decrease lift to match the low lift characteristics of the Space Shuttle. But that's not all. My favorite thing they did with theta to match the landing profile was land with the engine thrusters in reverse. Yep. That's what it took to actually match the landing characteristics of the Space Shuttle. I mean that's pretty ridiculous. You gotta have the flaps inverted the landing gear out for increased drag and you had to have the engine in reverse. It's actually a miracle there are no problems with landing the Space Shuttle, What's the point of Fighter Jet Training with Jared Isaacman but that's enough random history and facts about fighter jet trainings. Let's get to the point, what is the point of fighter jet training? With the advent of commercial astronauts and companies in charge of their own training, some are actually foregoing fighter jet pilot training altogether and why wouldn't they? Modern spacecraft are super autonomous. I mean they pretty much just fly themselves and we don't have Space Shuttles anymore. There's no like actual flying of a vehicle altogether. It's pretty much all just a bunch of falling and parachutes. So why does Mission Commander Jared Issacman think that fighter jet training is still important? No, it's a good question. I mean obviously NASA is flying on Dragon spacecraft same as us. They haven't taken the T-38 away from their astronauts. In fact, they spend, you know, two years just, you know, familiarizing new astronaut candidates with you know, T-6, T-38 operations, water survival training. A lot of the same things that we try and do as part of our missions because it's still an important part of training. I mean it is a dynamic, you know, G intense environment. You can work on crew resource management, precision flying, you know, avionic systems that have a lot of carryover to what we see in Dragon and it's probably most important, it's high consequence so there's no reset button like there is in the simulator. You can't just step out of it and say, "Okay, we got that one wrong. Let's do it again." You know, aircraft, it's totally different environment and I think that's important. It keeps a good focus. It's why with Inspiration 4 we kept flying literally right up until the last couple days before launch. It's something we're gonna continue to do with the Polaris program. So last I just wanted to talk to you about G forces. And obviously the G force you experience when pulling a high G maneuver in a jet is a little different than that when you're accelerating on a rocket. Can you just kind of describe the differences 'cause you've experienced both of them now you've experienced the up to about four Gs on and Dragon and up to eight in you're ,eight or nine almost in the MiG, right? Yeah. So the Gs you can pull in a fighter jet, those are the ones that really hurt. So if you can condition yourself to those, to that kind of a G environment, you can do really well in space fight. Now that is G Z so that's along that Z axis. So what it's doing is it's pulling the blood away from your brain down into your feet and what you have to fight against there is not losing consciousness. So you are using a G-Suit and you're tightening every muscle in your body. You're doing everything you can to fight against the blood that's being pulled down toward, towards your feet. Now in a in a rocket based on how we're sitting in the vehicle, you're pulling those Gs across the X axis; so through your chest. And a human body can endorse so much more. You know, nominal flight in in Falcon and Dragon, you're not really seeing more than like call it like 4.5, 4.8 Gs depending on whether you're going uphill or down. You can endure that no problem. You're not worried about blacking out losing consciousness and it's only for a brief period of time, like the last call, 30 seconds on the second stage, you know, it's a little bit longer on on reentry but you're just fighting gets breathing. It just feels like, like an elephant sitting on your chest. You don't have to worry about blacking out. It's also why in the launch escape scenario where there are certain times on a ballistic re-entry you can get up to like 20 plus Gs and it's survivable because of the axis you're pulling it on across your chest. Unlike in a fighter jet, you pull 20 Gs, I don't know, you're probably not looking the same. The Physics Involved in Fighter Jet Training Okay. So as Jared mentioned, the forces involved in a jet aren't quite a perfect analog for flying in a rocket. Now, although you can actually reach higher G forces on a fighter jet than you would on a nominal space flight mission, the G forces actually aren't along the same plane. When flying on a rocket, astronauts are pretty much laying on their back and so the forces are basically just pushing them up along their back as if you were kinda laying on the ground and gravity just got stronger and stronger. Now, although fighter jets can pull some pretty strong longitudinal Gs, they mostly pull Gs thanks to centripital acceleration. So basically when banking and pitching really hard, that's when they can pull some real G's. But this is really more of a compressing G force. So you'll feel like you're getting pressed down into the bottom of the seat as opposed to getting pushed back into the back of the seat. These are the same type of G force sthat you typically experience on a roller coaster and that's because you and the vehicle you're in have inertia. And even though that vehicle might change direction, you still wanna keep going in the direction you were traveling. Okay. That's enough about physics and the boring history stuff. Let's go take a look at these jets. A Tour of the Jets First off, we have the L-39 Albatross and there's actually three of these in Jared's fleet. And this is actually one of the most prolific jet trainers in the world. It's tandem seating. You get two, which is great of course for training. This thing is extremely rugged. They're known to land on gravel and things like that. Single engine subsonic, I think it is top speeds 750 kilometers an hour, something like that. These things, these things out here, these are actually wing tip fuel tanks to extend the range to the vehicle. It also has... you can pull, like these things can actually pull about eight Gs. So it makes it great for training 'cause you can, you know, push people pretty hard in it and, and put, load them up with a good amount of G forces. Now if you come to the front of the plane, you actually notice something. These, these jets have very little dihedral angle about a three degree- That's the angle of the wings and it's a low slung wing here. So that on this plane they're a little bit slower. You know, it's the slowest of the three jet types that that Jared has. And it has a pretty, a pretty straight wing. They don't have a much of a sweep angle on 'em compared to the other jets. So you'll notice that the L-39 has a, like I said, a dihedral angle. But look over here at the Alpha Jet notice, it has anhedral wings. So the wings are actually pointed a little bit downward. And what's interesting about that is it actually makes it more maneuverable. So having a dihedral angle on your wings makes it more stable. So it makes it so it kind of wants to auto correct and roll like back to center just naturally. So if you want a vehicle to be able to roll quickly and do hard maneuvers, you do something like this. So the Alpha Jet here is a little bit more maneuverable, a little bit more aggressive. It is dual engine. So even though it looks kind of similar with the same intakes, it is dual engine and this thing can fly real quick. This thing's top speed is just shy of 1,000 kilometers an hour. So it is still subsonic. Another thing you'll notice about these wings is they're much more aggressive sweep angle compared to the L-39. Now a sweep angle isn't always a direct correlation with a jet's top speed, but you'll definitely notice any super sonic jet will have a pretty steep sweep angle, which is exactly what the jet at the top of this image has come over here. And let's see, Jared's last jet. All right, and this is the coolest one, at least to me. It's definitely the fastest. This is the MiG-29. This is the only jet in Jared's fleet that can fly super sonic. So it can fly like 2,500 kilometers an hour. So Mach 2, pretty awesome. That's thanks to it's dual RD-33s .RD, you know, I love that. Uh, and those are, this is of course an old Soviet jet basically, and it has afterburners in the back that makes it capable of these Mach numbers. But one of my favorite things about this thing is if you come here and look at this, you'll notice there's on the top, there's some little slits here and those are intakes so that when it's taking off on a runway, this actually closes down. This is like a FOD foreign object debris guard that closes and allows them to take off from like any runway, any, like gravel and stuff like that. You know, normally when you're taking off from gravel, you have to worry about, you know, gravel getting kicked up and thrown into the engine. So they would have the ability to close this down and still get fresh air into the engine via those vents up there. Come back this way. The engines have an afterburner, which is really cool. You also notice it does have a slight, slight anhedral angle on it and in a pretty aggressive sweep of the wings. You'll notice the all moving control services, the... What would you call that? Those are called stabiliators when they're all moving like that. So that's really cool. Um, but you'll notice here these are the- you can see basically the shower heads and How an Afterburner Works it's still warm, I can still feel it, And this thing stopped flying like an hour ago. Um, but yeah, those are smells like kerosene, like crazy. Those are the afterburners. And that literally just sprays kerosene and, you know, the jet fuel into the exhaust. And it ends up after burning, burning after the main combustion process of the jet engine. And what this does is basically just turns the jet engine into a rocket engine. The afterburner just dumps additional fuel into the exhaust of the engine where we'll burn with unreacted oxygen. Jet engines generally run fuel lean to keep temperatures low, which leaves a lot of unreacted oxygen in the exhaust. So the afterburner just dumps a crap ton of fuel into the exhaust, which will add tons of additional heat energy. And then the engine actually makes best use of that heat energy with a variable geometry nozzle that you'll see on these afterburners. And that'll actually create a converging diverging nozzle that will literally turn that jet engine into a rocket engine for a short period of time, which is so, so cool. Now you'll notice here, this is actually a fun, a fun one here. This is the parachute. So it actually lands... If it has a long enough runway, it it can land without a parachute. This runway is short enough that they actually prefer to land it with a parachute. But yeah, they've been actually pulling the shoot every time they land, having to repack it every time. And you also notice this thing here, it kind of looked, might look a little bit ominous, like a bomb or something, but that's actually just also an external fuel tank to extend the range to this vehicle as well. And this thing is a, this thing's a beast. Whoever gets to ride in this, whoever's lucky enough to ride in the MiG 29 will go for a heck of a ride because it can pull about nine Gs. So definitely the the biggest baddest jet that Jared owns, in my opinion, one of the coolest looking jets is it's a kind of a, a Soviet counterpart to the, to the F-15. It looks a lot like an F-15 and I just think it looks incredible. All right, Talking to Scott "Kidd" Poteet now we better find out which jet I'm flying in. All right, so I'm here with Scott "Kidd" Poteet. That's right. And, uh, he's gonna be the one that's gonna take me up in, in which jet? We're gonna go fly in the Alpha Jet. So this is a two seater, two engine very agile fighter aircraft that is used throughout the world as a trainer and air to ground platform. It's a lot of fun to fly. It's fast, it's agile, and we like to fly with the MiG, we like to fly with the L-39. It's just a fun little aircraft to train. So, uh, how, how bad are you gonna punish me in this thing? Uh, you know, we'll, we'll go as uh, as hard and as fast as you wanna fly. We could pull up to eight Gs. So... Up to eight you think we'll get there? I think we will. I think, I think we'll, uh, uh, put some thrust behind it and, and see how, see, see how she'll, she'll do out there. Okay, that's enough talking about this stuff. Suitting up I'm gonna go suit up and then it's time to get into a fighter jet. All right, so Jared, you are putting on the G suit. That's right. And so this is all, it's pneumatic obviously since it takes bleed air and so it almost acts like a blood pressure cuff then? That's exactly what it feels like. Yeah. And it turns on like the, the air- the airplane is in charge of, uh, activating it, right? Or how's that actually work? Correct. Basically just as the, the G comes on for the first couple, like two or three, it's not gonna do really much. And then beyond that you're gonna have valve open up and it's gonna start inflating. I'm in the middle of getting a G suit put on. Check this out. As I mentioned out there, kind of our launch commit criteria here is gonna be we want VFR conditions, which we do have. So that's fantastic to put that off the table. We want to comm check between the two of us. We have to be able to communicate in the event something goes wrong, we need to instructions to the emergency... Tim, meet Alpha Jet. This is it, baby! Getting in the Jet Air Take off! speed's alive. Coming up on nose and steering. 100 knots. Rotate. Nose is coming off. 100 meters. Coming up. Flaps coming up. Look at that! Little offset. Heh Heh Heh YES! Woooo! 100 knots of closure. Little bit of speed break power. I'm gonna hold up 2, 02, 3, 1. We're gonna standby. Little bit of [inaudible] we're gonna slow that down, get you out of barn door. Here comes the sun. Oh my god. Formation Flying It's not every day you look out and see a MiG right there. There's incredible. My god! No way! [inaudible]. I'll hang with you, but I request a trail while you've recover, just give me air speed updates as you go. Yeah, High G Maneuvers yeah.WOAHHHH. We're gonna go for a G spike. You good? Yeah, I'm good. Doing alright? Surprisingly. You feel nauseous at all? Uh, no. All right. Here's what a formation barrel roll feels like. So I don't know if you can see him. He's gonna be off our left 11 o'clock. Yep. Okay. What you do is you go pull about one and a half Gs. And that's 2. 25 degrees nose high. And then you start an easy left hand roll. I'm gonna kill some speed, alright? You see him off right one o',clock? [inaudible]. Whoa. Reaction Oh baby, that was incredible. Excellent. You have a good time? Had a hell of time. Oh, that was awesome. Thank you so much, man. That was amazing. I knew you're ready for it. Yeah, that was just... He had, he had an engine issue. Oh yeah. So he couldn't pull a lot of Gs, so as soon as he cleared me off, that's when we started having fun. I'll admit I get it now. I would've not been able to do anything. I was so concentrating on just not passing out. That's about all I had in me was just like, "don't pass out." Now I was kind of trying to track where the MiG was. That was the only mission that I kind of had for myself, was trying to keep track of the MiG, but I couldn't have done anything else. I was completely distracted. Honestly, it'd probably take a while for you to get used to that kind of environment, to be able to handle those kind of situations and still stay ahead of your mission and not get behind and not just let important things go by. But we don't have to hear it from me. Let's talk to mission specialists, Talking to Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon Sarah Gillis and mission specialist/medical officer Anna Menon on what fighter jet training has been like for them. First time we went up yesterday and we're learning, you know, we're following air speed, we're looking at our altitude, we're changing, heading, and I was able to focus like on very specific values and then I'd look up and I would have no idea where I was and be not be paying attention to the horizon. And so today, the second time we did it, you start adding in more pieces to your crosscheck and you're able to kind of open up your situational awareness. But as soon as you come into the airport and there's calm that's increasing and there's more parameters you have to care about, like it's immediately like you can become aware of less and less. So the more you practice that, the more you're able to like, keep situational awareness and be able to make the right decisions in that, that situation where you're coming in, you're having to listen and talk and take in all the inputs at the same time. Absolutely. You know, I think that all of this type of practice and training really just increases that threshold so that what you are doing is you're training your to be so accustomed to this that you expand the brain space you have available for, for something going off nominally. And so if, if something were to arise that would be unexpected, we have the available mental capacity to respond to that safely and quickly. And we are really well trained to handle the nominal still parallel, Summary in parallel. So despite my initial skepticism, I totally get it. I genuinely do see the value of fighter jet training. Even in a world now today with commercial and private astronauts. Now maybe if you're just on a quick little suborbital hop where you're up in space for a couple minutes, this wouldn't really be necessary. But when you're out there pushing boundaries and when there's real risks involved, I think this stuff matters a lot. And the Polaris program will not only be pushing boundaries of what's possible for the commercial sector, but it's even pushing some boundaries on human space flight. In fact, Sarah and Anna are going to be setting altitude records. They're gonna be flying higher and further away from Earth than any woman has ever flown before. So I hope you guys now all have a little bit better appreciation and understanding of fighter jet training and why it still is applicable in a modern space flight world. But I also hope that you have a little bit better understanding of the entire Polaris program and I hope you're getting more excited and you start following along. And I also hope that you see a little bit more of that commitment that Jared Issacman has towards these missions and towards their safety. So be sure and follow along with the Polaris crew on their social media handles as they get ready for this mission. You are not going to want to miss this month and don't forget to support their cause, which is raising funds and awareness for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. I've got a link below on how you can help support and like always, I owe a huge thinking to my Patreon supporters for helping make things like this possible. If you want to support the work that I do at on over to patreon.com/everydayastronaut. And while you're online, don't forget to check out our awesome web store for things like this, our Space Shuttle, ejection hoodie, and lots of other fun stuff such as dress wear, our schematics collection, our future margin collection, norminal things, things for kids, lots of fun stuff at everydayastronaut.com/shop. Thanks everybody. That's gonna do it for me. I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut bringing space down to earth for everyday people.