Astronauts Urge Preservation Of T-38s

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.