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IPFS News Link • Events: America

My Flight With the Wannabe Space Pilots of the Mojave

• http://www.wired.com

Scott Glaser stands at the front of the pilot ready room at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, holding two sticks with plastic airplane models at the ends, one red and one blue. He demonstrates a maneuver called a crossover, moving one plane in an arc under the other. It's effective—but it also looks like something a kid would do for fun, yelling neeoooooow.

Watching the demo are a scrappy bunch of civilian pilots who are learning to fly like aces—in close formation. Right now they're sitting in leather chairs and taking notes, but in just an hour and a half, they will be in the grown-up versions of those toys, learning how to fly in formations like fighter pilots and airshow pros. And while the chaperones—like Jim Brown, who was once the chief test pilot for the F-22 program—usually have military aviation training, these trainees usually do not. They're treading air trying to make up for it.

Since this is Mojave, many of them work for aerospace companies like Scaled Composites, which designed the Ansari X Prize-winning SpaceShipOne, or the Spaceship Company, which built Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, a spaceplane that will eventually take tourists, if not exactly to space, then at least really, really high. Working at these New Space firms is competitive, and employees will do whatever it takes to set themselves apart. The new business landscape of private aerospace companies demands new aircraft, which means someone has to see if they fly. Just as their employers are privately-owned upstarts in a government-dominated industry, they are civilian upstarts trying to become something once the dominion of the military-industrial complex: test pilots.

But in order to test, say, the actual SpaceShip Two, you have to fly while another plane chases from close behind. That's formation flying, and it's fighter-pilot stuff—a skill most civilian pilots never acquire. Why would they? Your Piper Cub can't do what an F-22 can. But the new crop of wanna-be spaceships are a whole different story. Scaled is one of a handful of companies that promotes test pilots from within. But "they realized they had a crop of pilots who knew how to fly," says Brown, "but nobody knew how to fly formation."

So these hybrid engineer-flyers, and others who just want to level up, sit in this classroom with Glaser, a non-military guy who has learned the ways of that world and wants to open the gate for others. He goes over hand signals, acronyms, emergency diversion spots, the don'ts of parachute ejection. If your plane "trades paint" with another aircraft? "You've determined you cannot fly in formation," Glaser says. "So don't come back." Brown, who in his (many, storied) Air Force days flew formation as a matter of course, occasionally chimes in.

"Good comments. Thanks," Glaser says.

"Just enhancing the brief," Brown says from the back of the room.

Glaser concludes his remarks with a mix of drama and bravado. "I was up late last night making gumbo," he says. "So you all better fucking be there to eat it."

He doesn't mean they should cancel their evening plans. He means they shouldn't die.


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