I don’t know why, exactly, but this video really tickles me. A T-38 flight gets a surprise visitor in the camera (one NSFW word in the video).
I think it’s the honest amusement of the pilots that made me smile. Silly, but it made my day.
Tip o’ the thorax to Fark.
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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November 6th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Makes me wonder if it stayed on for the entire flight or if it came off at some point. That would be a heck of a fall.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Phil, you should check out http://cectic.com/comics/181.png
November 6th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Wayne – well at least he had a really good ride first. Not a bad way to go!
November 6th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Fall?? He’s inside the cockpit,on the dash!
November 6th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I remember once hearing that (probably apocryphal) that back in the x-15 days somebody took a cat up and did some maneuvers and the cat ended up clinging to the pilot’s arm the whole time.
(and let us not speak of the vomit comet run where they took a cat up and threw it at the walls of the jet)…
November 6th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Uh, JoeZo…
November 6th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Grr, video is blocked here on base. Having flown the T-38, I am anxious to see it.
JoeZo, that was the subject of a blog he had a few days back.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Testing G-forces on animals is wrong!
November 6th, 2008 at 11:45 am
LOL!
Hey a flying grasshopper! Does this mean he gets an honorary graduation to locust?
November 6th, 2008 at 11:46 am
“It’s not a parakeet, but it’s about the same size!” Ha! priceless.
Also, you guys have no idea how hard it is to look up the spelling of “parakeet” if you’re not a first-language speaker. Initial guesses: periquete, perikete, parakite. I ended up googling “small parrot” and got lucky.
Heh, by the way, interesting google image results for periquita (what I got recommended after periquete). NSFW.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:46 am
I’ll take a grasshopper in the cockpit over a stinging insect any day!
November 6th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Good thing the pilot didn’t suffer from acridophobia.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Larian LeQuella:
Goofing off at work, eh?
November 6th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Mandatory jokes:
“I’ve had with these motherfraking grasshoppers on this motherfraking plane”
“So kids, that’s how grampa achieved World record for fastest and highest grasshopper flight”
“Gooooosee!!”
“Punny humans. I don’t have lungs, gimme your best high-g turns!”
“One small hop for an insect…”
//santiago, “periquita” is a Brazilian Portuguese slang for… well, the english equivalent is cat-related. We also use “Perereca” (frog) among other colorful metaphors, including the classic “spider” and the now old-fashioned “brazilian rainforest”.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
@IVAN3MAN
No one on here would ever do that. Nope. Not a one.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
It’s the Beginning Of The End
J/P=?
Getting all Mistie….
November 6th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Doh! BUSTED!
Although, the AF has a policy of “Continual Education” that every person should endeavour to follow. So, I am only following that regulation and getting a continuing education here!
November 6th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I’m a member of P.E.T.I (People For the Ethical Treatment of Insects)…
My fellow PETI posse is not amused. We’ll be protesting this…
November 6th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
@Michael L
How petty.
November 6th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
@Todd W>:
That’s it! I’m calling Pamela Anderson!
November 6th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Grasshopper: Wah HOOOOOooooooo!
Grasshopper: (alternate, to other grasshoppers) Here, hold my beer, and watch what I can do!
November 6th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
What, no David Carradine references yet?
November 6th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Cardoso wins the internets!
November 6th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Todd W.:
November 6th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
I admit I’m not that familiar with T-38s or any jet aircraft for that matter, but it was my understanding that the grasshopper was not inside the cockpit (note the reference to it not being hypoxic yet). Obviously, it’s not in the airstream or it would be blown off, so can anyone explain exactly where the critter is? My thought was some sort of unpressurized housing for the camera, but I didn’t catch all the technobabble.
November 6th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Master Kan: “To suppress a truth, is to give it force beyond endurance.”
Master Po: “Yet it is eyes which blind the man… Because a man can see, he does not look.”
November 6th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Two comments –
1. What’s the last thing that goes through a grasshopper’s mind as he hits your windshield?
His butt.
2. If you think the correct spelling for parakeet is hard, try budgerigar (that’s why we Aussies call them budgies).
November 6th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
@ Jose – Not only is it wrong but you can’t assume that the test results will be applicable to later human consumers of the product, everyone knows that lab testing on animals is unreliable. For all we know gravity may have a completely different effect on grasshoppers than it does on human systems
November 6th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Only one quote seems approriate.
“And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords” Kent Brockman
November 6th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Wayne-
As I see it the grasshopper is just in front of the Heads Up Display (HUD) which is on the top of the panel inside the cockpit.
The T38 is a pressurized cockpit but I am unsure if it is oxygenated (the crew wear oxygen masks), this may explain the hypoxia comment.
November 6th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
That has to be a highest grasshopper on record, though with some help for a different species (known as “pilots.”)
Anecdotal, but this isn’t the highest an insect has gone above Earth on its own. I don’t know the type but there is apparently a tiny spider that spins a long strand and catches the wind. This insect has been found on jet fuselages after landing and (the story goes) “nose cones” after reentry.
November 6th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Ha, beat me to it, Sir Eccles.
Also…
That’s no insect, that’s and insectoid UFO and clearly we are being invaded! The audio was dubbed to cover up the conspiracy!
November 6th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
I for one welcome our insect overlords, and as a respected person in the media I can help round up people to work in the sugar caves.
November 6th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
I put T-38 into wikipedia, and this was one of the results: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingsby_T.38_Grasshopper
November 6th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
The T-38 also acts as a Shuttle pilot trainer. I wonder if this was a Shuttle Pilot?
November 6th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Their debugging software needs some serious upgrading.
November 7th, 2008 at 8:44 am
This was a Standard USAF T-38 from Laughlin AFB, in Del Rio, TX. Since Pilot training has changed since I was there, the student (if it was indeed a student as opposed to a dual IP flight) was on the fighter/bomber track (since students going to “heavies” fly the T-1). Also, the T-38 only has a partial pressurization system. Pilots have to wear the mask to fly. (I can’t recall the pressurization rate, but “cabin” altitude is pretty much always over 10,000 feet.) He was inside the whole time (besides, at the speeds the T-38 goes, there is no way he could have hung on in the slip stream).
Any other questions I can answer? Remember, the last time I flew a T-38 was in the spring of 1994!
November 7th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
He took a duck in the face at two hundred and fifty knots.
November 8th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Yes, partial pressurization in the Environmental Control system. That is why the pilots were wondering if hypoxia had settled in. I remember an altitude chamber run at Reese AFB in 1980 where I got a taste of hypoxia at a simulated altitude of 10,000 feet. Just like getting drunk.
But I declined to reenlist so I did not get my 20 minute joy ride. Left the USAF as a Sergeant…..after 4 years.