Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin A USAF Thunderbirds F-16 approaches a KC-135 stratotanker for midair refueling, November 4, 2024. Being a longtime space buff, I know about the KC-135. In the day, it was famous for simulating weightlessness for soon-to-be NASA astronauts.
The plane would climb and dive, climb and dive, climb and dive - a parabolic motion, if you will. During the climb phase, which lasted for about 8,000 feet, the rider would pull a moderate 2 Gs, or twice his body weight. But on the steep 40-degree dive, he would feel no Gs.
In fact, the rider would be weightless for about 25 seconds. After a number of parabolas, some trainees would get sick - hence the plane’s infamous nickname, the “Vomit Comet.” (Original Caption) 11/9/1970: Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell weightless while flying through a parabolic arc aboard a KC-135.
The USAF plane creates the weightless environment as a training exercise. But weightlessness training is just a small part of what the KC-135 is capable of. For more than six decades, the venerable aircraft has acted as an international midair refueling tanker for a variety of USAF military planes, including F-15, F-16, F-22 and F-35 fighter jets, and B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers.
This past week, I traveled to McConnell AFB in Wichita, Kansas, for an up-close look at the refueling process. Turns out the famous Thunderbirds team was flying from a Pensacola, Florida, air show event back to its home base of Nellis, near .