I think there is one out there that charge for rides in them. I believe it was $11,000 for 30mins? Not sure how legit the site was, it's been a years ago since I have seen it.
They are based at the space shuttle landing strip at Cape Canaveral Florida, in the same hanger that held the Columbia debris during the investigation of it's in flight break up.
https://preview.redd.it/ptdn06epv6of1.jpeg?width=4000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=234c20a23346a7fe374d78b37f23ea3f34d33ee5
Good luck!
When I was a kid I wanted to fly F14s (this was before the Top Gun movie), and wanted out of the house so badly I called a recruiter when I was 15 or 16 and asked if I could join the Navy at 17. Flying was my dream since I was probably 5.
He said yes, with Parent's consent (my dad joined the army at 17), and what do I want to do?
FLY F14S!
"Do you wear glasses?"
Yeah, why?
I was instantly deflated and all these years later - over 40 - I still remember how bad that was.
/now my eyes are fubar, can't even consider PPL. Oh well.
I know that pain.
My cousin flew F14s and F18s. Went through Annapolis and the whole thing. He was a poor swimmer, so he spent a year training by swimming in the Mississippi River almost every day it wasn’t frozen.
I desperately wanted to be a test pilot. Lived and breathed aeronautical engineering from around 12 to 16 or so. My cousin doesn’t know any of this. I’m chatting with him while he’s home for Christmas and he happens to mention: It’s a good thing you don’t want to be a pilot, they wouldn’t let you near a cockpit as colorblind as you are (I am very colorblind). I was devastated. Otherwise my vision was excellent. It never occurred to me that colorblindness might be a problem. I’m still salty about it 40 years later.
Private pilot requires only 20/40 correctable. If you can drive, you can get sport pilot.
Only you can decide if your vision is good enough for sport pilot, but your driver’s license can count as your medical
You assume it's just an Rx thing.
My vision is far better than 20/40 if you only look at the numbers, and I spent over $10k out of pocket to make that happen.
I have other issues.
It's hilarious. My buddy went E-O with a business admin degree (or something equally dumb sounding) and snagged an aviator slot. Hope your dreams come true!
Got a USAF pilot slot with a criminal justice degree.
And I know lots of dudes who went pointy nose with just liberal arts degrees.
Having a tech degree is only a huge plus much later if you’re interested in Test Pilot School or NASA hiring.
In fact, if you can get a 4.0 in a liberal arts degree (or something similarly within reach), vs a 3.0 in an tech program, you’re more likely to get a pilot slot with the higher GPA, not with the more advanced degree.
The only major way the advanced degree helps you in ROTC (my commissioning source) is in getting a tech scholarship. Which I used for two years then dropped the engineering program and scholarship, to be able to significantly lighten my workload and significantly raise my GPA, in the Criminal Justice BS program.
my college roommate got a degree in history. worked sales for a year or two after college then texted us out of the blue "I hate sales, I'm going to OCS."
we were all dying cuz he openly copped to getting drunk, watching top gun, and just saying fuck it. "how many dudes have signed up for, and then washed out of, OCS because they got drunk and watched Top Gun?"
and now he lands planes on boats in the middle of the ocean.
*held the Columbia debris*
I went to school with the woman that was in charge of that. She was the "airframe owner" or whatever it's called, and one of the astronauts was an ex boyfriend of hers that - get this - bought her some watch as a gift and when he gave her the case there was a note inside that said something like "help, I am being held hostage on STS-whatever-ill-fated-mission-it-was." He took it with him so she'd have something that flew in space.
And someone FOUND IT in Texas. And since it wasn't official NASA property she got it back.
I may have some of the finer details wrong but the story is here. You can't make this stuff up.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgI\_sJbcSyg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgI_sJbcSyg)
Yeah, I mean, don't bother trusting the video with the actual woman, pictures of her, and her telling the story from a first hand point of view. Trust the book written by "not her."
Thank you so, so much for confirming I didn't make it up.
This particular F-104 was brought to Italy disassembled in June 2023 and flew for the centenary of the Italian Air Force. You can see the event's emblem on the tail fin.
As others have said, they’re a perfectly safe aircraft when maintained properly and used for the proper role.
The Spanish and Japanese operated these with an almost flawless record. The Taiwanese and Italians were similar.
My father spent a huge amount of time in a 104, researching approach and landing techniques for the US space shuttle. Mostly published under titles like "Flight at Extremely Low L/D". I've got the memento model he was given by his friends at Dryden / Edwards.
He had a few remarks. 104 was a very by-the-numbers plane at lowish speeds. All the wing airflow management systems better be working or else. Any dings or crap on the wing, especially leading edge, was a no-go. Aside from that, it flew "like an airplane". Now you have the unpublished opinion of a senior NASA pilot, or at least my memories, on the subject.
Out of curiosity, was your father in the astronaut pool, or does NASA have a pool of test pilots specifically for research? And does he have a scientific/engineering background, military, or both?
Not astronaut. He was a Marine pilot(eventually ended up CO of USMCR A-4 squadron) who worked as a regular test pilot at NASA Ames / Moffett Field.
Aeronautical research, accident investigation / flight safety, V/STOL, airborne sciences. He flew everything, from the Avro Aerocar to Concorde.
That’s one of my dreams after I hopefully fly fighters is to get to navy tps then potentially go on to fly all sort of cutting edge planes and spacecraft.
I flew in the back seat of a two-seater F-104D in 1969 out of Luke AFB. Mach 2.1 straight and level at 45,000 feet. What a thrill. It was a post maintenance test flight of about 30 min. Love to do it again.
"The Starfighter had a poor safety record, especially in Luftwaffe service. The Germans lost 292 of 916 aircraft and 116 pilots from 1961 to 1989, its high accident rate earning it the nickname Witwenmacher ("widowmaker") from the German public." --wikipedia
Yes, because they used it as a low level nap of the earth aircraft, a role it was absolutely never designed to fulfil. Add in that the pilots were not even close to being as experienced as a modern fighter pilot is fresh out of training and you got a recipe for killing A L O T of people.
Exactly. It was a damned dragster. Hit the gas and sprint to altitude, take out enemy bombers, come back. It was absolutely NOT designed to be a ground attack aircraft or much of a dogfighter.
Read more, the losses were due to them using it as a low level attacker and lack of proper training aircraft to go from propeller planes to a mach 2 jet.
If you don't get hoodwinked by Lockheed sales reps into trying to use a thoroughbred interceptor as a strike fighter and nuclear vengeance bomber it's actually a perfectly fine aircraft
They'll be high and fast, where they belong. Using it as a low-level penetration tactical bomber in the German countryside was not a good plan. It was built as an interceptor, and in this role will being flying similar profiles.
The maximum altitude for a standard F-104C Starfighter was an official world record of 103,395.5 feet (31,513 meters), achieved on December 14, 1959, by Captain Joe Jordan.
This is not quite right. F-104s are used to launch small *payloads* into space, but these payloads are not *satellites* because they do not achieve orbit. These are sounding rockets. There is a project to adapt the system for orbit, with cubesats as payloads, but they have not performed a successful launch to my knowledge.
It's a really odd business model, because cubesat launch services are already so cheap piggy-backing off major launches - something like $30k/1U - that a smaller, dedicated launch platform is probably more expensive.
There is a market for dedicated launch services for small satellites because, while they are more expensive, they give you more freedom in when and where you want to fly. Essentially like taking a taxi instead of a bus.
If you mean the square here’s a comment on the video that mentions it:
@EnglishTurbines • 1y ago
The small square one is to prevent a pressure differential between outside the aircraft and the engine compartment. Air bleeds in to prevent a vacuum building...It's not for cooling or any other reason. ...
米
Suck in door for cooling the aft section between the engine and aircraft skin IIRC.
Depending on air speed and throttle setting there may not be enough ram air going through this space.
Got it. Interesting! It kept actuating so I thought it was a control surface but that didn't make any sense to me so all I could think of was cooling or air intake but ...that still seemed weird. Cool bird all around!
From what I can see, most of their birds are ex Italian. They flew them till 2004.
Pop quiz which aircraft did the Italians use for less than a decade between the Starfighter and the Typhoon
F-16A and F-16B, on loan from the USA, but I do believe you may be skipping a step in your list - didn't the Italians *first* loan Tornado ADV F.3s from the UK to fill the main fighter gap while waiting for the Typhoon?
After seeing how well the Koreans and Japanese maintain their jets, I would suspect that surplus from them would probably be in better condition than a boneyard bird anyhow.
I just want to hit mach one
More than you could ever know
Make my dreams come true
All I want for Christmas...... iiiiiiiiiiiiis.... Speeeeeeeeeeeeed.......
https://preview.redd.it/cy5j0ifxk7of1.jpeg?width=275&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1667b58e0603a10ecfd79612d6aeae6dba6f2272
I just want to hit mach one
More than you could ever know
Make my dreams come true
All I want for Christmas...... iiiiiiiiiiiiis.... ***Mach TWWOOOOOOOOOO......***
There. Made it rhyme for ya.
The US does not transfer military aircraft into civilian usage anymore. It took an act of Congress to release an F-4 Phantom to the Collings Foundation, and that F-4D came out of the Boneyard almost 40 years after retirement.
Didn't think you could launch something into orbit using an F-104, but seems like you can!
If you're interested in reading more about them, read straight from the source;
https://starfightersspace.com/operations/
Apparently they can launch Micro Satellites to just above the Karmin Line, and intend to build a larger rocket that'll carry Small Satellites to 112-350km+.
Also if you've got the cash, you can learn to fly it! Pretty cool.
One of the pilots has a bunch of videos from inside the cockpit and some technical/maintenance stuff, ground engine runs. Super informative and great to watch!
[Piercarlo Ciacchi](https://youtube.com/@piercarlociacchi)
Im guessing OP took some artistic liberty with the term. You could in theory launch a hypersonic rocket from it (which is how hypersonic tech is tested in free flight), but it wouldn't be practical because the high launch speed doesn't offset the small payload capacity. Those are usually launched from subsonic transport aircraft.
Not on the plane itself, they say they're working with the Air Force Research Laboratory on developing a Mach 5+ rocket to be airlaunched from the F-104.
Launching small satellites into space?
Guessing they have to be pretty small ?
Vought ASAT (ASM-135) was a 1200kg (~2600 lbs) missile that used an F-15 as a launcher and put a 14kg (~30 lbs) MKV into space.
I would be surprised if the F-104 could handle a rocket of this size.
Small payloads into space, but not satellites, because they don't reach orbit. Sounding rockets don't have to be that big, depending on your target payload and altitude - some are as small as 600kg. Big ones can be 5000kg and larger though.
There is a proposal to do an orbital launch of a cubesat (10cm cube no more than 1.3kg), but I don't believe they've actually performed a launch. Today, the smallest orbital rocket is the Japanese SS-520 (which is normally a high-altitude sounding rocket), which has a launch mass of 2300kg.
I saw one of their F-104s flying over St. Augustine a couple years ago. My astonishment was immense; definitely the last thing I would have expected that day.
They do regularly fly, but at this present time, they neither perform hypersonic research nor launch anything into space. Those are both supposedly in development. I’m curious to do the math on whether this is even technically feasible.
I am trying to decide which airplane to get to go check my cows in the evening.
Maybe you guyz have some advice:
F104 , wing loading 150 lb per sq ft, stall speed (max gross ) 194 knots.
F 15, wing loading 87 lbs /sq ft, stall speed 148 knots
Cessna 150, stall speed 42 knots, wing loading 10.2 lbs per sq foot
I think if I go faster I'll be finished quicker, but my wife doesn't want another fuel tank in the yard, and the Cessna does burn the same gas as my tractor.
I remember the first time I saw this bird in The Right Stuff when Yeager was checking it out. Thought it was such a badass looking plane (still is, but if looks could kill...).
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