VonoTemp

Flying KC-135s was my first assignment after graduating from the Air Force Academy and after general pilot training. I was co-pilot and then aircraft commander. Born in 1952, my life was very much affected by the years immediately following WWII. This was a time of optimism, a tremendous boom in aerospace, and dreams of a push-button future. My Dad’s B-24 bomber was pretty amazing technology that helped win the War. But post-war, the B-24s were scrap and there were now screaming jet engines, electronic computers getting smaller all the time, and advanced aircraft that could fly to the edge of space itself -- the stratosphere. One of these aircraft was the KC-135 Stratotanker whose operational ceiling was 50,000 feet. Above that, the pilot wears a spacesuit.   The first KC-135A rolled off the assembly line in 1956. They remain key assets today. I flew them from 1977 to 1982. The KC-135 aircraft is a Boeing product and looks a great deal like the Boeing 707, which was its contemporar...

The “about me” section of this blog says I am a retired Cold Warrior and a devout Roman Catholic. How can it be that a fellow with one bachelor and two masters of science degrees; a fellow who has used the scientific method consistently throughout his 40 year aerospace career; and a fellow who teaches others the scientific method; how can this fellow be a devout Roman Catholic? Actually, it is very common. I have met and worked with hundreds of devoutly religious people in my career. Popular culture nowadays creates an atmosphere of   “things people just know without needing to talk about”. One of those things we all know without discussing is that you can only really know something if SCIENCE has investigated it and made public its judgment. There are so many things wrong with this idea that it could only thrive if it is never taken out of the closet and examined.   Let’s do that, shall we? Let’s examine this silly idea. First, most people get their “science” by reading about...