- [Tim] I've flown past mach one
several times off a carrier.
The most exciting portion of it
is getting shot off the front end.
The body is experiencing this different
feel to it completely.
From zero to 150 miles an hour in about
two and a half seconds.
I'm Tim Hibbits, I am a pilot,
and I have flown faster than the speed of sound.
When you're sitting on the carrier at night,
you're right across from the island which has
all these big, orange, sodium lights.
It's this orange glow that's palling everything
and everybody's almost monochromatic
and outside of that, it's just pitch black.
As soon as they punch the button,
and you start off on the catapult,
you've got these lights now that were around you
and now they're streaking past you.
You body is pulled back into the seat.
Your hearing is now assaulted.
You're under these extreme forces.
Anything that could go wrong now
could be really disastrous in the next few seconds.
Suddenly you reach the end of the catapult.
And all you're left with is hanging out,
for an instant you can feel, hear, and see nothing.
Totally different experience for the person
who's watching it from outside.
So you're watching this airplane and he's
raging by you, but you still can't hear a thing.
And then he'll get four or five hundred feet past you
and then suddenly, (jet engine) this thunder hits you,
and it just rattles everything.
And it just compresses your chest.
It's a little wonky for a half a second.
If you just take this really quick snapshot,
“Okay, did I die? I don't think I died.”
Okay, everything is cool again?”
“Yeah, everything is cool again.”
And then you continue with your mission.