Top Gun

A place for ACers to come and hang out after a hard day of escape-and-evade or survival training.

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Top Gun

Post by ApolloXI »

This is a dumb space camper question. :?:
I just saw Top Gun for the first time and noticed that both Top Gun and AC are Navy. I was wondering if Top Gun the movie was an influence on AC or was there some other reason why AC is not Air Force.
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Post by Boeing »

It is kind of both. There is both Air Force and Navy influences. I guess you could say there are somethings that they got from the movie, like the Top Gun composition but it has other things too. I hope this helps and doesn't make you more confused.
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Post by Spanky »

You are right, you do see alot of the "Top Gun" influance at AC. The reson was Ed Buckbee. He is the former Executive Director of the USSRC and the driving force behind SC and AC. He was a PR guy for NASA back in the 60's and saw the influence the military had on the astronaut corps. Most were military fighter.test pilots. Several of the earlier space campers (1982-1990) followed in those footsteps and pursued military aviation careers. Buckbee saw the potential after Top Gun came out to develop a military based aviation program simalar to SC....thus AC was born. It has changed and grown since it's inital delivers but the basics are there....Academics, land survival, water survival, and simulator work. As a former counselor and prgram manager I have seen many AC kids go into the military and some are out there protecting this country today. As far as the Air Force influence, there was not alot before the mid-90's.....however we always tried to make sure both services were well represented. Trust me the USAF was well represented from 1996-2004.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

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Post by Sandrat »

Not to be left out, there are several Marines (Rambler among them) and Soldiers (Doolittle, Me, and the SGM among others) out there too. The Marines had a squadron at AC for a while, and the Army influence has been the survival program, escape and evasion, and the more doctrinally correct exercises run from 1996 to 2003 or so.
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Post by Boomerang »

If you're talking marines don't forget Grunt as well
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Post by Spyder »

There is a lot of Naval influence around AC, but there are a number of people who I know from AC who have gone on to pursue the military, Safety, who is on this board is with the Army, but also, former cousnelors Jon Leetham "Okra", and Alex Hanna "Clips" and myself(who is not a counslor) are Air Force. Well, they are currently, Im starting AFROTC in the fall. AC is AC to all of us, and just still awesome, no matter which branch we're with!
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Post by monkeynautt »

I just watched Top Gun again and although it has nothing to do with the Space Camp part of camp, it still reminds me of it. Mostly because of the one time at camp where some of the boys would sing "You've Lost that Loving Feeling" to my counselor. I now break out laughing at that scene and when I watched it with friends they thought I was insane.
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Post by Spyder »

"You Lost that Loving Feeling" is a pretty common occurence at AC. Its frequently sung to over nervous Mach 2's who have to share a bus with Mach 3's and also we sang it to Ruth at graduation last year. Her face was bright red!
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Post by ApolloXI »

monkeynautt wrote:I just watched Top Gun again and although it has nothing to do with the Space Camp part of camp, it still reminds me of it. Mostly because of the one time at camp where some of the boys would sing "You've Lost that Loving Feeling" to my counselor. I now break out laughing at that scene and when I watched it with friends they thought I was insane.
I am trying to understand where you thought we are taking about Space Camp. In fact we are talking about AC.
I also remember some of our group singing that our counselor. And on that note I just got one of the remastered versions of the Top Gun soundtrack which includes "You've Lost that Loving Feeling."
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Post by Vincent »

Dude! Read the post.

She was just saying that it reminds her of Space Camp.
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Post by ApolloXI »

Vincent wrote:Dude! Read the post.

She was just saying that it reminds her of Space Camp.
:smacks forehead:
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Post by monkeynautt »

ApolloXI wrote:
I also remember some of our group singing that our counselor.
That may be because it was at Christmas Camp of '03 when we were on the same team.
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Post by monkeynautt »

Because that's the time I remember it from. (so many memories its hard to remember which one happened for each trip!)
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Post by Spyder »

I hate it when that happens. I was talking to Safety a while ago and we were trying tofigure out if we didn in fact actually meet each other when we were at camp, but weve both been so many times it was hard to keep all the people and memories straight!
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Dumb spacer question

Post by ApolloXI »

I also know what you two mean, I tend to run some of my times togther.
I know a little trainees get their call sign. This leads to another Space Camper question but how do the instructors get their call sign?
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Post by Spyder »

I believe counselors get their callsigns much the same way that trainees do. They just have "icebreakers" with the other counselors and get their callsignd based upon stories or answers to question andbehavior things like that. Example, my counselor in 05 was Clips, because he constantly spouted random movie lines, or movie "Clips" My other counselor, Fish, because... well.... she likes to drink
And so on and so forth
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Post by des »

When I went to AC, one of the counselors call signs was "nose dive". It's because he would nose dive the simulator. This is a little scary since most (not sure if all) of the AC counselors were pilots. :-)

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Post by Joker »

Spanky wrote:Academics, land survival, water survival, and simulator work. As a former counselor and prgram manager I have seen many AC kids go into the military and some are out there protecting this country today. As far as the Air Force influence, there was not alot before the mid-90's.....however we always tried to make sure both services were well represented. Trust me the USAF was well represented from 1996-2004.
Part of it was, Mike Martin, the first director of AC, was a Tomcat guy when he was in the Navy -- so it was all-Navy, all the time in the beginning.

The program grew more......diverse... later.

I still haven't figured out how the obsession with Navy SEALs and the almost religious devotion to the Black Aces came about...oh, wait, yes I have.
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Post by Sandrat »

You went there! :D
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Post by CastAway »

You know, I should probably watch Top Gun (never actually seen it, ever) before going to work there...
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