Season 22, Day 3 - "These Pilots Don't Fly"

It's Test week, and today's quiz is inspired by the test pilot.

New players: Welcome! For division placement, you can either: 1. play the preseason quizzes (linked below) and I will slot you in a division based on your results (please do this before completing today's quiz if you choose this option), or 2. simply start with this week's quizzes and I will place you in Freshman-B by default.

Test pilot

A test pilot is an aircraft pilot who has the training to fly and evaluate new or experimental airplanes. They use specific maneuvers known as “flight test techniques” to test an aircraft’s performance. One notable test pilot was Chuck Yeager (pictured), the first pilot to travel faster than the speed of sound in level flight, thereby breaking the sound barrier. At the direction of President Eisenhower, John Glenn, Alan Shepard and the rest of the Mercury 7 (the first American astronauts) were all military test pilots, as were Neil Armstrong and many other later astronauts. The experiences of many test pilots (including Yeager and the Mercury 7 astronauts) are covered in Tom Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff and its 1983 film adaptation. Named for U.S. Air Force test pilot Glen Edwards, Edwards Air Force Base is the home of a school for test pilots. The 1970s TV series The Six Million Dollar Man starred Lee Majors as a test pilot who is “rebuilt” after he’s injured in a crash. In the sci-fi comedy movie Innerspace (the 1987 Oscar winner for Best Visual Effects), Dennis Quaid plays a Navy test pilot who volunteers for a miniaturization experiment and is mistakenly injected into Martin Short’s body.