I was watching the movie Top Gun and one the characters was an instructor that was an astrophysicist. Is there any reason that an astrophysicist would be instructing navy pilots on anything?
To add a sexual element to what would have otherwise been a one-dimensional film.
Officers that enroll at the Air Force Academy can choose from a wide range of majors. As such, you might find pilots with degrees ranging anywhere from Engineering to Biology to History.
As I remember, though, Kelly McGillis’s character is a civilian.
Right. A civilian with a PhD in astrophysics. Aeronautical/aerospace engineering would make sense. But what would the top gun school need with an instructor with a PhD in astrophysics?
Probably the same thing that big accounting firms need with them: They’re math whizzes and often their formulas can be adapted to other things.
But she is not a number cruncher. She is an instructor for the pilots.
She analyzes the videos of their flights, and would probably need to be a number cruncher to be able to accurately say if a plane could handle an alternate manover. Fighter pilots tend to have advanced degrees and a good understanding of math is necessary for them to be able to do their jobs. Having an instructor with a degree in underwater basket weaving wouldn’t do them much good, no matter how sexy she was.
Absolutely. A lot of astrophysics training is more about being able to analyse and glean physics from images, so I imagine that this could certainly happen. Plus also consider that the Navy does have a cadre of astrophysicists in its pay anyway – at the Naval Research Laboratories in Washington D.C. The astronomers are civilians, but NRL is a mixed civilian and military site.
Channel Shatner much? 
As Karl Gauss notes, if she has certain other qualifications, they can probably find a need.
I know a guy who taught at the Top Gun school. He never ran across any instructors that either looked like Kelly McGillis or had a specialty of astrophysics.
When I was in the USAF my squadron was down the street from the USAF equivalent, then called the Fighter Weapons School. The Top Gun movie came out while I was stationed there & was the butt of much derision, and the source of some great insults & many now-cliche’d sayings.
The vast majority of instructors were pilots, who as noted above, all have bachelors in something, ranging from astrophysics to zoology. Many had masters, generally in non-technical subjects because those are easier to get by USAF correspondence courses while stationed on Korea or wherever.
For some weapon-specific training, e.g. how to bombs really work, they had folks from the munitions maintenance field, typically uber-sharp senior enlisted.
If there were any civilians, they were former military who were hangers-on (“retreads” in the argot) & taught the intro to … courses.
At that time (late 1980s), 100% of the instructors of all types would have been male. Female fighter pilots /WSOs hadn’t been invented yet. A female non-pilot instructor would have been legally possible, but wasn’t practically possible; the jobs were too elite for the tiny fraction of women then in the service in any role to have a chance at being selected.
So NOBODY in the 3 years I was nearby looked even a little like Kelly McGillis.
Botom line: There’s no use for an astrophysicist at the school. Like her unreal breasts, her unreal education is just another unreality piled on the heaping pile of unreality in that utterly unreal movie.
However unrealistic the movie may have been, there is the tiniest grain of truth to this part. See this page for one version of the background. Short version, the Center for Naval Analyses (essentially the Navy’s think tank) has a few dozen analyst billets at various strategic and tactical commands, and Kelly McGillis’ character was supposedly loosely inspired by the one then at NAS Miramar. The vast majority of CNA analysts have advanced degrees in science (including, yes, astrophysics), math, or engineering. See, the Navy has this crazy idea that people with analytical backgrounds can actually apply their skills outside of the subject matter area they got their degrees in.
I will certainly grant, though, that notwithstanding her name, Ms. Fox is no Kelly McGillis.
I came here to relate basically the same story. A senior analyst at CNA told me much the same thing.
CNA is a pretty cool place. They recruit quite aggressively for science PhD grads at places like Caltech, offering themselves up as an interesting alternative to academia. Just what your degree was in isn’t of much interest - they analyze interesting problems that nobody studied in school, no matter what their major field was.
I know several Caltech PhD’s who have gone to work for them (or a similar outfit, the Institute for Defense Analyses), few of whom had even heard of the place before attending a career fair at school. If you’re burned out on examining vortex shedding behind oscillating cylinders (something a buddy of mine did his thesis on before heading to IDA) and don’t feel like spending your career doing more of the same - a mood many people are in around the time they finish grad school - CNA or IDA can be very attractive options.
I am almost certain that her breasts were real. If she got implants it was after Witness.
It may have just been part of the story ,but would those people also have access to sensitive information , ala goose giving the bird to a Soviet mig.
Of course none of the other reasons for that make sense either.
Declan
As far as I know, they probably wouldn’t without the relevant clearances. The astrophysicists in the employ of the US Navy tend mainly to be radio astronomers – a holdover from the development of radar. When I was at NRL (2005), security was pretty tight, and access to sensitive areas was very tightly controlled. As a foreign civilian, I wasn’t allowed anywhere without a chaperone (even to go to the toilet!), and the movement of US Nationals who were civilian personnel was also restricted to civilian designated areas of the facility.
So, in a nutshell, yes the US Navy employs astronomers, no they wouldn’t have had access to sensitive information, and its all made up for Top Gun.
Apart from the bit about pretty female astrophysicists – those exist… 