Neil, my IFR flight students have to know how to handle an airplane if they fly into a thunderstorm inadvertently, particularly in knowing how not to over stress the airframe. Are you suggesting that I should fly them into a storm to prove the techniques work?
Excellent example. No, I'm not suggesting you fly them into a thunderstorm. I am suggesting that you place them under the hood for many hours as pilot in command during cross country flights, the closest condition you can get to the risk without actually taking the risk of flying into a thunderstorm. Now if the pilot's military mission was to fly through a thunderstorm to reach their target and they didn't perform the necessary requisite hood training before the mission because it was construed as being immoral because it was potentially dangerous, then I would say that was ridiculous.
By the way, do you believe the story about JFK jr. stalling his plane? I had the meager hood training for a private pilots license and I'm confident I could have kept that plane on the straight and level using instruments in those conditions. I believe he was working on his Instrument rating and already had many hours of hood time.
Off topic, but I'll respond. Many fully rated, experienced IFR pilots have come to grief flying VMC into IMC. He was essentially flying into a black hole with no horizon, even though the conditions were legally VMC. If I recall correctly, he didn't stall the aircraft - it was the classic graveyard spiral and it flew into the ocean. So, no, he, his wife, and his sister-in-law weren't murdered by some cabal, if that's where you're going.
BTW, I have a training technique that I virtually guarantee is one where you'll put yourself in the graveyard spiral, even if you're a multi-thousand hour IFR pilot, within about 90 seconds. The longest I've seen someone last is about 150 seconds. I got it from a very wise pilot examiner and use it as an object lesson about how unreliable seat-of-the-pants piloting is.
ETA and back on subject: If I know the airplane has been tested at the factory, been properly maintained, know the G-load and V-speed limits, and have learned the techniques for flying an aircraft in an inadvertent thunderstorm encounter, then there's no good reason to actually go into a cell. But your logic says my training and the testing of the aircraft is only valid if I do so.
Now, that usually a self-induced emergency, so it doesn't match up precisely with the spacesuit/sublimator issue. But take icing as an example. I have flown light GA airplanes with known icing equipment, notably the Diamond DA-42 with a "weeping wing". I've read the approved flight manual, know how the system works, read the relevant training material from the FAA, Jeppesen, ASA, ad infinitum. Because of this training, I know how to fly the airplane in icing conditions. Never happened, because, even when conditions were favorable, I never was '"lucky" enough to pick up ice in the airplane (oddly enough, I picked up a boatload of ice in Cherokee when it was supposed to be too warm, but I digress). Yet, even though I never had the experience of flying in ice I knew the
system (not that particular aircraft) had been tested and approved, both at the component level and as an integrated whole. Thus, I had confidence in it and did not have to take the plane to a full scale icing tunnel to test it before I flew it.
