To improve corporate jet safety, Bombardier Aerospace -- maker of Learjet and Challenger bizjets -- sponsors this annual week-long safety seminar. It draws nearly 400 bizjet pilots, mechanics and flight department chiefs, from around the world.

It's a sort of "Top Gun" school for corporate and charter jet pilots, whose "graduates" return to their flight departments to share the lessons learned.

Keynoted by speeches from FAA and NTSB chiefs -- an army of leading aviation industry safety experts give detailed technical safety presentations -- augmented with safety briefings and "there I was" stories from NASA experts and astronauts.

I attended all four days, and interviewed most of the speakers, including the astronauts and NASA men, NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman, and FAA Administrator Randy Babbit. National Test Pilot School director Sean Roberts graciously gave me a "private lesson" on bizjet upset recovery.

ABOVE: Simulating a ditching in the dark, an intrepid aviator (and amateur Houdini), is strapped into his "cockpit seat," blindfolded, then dunked inverted into the water, and promptly extricates himself in seconds -- surfacing after finding his way through a designated "emergency exit." Students practice first without goggles, as the Stark Survival lifeguards monitor them closely.

ABOVE: Astronaut Lousma gives the banquet presentation, recounting his months in Skylab (in one of the longest spaceflights of the early years), and later missions in the first Space Shuttles. Here he details the Shuttles' one-shot landing approach procedure.

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