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Posted: 8/27/2019 10:13:27 PM EDT
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One of my absolute favorite things ever created by the hand of man.
A throttle-able rocket engine with a fuselage carved out of solid Inconel X. |
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My dad delivered it to the USAF museum back in '69 when he was a C-133 navigator. https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/220924/dad-X-15A_jpg-1069820.JPG View Quote I visited that museum with my Dad, and remember thinking it was the coolest, most bad assed thing I ever saw. I need to go back, I see it's much bigger now. |
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bunch of pitchers here: http://www.mach25media.com/x15chap01.html
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https://live.staticflickr.com/7346/9458073379_1f041a6664_b.jpg X-15 Crash at Mud Lake, Nevada An engine failure forced Jack McKay, a NASA research pilot, to make an emergency landing at Mud Lake, Nevada, in the second X-15. The aircraft's landing gear collapsed and the X-15 flipped over on its back. McKay was promptly rescued by an Air Force medical team standing by near the launch site, and eventually recovered to fly the X-15 again. But his injuries, more serious than at first thought, eventually forced his retirement from NASA. The aircraft was sent back to the manufacturer, where it underwent extensive repairs and modifications. It returned to Edwards in February 1964 as the X-15A-2, with a longer fuselage (52 ft 5 in) and external fuel tanks.The basic X-15 was a rocket-powered aircraft 50 ft long with a wingspan of 22 ft. It was a missile-shaped vehicle with an unusual wedge-shaped vertical tail, thin stubby wings, and unique side fairings that extended along the side of the fuselage. Date: November 9, 1962 View Quote |
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... as a kid I was enamored by this incredible machine. Molded my desire (moonshot too) to become an aerospace engineer
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You have to wonder where our space program would be today if we'd continued on the path that was being forged with the X-15, and the Lifting Bodies (ie, the 6 million dollar man) the X-24, etc etc etc.
But, we were diverted/distracted by sputnik, and hence the Redstone/Mercury program....... Amazing shit done with slide rules..... |
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X-24 program and follow ons happened after Redstone/Mercury. And rumor has it they are still in progress.
https://gizmodo.com/secret-u-s-air-force-spaceplane-breaks-record-with-719-1837605822 among others |
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There's an X-15A2 (the fastest variant of the X-15) on display at the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. It's in the Space Gallery (f yeah!)
25 pics here, including the last living X-15 pilot: https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/195761/north-american-x-15a-2/ |
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X-24 program and follow ons happened after Redstone/Mercury. And rumor has it they are still in progress. https://gizmodo.com/secret-u-s-air-force-spaceplane-breaks-record-with-719-1837605822 among others View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
X-24 program and follow ons happened after Redstone/Mercury. And rumor has it they are still in progress. https://gizmodo.com/secret-u-s-air-force-spaceplane-breaks-record-with-719-1837605822 among others What are they doing up there? We have no idea. But given how bad things are going on Earth—between the global rise of fascism, the deaths of children in American concentration camps, and the disastrous fires in the Amazon—here’s hoping that the Air Force is developing some kind of human escape plan. |
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Notice all the cool stuff was done cheap and easy before the EPA existed? (before 1970)
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Pretty awesome! I saw some really really fast moving unidentified flying object using NVG the other night. Not sure what but it was moving.
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Mud Lake NV is 16 miles NW of the Tonopah Test Range air base i.e. Area 51's little brother. I wonder if it was trying to land there? View Quote Tonopah Test Range at the time didn't have a runway capable of handling the X-15 until the F-117 program started. Then the original 5 to 6 thousand foot runway was extended to 10,000ft and it was strengthened for aircraft heavier than light transports that were the only users prior to then. |
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Mud Lake was a designated emergency landing site for the X-15 because it was almost directly under the flight path and there were several miles of lakebed available to land on. Plus, 16 miles of cross-range flight was probably too much distance for the X-15 to handle, especially in an emergency. Tonopah Test Range at the time didn't have a runway capable of handling the X-15 until the F-117 program started. Then the original 5 to 6 thousand foot runway was extended to 10,000ft and it was strengthened for aircraft heavier than light transports that were the only users prior to then. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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Mud Lake NV is 16 miles NW of the Tonopah Test Range air base i.e. Area 51's little brother. I wonder if it was trying to land there? Tonopah Test Range at the time didn't have a runway capable of handling the X-15 until the F-117 program started. Then the original 5 to 6 thousand foot runway was extended to 10,000ft and it was strengthened for aircraft heavier than light transports that were the only users prior to then. |
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What could have been if the program kept going: Mach 5, scramjet powered X-15 growth proposals https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/318250/serjx15c-777266.jpg View Quote |
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I am currently trying to design and manufacture a reusable KNO3 and sugar SRB powered scale model of that beauty for the Texas A&M Society of Flight Test Engineers. Its quite the challenge but I got my first castings machined last semester and our glide test prototype is almost ready for test flights. Its about 3ft long and when its finished it should experience 14g's of acceleration via accelerating from 0mph to 200mph in just under a second.
Should be fun. This is the glide test vehicle, which is made of foam. The final article will be made from either carbon fiber or fiberglass. Attached File Attached File |
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Those things were crazy fast at the edge of engineering. The speed would make the glass on the window opaque so they had an "eyelid" over the left side that the pilot could open in order to see when he landed.
I can't imagine the thoughts going through a man's mind while he hung out by himself on the wing of Balls 8. |
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The first model airplane I built c.1968 iirc
Second was the B-58 |
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I used to know a guy that worked on the X-15. He was an interesting guy but I haven't thought about him in years. Some quick googling and I found him here.
After graduation from Stanford in 1954 with a degree in mechanical engineering, I took a summer position at the NACA Ames Research Center in Sunnyvale, California with plans to begin a master's degree program, but without a clear idea of how. Instead I got married and accepted a position at Pratt-Whitney Aircraft in East Hartford, Connecticut as a Test Engineer, having interviewed that spring.
The job at Pratt was less than expected, and I decided after two years to return to California. Pratt came to the rescue with a position at the Larwrence Livermore Nuclear Laboratory as a mechanical engineer. This job lasted a year, as Pratt decided to continue the work in Connecticut. Again, there was a position open at Edwards AFB in flight test of advanced turbojet engines at Pratt's facility. I was assigned to an F-101 with two test engines and an F-8U with one representing both Air Force and Navy applications. The Pratt facility was closed in December 1959. Across the ramp from Pratt the North American X-15 was undergoing flight demonstration of its contract goals. I visited the NASA High Speed Flight Center as Pratt was phasing out and was hired as a propulsion engineer specialist. My first assignment on the X-15 was subsystems engineer for the auxiliary power unit, environmental control, and pilot escape systems. One year later I became the operations project engineer on X-15-1, #6670. During the period of 1962 to 1966, under my direction, X-15-1 flew 47 flight missions and a total of 114 in flight events. NASA conducted two years of high speed research on the XB-70 VALKIRE. My position was operations project engineer with the responsibilities of coordinating and directing modification, flight preparation, and mission activities. At the conclusion of the program, I was promoted to Section Chief of the Flight Operation Engineering Section. During the 1970's my career included several administrative positions, ending my hands-on engineering work. With passing time and experience, I became Deputy Director of Flight Operations, Acting Director of Administration, Acting Director of Flight Operations, Director of Projects and Liaison Office, and finally the dream job of all, the Director of Flight Operations! I held this position for four and a half years before my retirement in1985 after a 25 year career in the world's premier flight test facility. The STS Shuttle program was developed and flown by NASA during my tenure as OPS Director, and some seventeen missions were recovered at Edwards for which I had responsibility for preparation for ferry and launch back to Kennedy. One year after my retirement, the Shuttle Challenger accident occurred. The presidential Rogers Commission was initiated with Neil Armstrong as deputy to Rogers . For five months I participated in meetings in Washington, NASA centers, and contractor facilities. The investigation quickly identified the solid booster "O" ring as the cause of the accident. Also evident was NASA's management's culture of violating its own operating ground rules. Although NASA's name implies a single organization, it was my experience that in all ways it was "a"eronautics and "S"pace. With Johnson and Kennedy it was always turf and control. View Quote |
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Who is the best pilot I ever saw? |
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https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/2275/7C4C0955-5D32-4C86-A600-B1C13836BC03_jpeg-1070209.JPG View Quote They were pushing the speeds ever higher and for a longer duration. They solved a lot of engineering problems for future generations. |
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Was there ever a South American variety ?
Designed by Nazi's, like all the coolest planes back then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Dornberger |
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I have a book about the X-15 written by one of the pilots - Milton O. Thompson
The foreward for the book was written by Neil Armstrong, who also flew the X-15 prior to joining Nasa. My copy is signed by Neil himself |
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The X-15 was indeed a great airplane. It initially had yaw stability problems that the pilot and the instruments could not really sense. the result was one side of the fuselage would glow red hot!
Northrop Aviation was given the task of coming up with a solution, which my dad was a part of. The came up with the so-called "Q-Ball" (Q referring to Dynamic Pressure) as far forward in the nose as you could get, and it completely solved the stability problem. The Q-Ball can clearly be seen in a couple of archived X-15 videos in the day. My dad went on to design and build the attitude control systems for the NSA/USAF spy satellites in the 70's & 80's (and thanks Christopher Boyce, aka The Falcon, with his buddy The Snowman ), but he was always very proud of that Q-Ball system they invented for the X-15. I miss him every day. |
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