21 April 1961. USAF Major Robert Michael "Bob" White piloted the X-15-2, 56-6671 research aeroplane from Edwards Air Force Base in California on its first flight at full throttle, reaching a speed of 3,074 mph at an altitude of 79,000 feet, before climbing to 105,100 feet.
Kind of on topic
ReplyDeleteI was born in 57, so my early school days were during all of the heyday. Sears sold a pair of kids school shoes called X-15s for about 8 bucks. My mother bought them at the start of each school year. Had the X-15 graphics on the box.
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-sears-15-shoebox-jet-molded-3837218319
Endlessly incredible how they did this with slide rules. Good ideas are just that. They get proven out thru time.
ReplyDeleteI still believe, as time seems to have justified, the YF-23 over the YF-22, should have been chosen, because just now, with the SU-57 and other 5th-6th gen aircraft are essentially evolutions of the YF-23.
While the YF-23 out performed the YF-22 in some regimes of flight, overall the YF-22 better met the overall characteristics in the proposal. One critical area was maneuverability where the YF-23 had issues.
DeleteAnon@1:29 Have you ever used a slide rule? Don’t think so based on your comment. I still remember sitting at 1 of 100 drafting tables on the engineering floor, using D sized mylar and/or vellum drafting paper stock, plastic templates, lettering guides, and created actual blue prints for production. I got rid of the slide rule (estimate stick). Glad when really good calculators came out; paid a fortune for an HP11c for doing FMEAs.
ReplyDeleteThe X-15 flew higher than the women who were passengers on the Blue Origin flight.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing I thought of when I saw a picture or that BO thing was it looked like it was made by a company that made portajons. What's with those huge windows?
DeleteHe only went about 20 miles up into the atmosphere.....but I'm going to call him an astronaut.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn’t just slide rules. They used Friden calculators and log tables. Remember how to interpolate?
ReplyDeleteI still have my old Smoley's Four Combined Tables book. What a beast that was. I wonder how many of today's kiddies even know there was such a thing.
DeleteThere are pics of the X15 after flights where it got so hot the airframe was quite visibly eroded away. Tough guys.
ReplyDeleteRead someplace that these were supposed to be our first space craft. Fly into space then fly back and land. I read where they made three. One flew into space and never came back.
DeleteThree were made. One crashed, killing pilot Michael Adams. One is in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the other at the USAF Museum in Dayton.
DeleteThose were some amazing test pilots back then.
ReplyDeleteI can imagine the pilot briefing "What do you mean it doesn't have wheels!!?"
ReplyDeleteAl_in_Ottawa