4 replies to this topic

[NSwanberg]

 

[MSwiss]

Quickly scrolling down, I thought it said X1/9.

I'm still going to therapy after owning one of those and a Fiat-engined, Lancia Beta coupe. LOL.

[Phil Hackett]

Scott Crossfield lived on the next street over from me... just a couple doors away from Sandy Leblond (Indy 500/Hot Rod trivia). I only found out about these things when I was in my late teens.

[Bill Seitz]

I have what would probably be considered an extreme interest in the X-15 program. I have 3 books and other articles on the topic and 15 hours of archival video footage compiled into a multi-DVD set. While the general concept of the video is correct, there are a number of inaccuracies, and video clips seemed to be used at random and not with any historical accuracy. The XLR-99 rocket motor was designed by Thiokol, aka ATK, and now Northrup-Grumman, Promontory, UT which has an example in their "rocket garden" in front of the factory. There were 3 vehicles: 66670 depicted in this video and hanging in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum on the National Mall; 66671 which actually attained the 6.7 mach speed record and is currently on display at the Museum of the USAF in Dayton, OH (without the ablative coating); and 66672 which set a maximum altitude record for winged aircraft and made several flights above 50 miles altitude before it crashed in the Mohave desert near Johannesburg, CA (there's a very nice memorial in the desert at the crash site). Neil Armstrong and Scott Crossfield were 2 of the 15 pilots. Only 1 is still with us today, 88 year old Joe Engle. Gen. Engle has the unique distinction of being the only pilot to have flown both the X-15 and Space Shuttle, and the only Shuttle pilot to fly a manual re-entry. He was picked for the manual re-entry flight in-part based on his previous experience with high sink rate dead stick landings with the X-15. The X-15 had an unpowered glide ratio of 4:1. The purpose of 66671 being lengthened, fitted with external fuel tanks, and receiving ablative was to test ramjet engines, not specifically to set a speed record. A dummy ramjet engine was attached under the fuselage ahead of the lower ventral fin on the flight which attained the record. It was intended to be one of a series of envelope expansion flights with increasing speeds up to Mach 8, but engineers did not account for turbulence heating around the dummy ramjet, and a hole was burned through the Inconel skin at the local of the dummy engine (which melted and fell off somewhere in the flight. 66671 was not destroyed, it was sent for repairs, and as mentioned above is on display in Dayton, OH. A few months after this flight, 66672 crashed and pilot Michael Adams was killed. This brought an end to the program a year later before 66671 could be repaired, so it never flew again. The program tried to end with 200 flights, but winter weather in the Mohave desert in November and December 1968 prevented making the final 200th flight. William "Pete" Knight, a California state senator until his death from cancer, later said that had he known that 66671 was not going to fly again, he would have pushed the envelope to at least Mach 7.0. The video makes no mention of the winged aircraft altitude records set with 66672 and maximum altitude of 364,000 feet. The maximum altitude was exceeded by Space Ship One, but the record for winged aircraft will likely never be broken. There were 2 modified B-52 motherships. One is on display at Edwards AFB, and the other is on display at Pima Air & Space Museum, Tucson. Pima also has the full-size X-15 wood mock-up that was used for the 1961 X-15 movie starring Charles Bronson and Mary Tyler Moore. They have modified it with a set of external fuel tanks as used on 66671.

[NSwanberg]

"Quickly scrolling down, I thought it said X1/9.

 

I'm still going to therapy after owning one of those and a Fiat-engined, Lancia Beta coupe. LOL."

 

According to Carl Seaberg: FIAT - First Italian Attempt at Technology