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Science Forum Index » Space - History Forum » Another thing that grated on me about When We Left...
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| Lhead... |
 Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 9:57 am |
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In the first few minutes, the X-15 was mentioned and footage was
shown. The VO intoned the reasoning behind the X-15 was "...NASA
wanted to get into space and they were in a hurry...".
Well, the X-15 was as I'm sure you all realize a research aircraft
designed to explore flight regions and dynamics beyond the
capabilities of other aircraft of the day. It was not a spacecraft
other than incidentally. Space was part of its operating realm, and in
the high profile missions the pilots did experience 0g, and X-15
pilots did earn astronaut wings (some did, I don't know about all).
But when you hear the X-15 referred to, then or now - it is always
termed an aircraft, not a spacecraft.
Personally, I'd love to see a multi-part Discovery Channel series on
the entire X series of aircraft. Talk about nichy! Limited commercial
appeal would guarantee such a thing would never get off the ground -
so to speak. Such a show was made many years ago. I don't recally who
produced it but I do remember Lloyd Dobins of NBC news narrated it. It
was called the The Rocket Pilots. I've got it on tape somewhere. Great
interviews with Yeager and Crossfield and great footage including the
X-15 ground test explosion. |
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| Jud McCranie... |
| Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 3:01 pm |
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On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:57:49 -0700 (PDT), Lhead
<chestand1116 at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
Quote: Personally, I'd love to see a multi-part Discovery Channel series on
the entire X series of aircraft.
There was a whole series about X-planes, but I don't remember which
channel did it.
--
Replace you know what by j to email |
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| Jeff Findley... |
| Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 5:31 pm |
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"Lhead" <chestand1116 at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote in message
news:31193275-7088-49a9-a564-69dc51e624e6 at (no spam) c58g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
Quote: In the first few minutes, the X-15 was mentioned and footage was
shown. The VO intoned the reasoning behind the X-15 was "...NASA
wanted to get into space and they were in a hurry...".
Well, the X-15 was as I'm sure you all realize a research aircraft
designed to explore flight regions and dynamics beyond the
capabilities of other aircraft of the day. It was not a spacecraft
other than incidentally. Space was part of its operating realm, and in
the high profile missions the pilots did experience 0g, and X-15
pilots did earn astronaut wings (some did, I don't know about all).
But when you hear the X-15 referred to, then or now - it is always
termed an aircraft, not a spacecraft.
Personally, I'd love to see a multi-part Discovery Channel series on
the entire X series of aircraft. Talk about nichy! Limited commercial
appeal would guarantee such a thing would never get off the ground -
so to speak. Such a show was made many years ago. I don't recally who
produced it but I do remember Lloyd Dobins of NBC news narrated it. It
was called the The Rocket Pilots. I've got it on tape somewhere. Great
interviews with Yeager and Crossfield and great footage including the
X-15 ground test explosion.
Depends on your defintion of spacecraft. Certainly the X-15 was a far cry
from an orbital spacecraft. In fact, it could fly high or fly fast, but not
on the same flight.
However, the X-15 certainly could operate as a suborbital spacecraft. That
is, it could exceed 50 miles in altitude, which is how the U.S. Air Force
defined being in space. So the U.S.A.F. pilots that exceeded that altitude
in the X-15 did get astronaut wings. But, it wasn't until many years after
the fact that the civilian X-15 pilots were awarded astronaut wings. See
article below.
http://www.space.com/news/cs_050823_civilian_x15.html
Jeff
--
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein |
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| Neil Gerace... |
| Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 6:46 pm |
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On Jun 11, 11:00 am, Pat Flannery <flan... at (no spam) daktel.com> wrote:
Quote: Which one suspects, is because the X-15 could get that high, and 50
miles was a nice round number. 
Only in that Roman system of units you use there  |
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| Brian Thorn... |
| Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 7:22 pm |
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On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:57:49 -0700 (PDT), Lhead
<chestand1116 at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
Quote: In the first few minutes, the X-15 was mentioned and footage was
shown. The VO intoned the reasoning behind the X-15 was "...NASA
wanted to get into space and they were in a hurry...".
I took that to mean that the current system (progressively higher and
faster in X planes) would take too long, and the X-15 was used to
illustrate the "take too long" plan.
Brian |
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| Pat Flannery... |
| Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 9:45 pm |
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Lhead wrote:
Quote: I don't recally who
produced it but I do remember Lloyd Dobins of NBC news narrated it. It
was called the The Rocket Pilots.
Full title was "An American Adventure - The Rocket Pilots":
http://polish.imdb.com/title/tt0213200/usercomments
And it was a very good show, and was later rebroadcast by A&E.
One of the documentary channels (Discovery, History, Science, Military,
etc) did do a show or two on X-planes...was it part of the "Wings" series?
Quote: I've got it on tape somewhere. Great
interviews with Yeager and Crossfield and great footage including the
X-15 ground test explosion.
The official explanation for that was that a stuck vent valve caused the
Lox tank to over-pressurize and rupture... but to me that always looked
like a classic "hard start" of the engine, particularly as the pilot
says he is "going for restart" just prior to the explosion.
Pat |
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| Pat Flannery... |
| Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 10:00 pm |
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Jeff Findley wrote:
Quote: However, the X-15 certainly could operate as a suborbital spacecraft. That
is, it could exceed 50 miles in altitude, which is how the U.S. Air Force
defined being in space.
Which one suspects, is because the X-15 could get that high, and 50
miles was a nice round number.
Try to orbit a satellite at fifty miles up and watch what happens.
Even the 100 km standard now accepted seems sort of low.
Pat |
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| Jud McCranie... |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 7:41 pm |
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On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:57:49 -0700 (PDT), Lhead
One thing this show points out to me is that we need something in
between it and the Spacecraft Films DVDs. This TV show leave me
wanting more, quite a bit more. I have quite a few of the Spacecraft
Films DVDs, and there are many times when I ask myself "why am I
watching this?" Spacecraft Films needs to release selectively edited
versions of their material.
--
Replace you know what by j to email |
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| OM... |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 10:49 pm |
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On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:41:37 -0400, Jud McCranie
<youknowwhat.mccranie at (no spam) comcast.net> wrote:
Quote: Spacecraft Films needs to release selectively edited
versions of their material.
....Spacecraft Films needs to do two things specifically for me,
because I'm a greedy, selfish one-legged bastard:
1) An ASTP DVD. Now. Not a year from now. NOW!
2) Locate all of the Saturn program development quarterly briefing
films. There's got to be copies of the missing ones out there, and I
actually found those really fascinating. They show the program from an
engineering standpoint and not a historians, so they're not as
dumbed-down at times. Then again, I've always enjoyed industrial
quarterly report films like that, especially aerospace or navy-related
ones.
....On a side note, an OMBlogger sent me a 3DS file of ASPT. I haven't
loaded it yet, but it could save me the hassle of having to build my
own DM mesh and locating a Soyuz 19 mesh that's of the same quality as
the Apollo CSM stack someone "acquired" for me a while back.
OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
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| Terrell Miller... |
| Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 10:13 am |
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"OM" <om at (no spam) all_trolls_must_DIE.com> wrote in message
news:st615450464m8h2sdt8cnl53769jr8aeio at (no spam) 4ax.com...
Quote: ...Spacecraft Films needs to do two things specifically for me,
because I'm a greedy, selfish one-legged bastard:
you sell yourself short, Bob.
One-and-a-half ;)
--
Terrell Miller
millerto at (no spam) bellsouth.net
"If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee - that
will do them in."
- Bradley's Bromide |
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