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The X-15 was built by two manufacturers: North American Aviation was contracted for the airframe in November 1955, and Reaction Motors was contracted for building the engines in 1956. Like many X-series aircraft, the X-15 was designed to be carried aloft and drop launched from under the wing of a B-52 mother ship .
The flights of the North American X-15, an experimental American spaceplane built by North American Aviation and operated by the United States Air Force and NASA, were conducted from 1959 to 1968. Twelve pilots flew three X-15 spaceplanes, flying record high-altitude flights, high-speed flights, and sub-orbital spaceflights .
Joseph Albert Walker (February 20, 1921 – June 8, 1966) (Capt, USAF) was an American World War II pilot, experimental physicist, NASA test pilot, and astronaut who was the first person to fly an airplane to space. He was one of twelve pilots who flew the North American X-15, an experimental spaceplane jointly operated by the Air Force and NASA.
Michael James Adams (May 5, 1930 – November 15, 1967) (Maj USAF) was an American aviator, aeronautical engineer, and USAF astronaut. [1] He was one of twelve pilots who flew the North American X-15, an experimental spaceplane jointly operated by the Air Force and NASA.
Engle was one of twelve pilots who flew the North American X-15, an experimental spaceplane jointly operated by the Air Force and NASA. As an X-15 pilot, Engle made three flights above 50 miles, thus qualifying for astronaut wings under the American convention for the boundary of space.
The North American X-15 was a joint NASA–US Air Force program, [10] with the hypersonic test aircraft becoming the first non-dedicated spacecraft to cross from the atmosphere to outer space. The X-15 also served as a testbed for Apollo program technologies, as well as ramjet and scramjet propulsion. [4]
Development began in the 1950s by the Reaction Motors Division of Thiokol Chemical Company to power the North American X-15 hypersonic research aircraft. It could deliver up to 57,000 lbf (250 kN) of thrust with a specific impulse of 279 s (2.74 km/s) or 239 s (2.34 km/s) at sea level.
The Cosmosphere grew from a planetarium established on the Kansas State Fairgrounds in 1962. The 105,000-square-foot (9,800 m 2) facility houses the largest collection of Russian space artifacts outside of Moscow, and a collection of US space artifacts second only to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. [1] [2]