Today, Tomorrow and Titan III, part 2, MAN IN SPACE

[Music] mid July 1966 the fullscale heavyweight lifting body is ready for its first test flight strapped under the wing of a B-52 Thompson is to be taken to 45,000 ft and then dropped into a plummeting dive wingless and Powerless he is to execute two 90° turns during a 217c descent at the last moment lower the landing gear and then straight to a spectacular 200 mph landing on the lake bit there was a feeling of anticipation uh certainly on the First Flight of the heavyweight vehicle I'm sure that every test pilot goes through this and yet the extensive simulation work that I had done on the vehicle pretty well convinced me that it would fly and that I could get it down and land it safely with the uh background that I had in the lightweight vehicle I uh felt much better on the first flight and was actually uh anxious to get off the hooks get off the B52 and see how well it would fly okay all systems go check your dampers track looks good heading is good okay flying real nice now give us an air speed Alpha turn air speed again the Steep flight path angle was uh very apparent the rate of descent averaged out about 15 ,000 ft a minute which sounds uh pretty impressive but actually uh you have quite a bit of time to evaluate the handling quality to the vehicle and prepare for the [Music] landing beautiful milk beautiful I've got you 389 well done no right that goes further the next 15 it the lifting body work that we are presently involved in May benefit the Space Program some 10 years in the future from every flight program uh there's a tremendous amount of data which is was applicable to the manspace vehicle Les not necessarily the exact same system but the concept in the future a version of the heavyweight vehicle will be equipped with an X15 rocket plane engine and Thompson will take it to 880,000 Ft and 1200 mph before starting The Descent further in the future and as more funds become available a piloted lifting body with a heat shield will be launched from Cape Kennedy at top the Titan 3 for a flight that will carry it from the Atlantic to the Pacific where it will re-enter the atmosphere for a controlled landing on the lake bed in a way uh we may be considered test pilots for the astronauts because we're working with configurations that are some 10 years in the future and uh could end up as one of the mission vehicles that they actually are working with Colonel Buck Buchanan commant United States Air Force Aerospace research Pilot School Edwards Air Force Base I think the reason that this country both uh DOD and NASA are interested in uh lifting body or winged vehicle type spacecraft is that they have a uh they're much more flexible uh in their say their launch configuration and also during their uh re-entry where they can maneuver uh and have what we call a large footprint both longitudinally longitudinally and laterally we have uh say laterally plus or minus 3 or 4,000 miles we can maneuver which means uh that during re-entry once we decide to re-enter uh we can land almost any place uh in the continental United States now take the case of uh somebody saying project uh Mercury or geminy or even Apollo when they made re-entry into the atmos into the orbit of the earth uh if they get in trouble saying don't have a fuel supply in order to Retro uh thrust in order to make a re-entry and the astronauts are stranded in orbit how then would we recover them uh or how would we recover them and say we want to recover them in a hurry uh with a lifting body type vehicle that could be used for rescue Supply or or Logistics types type operations uh we could launch make rendevu dock go in and give medical attention to the astronauts transfer them to the other uh to the lifting body spacecraft and then make re-entry at random and uh by making re-entry at random I mean we don't have to pick a particular point in the orbit where we start our our re-entry the case now say with project gmany is we have a compl complet Navy uh Fleet of aircraft of ships on the ocean and the re-entry is such that it must be very very precise and there very little there is very little maneuvering available during re-entry the ships must be there so that we're restricted to make the re-entry as specific time and location with a spacecraft uh capable of making Maneuvers during re-entry we can make re-entry almost at any point and recover in the United States and if we have an astronaut that has a serious medical condition this would be very beneficial we hope and plan to get lifting body spacecrafts uh in the school inventory here at the flight test center we're studying the operational aspects of lifting bodies uh in high performance modified [Music] aircraft mu Canan is interested in the capabilities of future spacecraft because he is responsible for the capabilities of future astronauts who will fly them his command has but three known counterparts in the world the Empire test School in farboro England Francis s De 50 Mi south of Paris and the Navy's test pilot school at pent River [Music] Maryland graduates of this school and of the Navy school will be required to test everything from variable Wing multi-engine carrier aircraft to Vertical takeoff prototypes to arresting gear reliability this widely varied background has made them the primary source of astronaut selectees for the nation's man space programs it is here that highly skilled Pilots discover how much more skill and knowledge they must acquire for the intricate demanding programs of the future they arrive with a working knowledge of differential calculus flight Theory aeronautical mechanics and aerodynamics and go on from there to computer Theory Aero thermodynamics project management nuclear and exotic propulsion okay I just would just like to welcome you here to the school and this morning we'll give you a little briefing on what uh the school is and what you as the wives and the students can expect in the uh next the attitude and the caliber of Pilots or students that we get today are far and above military Pilots of 10 years ago uh number one they're a little more mature certainly more mature than I was when I finished flying school they have by far a finer education half of our students have Masters and a few have phds I think they're the finest young people this country has are going to be very rewarding they'll all be flying jobs in uh either as experimental test pilots or as crew members on space programs and there'll be a lot of work here and how you doing this school is really is very very important on your whole future career so I want to wish you all all the luck I can and and work hard the reason we brought the student wives down was to give them an indoctrination uh and sort of a detailed briefing on the activities that their husbands will be involved in for the next uh 12 months we felt it very beneficial to let them know just what the program is at the very onset of their training and it just makes for better community relations and I think the the wives are more tolerant during their stay here then would you go in this gate right down here the next gate onto the pad out front of the pool we're going to go by the helicopter which is right back [Applause] here guy more than Vietnam carrying quite a few bombs but do say these can't student gets a about 10 hours of flying time in this and say it starts after they've been here about 2 months by putting rings in the exhaust nozzle and pouring a little raw fuel in the heat from the engine or hot streak ignition can ignite the the fuel and the air that is going through here and you have additional combustion in the tail pipe now as that exhaust comes out you want it to expand efficiently depending upon your altitude and all so you have eyelid both inside and out which close and open to give you a nozzle effect a nozzl effect which gives you your best expansion which gives you thrust we're responsible for training research Pilots or as most of us refer to them as as astronauts we do not train the astronauts for a specific vehicle but train them in general give them their General background training uh so that they can go either to a NASA program or to a military space perform the dual function of elevator and aileron so that when the pilot pulls the stick back the elevator action causes both elevons to go up or when he pushes forward they go down uh they'll be flying many different types of aircraft probably aircraft with higher performance than ever before and when they graduate they'll be very very seasoned test pilots probably the best trained test pilots the world has ever turned out this is the X15 the highest flying fastest most exotic airplane in the [Music] world while the lifting body project is solving flight control problems in the lower atmosphere the X15 is solving the same problems on the fringes of space they are in effect two sides of the same [Music] coin since Scott Crossfield made the first powered flight on September 17th 1959 it has been flown at speeds over 4,000 mph and altitudes over 3 54,000 ft 67 M into space the history of its success has filled record books and the 11 men who have flown it sound like a who's who of modern flight for NASA Neil Armstrong John McCay Bill Thompson and the late Joe Walker Navy's Forest Peterson and for the Air Force Bob White Joe angle and major Pete Knight their world is a world of exotic new Concepts lightning reflexes and the close-knit friendships born of danger and a common goal how's bird it's all right it'll be in soon as I get a tire Chang on it tire change all right it is a world of professionals surrounded by a calm relaxed atmosphere that seems inconsistent with the mission but it is mute testimony to the ability of the men falling all the way down how play good good good FL good flight they all altitude flight would have been better if Chase Ford had been there [Applause] again I was just gonna say really don't mess it up he doesn't know what to do with it though it's all right deair okay come on no kit now de there of course it's the X15 is the most exotic airplane in the world and we hope to gain knowledge of heating problems associated with re-entries structural problems that might occur at higher mock numbers from this it will be a natural extension as was the X1 through the X15 to something more exotic to maybe a lifting body re-entry type vehicle I think that civilian Aviation benefits completely by the research and the development work that the Air Force and NASA accomplishes hey Pete what this I hear about you going up in the blackb again yeah next Thursday another flight well they're going to catch you off you've already used up your seven for this year haven't you well not quite you know got to get a few flights in before you get a tank flight I know double up and catch up anybody can speculate that it will progress to higher velocities even in terms of a possibility of of intercontinental ballistic transportation from coast to coast or from one continent to another cutting the size of the Earth down to almost nothing John McCay senior NASA research pilot assigned to the X15 General a of the X15 program in conjunction with the M2 was to get a type of uh configuration that can be re-entered uh from space uh it doesn't make a difference really whether it's from Deep or shallow space uh well my station wagon could orbit and re-enter to a certain point if we had enough thrust to put it up there they got a little Nick out there there yeah that stuff's holding up pretty good Jack we plan to get some more before uh next fight old now how long will it take you to turn the bird around about uh a week and a half Jack got and got a lot of inspections to do engine inspection post flight a cabin pressure so we we land with a little bit of locks on the tank there yeah it usually stays in a couple hours it's kind of cold under there the X15 itself is as a lifting body because you get quite a bit of the lift off the fuse LOD if you take a look at those wings they look like little Stepping Stones I get up to the cockpit speed break wind that that fight not very much do you have any uh porcelain crank off here no the engine looks real real good come through real good uh What type of a configuration it can be a several of many there could be a what we call a winged aircraft or even just a blunt body for some uh the of uh configuration that can be maneuvered and it doesn't have to have too much maneuverability either few spots here in here where's a burn paint it's fall in here and there so it may take a week and a half to turn it around yeah go ahead and reschedule uh let's look at the canopy a minute here we go the flight of an X15 begins in this simulator M will be ground controller for the first checkout flight of NASA pilot Bill Dana scheduled for the following morning he This wiress Dana will rehearse the procedures until they are automatic I haven't flown this pile in 2 months yeah upstairs in the control room milk Thompson Monitor and watch your angle of attack should be on 11° now your heading is good and your profile is good the most difficult thing as far as teaching say a service type pilot come in the X15 program is to stay on profile doing this boost phase Aon by us here so shut down at you want to shut down at 5200 5150 5150 under these circumstances he's under very tremendous longitudinal G something he's not he hasn't been subjected to in the past even with jet type aircraft about 84 and A2 or so okay keep it up to 11° how's my track looking out looking real good Jack okay you should be on Thea now stand by for shut down the uh the one problem though is to uh trying to keep your head inside the cockpit and pay attention what you're doing because there's a fantastic site up there about 90,000 ft you're essentially in a prettyy black void it's it's aim on now very s being in a very black closet with a very bright light and mat uh running under your feet and here comes the G Jack and P a maximum of five G's for about 12 seconds on the re-entry when you come back in on a re-entry say a typical one from 300,000 ft you don't have the sense that you're actually falling back in the atmosphere you're just standing still and the ground's coming up at you here what was Max G on that last one ah jeez of course Similator isn't too much help from Stand point of G input but it does uh help him to uh program himself uh from a time element in other words what he's going to be doing in the next second to be able to uh go to the next ring and do it properly and naturally he will do this over and over again many many hundreds of times before he ever makes his first [Music] the following morning the Liturgy of the actual flight begins with McKay acting as flight controller Knight observing and NASA pilot Bill Dana in the X15 for the first time and it's Prett hard to get it on it just record [Applause] 08 one Roger your uh point over North base will be your 3535 minute and the heading will be 0 08 de and 25 to 3 sou all Rog understand 35 minutes over North base 008 and 25 35 8 numerous T aircraft operating in a Death Valley area altitudes unknown ready for another set of gates readings go ahead Bill Fox is 33 number one and number two are 32 control gas 570 cabin Source 33 Apu sources uh number one and number two 3850 number one mixing chamber - 45 and number two mixing chamber - 40 and that's one we have windshield heat on engine Master on engine reset and fre okay [Music] Bill approach control over the aut North got radar contact ner 61 and 748 are you okay back to 10° coming up on 40,000 at one two uh 0 that's one your On's at 45 210° at 41 13 all right and I'm reading a hting of about 168 Ed ready light 3 IGN switch take onp idle manif coming up second coming up how's it look looks very good Bill Let's Go 5 4 3 2 1 we got a good light down here Bill Good T and you coming up on profile stand by aater Bill paralleling the track and standby for you push over 4500 ft second 4500 ft second 7,000 coming up 7,000 track and profile a good bill you adjust to the left of track on profile on track this thing handles a lot better Dam than the simulator does got a fix gain fix gain looking very good and you're probably probably only in the track very good though all right stand by shut down right a black up there it shut down shut down yeah we have your shut down go to your Alpha Beta 150 Q he's reentering 150 Q you're reentering now and you should have the feel in sight shortly okay I got a little right now to see 128 speed brakes coming to 20° yeah we have your speed brakes right and you coming downhill about four five we showing about 150 Q real good profile Bill there Jack taking the off okay and you're coming up on a f mile Point what you say Pete watch your speed brakes okay St on Deck I'm going to hold my P here I break my way to desent and you can come out with some break P out and you're coming by C back 65 and you should see the field I do okay B uh take it from there what are you for any you about 15 miles okay at 24 okay and a 22 and check your pressure altimer Bill okay there's 10 miles you can jet us on anytime and watch angle of attack on this turn Bill okay and speed Brakes in speed Brakes in bill they coming inck in Jon all day radio all week to call you right aftering good you ack look like a good one bill yeah well done [Applause] D all stations the most flight would be at 11 133 is he going to pick up the Jeeps and everything and bring it back to the Jeep yes but the f [Music] t got the MIT experiment on there when weeks of anticipation and tension give way to the satisfaction of a job well done the final release and camaraderie of small talk is inevitable in this way research test pilots are no different than baseball players orus we to find Nasa pilot B Dana which we ran up on about 150 ft of War Surplus nylon cord Jack are these the fill them yeah and fill them with war Surplus helium it seems like they got to you got to they got about to Food Fair they live over about what 13th West in iburg they got about three or four blocks away from the house and John's wife says what are all those balloons doing over your house John says they out over my house they got about a block from his house and John says maybe they are over my after it was all over Ralph and I realized we missed that real Pride on this for sale time we should have said price includes Japanese gardening Bill have a little more I see you there put some ice in on this time well bill has a total of three flights now so he's had his quot for the year you're only supposed to get what five or six years yeah but he didn't get them in half yeah that's right now about next Thursday I haven't got number six yet not much I know about that program I read the pap in the light-hearted gayet of the moment the famous pilots who can never again join in the laughter are not mentioned but they're not forgotten Jack come Tuesday I guess I'll be flying to what kind of Bight another when we lose one of our close relationships intern not well the experience that we feel well it's apprehension in a way I think we uh we feel like that we would particularly like to get down to why the sort of thing happened I think that possibly externally we don't appear to have suffered a loss but I think this is true in any flying organization in most cases you know him better than his wife you're with him more hours a day than his family is I than think that you can just as a good example if you're in a platoon and going into combat and your platoon leader says that one person is going to come back you're going to turn around everybody and say well been nice knowing you people that's probably not a good example I believe psychologically that's the way everybody feels you don't moop around too long because somebody's got to get out and fly the next day and uh so you've got to maintain a pretty good outlook to actually ensure your own Survival you worry about yourself shortly after you lose somebody else I think the good lord gave us the idea that we ar going to be the next he's up by noon almost every day well actually Bill the reason that it takes me so long to get to work is I'm combing my [Laughter] hair that's an a genous way of the way he splits three hairs all over top of his head the 35 years of experimental flight test experience these men represent can control the normal anxieties and fear associated with the mission but it cannot eliminate them you certainly do have a a certain amount of fear I think even now that the night before an X15 flight we try to get as much rest as possible to give yourself every break and to cut down the anxiety as much as possible I think I can trly say that in the beginning that there was a certain amount of fear but I think it this kind of out grows the fact that you've done it over and over again and I think the fear has given away to uh just plain anticipation you've got to have confidence in yourself and convince yourself that you can get it back on the ground safely once you've dropped away from the B52 because you're the only thing that's going to land this airplane and if you can't do it you better not hit the release button for most of us Perhaps it is an insurmountable jump from these men to the World of Tomorrow for which they have dedicated and gambled their lives a world of Space Traffic as heavy as air traffic manned orbiting Research Laboratories that will unlock the mysteries of the universe and intercontinental ballistic airliners that will travel from New York to Rome in 45 minutes as we approach the new era in space most of us cannot hope to follow or understand the impact of events that surround us but this has been the case with the dawn of each New Era a few daring men are selected to lock horns with the dilemmas of progress the rest of us must be content to sit on the sidelines of history and observe I know that uh the X15 is uh a research aircraft uh it's [Music] important uh what they actually do with it uh I have no idea and uh actually it's n of my business but uh being around aircraft for approximately 25 years why uh at times feel like a babysitter on track this thing handles a lot better d off the simulator does got a fix gain Roger fix gain looking very good and you're probably probably only in the track very good though right stand by a shut down right kind of black up there is it yeah is