Lot of good footage in this one!
What’s the white model on the top bookshelf behind Crossfield?
I thought it was a B-70, but the air intake is too far back, and it looks like it only has a single vertical fin.
It was partially based on the Navaho missile as far as aerodynamics went.
The reason it was named “Hound Dog” was that it incorporated parts from several earlier missile programs, so it was sort of a mutt.
I actually saw a real operational one up at Grand Forks AFB in the early 1970’s. They had rolled it outside of the hanger and were doing maintenance or cleaning on it.
It was finished in the Vietnam style camouflage scheme of very light gray or white underside and tan, dark green, and olive green topsides.
Why it was painted that way is anyone’s guess… it wouldn’t have been of much use for a attack on the Soviet Union…China maybe?
Excellent video. And think, a few short years later, we go the SR-71. But, you also have to realize the predecessor to the SR-71, the A-12 was flying at the time of the early X-15 program.
Having the X-15 makes it plausible we do have the Mach 5 Aurora aircraft since we were flying at hypersonic speeds in the 1950s and 1960s with the X-15.
> Having the X-15 makes it plausible we do have the Mach 5 Aurora aircraft
No, it doesn’t. They are fundamentally different aircraft types. X-15 got to Mach five for timespans comfortably measurable in seconds. An “Aurora” would need to spend a good fraction of an *hour* at those speeds, using a propulsion system that is unproven to this very day.
I like in the video when they show the X-15 in the engine test stand cranking up the XLR99 engine…and everyone who knows about that aircraft knows what’s about to happen next…
When they show the part where you are looking up the engine’s nozzle while is firing at full thrust, you can see that there are stripes of higher and lower temperature running from the combustion chamber to the end of expansion nozzle (did it use veil cooling like the V-2 engine did?); those burn stripes are still visible in the nozzle of the X-15 on display at the NASM.
BTW, you dug up that info on the SERJ ramjet version of the X-15 design that showed the two-seater version as a possible operational prototype: http://up-ship.com/blog/blog/?p=6060
What was the max speed on that supposed to be?
…You know, this report reminded me one aspect I can’t STR ever seeing anything mentioned about: simulators for the X-15. Even guys at the top of the Ziggurat like Crossfield and Yeager had to go though ground-based sims on new aircraft before taking them up. Was a “train wreck” used for X-15 training, or was it done in situ using a tweaked existing jet, much in the same way a couple of Thunderthuds were used for Nighthawk training?
Lot of good footage in this one!
What’s the white model on the top bookshelf behind Crossfield?
I thought it was a B-70, but the air intake is too far back, and it looks like it only has a single vertical fin.
I believe it’s a Hound Dog.
The Hound Dog didn’t look too far off from the Pluto,did it?
It was partially based on the Navaho missile as far as aerodynamics went.
The reason it was named “Hound Dog” was that it incorporated parts from several earlier missile programs, so it was sort of a mutt.
I actually saw a real operational one up at Grand Forks AFB in the early 1970’s. They had rolled it outside of the hanger and were doing maintenance or cleaning on it.
It was finished in the Vietnam style camouflage scheme of very light gray or white underside and tan, dark green, and olive green topsides.
Why it was painted that way is anyone’s guess… it wouldn’t have been of much use for a attack on the Soviet Union…China maybe?
Excellent video. And think, a few short years later, we go the SR-71. But, you also have to realize the predecessor to the SR-71, the A-12 was flying at the time of the early X-15 program.
Having the X-15 makes it plausible we do have the Mach 5 Aurora aircraft since we were flying at hypersonic speeds in the 1950s and 1960s with the X-15.
> Having the X-15 makes it plausible we do have the Mach 5 Aurora aircraft
No, it doesn’t. They are fundamentally different aircraft types. X-15 got to Mach five for timespans comfortably measurable in seconds. An “Aurora” would need to spend a good fraction of an *hour* at those speeds, using a propulsion system that is unproven to this very day.
I like in the video when they show the X-15 in the engine test stand cranking up the XLR99 engine…and everyone who knows about that aircraft knows what’s about to happen next…
When they show the part where you are looking up the engine’s nozzle while is firing at full thrust, you can see that there are stripes of higher and lower temperature running from the combustion chamber to the end of expansion nozzle (did it use veil cooling like the V-2 engine did?); those burn stripes are still visible in the nozzle of the X-15 on display at the NASM.
BTW, you dug up that info on the SERJ ramjet version of the X-15 design that showed the two-seater version as a possible operational prototype:
http://up-ship.com/blog/blog/?p=6060
What was the max speed on that supposed to be?
Outstanding video!
Note to self: Don’t press reset.
Jim
it looks like a topping X-15 but whats interesting is the base is curved instead of bent, I’ve never seen that b4
…You know, this report reminded me one aspect I can’t STR ever seeing anything mentioned about: simulators for the X-15. Even guys at the top of the Ziggurat like Crossfield and Yeager had to go though ground-based sims on new aircraft before taking them up. Was a “train wreck” used for X-15 training, or was it done in situ using a tweaked existing jet, much in the same way a couple of Thunderthuds were used for Nighthawk training?