x-15

If the X-15 has a ceiling of 354,200 feet, this would put the plane at about 67+ miles above earth. Are the pilots who fly the X-15 actually considers astronauts?

the soviet version of the X-15 was the tu-139/jastreb-2/dbr-2 only this one was unmanned

The X-15 was to be the Americans' first stepping-stone into space. It was planned that the X-15s would pave the way for better, faster rocket planes that would be reaching orbit by the mid/late 1960s. Sputnik changed all that, and as a result we were all sent up a technological dead end of throwaway rockets. If we hadn't gone the rocket route, we would only have walked on the moon perhaps in the early 1980s. Technology would be at different stages of advancement, particularly in materials and not so much in computers. Supersonic/hypsersonic/suborbital airliners, the beginnings of a space station and much more in the way of private space ventures. In my humble opinion.

If you ask me, the X-15 guys were the real "right stuff," flying at Mach 6 in the days when number crunching meant playing with a slide rule.

Hats off to the X-15 jocks!



Eat your heart out Armageddon!

thanks for all the scramjet stuff, really interesting
the x-15 pilots, some of them were given astronaut wings for flying the x-15 above the ~~ 215000 feet necessary ( i think)...
well either way at least one got astronaut wings =)

originally posted by: SectorGaza
the soviet version of the X-15 was the tu-139/jastreb-2/dbr-2 only this one was unmanned

The Tupolev Tu-123 Yastreb and Tupolev Tu-139 Yastreb 2 were not the Soviet equivalents of the X-15 but instead designed for reconnaissance missions at speeds of Mach 2. The proposed but unbuilt Myasishchev RSS-52 (derived from the design bureau's M-44 cruise missile project) would have been the Soviet counterpart of the X-15.

Links:
www.secretprojects.co.uk...
www.astronautix.com...