Shuttle Commander quote about China Lake

Talking about what personal items were taken onboard this shuttle flight...
"Commander Kelly's choices were a bit more random.

"I had a kid ask from some school in New Zealand, a kid I met one time, if I would fly his New Zealand striped, really cool looking blazer from his school, but I said it was too big. So what I did [fly] was the crest. What else did I fly? A patch from a friend of mine's squadron, who is the CO of the X-31 at China Lake," Kelly shared."

Quote taken from the following url
news.yahoo.com...;_ylt=ApWIFEeZ2SzuRZH.YJv8Z7EE1vAI

Any thoughts?

X-31 pictures are available at NASA Dryden. The Dryden homepage. The X-31 photo gallery page here and a photo link to a pic of the X-31 here.

cheers,

Vic

[edit on 16-8-2007 by V Kaminski]

According to the Dryden website, the X-31 program ended a llong time ago. (June 1995).

Doesn't seem to jive with "who is the CO of the X-31 at China Lake"

So? Are saying that there is an X-31 squadron at China Lake or that Commander Kelly may not know the CO? Or something "else"? You seem "up" on this topic. What do you think? Me? I think the CO in 1995 may be the same CO today or that "is" and "was" is an easy mistake of speech? Good luck! Please report what you find out.

Cheers,

Vic

[edit on 16-8-2007 by V Kaminski]

Considering that China Lake is a weapons testing range his friend my be the CO of detachment X-41. A detachment being a group of people and equipment who are together for the express purpose of completing a specified task.

sounds to me that he let it slip...the project didn't end in June 1995

Do you really think it's possible that Kelly would let a classified program slip out? I tend to doubt it, but I suppose it's possible.

Not sure what it gets us. It might be that the Dryden site is correct in a specific, such as the program ending but parts of it continue to do other tasks.

It seems that only two X-31s were built, one pretty spectacularly fell out of the sky in 1995 (Video Clip) and the other one is on display at the Oberschleiβheim museum apparently since 2003.

The planes were still flying in 2003 testing very short take-offs and landings with an incredibly accurate GPS system. So either its a mistake and there is no more X-31 program, it doesnt seem like it was ever at China Lake anyway, or it continued without the planes testing some technology developed during the program.

I'm sorry I didn't catch this thread fast enough. Kelly didn't say "CO of the X-31," he said "CO of VX-31."

His friend is the commanding officer (CO) of Air Test and Evaluation Squadron Three One (VX-31) at China Lake.

VX-31 provides aircraft, test pilots, project officers, and flight test planning oversight for research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) of weapons and platform-related systems.

The unit has a web site:

www.nawcwd.navy.mil...

thanks for clearing that up...make more sense now

Great stuff Shadow' thanks. I was about to review my STS-118 footage to find the exact quote during the PAO event. Cheers and cheers!

Vic