Pssst, dude........ Look up Sir Frank Whittle*, I think we need to be thanking him for that one. But mate, you are dead on about the rest, how many Russian dialects are there? I wonder what one we would be all using if it were not for NASAs advances? Doc. *PS, He invented the 'Turbo Jet' the type that does carry us from one country to the next and powers most all Military jets. The concept of pure 'Jet' propulsion actually goes way back to ancient Greek scholars using steam! Yes I hate my inner NERD for knowing this ****.
Wernher von Braun rules. Sound like a german name....... And I heard a rumour, that we were the guys, who invented the jet engines.... Just kiddin..... We can leave here for four days in space, but when we return, its the same old place.....
Urban legend! It is one commonly believed by many people out there, but there were some pretty good reasons why pencils didn't fly in spacecraft very much. The graphite (or whatever pencil lead was made of in those days) gets ground up during normal use as part of the writing process, resulting in some of it being released into the air as very fine dust in the zero gravity environment within the capsule. Aside from being a known respiritory irritant, it was considered a high risk substance to have floating around a****st switch contacts and electronics in the oxygen rich atmosphere. Consequently, lead pencils didn't make the cut for either the Russians or the USA in their space programs, or if they did, they put a stop to it pretty fast when they observed the downsides. Ken
Funny you say that last bit, somone apparetly put the carbs on the 'Lil Coffin' on backwards. Indeed we are on the eve of distruction! Doc.
NASA had something to do with breast implants, didn't they? Had to have, because they're FAR OUT DUDE. One would be hard pressed to find something in everyday life that NASA did not have a hand in, or at least making it better. Steven.
You got me! Maybe I was thinking of the SCRAM JET??? hahah If you rifled all that off at the top of your head, I wish I had your brain power!
Pete, good point. Kamen is an interesting individual who founded the FIRST robotics program for high school and middle school age kids. The idea is to pair up engineers and technology folks with students to get them interested in Science and Engineering as a career. My son and I have been involved for 10 years now and I know there are others here on the HAMB that are involved with FIRST. Over 1500 high schools world wide and growing.
back on topic....I'd sure like to know what happened to this 63 Pontiac. Based on the ideas and basic design of Alfred J. Eggers and others at the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory (now the Ames Research Center), Mountain View, Calif., in the mid-1950s, the M2-F1 came to be built over a four-month period in 1962-63 for a cost of only about $30,000 plus perhaps an additional $8,000-$10,000 for an ejection seat and $10,000 for solid-propellant rockets to add time to the landing flare. Engineers and technicians at the NASA Flight Research Center (now NASA Dryden) kept costs low by designing and fabricating it partly in-house, with the plywood shell constructed by a local sailplane builder. Someone at the time estimated that it would have cost a major aircraft company $150,000 to build the same vehicle. Unlike the later lifting bodies, the M2-F1 was unpowered and was initially towed until it was airborne by a souped-up Pontiac convertible. This vehicle needed to be able to tow the M2-F1 on the Rogers Dry Lakebed adjacent to NASA's Flight Research Center (FRC) at a minimum speed of 100 miles per hour. To do that, it had to handle the 400-pound pull of the M2-F1. Walter "Whitey" Whiteside, who was a retired Air Force maintenance officer working in the FRC's Flight Operations Division, was a dirt-bike rider and hot-rodder. Together with Boyden "Bud" Bearce in the Procurement and Supply Branch of the FRC, Whitey acquired a Pontiac Catalina convertible with the largest engine available. He took the car to Bill Straup's renowned hot-rod shop near Long Beach for modification. With a special gearbox and racing slicks, the Pontiac could tow the 1,000-pound M2-F1 110 miles per hour in 30 seconds. It proved adequate for the roughly 400 car tows that got the M2-F1 airborne to prove it could fly safely and to train pilots before they were towed behind a C-47 aircraft and released. In this photograph, the Pontiac with its NASA markings is shown next to the M2-F1. The pilot in the M2-F1 is Milt Thompson. The crew chief at the nose of the lifting body is Orion "Bill" Billeter. The individual standing in the center of the group is John Orahood. **** Eldredge is in the back seat of the Pontiac. The man to Orahood's left is unidentified, as is the driver of the Catalina, but the man in the driver's seat is probably "Whitey" Whiteside.
WOW...really man?....so as long as it pertains to you and your hot rod then you're down with it but otherwise **** it huh. Yeah our military got to where its at by the movie American Grafitti. There is more to it than "your life".
The fact that someone could post that on their home computer is really funny...no actually thats really stupid, and sad. Probably posting while talking on his cell phone, and watch tv with his Dish... We have an SR71 at Castle Air museum, I p*** it all the time and when I look at it, it still amazes me. gotta be responsible for more than one UFO report.
Sort of O/T... I just heard on the radio today the ex-head of WD-40 just p***ed away. WD-40 was developed by Rocket Chemical in the 1950's for the aerospace industry. This fella came in and changed the name of the company and made it a household product in the 1960's. Take home message: We can thank the space program for WD-40!!
I saw a show last night that said when they came in from one of the moon walks and took off thier suits that it was so cramped in the lander that they noticed that somehow one of the switches had been broken off, turned out it was the one to start the engines for liftoff from the surface. Armstrong fixed it by inserting a "PEN" and using it to switch it on. He still has the pen. If they had pencils it might have broken off, then where would they be?
Nothin' cooler than the space program. I'd strap on a suit today and climb in a go.....my wife says she won't let me though. Funny thing the other day, though...my four year old daughter has been saying she wants a space suit and for me to build her a rocket and wants to go to space. My wife said she wouldn't let her go to space and the 4 year old came unglued and started the biggest cry fest.
Yeh, I'm a space nut. Read shedloads of books on it - still inspires me. Get to the Smithsonian in Washington if you get a chance. That X15 is really cool up close. Someone here will tell me the alloy its made from, but up close its just like blued steel. The heyday of the space program was the last era where we were enthusiastic about the future and believed in the power of know how. I wonder if we are ever going to feel that way again.
I suspect we learned rather more profound things than how to make Teflon from the space program. I was lucky to have a close up tour of Cape Canaveral and it is one of the most inspiring places I have ever been, with an intoxicating combination of intelligence, invention and imagination. An amazing adventure.
The closest I've been to this stuff is at the Smithsonian. Simply amazing. What they had to work with...It's beyond belief.
Inventiveness is still alive and well. Look right here at the HAMB. Some of the stuff you guys come up with is unreal. Isn't WD-40 flammable? Uh OH, cat's out of the bag on the Gemini deal. I have gotten lazy mentally, as a lot of people have I bet. It's refreshing to see guys and gals on here building they're own stuff , lots of times out of nothing. And don't think for a minute people like us couldn't build high tech ****, we just want to build hot rods! Hell, if we really were interested and wanted to I bet we could build a flying saucer that flew!! With 3-97's of course. Lippy in Ks.
Milt Thompson included the story of the conception, birth, and use of that Pontiac in his book At the Edge of Space. I don't recall any mention of its disposal. It was government property, so it's probably still sitting behind a hangar outside of Dryden. The book is a good read, if you are into that sort of thing. Ultimately, as a 32-year old engineer, I found it depressing. We will never again experience the level of rapid advancement in technology in the physical world (computers and networking are a different story). The level of risk deemed acceptable, and the willingness for forgive transgressions, seem foreign to today's society. What those guys accomplished out in the desert in the 50's is astounding. It only took about 50 years to progress from kites with lawnmower engines barely flying down a sand dune to hypersonic aircraft traveling at the far limit of the atmosphere and requiring new metals to keep the skin from melting due to friction.
The actual structure of the X-15 is a composite, but the outer skin you can see is ***anium. It is also unusually thick as it was also a heat sink for the extreme temps that the aircraft operated in, leading edges operated at over 800*!! When the Skunk Works started to build the SR71 they had troubles cutting the ***anium for the surfaces of the airframe. The issue was solved by accident, an engineer scribed a line on a panel using a blue ball point pen. He then watched in amazement when the ink ate through the ***anium! I think (Sort of....) that it was the cadmium in the ink that reacted with the ***anium and ate through it! No more dulled bits in cutters! Slepe, yup its all off the top of the head and no its not a good thing. Doc.
I'm still just as amazed at the sheer guts of the test pilots (many died over and at Edwards in the early stages) and astronauts, as well as the technological accomplishments. I'm a total space/NASA geek. Slightly off topic, but get a load of this photo: Looks like a NASA pic, right? It's not, it's Capt. Joseph Kittinger, April 1960, jumping from a balloon at 102,800ft, considered space by today's standards. He freefell for 4 and a half minutes and came close to hitting the speed of sound. Google this guy, amazing. His records still stand.
Now Kittinger had balls, his space suit began to leak on ***ent! He didn't quite make it to the al***ude he wanted but in the space equivalent zone with a leaking suit I would have bailed out too! You know at that al***ude the g***es in your blood would boil off in seconds! Henry's law, known as the 'coke bottle' law, partial pressure of a gas dissolved in a liquid (In this case blood) is equal to that of the atmosphere or gas above it. This means that you take away the atmosphere there is nothing to keep the gas dissolved in your blood, hence it boils away! I know this from doing aviation medicine for High Al***ude Parachute Operations. Doc.
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