50 years of American manned spaceflight on May 5th! WOW!

[+warthog64]

May 5th will be 50 years since the late astronaut Alan Shepard flew the first American manned flight into space. I can't believe its been that long. I hope that even though things don't look too well right now for the immediate future of NASA's manned space flight program, we will soon be soaring into space again. Still it's incredible that 50 years ago on May 5th we began this "trend" that continues today.

Edited May 4, 2011 by warthog64

[Lexx_Luthor]

 

If they tied me down inside one of those rockets, I'd pea in my suit in 3 seconds flat. Not hours later.

 

On the other hand, there may be worse things than riding a ballistic missile. Scroll down halfway to see the ...edit...Convair/Marine pilot waving from the cockpit. That's amazing stuph. And they were *hoping* to do that on ships at sea.

Edited May 4, 2011 by Lexx_Luthor

[+warthog64]

 

If they tied me down inside one of those rockets, I'd pea in my suit in 3 seconds flat. Not hours later.

 

On the other hand, there may be worse things than riding a ballistic missile. Scroll down halfway to see the ...edit...Convair/Marine pilot waving from the cockpit. That's amazing stuph. And they were *hoping* to do that on ships at sea.

 

 

Yeah I'd probably do the same.

 

Those concepts of the Cold War were pretty out there, thanks for the link!

[Lexx_Luthor]

The Flying Atars at the bottom of that page have to be even worse. A jet engine with wheels on the bottom, and a seat at the top. The French flying barrels pic is interesting if it could be done with a more conventional takeoff/landing -- how would planes develop after the 1950s if that barrel wing concept took off?

 

On a less fantastic level, possibly the most effective and practical idea was the inverse taper wing of the Republic XF-91...here's The Deal with that...

 

(1) stall at the wing roots, not the tips -- a nice thing to have

(2) less drag at the wing-fuselage interface where the wing is thin and less "chord-ial", so to speak.

 

Roll may suffer though. This wing helped extend the airspeed higher and lower. The F-86 chase planes could not follow it in low speed flight. And the XF-91 had in-flight variable incidence wing (-2 to +6 degrees to centerline). Crusader was not the first.

 

With the available rockets from the X-1, XF-91 could do M=1.8 but was designed for bigger rockets but those never made it. Once the J47 flamed out and the pilot had to use the rocket to get to the airfield. Very reliable.

 

Forget the rocket. I've been looking at this thing, and I wonder if the inverse taper wing was the Road Not Taken for basic high speed aircraft design. Think of F-105 -- same Republic -- with this type wing, along with variable incidence: less drag for higher speed (or less fuel hungry similar speed), and lower and more controllable low speed flight. This might apply to any heavy jet of the era, perhaps even deltas but, what would an inverse taper delta be? A tail-less inverse taper. Draw some simple shapes, and its weird.

Edited May 5, 2011 by Lexx_Luthor