Because Neil was Inverted...
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April 20th, 1962, Test pilot Neil Armstrong was testing a self-adjusting control system on the hypersonic experimental rocket plane called the X-15. Utilizing the incredible performance of his X-15, and its climb rate of over 60,000 feet per minute, Armstrong managed to reach an altitude of over 207,000 feet above the surface of our planet, but unfortunately for poor Neil, during the test flight descent, the X-15's nose was held up for too long and the hypersonic rocket plane bounced off the atmosphere like a skipping stone, sending Neil and his experimental aircraft back up to 140,000 feet.
At that extreme altitude, the air is so thin that aerodynamic surfaces have almost no effect...so Armstrong and his X-15 tore inverted past his landing field at three times the speed of sound Mach 3.0 (2,000 mph) at over 100,000 feet in altitude, and before he knew it, ended up somewhere over the hills of Hollywood.
After waiting for the control inputs to bite, and a sufficient descent rate to accumulate, Armstrong nursed his hypersonic thoroughbred back towards the East, now far exceeding the glide distance of his 15 thousand pound experimental lawn dart, Armstrong, by the skin of his teeth, managed to stretch his glide just enough to clear the Joshua trees at the south end of Edwards dry Lake bed. According to his chase pilots, Neil cleared the trees by as little as 100 feet.
That particular flight set the all-time record for the longest X-15 flight in both time flown, as well as total distance on the ground track... and poor Neil wasn't proud of either one.
AMAZING & COOL STORY
Commander Neil Armstrong was an incredibly brave man! His amazing accomplishments are unsurpassed in aviation history. My uncle was an electrical engineer at Edwards AFB (near Lancaster, Southern California) during that period of time. He may have worked on those top secret projects. At some time after Apollo 11, Armstrong’s parents were in Southern California & were guests of our neighbors (the Nelson’s) in the small, San Bernardino Mountains village of Running Springs. They gifted the Nelson’s a stunning ‘coffee table picture book’. In the 1930s, my good Dad went to Purdue University; he studied the mechanics of aviation engineering & played basketball with fellow student John Wooden who would become UCLA’S winningest basketball coach ever. When I was growing up, we lived near UCLA & my Dad would take me to basketball games at Pauley Pavilion.
Happy to be on board.
Happy to be on board.
That kind of looks like Scott Crossfield. I met him at Purdue only once, but he was also the test pilot for North American Aviation on the X-15 program before they handed it off to NASA. It very well could be the ceremonial handover, with Scott saying ok. It flies just like we promised, now just don’t breaker it!
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