Evening star., 1962-08-12
" More Speed and Altitude Records Predicted

lviet society, if there were q
Russian equivalent of the Kills
1t is hard for a layman tc
visualize the sort Of flying done
in this airplane. Experience ir
even the SpeedieSt commercial,
jet affords no feel whatever fol
Kills flight. The relationship
between the two is fully as re-
mote as between riding in ar
inter-city bus and driving an
experimental auto at Bonne-
vile Salt Flats.
For one thing, there is heat
ing. AS X-15 streaks through
the upper air at a mile a Sec
ond, its skin is heated by the
friction of air molecules. As it
re-enters the heavier atmos-
phere and reaches the region
of maximum dynamic pressure
called max o.. its leading
| surfaces glow a cherry red. At
the Subsonic speeds of even the
fastest jet airliners, frictional
heating is too slight to be
measured and the effects of
@" are utterly negligible.
Surprisingly, the Kills meets
and withstandS-more rigor-
GUS conditions than do the
spacecraft. This suggests a use
for Kills as a flying test bed.
A radar senSor is being de-
veloped for the Saturn moon
booster system. Problem: AS
the ascending Saturn goes
through max @" at $4,000 to
100000 feet, will the sensor
operate? Solution: Fly the
senSor in X-15; if it can func-
ton in the plane. it will have
no difficulty on the rocket.
Panic in Los Angeles
Another gadget with space
flight applications is now be-
ing used in X-l5. 1t is called
adaptive control" a mech
aniSm that automatically COM
pensates for varying flight con-
ditions as they arise, rather
than having them foreseen Cor
possibly overlooked) in ad-
vance programming.
After the adaptive control
had been in Kills No. 3 for a
while, the pilots agreed 1t was
a great improvement. So early
this month No. Q was placed on
a truck trailer and hauled 100
miles to Los Angeles for similar
modification. This caused a
minor flap in the California
metropolis, where normally
nothing is regarded as too BIZ
zarre to happen.
A citizen saw the unmis-
taxable black shape on the
trailer bed and informed the
city desk of a Los Angeles news
paper: Hey, there's an X-15
down on Sepulveda boulevard" !"
The deSkman understood the
caller to have said. IAN Kills
doDn on Sepulveda." He
pressed the panic button.
An Kills dotDn on Sepulveda
would indeed present a prob
lem; in fact, such q landing
could hardly be effected with-
out considerable carnage. But
if it ever became necessary, the
speedy craft could easily land
at Los Angeles International
Airport, or even a smaller one
such as Washington's National.
Flight Pattern
The flight pattern of a typi-
cal Kills mission is interesting
to follow, and the crafts land
ing procedure is perhaps most
interesting of all. Bob White,
the altitude record holder, says
t's an excellent airplane to
.ly."
1T responds well to its COM
nand inputs, and this extends
iown particularly to the land
ng phase" Mai. White says.
Four of the Kills pilots
Jointly delivered a lecture last
May at a space meeting in Sc
attle. Their description of the
landing is worth repeating:
I'VE start from about so
miles from the dry lake at
Edwards in the neighborhood
of 10000 feet (altitude) and
about 1000 miles an hour for
our actual landing pattern. We
utilize a glide speed Of about
300 knots t345 miles an hour
and hold the landing flaps and
gear up until we are ready to
land and close to the runway,
in order to reduce total drag
on the glide.
"The lower vertical tail is
jettisoned prior to landing,
since we haven't any real in
terest in becoming the worlds
fastest plow. (X-l5 drops the
lower half of its tail so it can
land on skids that are lowered
just before touchdown)
I'VE use a mark on the run
way as an intended touchdown
spot, and we have consistently
landed within plus or minus
1900 feet. Our better numbers
are less than 500. In about a
mile the airplane slides to a
stop. The canopy is opened and
the pilot gets out"
One-Man Job
The landing of Kills is one
man job, of course, as is the
actual flying of the craft
through a typical mission. But
behind the one man in every
flight is a close-knit, highly
trained team that averages
about ITS specialists. There is
no hit-or-miss, no "by-guess-
and-by-gosh" in an Kills mis-
sion, where even a second too
much powered flight can make
a tremendous difference Gas it
OF ZIPS UNDER