Both Sides of the Ball?

While the world was wondering whether the U.S. or Russia could blast a man into space with rockets and bring him back alive, a California test pilot proved last week that the mundane manned airplane is still a fairly handy get-up-and-go device. Above the shimmering mirages of California's Mojave Desert, Veteran Test Pilot Joseph Albert Walker rode the nation's most advanced research craft--the North American X-15--to a height of 169,600 ft. (32.12 miles). Walker's flight lifted him farther from earth than man has gone before and provided a strong hint that the winged aircraft may provide a very feasible way of getting to the top edges of the atmosphere.

The black, 50-ft. long, stub-winged plane left Edwards Air Force Base tucked under the right wing of a B-52. Somewhere over the just-awakening revelry of Las Vegas, at 45,000 ft., Walker and -55 Pilot Fitzhugh Fulton began their countdown prior to dropping the X-15 for its flight. Midway in the countdown, Walker interrupted by radio: "We've lost our liquid-nitrogen cooler. My mixing chamber quit." Without the cooler both his special flight suit and his cockpit would turn into bake ovens in the searing, supersonic flight to come. As the mother plane circled slowly, Walker jiggled the mixer handle. "I've worn out my fingers," he complained. Then: "That was touch and go. I've got it on again."

Major Fulton finally pulled a pin to release the X-15. Walker hit the throttle. The rocket engine fired briefly, then died. "I don't have a start," he radioed. He tried again. Fourteen seconds passed ("It felt like five hours"). Then, thankfully, the 57,000-lb. thrust engine reignited with a roar.

The X-15 shot upward at 35 degrees, its throttle only open to 75% of full power. Walker cut the engine after 93 sec., but already he was above 100,000 ft. and going 2,756 miles an hour. Coasting higher, he tested eight small rockets in the nose and two in each wing--a main objective of the flight. These form a control system that will be vital at higher altitudes, where conventional controls turn mushy in the thin atmosphere. They worked fine. Descending, he looked out of his tiny window at most of California, part of Oregon and Baja California in Mexico, noting that the horizon wore a white halo and the sky was "a nice, dark blue."

At 80,000 ft. Walker's voice came calmly, almost in a bemused tone, over the radio: "Good heavens, we're shaking to pieces here." The plane was racked by vibrations, the most violent he had ever felt. "I and the airplane window were going in opposite directions." Then, as mysteriously as they had started, the vibrations stopped, and Joe Walker headed down to a 180-knot landing in the tan clay of Rogers Dry Lake. Came a voice over the radio: "Wonderful show, Joe." And another: "Whoopee!" Said Walker, as he climbed out the cockpit: "You feel like you're beginning to get out there where someday you'll see both sides of this old ball."

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