Dear Aliens... Love, NASA Secrets of the Wright Brothers Eyewitness SR-71 Crash

118 Pages·2015·17.88 MB·English

It’s Fast and It Hovers: The Next X-Plane
What
Vought XF8U-1
Doomed
Dear Aliens...
Love, NASA
the F-8?
Secrets of
the Wright
Brothers
Eyewitness
SR-71 Crash
www.airspacemag.com NOVEMBER 2015

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2015 | VOL. 30, NO. 5
Contents
»
Meet the Howards
Mr. Mulligan’s extended family
became postwar America’s favorite
At the Howard Aircraft Foundation
flying pleasurecraft.
fly-in, members putter around Benny
BY MARK HUBER | PHOTOS BY JIM KOEPNICK Howard’s high-wing beauties.
AIRSPACEMAG.COM JIM KOEPNICK
Features
»
The Next X-Plane
Tilt rotor, lift fan, tail sitter: What’s the
best technology for both vertical lift and
high speed?
BY RICHARD WHITTLE
»
Airplanes Seeking Good Home
Some lucky community could get a new
tourist attraction—and a lesson in early
» If the Lockheed
aviation. Towers
Martin F-35B
Joint Strike Fighter
BY  PAUL GLENSHAW PHOTOS BY CAROLYN RUSSO
is any guide, the
PHOTOS BY DANE PENLAND Air traffic controllers companies competing
for DARPA’s vertical-
work in the world’s most
takeoff-and-landing
»
A Truly World-Wide Web distinctive buildings. A X-plane have their
work cut out for them.
Access brought to you by drones, sats, photographic tribute.
and balloons.
»
Space Nerds
BY MARK ANDERSON
Sometimes a soldier’s best
»
“Hi! I’m from Earth!” friend is an IT guy with a
Spacecraft are trying to connect to others satellite dish.
in the cosmos.
BY ED DARACK
BY DAMOND BENNINGFIELD
»
Gunfighter
The Vought F-8 Crusader’s
When U.S. troops are deployed motto: Have gun, will dogfight.
where there’s no cell service, the
117th Space Battalion “Space Nerds” BY EILEEN BJORKMAN
set up communications.
AIRSPACEMAG.COM LEFT: TECH SGT. WOLFRAM M. STUMPF/USANG; RIGHT: LOCKHEED MARTIN/ANDY WOLFE
Departments
»
Viewport
Game time and classic fighter
»
Letters
»
What’s Up Down under
»
Soundings Crash test, space law
One of a
»
Bill Sweetman collection of
Technically Speaking bashed cockpit
voice recorders,
»
Water skiers
Sightings
recovered from
Black boxes airliner crash sites.
»
Solar System Chatter
»
Milky Way central
Reviews & Previews
Space art
»
Above & Beyond
»
Blackbird down
Contributors
»
»
Oldies & Oddities
Forecast
Paper chase
»
One More Thing
»
In the Museum Interact!
Happy 70th, Pitts Special
In a composite image made by the Solar and
Heliospheric Observatory, Comet ISON is ON THE COVER: On the 60th anniversary of the Crusader’s first flight,
stopped (several times) in its swing around the sun.
the Museum of Flight in Seattle rolled out its XF8U-1 after a decades-long
restoration. Last September, Museum photographer Ted Huetter snapped
its portrait.
AIRSPACEMAG.COM LEFT: NASA LANGLEY/DAVID C. BOWMAN; RIGHT: JEFFREY MILSTEIN

Viewport
FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM
Flying Lessons
FOR THE NEXT THREE MONTHS,
the National Air and Space Museum
is hosting an exhibit unlike any that
has appeared in the Museum before.
Developed by Boeing and Evergreen
Exhibitions, Above and Beyond fea-
tures 20 interactive or dynamic dis-
plays that engage visitors in the many
fields of aerospace, from designing
aircraft to traveling to Mars (see In the
Museum). This is a gallery where there
are not just things to see—although
there are artifacts and many videos—but things are undertaking with a $30 million gift from
to do. When you plan your visit, you’ll want to Boeing—our curators and exhibit designers are
budget at least a couple of hours in order to take using Above and Beyond as a test lab to learn
in all that is offered here. about the kinds of activities that are most effec-
Besides its interactivity, Above and Beyond tive in holding visitors’ interest.
is unusual in another way. At the same time it Even as we update and transform our exhibit
teaches our visitors about aerospace, we hope space, one hallmark of the National Air and Space
it will teach us about our visitors. As we begin Museum that will not change is the protection and
to renovate our other galleries—work we display of authentic artifacts that played a signifi-
AIRSPACEMAG.COM
cant role in aerospace history. One of those arti- five minutes. Then you started down, accelerat-
facts, the subject of this issue’s cover story, is the ing, and when you got to 37,000 feet, you eased
Vought F-8 Crusader, the first U.S. fighter to fly it back up to about 40,000 feet again. When you
faster than 1,000 mph. came back down the next time, you had to make
In 1966, I checked out in the F-8. There was no it, because by then you’d run out of burner time
simulator, and there were no two-seaters. To get and probably out of airspace.
the feel of the airplane, on your first hop, you In this issue’s feature, you’ll see the patch the
lined up on the runway, went into afterburner, F-8 pilots made: “When you’re out of F-8s, you’re
and at 60 knots you came out of burner and out of fighters.” A-4 Skyhawk pilots developed
tried to stop before the end of the runway. a different patch. It said, “When you’re out of
Every F-8 pilot wanted to earn a thousand- F-8s, it’s no big deal.” I’m glad I don’t have to
mile-an-hour pin, but although the F-8 was an moderate that debate, but I’m also glad we have
easy airplane to fly, it wasn’t easy to get it to 1,000 an F-8 Crusader in the National Air and Space
mph. In the F-4, you can get your Mach 2 pin just Museum. You can learn a lot about fighter air-
by adding power and sitting there. In the F-8, craft by studying that one.
you had to really work, particularly in the older
ones. You climbed to about 43,000 feet, then went
nnn J.R. DAILEY IS THE JOHN AND ADRIENNE MARS
into afterburner, which you could use for only
DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM.
W ASHINGTON, DC CHANTILLY, VA
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Letters
WRITE TO US
Look for Another Lunar Loss
FOLLOW US
Scientists should forget about tasking the Lunar Twitter twitter.com/ airspacemag
Reconnaissance Orbiter to find Luna 9 (“ISO First
Moon Lander,” Soundings, Sept. 2015); instead,
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have it try to solve the mystery of Surveyor 4.
On July 17, 1967, at about two and a half min-
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utes before touchdown, all contact with the
Surveyor was lost. Some believe the retro-rocket
WRITE TO US at Letters, Air & Space/
exploded, blowing Surveyor to pieces. But it’s
Smithsonian, MRC 513, P.O. Box 37012,
possible something happened to the radio and Washington, DC 20013. Please type or print
clearly. You must include your full address and
Surveyor has been sitting on the moon’s sur-
daytime phone number.
face ever since. Pointing the LRO at Surveyor 4’s
e-mail: [email protected]. All e-mails must
Central Bay landing site would help solve the
include your full name, mailing address, and
mystery of its loss. daytime phone number.
THOMAS J. FRIELING
Tallahassee, Florida
ace in the Vietnam War, Richard “Steve” Ritchie.
Aces Missing There was another: Randy “Duke” Cunningham.
Am I admitting some annoyance that the
From “The Last American Aces” (Aug. 2015), the only Vietnam pilot mentioned was Air Force?
uninitiated might think there was only one pilot Regrettably, yes. As a naval aviator of that era, I
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want people to know that the Navy held its own ment) on its wing. Afterward, the CH-46’s log-
in Vietnam. books were presented to General Jack “Zorro”
C.W. “TODD” SCHRACK Dailey, director of the National Air and Space
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania Museum, which will display 153369 at the Udvar-
Hazy Center.
Editors’ reply: Our photo-essay could include only Upon my return home, I checked my log-
those who attended the 2015 American Fighter Aces books and found that, after 26 years of flying
convention, which is mentioned in the introduction, or CH-46s, I made my last flight as a Marine Corps
who were able to be within driving distance so that the pilot on May 8, 1990, in that exact aircraft.
photographer could reach them. COL. JERALD GARTMAN, USMC (RET.)
Morehead City, North Carolina
We Meet Again, Old Phriend
Corrections
The Phrog went out in style (Viewport, Aug. 2015).
At the farewell fly-in on August 1 at the Steven F. Sept. 2015 “Huey Pilots: Where the Heroes Were
Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, BuNu no. 153369 Made”: The Marines’ name for the UH-34 is Sea
made a low pass, an Osprey (the Phrog’s replace- Horse, not Choctaw.
Aug. 2015 “Brought to You by Drones”:
On July 17, Flirtey delivered medications via
drone to a clinic in western Virginia, not West
WRITE TO US at Letters, Air & Space/Smithsonian, MRC 513, P.O. Box
37012, Washington, DC 20013. Please type or print clearly. You must include Virginia.
your full address and daytime phone number.
June/July 2015 “War Within a War,” p. 34, cap-
email: [email protected]. All emails must include your full name, mailing address,
and daytime phone number. tion: The first bombing missions in Korea were
Air & Space is not responsible for the return of unsolicited materials. Never
flown a few days, not three weeks, after the war
send unsolicited original photographs to the Letters department; send only
copies. began. The error was introduced during copy
All letters selected for publication are edited. We reserve the right to publish
editing.
letters in the magazine, on our website (airspacemag.com), or both. We regret
that we cannot respond to every letter.
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