Word: bridgeman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Flying Bridgeman...
...designed. It is underpowered, they say, and, without complete redesign, it cannot use the bigger engines that are coming along. Bill is noncommittal. Neither liking nor trusting his little beast, he still intends to fly it with high professional competence, however tricky its character. The plan for Bill Bridgeman and the X-3 is many more flights, perhaps 40 of them, gradually increasing the speed to the maximum. Some of the flights are sure to be unpleasant, but Bill does not worry much. The flights will not come very close together; after almost every flight the X-3 is torn...
...give lift at low speed, they stir up too much drag. So the tiny wings of the X3, designed for efficiency and minimum drag at very high speed, make the ship unstable and cranky when it is flying below the speed of sound. This is one reason why Bill Bridgeman quietly denounced the X-3 as a "nasty little beast." When he does, one of the Douglas designers retorts: "What do you expect? The X-3 wasn't built to hover...
...condition an average movie theater. The refrigerator accounts for 10% of the empty weight of the X3, and absorbs 2,600 horsepower from its engines. Despite all this cooling, the windows of the cockpit (which must be glass, not plastic) are expected to get hot enough to burn Bridgeman's hands...
...Airman Bridgeman views the "heat barrier" calmly. He does not seem alarmed by the prospect of flying an airplane whose windows are too hot to touch. He is not optimistic, either, about the ultimate outcome. "The sound barrier," he says from experience, "wasn't too bad. It was sort of like jumping over a fence. But the heat barrier is like fighting your way into a thicket of thorns. The farther you get into it, the more thorns stick into...