Word: skyrocket
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...metals, aluminum and magnesium are now commonplace, although a few decades ago they were prohibitively high priced. Aluminum and its alloys are still the basic materials of all aircraft. But magnesium, which is one-third lighter, is encroaching on aluminum's domain (Douglas's 1,238-m.p.h. Skyrocket has a magnesium-sheet fuselage). In the field of atomic power the most important metal, next to uranium, is zirconium. Reason: it is one of the few metals yet found which will not absorb atomic neutrons. But it is a frightening metal to process; in powder form...
Rocket planes have flown higher; the Douglas Skyrocket piloted by Bill Bridgeman reached 79,494 ft. in 1951 (TIME, Sept. 10, 1951). But since rocket motors need no air to breathe, they are considered in a separate class. They can fly under full power for only two or three minutes, and when trying for an altitude record, they must be dropped from the belly of a high-flying bomber. Wing Commander Gibb's Canberra took off from the ground in the normal way and stayed in the air for 61 minutes. At the top of its flight, its engines...
Douglas' Skyrocket had just been completed, but no pilot had been assigned to fly it. Bill's chief weakness in going after the job was that he had never flown a jet plane, and the rocket-pushed Skyrocket was a sort of superjet. He got checked out in an F-80, and in twelve hours of jet flying he convinced Douglas engineers that he was the man to entrust with the precious Skyrocket...
...regretted the decision. In 60 dangerous but splendidly executed flights, Pilot Bridgeman flew the Skyrocket faster and higher than any other plane has flown. He met new perils of the air, e.g., "supersonic yaw" and heating, and brought the Skyrocket back again & again to its base. Death often brushed his shoulders, but the Skyrocket is still intact, and it has accumulated enough data about high-speed flying to keep designers figuring for years...
Heat Barrier. Beyond the problems of design and control lies an even more serious obstacle. Some experts believe that heat will defeat all attempts of men to fly for long at twice the speed of sound. Rocket planes like the Skyrocket do not encounter the "heat barrier"; they do not fly long enough to heat up seriously. But the X3, expected to fly at high speed for a considerable period, is another matter. Its designers had to build into it resistance to the floods of heat caused by its own motion...