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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Chance in 200. What Gralla and his crew had come to shoot were three 57-ft. X-17A solid-propellant rockets, each tipped with a 1.5 kiloton atomic warhead (equivalent in blast to 1,500 tons of TNT). Since he had no target to hit except the wide sky, Gralla's job might have seemed simple, but in fact it was fantastically difficult. To enable the rockets to travel 300 miles up, he had to get them fired in an almost perfectly vertical course, a delicate task in rough seas. The rockets had to go off at precisely...
...object tucked like a streamlined fledgling under the bomber's wing was North American's X-15 rocket-plane, designed as the U.S.'s first manned space vehicle. Leaving earth for the first time, it carried no fuel: Test Pilot Scott Crossfield, 38, was in the cockpit scanning a host of instruments that judged the performance of the mated bomber and X-15, whether they flew well together at all altitudes without dangerous yaw or buffeting. The first test, as the three watching chase planes and the two closed-circuit TV cameras in the B-52 confirmed...
...burdened B-52 climbed to 38,000 ft., which is the altitude where the X-15 will be launched in free flight. In the dense lower air the off-center weight called for trim adjustments, but at the critical launch height and speed Mach 0.8, there was no trouble at all. After 70 minutes B-52 Pilot Charles Bock gently eased the coupled pair back down to a landing...
Last week's flight was like the first hesitant step of an infant who will some day grow into a record-breaking runner. Other, more confident steps will follow. Soon the X-15 will be carried aloft with a full 15,000-lb. load of liquid oxygen and liquid ammonia fuel. The emergency fuel-ejecting system and a dozen other complex gadgets will be air-checked. On another flight the X-15, probably with Crossfield at the controls, will be dropped to glide without power to earth. Then will come the first tentative powered flights, using only a fraction...
...CIRCLE/CTR AT, + 2, + 3, RADIUS, + 5." Meaning: "Turn on coolant, turn on spindle, go right with tool on left side along circle whose center is at x= +2,y = +3, with a radius of+5." This language is translated by a large computer that has been fed a set of cards punched with the APT grammar and vocabulary, thus has "learned" APT language. After it has read the APT instructions, the computer tests its solution with a blip of light that appears on a screen and goes through the motions that the machine tool is expected to make...