AirSpaceMag.com

Six weeks before Sputnik 1 ushered in the Space Age, and four years before Yuri Gagarin’s Vostok 1 flight, an adventurous young biomedical researcher named David Simons climbed to the edge of space inside a pressurized capsule, as part of a project called Manhigh. As we wrote in an article published in 2000, Simons was the first man in history to watch the sun rise and set from above the atmosphere.

When he took a break from work and just sat there munching sandwiches and chocolate bars in his tiny capsule 20 miles up, he turned reflective. Later, in his official pilot’s report, he wrote: “It seemed right that I should be going toward space, as if that was where I belonged. In this sense I experienced a separation of emotional ties and interests from the earth below and felt an identification with the void of space above.”

Simons before his Manhigh flight in August 1957. (Photo: USAF)

Simons died on April 5 at his home in Covington, Georgia at the age of 87.

New hi-definition movies of the Sun, from NASA’s recently launched Solar Dynamics Observatory. Mesmerizing.

On Thursday, April 22, the U.S. Air Force will finally launch its little, unmanned X-37 orbital spaceplane on top of an Atlas V rocket. The liftoff, which will take place in a window between 7:52 p.m. and 8:01 p.m., will mark the culmination of years of development for the newest U.S. spacecraft—and the world’s only reusable one after the space shuttle’s planned retirement toward the end of this year.

The X-37 program, which is run by the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office, has been veiled in secrecy ever since NASA handed the program off to the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency and the Air Force several years ago. The spaceplane’s mission remains a mystery, although deployment of small satellites and space experiments, and their later retrieval and return, have been mentioned as possible activities once the X-37 becomes operational.

The X-37 Orbital Test Vehicle is outlined by its payload fairing in the Astrotech facility in Titusville, Florida, in April 2010. Photo: U.S. Air Force

On April 20, Gary Payton, Deputy Under Secretary of the Air Force, gave a few details about the program in a teleconference. One new piece of information is that the Air Force will analyze the procedures on the ground after the spacecraft comes home to get a sense of how feasible and affordable it will be to turn the X-37 around for another flight within a matter of days or weeks. “If we were in a surge environment where we were putting up a whole bunch of satellites all at once, over the course of a month or two, kinda like an operationally responsive space scenario…I would like to see this X-37 handled much more like an airplane, maybe an SR-71,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve set any specific goal, but I would think handling this bird more like an SR-71 and less like a routine space launch vehicle would be a good objective. So that’s measured in several days, or maybe 10-15 days, or less. Something like that.”

Payton also revealed that the program has a contract for a second “tail number,” or a second X-37, which will make its first flight at some point in 2011. While the first tail number’s duration in orbit on its inaugural flight hasn’t been released, Payton did confirm that the spaceplane, which can stay in orbit for up to 270 days, will make a landing before the second tail number ever flies, to ensure that any improvements would be applied to the second tail number’s first flight.

When asked to come up with a good adjective for the X-37 with regard to the vehicle’s revolutionary nature, Payton replied.

“Oh, wow. No, don’t use ‘Oh, wow.’ I’m an engineer, not an English major.”

For an audio file of the teleconference, click here.

Mach 20! Yee-hah!

The field of hypersonic flight research is about to get a boost—actually, two boosts. DARPA’s Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle, or HTV-2, is due to launch Thursday on a Minotaur rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California (after two days of weather delays).

The unpowered glider will be released from the rocket to fly back through the atmosphere, and is expected to reach at least Mach 20 before slamming into the Pacific Ocean near Kwajalein Atoll. On the way down, it will send back lots of data on basics like structural heating, navigation and aerodynamics. The flight should last just 30 minutes, and will be followed by a second Falcon test early next year.

Then, later this spring (no sooner than the end of May), the U.S. Air Force’s X-51 WaveRider is due to begin a series of flights from Edwards Air Force Base. Here’s a preview:

DoD / U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Derrick C. Goode.

In March 1999, during the Kosovo War, as Lieutenant Colonel Dale Zelko piloted his F-117, he saw two missiles punch through the bottom of the clouds. The unbelievable had happened: A Serbian surface-to-air missile had locked on to his aircraft. Zelko was able to eject, and was rescued shortly after, but Serbian television immediately began broadcasting shots of the wreckage of the F-117 around the world. The U.S. military was stunned. How had the seemingly invulnerable stealth aircraft been targeted and brought down?

A recent Smithsonian Channel special, titled Stealth: Flying Invisible, recounts the history of stealth from the advent of radar to the Lockheed Martin F-35, and beyond. Covered are the World War II origins of stealth; the cold war’s stealthy U-2 reconnaissance aircraft; and the development of Lockheed’s SR-71. (During the Vietnam War, the 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa was said to have a sign about the SR-71 that read: “Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I shall fear no evil, because I’m at 80,000 feet and Mach 3.”)

After the success of the SR-71, the goal became to build a fighter that was undetectable: hence the F-117. And stealth would ultimately change the battlefield. As Colonel David A. Moore, vice commander of the 49th Fighter Wing says in the episode, “There are some things that the F-117 does that are very unique. I like to describe it as going in to find the needle in the haystack…and then kill it. That is our job.”

Stealth: Flying Invisible will be shown on  April 24 and 26 on the Smithsonian Channel, and is also available on demand. Check your local television listings for more details. Watch a sneak peak, below.)