alternatehistory.com
Lifting body
a little of the right stuff
April 1971
Edwards AFB , California
Test pilot Story England considered himself altogether as the best pilot one has ever seen, a veteran, and sometimes a survivor, too.
Although he loved flying fantastic machines – and Edwards was the best place in the world for the job – he had seen too much aircrafts fell from the sky over the years.
Risky business, as they say.
His heart pinched slightly.
I don't know why, but I keep thinking something's bound to go wrong.
He didn’t give a damn.
Better than being in Vietnam, or driving a fucking airliner between two cities many times a day.
This morning promised to be quite exciting and fun, if not risky.
Story England had joined the Air Force just after the Korean War, and never regretted it. After some year spent flying interceptors for the Air Defence Command - North America watchdogs - he had geared his career toward flight testing.
At at time when Sputnik scared the hell out of America the Air Force had great hopes that the next step - flying men into space - would fall under its aegis.
Over the decade that followed the Air Force frantically attempted to place its pilots in space with a host of varied programs - Man In Space Soonest, DynaSoar, Blue Gemini, and the Manned Orbiting Laboratory.
All were cancelled since role of a military men in space remained murky.
Of all these broken arrows, England mostly regretted DynaSoar, a small space plane, the true ancestor of the space shuttle NASA wanted to build.
Back in 1944 the Nazis wanted to bomb New York, 8000 km away from the Fatherland. None of their aircrafts, of course, could do the trip.
And then come engineer Eugene Sanger, with a hare-brained concept.
Sanger’s bomber would be rocket powered, and it would fly extremely fast and high, to the edge of space; and then it would skim over Earth atmosphere like a flat stone over water.
Rebounding again and again on the upper atmosphere, a hundred kilometer high, the Silver Bird could fly to the antipodes, dropping nuclear bombs on the way - a truly terrifying weapon.
The Air Force explored the concept in the early 50's, only to discover it would never work; the Silver Bird would have melted straight away.
Dynamic Soaring:
Dyna Soar.
The name had stuck to the American Silver Bird.
DynaSoar would fly suborbital hops atop a modified Titan missile.
This made it the perfect successor to the X-15 that flew with great success. The year was 1958; in the wake of the Sputnik panic, a civilian space agency was created, and they took a different approach to men-in-space than the Air Force.
Capsules, not spaceplanes, would fly men into orbit, at least initially. Early spaceplanes like the X-15A2 and DynaSoar would test hypersonic flight into suborbital hops; later they would reach orbit and replace capsules in their role of crew ferries to future space stations. And later those space stations would become spaceports for nuclear-powered space cruisers bound to the Moon and Mars.
Such visions !
Dynasoar flight test program promised to be a pilot dream: the thing would fly high and fast, a huge suborbital hop that would bring it as far as Brazil - to a landing at the Fortaleza airstrip !
It would be the culmination of six decades of flight since the Wright brothers brief hop at Kill Devil Hills in 1903...
Unfortunately from 1961 onwards Boeing and the Air Force made the mistake of turning DynaSoar into a capsule competitor. Together with that foolish McNamara, this rapidly doomed the program, until its final cancellation late 1963.
England faced no other choice to remain at Edwards and fly the varied machines up there, most of them bleeding-edge technology.
There were past prototypes of fighters that would never enter service for a host of reasons; monstrous titanium or steel machines flying at 2000 miles per hour, called Walkyries and Blackbirds; old bombers turned into motherships; the X-15 of course, that flew faster and faster, up to Mach 6.
And, above all, were the Lifting Bodies, a new breed of flying machines, that build their lift, not from their wings but from their own stubby fuselage. M2F, X-24 or HL-10 - their had been varied machines flying over the years in the desert. Just like the incoming space shuttle, lifting bodies used to land unpowered, falling toward the landing strip like stones rather than birds, at a speed of two hundred miles per hour.
I guess I should've kept my mouth shut when I started to brag about. But I can't back down now because I pushed the other guy too far...
He thought about his fellow test pilot and colleague Milton Thompson. Of the things they had discussed days before, around some beers.
“The other day I received a call from the Martin Marietta company. One of their representative who had first contacted me about the SV-5J - a X-24 lifting body powered by a small jet engine borrowed from a business jet. This thing is all drag and lack power.”
“Probably very dangerous to fly then. Why on hell did they build that ?”
“Because Chuck Yeager told them we needed a jet-powered lifting body trainer. Well, maybe Yeager has the pilot skills to fly such thing, and probably you and I, too. But younger pilots don’t, and this might end in a bloodbath. Whatever, the fuckers from Martin didn’t give a damn; all they understood what that Yeager asked them two more X-24 hulls they immediately build on their own dime. Fortunately USAF refused the things, and they were stored, never flying. Unless of course they found some crazy pilot to risk his life making a hop in this infernal machine.”
“How interesting. And obviously they thought about you.”
“You have it right. And guess what ? the fucker asked me to quote a price to fly their coffin ! I told him I wasn't interested. He persisted, but I finally convinced him that I really wasn't interested. I suggested that he talk to one of the other lifting-body pilots. The next day, I got another call asking me to quote a price. I again indicated I was not interested. A day later, another call. By this time, I had decided to quote them a ridiculous price to get them off my back. I said that I would make the first flight for $25 000.”
England laughed loud. “You bastard ! And did this strategy worked ?”
“Well, it actually didn’t. Instead I received, guess what ? an invitation from them; they wanted me into a simulator of them so that I understood flying the thing wouldn’t be so hard. For the sake of curiosity I went to their corporate offices in Denver. After I finished my simulator evaluation, I was escorted upstairs to meet the vice president responsible for this particular project ! He wanted my impression of the vehicle based on the results of my simulator evaluation. I was initially a little embarrassed about telling him what I really thought of the vehicle, but I finally began giving him my impressions and their implications.
"Uh- Oh."
"I told him that my major concern was the lack of adequate thrust to make a normal, safe takeoff. Depending on a quick gear retraction was not the way to guarantee a safe takeoff. I told him that even if I could do it safely, some of Yeager's students might not. An underpowered vehicle like that was a guaranteed killer.
Martin could only ruin its own reputation by killing a couple of astronaut candidates. The X-24A might enhance Martin's reputation. The jet version would definitely degrade it. I concluded my evaluation of the SV-5J by strongly recommending that Martin not pursue the idea of flying it. And I’m quite sure they understood this time”
“They still don’t” England looked at Thompson, smirking.
For a second Thompson couldn’t say anything.
“Oh no. Please. Don’t tell me you will do it ?” And then Thompson laughed. “Tell me frankly. How much did you asked them ?”
“You’re not as ambitious as I am. I’m the real businessman out here.” he boasted.
“How much ?” Thompson shouted, grasping England by the collar.
“well... a good $100 000.”
Thompson was stunned, shut his mouth, and left the room. England was all triumph.
Money, however, was not the main reason why he wanted to fly the fucking SV-5J. He had to know those beasts, because he might soon fly into space with them.
Now all he had to do was to find a way to make Martin’s coffin airborne...
... the SV-5J stood at the edge of the runway, as rounded and thick as a French loaf. There was a fellow mecanician hanging around, England's trusted ally.
"Hey, Stanley, ya got any Beeman's?" He smiled. An old tradition of them.
"For unknown reason I was sure you would ask me that question." England caught the gum in mid-air and put it in his mouth.
"You know I'll pay you back later hmm ?"
He sat in the cramped cockpit, the canopy got closed over his head. Early in the morning the sun already bit his skin hard.
Another reason to conclude this business rapidly. England had a brief, loving thought for that beauty, Janis.
Don't worry baby, everything will turn out alright.
He lighted the J-60 turbojet and started taxiing on the runway, until the mark which materialised the beginning of the run.
He released the brakes and went at full throttle, and the lifting body responded without enthusiasm; the acceleration was pitiful, as he feared. The poor little turbojet in his back battled drag, lots of it.
After a mile like that he started working on its controls to make the fucking thing airborne. Nothing happened, as if the wheels were stuck on invisible rails hidden below Roger dry lake surface.
Okay, so you, fucking bucket of bolts, is reluctant to fly.
He glanced at the runway; another painted mark went and vanished. He was right on schedule, right on the "flight" plan he had imagined.
He counted seconds - 5, 4... at three, he eyed an object on the track - the board was present to the rendezvous. Zero ! he shouted, as the lifting body rear wheels bite the board, sending it flying over the lake. He pulled the controls as strong as he could and the lifting body literally jumped into the air.
I told you you would fly, but you did not believed me.
The nose, however, immediately started to sink.
Uh-oh - looks like I won't retract the gear and have a ride over Edwards.
He had enough, and landed the little bastard as soon as he could.
After he stopped the exhausted turbojet a car settled near his cockpit and a guy - probably a corporate from Martin Marietta – ran in his direction, waving his arms, visibly agitated and angry. England took deep breathes in its open cockpit.
Welcome back to Earth surface.
"So that's what you call flying ? you bastard, you just jumped our thing into the air like a car taking a bump too fast. Say goodbye to your 100 000 dollars."
What ?
He literally jumped out of the cockpit, and walked toward the guy, menacing.
"Who are you to learn me how to fly ? your paper-pushing cocksucker, you know no more about flying than how to order a drink from a stewardess !"
Undaunted, the little man continued his rambling, although on a softer tone. England caught the guy by the collar and lifted him near his face.
"I'd never specified a flight duration. A flight is a flight whether it is one hour or five seconds in duration. Okay ?" he released his grasp, and the guy fell to his ass in the mud.
"Sounds... sounds okay to me." He retreated to his car, muttering obscenities. As the car vanished in the foreground, England laughed out loud, relieving the pressure that had tightened around his heart.
Just another day at the office.
Another car come out of nowhere. Stanley. Thrust an old buddy.
Martin SV-5J
April 1971
Edwards AFB , California
Test pilot Story England considered himself altogether as the best pilot one has ever seen, a veteran, and sometimes a survivor, too.
Although he loved flying fantastic machines – and Edwards was the best place in the world for the job – he had seen too much aircrafts fell from the sky over the years.
Risky business, as they say.
His heart pinched slightly.
I don't know why, but I keep thinking something's bound to go wrong.
He didn’t give a damn.
Better than being in Vietnam, or driving a fucking airliner between two cities many times a day.
This morning promised to be quite exciting and fun, if not risky.
Story England had joined the Air Force just after the Korean War, and never regretted it. After some year spent flying interceptors for the Air Defence Command - North America watchdogs - he had geared his career toward flight testing.
At at time when Sputnik scared the hell out of America the Air Force had great hopes that the next step - flying men into space - would fall under its aegis.
Over the decade that followed the Air Force frantically attempted to place its pilots in space with a host of varied programs - Man In Space Soonest, DynaSoar, Blue Gemini, and the Manned Orbiting Laboratory.
All were cancelled since role of a military men in space remained murky.
Of all these broken arrows, England mostly regretted DynaSoar, a small space plane, the true ancestor of the space shuttle NASA wanted to build.
Back in 1944 the Nazis wanted to bomb New York, 8000 km away from the Fatherland. None of their aircrafts, of course, could do the trip.
And then come engineer Eugene Sanger, with a hare-brained concept.
Sanger’s bomber would be rocket powered, and it would fly extremely fast and high, to the edge of space; and then it would skim over Earth atmosphere like a flat stone over water.
Rebounding again and again on the upper atmosphere, a hundred kilometer high, the Silver Bird could fly to the antipodes, dropping nuclear bombs on the way - a truly terrifying weapon.
The Air Force explored the concept in the early 50's, only to discover it would never work; the Silver Bird would have melted straight away.
Dynamic Soaring:
Dyna Soar.
The name had stuck to the American Silver Bird.
DynaSoar would fly suborbital hops atop a modified Titan missile.
This made it the perfect successor to the X-15 that flew with great success. The year was 1958; in the wake of the Sputnik panic, a civilian space agency was created, and they took a different approach to men-in-space than the Air Force.
Capsules, not spaceplanes, would fly men into orbit, at least initially. Early spaceplanes like the X-15A2 and DynaSoar would test hypersonic flight into suborbital hops; later they would reach orbit and replace capsules in their role of crew ferries to future space stations. And later those space stations would become spaceports for nuclear-powered space cruisers bound to the Moon and Mars.
Such visions !
Dynasoar flight test program promised to be a pilot dream: the thing would fly high and fast, a huge suborbital hop that would bring it as far as Brazil - to a landing at the Fortaleza airstrip !
It would be the culmination of six decades of flight since the Wright brothers brief hop at Kill Devil Hills in 1903...
Unfortunately from 1961 onwards Boeing and the Air Force made the mistake of turning DynaSoar into a capsule competitor. Together with that foolish McNamara, this rapidly doomed the program, until its final cancellation late 1963.
England faced no other choice to remain at Edwards and fly the varied machines up there, most of them bleeding-edge technology.
There were past prototypes of fighters that would never enter service for a host of reasons; monstrous titanium or steel machines flying at 2000 miles per hour, called Walkyries and Blackbirds; old bombers turned into motherships; the X-15 of course, that flew faster and faster, up to Mach 6.
And, above all, were the Lifting Bodies, a new breed of flying machines, that build their lift, not from their wings but from their own stubby fuselage. M2F, X-24 or HL-10 - their had been varied machines flying over the years in the desert. Just like the incoming space shuttle, lifting bodies used to land unpowered, falling toward the landing strip like stones rather than birds, at a speed of two hundred miles per hour.
I guess I should've kept my mouth shut when I started to brag about. But I can't back down now because I pushed the other guy too far...
He thought about his fellow test pilot and colleague Milton Thompson. Of the things they had discussed days before, around some beers.
“The other day I received a call from the Martin Marietta company. One of their representative who had first contacted me about the SV-5J - a X-24 lifting body powered by a small jet engine borrowed from a business jet. This thing is all drag and lack power.”
“Probably very dangerous to fly then. Why on hell did they build that ?”
“Because Chuck Yeager told them we needed a jet-powered lifting body trainer. Well, maybe Yeager has the pilot skills to fly such thing, and probably you and I, too. But younger pilots don’t, and this might end in a bloodbath. Whatever, the fuckers from Martin didn’t give a damn; all they understood what that Yeager asked them two more X-24 hulls they immediately build on their own dime. Fortunately USAF refused the things, and they were stored, never flying. Unless of course they found some crazy pilot to risk his life making a hop in this infernal machine.”
“How interesting. And obviously they thought about you.”
“You have it right. And guess what ? the fucker asked me to quote a price to fly their coffin ! I told him I wasn't interested. He persisted, but I finally convinced him that I really wasn't interested. I suggested that he talk to one of the other lifting-body pilots. The next day, I got another call asking me to quote a price. I again indicated I was not interested. A day later, another call. By this time, I had decided to quote them a ridiculous price to get them off my back. I said that I would make the first flight for $25 000.”
England laughed loud. “You bastard ! And did this strategy worked ?”
“Well, it actually didn’t. Instead I received, guess what ? an invitation from them; they wanted me into a simulator of them so that I understood flying the thing wouldn’t be so hard. For the sake of curiosity I went to their corporate offices in Denver. After I finished my simulator evaluation, I was escorted upstairs to meet the vice president responsible for this particular project ! He wanted my impression of the vehicle based on the results of my simulator evaluation. I was initially a little embarrassed about telling him what I really thought of the vehicle, but I finally began giving him my impressions and their implications.
"Uh- Oh."
"I told him that my major concern was the lack of adequate thrust to make a normal, safe takeoff. Depending on a quick gear retraction was not the way to guarantee a safe takeoff. I told him that even if I could do it safely, some of Yeager's students might not. An underpowered vehicle like that was a guaranteed killer.
Martin could only ruin its own reputation by killing a couple of astronaut candidates. The X-24A might enhance Martin's reputation. The jet version would definitely degrade it. I concluded my evaluation of the SV-5J by strongly recommending that Martin not pursue the idea of flying it. And I’m quite sure they understood this time”
“They still don’t” England looked at Thompson, smirking.
For a second Thompson couldn’t say anything.
“Oh no. Please. Don’t tell me you will do it ?” And then Thompson laughed. “Tell me frankly. How much did you asked them ?”
“You’re not as ambitious as I am. I’m the real businessman out here.” he boasted.
“How much ?” Thompson shouted, grasping England by the collar.
“well... a good $100 000.”
Thompson was stunned, shut his mouth, and left the room. England was all triumph.
Money, however, was not the main reason why he wanted to fly the fucking SV-5J. He had to know those beasts, because he might soon fly into space with them.
Now all he had to do was to find a way to make Martin’s coffin airborne...
... the SV-5J stood at the edge of the runway, as rounded and thick as a French loaf. There was a fellow mecanician hanging around, England's trusted ally.
"Hey, Stanley, ya got any Beeman's?" He smiled. An old tradition of them.
"For unknown reason I was sure you would ask me that question." England caught the gum in mid-air and put it in his mouth.
"You know I'll pay you back later hmm ?"
He sat in the cramped cockpit, the canopy got closed over his head. Early in the morning the sun already bit his skin hard.
Another reason to conclude this business rapidly. England had a brief, loving thought for that beauty, Janis.
Don't worry baby, everything will turn out alright.
He lighted the J-60 turbojet and started taxiing on the runway, until the mark which materialised the beginning of the run.
He released the brakes and went at full throttle, and the lifting body responded without enthusiasm; the acceleration was pitiful, as he feared. The poor little turbojet in his back battled drag, lots of it.
After a mile like that he started working on its controls to make the fucking thing airborne. Nothing happened, as if the wheels were stuck on invisible rails hidden below Roger dry lake surface.
Okay, so you, fucking bucket of bolts, is reluctant to fly.
He glanced at the runway; another painted mark went and vanished. He was right on schedule, right on the "flight" plan he had imagined.
He counted seconds - 5, 4... at three, he eyed an object on the track - the board was present to the rendezvous. Zero ! he shouted, as the lifting body rear wheels bite the board, sending it flying over the lake. He pulled the controls as strong as he could and the lifting body literally jumped into the air.
I told you you would fly, but you did not believed me.
The nose, however, immediately started to sink.
Uh-oh - looks like I won't retract the gear and have a ride over Edwards.
He had enough, and landed the little bastard as soon as he could.
After he stopped the exhausted turbojet a car settled near his cockpit and a guy - probably a corporate from Martin Marietta – ran in his direction, waving his arms, visibly agitated and angry. England took deep breathes in its open cockpit.
Welcome back to Earth surface.
"So that's what you call flying ? you bastard, you just jumped our thing into the air like a car taking a bump too fast. Say goodbye to your 100 000 dollars."
What ?
He literally jumped out of the cockpit, and walked toward the guy, menacing.
"Who are you to learn me how to fly ? your paper-pushing cocksucker, you know no more about flying than how to order a drink from a stewardess !"
Undaunted, the little man continued his rambling, although on a softer tone. England caught the guy by the collar and lifted him near his face.
"I'd never specified a flight duration. A flight is a flight whether it is one hour or five seconds in duration. Okay ?" he released his grasp, and the guy fell to his ass in the mud.
"Sounds... sounds okay to me." He retreated to his car, muttering obscenities. As the car vanished in the foreground, England laughed out loud, relieving the pressure that had tightened around his heart.
Just another day at the office.
Another car come out of nowhere. Stanley. Thrust an old buddy.
Martin SV-5J
- Archibald
- Word Count: 2k