Make Your Career Soar
Fifty-six years ago this month, USAF Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Stapp set a record for human G-tolerance when his Sonic Wind #1 rocket-powered test sled decelerated from 632 mph to a full stop in roughly 1.4 seconds. In so doing, Stapp endured a deceleration load equal to 46.2 times his weight. The period immediately… Read More
Fifty-one years ago this week, USAF Captain Joe B. Jordan zoomed a modified USAF/Lockheed F-104C Starfighter to a world altitude record of 103,395.5 feet above mean sea level. The flight originated from and recovered to the Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC) at Edwards Air Force Base, California. On Tuesday, 14 July… Read More
White Eagle Aerospace (WEA) held its highly acclaimed Aerodynamics For Engineers (AFE) short course at Edwards Air Force Base, California from 29 Nov-02 Dec 2010. This specialized training was provided to military and civilian engineering personnel of the legendary Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC). White Eagle Aerospace sincerely appreciates the opportunity to… Read More
Forty-five years ago this month, Gemini 7 set a new record for long-duration manned spaceflight. The official lift-off-to-splashdown flight duration was 330 hours, 35 minutes and 1 second. Project Gemini was the critical bridge between America’s fledging manned spaceflight effort – Project Mercury – and the bold push to land men on the Moon –… Read More
Thirty-one years ago this month, the 2nd and only surviving USAF/Lockheed YF-12A completed its final NASA flight research mission. The flight brought to a close the 10-year period within which the YF-12A was employed as a NASA high-speed flight research platform. The YF-12A was the interceptor variant of the vaunted Lockheed A-12 Mach 3+ aircraft. Armed with a… Read More
Forty-four years ago this month, a prototype of the USAF/Douglas Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) was launched into Earth orbit. It was the first and only orbital flight test of the military space station. The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) was a United States Air Force (USAF) program to develop a military reconnaissance space platform in… Read More
Twenty-nine years ago this month, the Space Shuttle Columbia completed the second mission of the Space Shuttle Program. Designated STS-2, the mission marked the first reuse of a space vehicle for manned orbital flight. America’s early manned spacecraft – Mercury, Gemini and Apollo – were single-flight vehicles. That is, a new spacecraft was required for each space… Read More
Forty-nine years ago this week, the USAF/NASA/North American X-15 became the first manned aircraft to exceed Mach 6. United States Air Force test pilot Major Robert M. White was at the controls of the legendary hypersonic flight research aircraft. The North American X-15 was the first manned hypersonic aircraft. It was designed, engineered, constructed and first… Read More
Fifty-six years ago this week, the USN/Convair XFY-1 became the first Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) aircraft to successfully transition from vertical to horizontal flight. The historic flight was piloted by famed Convair engineering test pilot James F. “Skeets” Coleman. Motivated by World War II lessons-learned, the United States Navy began contemplating the feasibility of… Read More
Forty-eight years ago this month, Mercury Astronaut Walter M. Schirra, Jr. orbited the Earth six (6) times in his Mercury spacecraft code-named Sigma 7. The near-perfect 9-hour spaceflight was the United States’ third manned orbital mission flown within a period of eight (8) months. Project Mercury was United States’ first manned spaceflight… Read More
