On Fri, 14 May 2004 23:37:32 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

In article . net,
"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote:

Not after the high-altitude flights, though, and the average gap between
"hard" flights of the same airframes was a month and a half.

Some of that was the requirement to analyze the data from one flight
before doing the next. It wasn't a mechanical problem.

They also had a tendency to need major parts of the airframe (tail and
wing surfaces) replaced or refurbished after the more demanding flights.

Only rarely. You make it sound routine, but it wasn't. It was
actually very uncommon.

Not to mention they were doing this with a much smaller payload.

It was built to be an experimental vehicle, not to win the X-Prize.
If it had needed the bigger payload, it would have had it.

We're talking about a vehicle nearly a half century old, flown to very
conservative flight rules for research. Retrospect only works about
so well.

If FRC had had a requirement to fly two high-altitude flights within
14 days, I am quite confident it could have. This is because, in
part, one of the X-15 ops engineers told me so.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer