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X-15 Flight 91

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{| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" align="right" |+ X-15 Flight 91 |- !colspan="2" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="

FFDEAD"|Mission insignia

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FFDEAD"|Mission statistics

|- |Mission Name:||X-15 Flight 91 |- |Call Sign:||X-15 |- |Number of
Crew members:||1 |- |Launch:||August 22, 1963
18:05:57 Coordinated Universal Time
NB-52A Flying near
Smith Ranch Dry Lake, NV
|- |Landing:||August 22, 1963
18:17:05.6 UTC
Rogers Dry Lake,
Edwards AFB, CA |- |Duration:
B-52 drop to
X-15 wheel stop||11 min 8.6 seconds |- |Number of
Orbits:||Suborbital |- |Apogee:||107.96 km |- |Distance
Traveled:||543.4 km |- |Maximum
velocity:||6,106 km/h |- |Peak acceleration:||5 G (49 m/s²) |- |Mass:||15,195 kg fueled;
6,577 kg burnout;
6,260 kg landed |- !colspan="2" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="

FFDEAD"|Crew picture

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FFDEAD"|Joe Walker

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Crew

- Joseph A. Walker

Mission parameters

- Mass: 15,195 kg fueled; 6,577 kg burnout; 6,260 kg landed

- Maximum Altitude: 107.96 km

- Range: 543.4 km

- Burn Time: 85.8 seconds

- Mach: 5.58

- Launch Vehicle: NB-52A Bomber

Mission highlights

Unofficial world altitude record from 1963 to 2004. On this flight, Joe Walker became the first person to enter space twice. Maximum Speed - 6106 km/h. Maximum Altitude - 107,960 m. Second and final X-15 flight over 100 km. Unofficial altitude record set for class. Highest altitude achieved by X-15. Last flight for Walker in X-15 program. Number 1 left RCS nozzle froze up. First flight with altitude predictor instrument (needed calibration). The mission was flown by X-15

3, serial 56-6672 on its 22nd flight.

Launched by: NB-52A

003, Pilots Bement & Lewis. Takeoff: 17:09 UTC. Landing: 18:56 UTC.

Chase pilots: Wood, Dana, Gordon and Rogers. The X-15 engine burns about 85 seconds. Near the end of the burn, acceleration builds up to about 4 G (39 m/s²). Weightlessness lasts for 3 to 5 minutes. Re-entry heating warms the exterior of the X-15 to 650 °C. in places. During pull up after re-entry acceleration builds up to 5 G (49 m/s²) for 20 seconds. The entire flight is about 12 minutes from launch to landing. Pilot Robert White commented on his high altitude X-15 flights, "My flights to 217,000 feet [66 km] and 314,750 feet [96 km] were very dramatic in revealing the earth's curvature ... at my highest altitude I could turn my head through a 180º arc and wow! - the earth is really round. At my peak altitude I was roughly over the Arizona/California border in the area of Las Vegas, and this was how I described it: looking to my left I felt I could spit into the Gulf of California. Looking to my right I felt I could toss a dime into San Francisco Bay."

1st 100 km Flight:
X-15 Flight 90

X-15 Program

2nd 100 km Flight:
X-15 Flight 91

References

- X-15 The NASA Mission Reports - by Robert Godwin - ISBN 1896522-65-3

;NASA reports (Portable Document Format format)

- Hypersonics Before the Shuttle: A Concise History of the X-15 Research Airplane

- X-15 research results with a selected bibliography

- Flight experience with shock impingement and interference heating on the X-15-2 research airplane 1968

- Thermal protection system X-15A-2 Design report 1968

Category:Human spaceflights

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