1. I suspect that this was written somewhat was a hagiography of Storms and North American in a way that may not be entirely fair. Henry Spencer (noted expert in space history) described it as a movie script instead of history. That said, the bit where NASA decides to screw the contractor after a disaster is something I've seen several times myself.
2. "Storms suggested adding weight to the nose to make it less tail-heavy (a trick he picked up from his model-building days). The next test, the missile “flew like an arrow to the target.""
This definitely isn't the whole story. They spend quite a bit of time on weight and balance in aerospace classes. My guess would be that he was willing to authorize ballast, which is generally frowned upon because it's obviously otherwise useless.
3. Specific impulse isn't about thrust, it's about delta-V (change in velocity for a given amount of fuel). If you want more thrust, kerosene-LOX is better.
4. The majority of North American's aerospace divisions ended up as part of Boeing. I actually started my career in the building where they did most of the design of the SII stage.
That's a great story. I remember Apollo from my childhood. Building the moon rocket took some serious engineering and a certain mysticism, impossible to recapture today, about American capacity. The Reagan years and since have all been about what we can't do.
P.S. Germany had three groups of rocket scientists. The Americans got one, and our rocketry follows their model. The Russians got another, and their rocketry has followed that model. The British got the third, the one developing hydrogen peroxide fuel mixture based rockets. According to "Backroom Boys", the British managed to launch a satellite using this technology, but advanced rocketry was a game for superpowers, and England was no longer a superpower.
"The X-15 would ultimately achieve a speed of Mach 6.7 (4,520 miles per hour), a record which remains unbroken for crewed, powered aircraft."
In *Top Gun: Maverick*, the scene in which Tom Cruise reaches Mach 10 seemed implausible when I saw it, though I didn't follow up, in part cause the movie is more fable / fairy tale than not.
A couple of comments:
1. I suspect that this was written somewhat was a hagiography of Storms and North American in a way that may not be entirely fair. Henry Spencer (noted expert in space history) described it as a movie script instead of history. That said, the bit where NASA decides to screw the contractor after a disaster is something I've seen several times myself.
2. "Storms suggested adding weight to the nose to make it less tail-heavy (a trick he picked up from his model-building days). The next test, the missile “flew like an arrow to the target.""
This definitely isn't the whole story. They spend quite a bit of time on weight and balance in aerospace classes. My guess would be that he was willing to authorize ballast, which is generally frowned upon because it's obviously otherwise useless.
3. Specific impulse isn't about thrust, it's about delta-V (change in velocity for a given amount of fuel). If you want more thrust, kerosene-LOX is better.
4. The majority of North American's aerospace divisions ended up as part of Boeing. I actually started my career in the building where they did most of the design of the SII stage.
That's a great story. I remember Apollo from my childhood. Building the moon rocket took some serious engineering and a certain mysticism, impossible to recapture today, about American capacity. The Reagan years and since have all been about what we can't do.
P.S. Germany had three groups of rocket scientists. The Americans got one, and our rocketry follows their model. The Russians got another, and their rocketry has followed that model. The British got the third, the one developing hydrogen peroxide fuel mixture based rockets. According to "Backroom Boys", the British managed to launch a satellite using this technology, but advanced rocketry was a game for superpowers, and England was no longer a superpower.
A great write up. A small correction- one of the footnotes says Hitler came to power in 1937. He became chancellor in 1933.
Great review
Thx
"The X-15 would ultimately achieve a speed of Mach 6.7 (4,520 miles per hour), a record which remains unbroken for crewed, powered aircraft."
In *Top Gun: Maverick*, the scene in which Tom Cruise reaches Mach 10 seemed implausible when I saw it, though I didn't follow up, in part cause the movie is more fable / fairy tale than not.
What a fantastic read! Thanks for the great intro to the book.