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Flight Research Pilots

Robert White, Bill Dana, Neil Armstrong and Joe Engle were on hand when astronaut wings were presented to the three NASA pilots who flew the X-15 into space.

 
Photo Number: EC05-0177-33
Photo Date: August 23, 2005
 
Formats: 640x621 JPEG Image (246 KBytes)
1280x1242 JPEG Image (888 KBytes)
3000x2910 JPEG Image (4697 KBytes)
 
Photo
Description:
Four of the five surviving X-15 pilots were on hand when astronaut wings were presented to the three NASA pilots who flew the X-15 rocket plane into space in the 1960s, Bill Dana, Joe Walker (deceased) and Jack McKay (deceased). From left, Robert White, Dana, Neil Armstrong, Joe Engle.
 
Project
Description:
In a turbulent era of 1960s Cold War confrontations, moon race headlines, and war in southeast Asia, eight military and civilian test pilots flew the radical X-15 rocket plane out of the atmosphere and into the record books, earning astronaut status. Until today, three of those early astronaut test pilots never received official recognition of their lofty membership as astronauts because only the military had astronaut wings to confer on their pilots at that time. Civilian NASA pilots had no such badge.

That inequity was rectified on August 23, 2005, when retired NASA pilot Bill Dana, and family members representing deceased pilots John B. McKay and Joseph A. Walker, received civilian astronaut wings acknowledging their flights above 264,000 feet altitude -- 50 miles high. The men were honored in a quiet ceremony at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base in California, site of their achievements.

Bill Dana was philosophical about it: NASA pilots didn't wear wings anyway, and the concept of winning special wings was probably more crucial to a military pilot's career ladder, he explained.

Dana's first of two flights into space took him 58.13 miles above the Mojave Desert on Nov. 1, 1966 on a mission to collect micrometeorite samples, while also learning about issues of sky brightness at that height.

Joe Walker's third X-15 foray into space claimed the unofficial world altitude record of 354,200 feet, or 67.08 miles, on Aug. 22, 1963. Walker's unofficial record also marked the highest altitude to which the X-15 was ever flown.

John McKay attained 295,600 feet altitude, or 55.98 miles, on Sept. 28, 1965 during during a flight that investigated several research experiments.

The X-15 program used three piloted hypersonic rocket planes to fly as high as 67 miles and as fast as nearly seven times the speed of sound. Volumes of test data gleaned from 199 X-15 missions from 1959 through 1968 helped shape the successful Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle human spaceflight programs. Two retired X-15s are displayed at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C., and the Air Force Museum, Dayton, Ohio.

 
NASA Photo by: Tony Landis
 
Keywords: X-15, pilots, astronaut wings, Bill Dana, Joe Walker, Jack McKay, Robert White, Neil Armstrong, Joe Engle
 


Last Modified: August 30, 2005
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