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Post by bazbear on Apr 25, 2006 13:00:36 GMT -4
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Post by LunarOrbit on Apr 25, 2006 13:23:51 GMT -4
Yeah, that was sad. At least he died doing something he loved. (I wonder how long it will be before a HB claims he was about to expose the moon hoax so "they" had him killed :  |
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Post by bazbear on Apr 27, 2006 0:10:38 GMT -4
Yeah, that was sad. At least he died doing something he loved. Indeed. I just find it ironic a man who pushed the envelope in so many of the highest performance aircraft of his time (and in the case of the X-15, arguably of all time) would perish flying a tried-and-true aircraft ('61 Cessna 210A) he'd flown a ton of hours in over the years. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?), most of them wouldn't know the name Scott Crossfield from Adam, the first man to fly at Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound. They certainly wouldn't know the connection the X-aircraft projects have to manned space flight. Heck, they were manned space flights on a couple or a handful of occasions, depending on definition. (Crossfield wasn't one of them even by the the 50 mile altitude U.S. definition, the international definition is 100 km/62 miles). He was one of a small group of men who pushed the envelope in the early days of trans-and-supersonic flight, and put his own @$$ on the line as much as more celebrated (if equally deserving) contemporaries and peers such as Chuck Yeager. I'll let his own words sum up how I see him "I am an aeronautical engineer, an aerodynamicist and a designer. My flying was only primarily because I felt that it was essential to designing and building better airplanes for pilots to fly." |
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