Originally posted by gilroynewball:
the legendary Scott Crossfield gave a brief presentation on his contribution to aviation and aerospace (for those of you who don't know who Scott Crossfield is, which is, 99.8% of you, he flew the X-15, the first airplane to fly sub-orbital. Its technology was vital to the space program, and was one of the precursors to the Space Shuttle).




The 0.2% would point out that Scotty was the first person to fly twice the speed of sound, in the Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket, and left NASA/NACA to be a development engineer on the X-15, flying the first test flights before North American handed the vehicles over to NASA. He's a great speaker and, unlike some of those guys, is happy to chat and sign autographs after his appearances (when I asked him to sign my copy of his book, "Always Another Dawn," his comment was, "So, did you like my book?")

Also, small point, but the first airplane to fly sub-orbital was built by the Wright brothers....

'00 SE...that's all