Science: Nearest to Space

The Air Force would not confirm it. At a press conference last week Defense Secretary Wilson muttered, “I think we have talked too much about it.” But the news had spread nevertheless along the quick-acting grapevine that connects aviation centers. The Bell X-2 rocket plane, insisted the grapevine, had flown to 126,000 ft. (23.9 miles), beating the official record of the X-1A by nearly 6.8 miles. Nothing firm had leaked about the details of the flight. One air-industry rumor held that the X-2 had merely been trying for 100,000 ft., and that it surprised its fans when it shot five miles higher.

One thing was fairly certain: Captain Iven Carl Kincheloe, 28, the X-2’s pilot, had penetrated deeply into a part of the atmosphere that no man had reached before. Twenty-four miles up is the very threshold of space, where the air is only 1/250th as dense as it is on the ground. To reach 24 miles, Pilot Kincheloe passed through the layer of deadly ozone around 65,000 ft. and left it far below. He approached the altitude where the air is electrified by the sun. He was halfway up to the zone of fire where meteors sparkle and die.

Back from the edge of space, Kincheloe is reported to have called his parents on their Michigan farm. “I did it,” he said. “I did it, and am I thrilled!”

The Difference. Last week tall, blond Pilot Kincheloe (rhymes with pinch low) watched his words but looked as if he had swallowed a canary. The X2, he said guardedly, “handles well. It is an airplane, and it flies like one. Of course there are certain aspects of handling it that make it different. First, you are dropped [from the B50 mother ship]. Then you are rocket-powered. Then you glide. These make it different.”

“Kinch” started preparing for this “different” flight at the age of four on a farm at Dowagiac, Mich. His father permitted barnstorming pilots to use one of his fields as a landing strip, and young Kinch watched the kitelike airplanes taking neighborhood farmers and their kids for rides. The pilots accepted ducks and eggs as Depression pay. Next year his father made the barnstormers pay their rent in rides for Kinch. By the time he was seven, Kinch was handling airplane controls. He soloed unofficially long before the legal flying age (16), soloed for the record on his 16th birthday.

After graduating from Purdue University (B.S., aeronautical engineering), Kinch briefly considered taking a job with a leading airplane company. But who wants to sit at a drafting board for the rest of his life? Basic flying training at Randolph Field, Texas led to his fighter’s wings in 1950. In 101 Korean combat missions Kinch shot down ten enemy planes, which made him the tenth U.S. jet-ace and a double ace.

That is about as high as a man can get by flying. There is one higher level: research test pilot. In 1954 Kinch was admitted to the Air Force test-pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. He lives in a two-bedroom house on the base, has three cars (Cadillac, 1924 Vauxhall, model A Ford), and he and his wife are expecting a baby.

Controlled Thrust. Neither the Air Force nor Kinch will hint what the future of the X-2 will be. It was built as a research ship to feel out the problems of flight at extreme speed and altitude. One problem was frictional heat, which was solved by making the X-2 of heat-resisting alloys. Another problem was control. The Air Force has not told how well the X-2’s controls, which look conventional, work in the near-vacuum 24 miles up.

A large part of the success of the X-2 is certainly due to its improved rocket motor. Its predecessor, X-1A, had a cluster of four small rocket chambers that could be turned on and off individually, giving the pilot a clumsy kind of thrust control. The X-2’s motor, made by Curtiss-Wright Corp., is much more sophisticated. Its two rocket chambers can be throttled down smoothly to a small fraction of full power. Much weight is saved by better fuel tanks, pumps, valving, etc.

The greatest improvement is the controlled thrust, which enables the pilot to program his flight so as to get the maximum effect out of his fuel. When the X-2 is dropped from a B50 at 30,000 ft. and is trying for altitude or speed, it can save fuel by throttling down while still in the thick air of low altitudes. When it climbs to thin air, which does not offer as much resistance, the pilot can open up safely. If trying for altitude, he probably points his nose straight up, blasts his motor at full thrust until all fuel is gone. Then he coasts upward for miles like a burned-out missile until gravity slows him and beckons him back to earth and a dead-stick landing.