CriticalPast is an archive of historic footage. The vintage footage in this video has been uploaded for research purposes, and is presented in unedited form. Some viewers may find some scenes or audio in this archival material to be unsettling or distressing. CriticalPast makes this media available for researchers and documentarians, and does not endorse or condone any behavior or message, implied or explicit, that is seen or heard in this video. Link to order this clip: http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675047088_Directors-of-Zeppelin-Air-Dock-Yard_Commander-Hugo-Eckener_Ing-Arenstein_Ludwig-Durr-writes Historic Stock Footage Archival and Vintage Video Clips in HD. Principal officers of the Zeppelin Airship Building Company, Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Directors of the zeppelin Airship Building Company (Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH) in Germany. Commander Hugo Eckener seated in a chair and holds a cigar in his mouth while reading a paper. Dr. Ing Arenstein, engineer of zeppelin, works at a workshop. Dr. Ludwig Durr writes at desk and drink beverage. Location: Germany. Date: 1908. Visit us at www.CriticalPast.com: 57,000+ broadcast-quality historic clips for immediate download. Fully digitized and searchable, the CriticalPast collection is one of the largest archival footage collections in the world. All clips are licensed royalty-free, worldwide, in perpetuity. CriticalPast offers immediate downloads of full-resolution HD and SD masters and full-resolution time-coded screeners, 24 hours a day, to serve the needs of broadcast news, TV, film, and publishing professionals worldwide. Still photo images extracted from the vintage footage are also available for immediate download. CriticalPast is your source for imagery of worldwide events, people, and B-roll spanning the 20th century.

Describes how the X-15 Aircraft was designed and built by North American Aviation. Engineered to be the worlds fastest aircraft, the North American X-15 was a hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft operated by the USAF and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the X-plane experimental aerospace projects. The X-15 set speed and altitude records in the 1960s, reaching the edge of outer space and returning with valuable data later used in aircraft design. As of September 2015, the X-15 holds the official world record for the highest speed ever recorded by a manned, powered aircraft. It would ultimately reach a top speed of 4,520 miles per hour (7,274 km/h), or Mach 6.72.

Discord: https://discord.gg/WXb565P9nQ New Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD3cl0MmX6fGZzeAHt4JWJA Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpM4zrZ9c_apiEj6CApj2yw/join YES! This is a reupload (the first-ever on the channel). An editing mistake and a too hasty attempt to fix it interrupted the algo and killed its ability to perform. So enjoy again! Flying at 70,000 feet above the world at three times the speed of sound floats the future of combat - so much so that the US air force called it the last manned bomber. Its platform was so versatile that the military planned a range of future versions, from supersonic refueling, medical evac to even passengers! But this 1950s miracle plane would never enter production, and the what if only remains on paper. This is the lost future we never had, the legendary XB-70 Valkyrie Super Bomber. The XB-70 Valkyrie was an experimental high-speed, delta-wing aircraft that was developed by the North American Aviation, or NAA, Los Angeles Division of the United States Air Force. The XB-70 was a plane full of amazing features but its two most-distinguishing features were these: Firstly, it was designed to fly at three times the speed of sound, which meant attaining Mach 3 speed. Secondly, it was designed to fly at an altitude higher than 70,000 feet, which is approximately 21,000 kilometers. It was to be a very, very fast plane that could fly very, very high. The Air Force had first dreamt up the concept for the XB-70 in 1954, with the contract for its Air Force Weapon System 110A competition being between two American aircraft manufacturers: Boeing and NAA. It was the NAA proposal that was awarded the contract on December 23rd, 1957. The intent was for the XB-70 to be a very large, very fast strategic bomber meant to replace the legendary and hugely successful Boeing fighter bomber, the B-52. The new super bomber would need to be capable of carrying nuclear and conventional weapons. Interestingly, a key aspect of the Air Force contract was that NAA as the prime contractor would have total responsibility over weapon systems as well. This Valkyrie would have a crew of four, namely a pilot, co-pilot, bombardier and defensive systems operator. The XB-70 was 196 feet or 59,7 metres in length and its tail stood at a height of 31 feet or 9.4 metres. The plane would weigh in at an estimated maximum gross weight of 521,000 pounds or 235,868 kilograms. The delta wing spanned an impressive 105 feet or 32 metres, with the wing swept at just over 65 degrees. The plane also had two large vertical tails. Its engines could push the plane to a decent range of 4,288 miles or 6,900 kilometres, which, although not a huge range, would still be considerable given the incredible cruising speed the plane could attain. Its service ceiling was especially attractive - an incredibly high altitude of 77,350 feet or 23,576 metres, which equated to 14.64 miles or 23.57 kilometres up in the air. Also noteworthy and downright impressive were the plane’s braking gears, which weighed more than 6 tons in total. Each main gear had four wheels, whilst the nose gear had two wheels. To give an idea of just how much aircraft had to be stopped by the braking system, consider this: a single stop for the XB-70 Valkyrie would absorb kinetic energy equivalent to that needed to suddenly stop 800 medium-sized cars travelling at a speed of about 100 miles or 161 kilometres per hour. The XB-70 was full of new and experimental technologies. These included an exotic new type of boron-based fuel, known colloquially as zip fuel. It was more energy-dense than gasoline or jet fuel and its advantage, so the thinking at the time went, was that it would offer jets greater range and speed advantages. Six General Electric J93-GE 3 turbojet engines that produced a massive 28,000 pounds of thrust each would be needed to burn this special fuel and attain such blistering speed. Each of the engines would also have an afterburner, with the six engines located side by side in a large pod underneath the fuselage. There would also be two large rectangular inlet ducts that provided two-dimensional airflow and thus improved aerodynamic efficiencies for the XB-70. The plane would also feature what’s been dubbed a retractable “wind screen” for when the plane attained Mach 3 flight. This movable screen was comprised of a wind shield and ramp that would be raised during supersonic flight in order to reduce drag. The assembly would be lowered once the plane needed to land so that both the pilot and co-pilot would have a clear view of the runway. In effect, the B-70 was designed to “ride” its own shock wave, akin to how a surfer rides an ocean wave. That’s quite a ride! There were such hopes for this super-fast super bomber that many different variations regarding its potential were proposed for the XB-70 Valkyrie and they’re worth looking into.

“That’s not a plane, it’s a 3 plane formation” that’s what General Curtis LeMay said of the plans for the WS-110 supersonic replacement for the B-52 back in 1954. Patreon : https://www.patreon.com/curiousdroid Paypal.me : https://www.paypal.me/curiousdroid You can now translate this and other curious droid videos, see my video about it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLPVgIytKyg Back in the early 1950s, the B-52 was USAF’s main nuclear delivery platform but with the increasing sophistication of the Soviet defences, a new supersonic nuclear bomber was called for which would stretch the limits of the technology to beyond what was thought possible just a few years before. The plane that would emerge from the WS-110 design process was the XB-70 Valkyrie. It would be one of the biggest in the world and capable of cruising at Mach 3, something which no aircraft of this type is capable of doing even today. It would also fly at 77,000 feet – 23,500 meters, have a range of 4,280 miles or 6,900 km and carry up to 14 nuclear weapons. The problem with large planes and payloads is the need for powerful engines which in turn require a lot of fuel which also has to be carried making the plane heavier and reducing the available payload, so in the 40’s and 50’s alternative methods of propulsion were researched. Nuclear was seriously considered as a power source for jet engines. A nuclear reactor would heat the air in place of jet fuel and could run for weeks or months without the need for refuelling. But problems with the extra weight of the radiation shielding required for the crew and the low thrust output from early engine designs meant that it became unpractical. Also if a nuclear-powered plane crashed it would be a much bigger problem than a conventional jet due to the radioactive contamination. If you want to find out more about Nuclear powered planes, trains and automobiles we have video on the link showing now. Also during in the 1950’s, a new type of jet fuel was being developed called high energy fuel or Zip fuel. This could deliver up to 40% more energy for the same weight. This was achieved by adding boron, a high energy, low mass element. The problem with this is that it made both the fuel and the exhaust toxic. When the Zip fuel was burned in the engines it produced solids that were sticky, corrosive and highly abrasive and created a lot of black smoke which could reveal the position of the plane even at high altitude. These solids built up on the turbine blades making them less efficient and in some case causing the engines to fail completely. One method get around these issues was to use it in afterburners as this didn’t affect the engine itself. This would be used for the quick dash up to supersonic speeds over enemy territory whilst using normal jet fuel for the rest of the journey. This and the high cost of making the Zip fuel and the inability to overcome the engine damage it caused meant that it also went the same way as the Nuclear powered engines and by 1959 Zip fuels were dropped too. Both the Nuclear engines and the Zip fuels were proposed for the WS-110 before a new higher density type of conventional jet fuel called JP-6 was developed. To overcome the extra fuel needed, the North American Aviation’s WS-110 design had “floating panels” at the end of the wings which were essentially huge fuel tanks, these would have been jettisoned when it went to supersonic leaving much shorter trapezoid shaped wings. Another Place by Frank Dorittke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/) Source: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Frank_Dorittke/Mare_Tranquillitatis/pcr018_cd01_03_fd_project_another_place

"It was the ultimate flying machine, No airplane can live up to what the X-15 did." That’s what retired test pilot and astronaut Joe Engle said of the first real space plane and 50 years after its record-breaking flight of 3rd October 1967 when USAF test pilot William J. Knight achieved a top speed of MACH 6.72, 4519 mph or 7273 km/h, It’s still the fastest manned powered aircraft. Patreon : https://www.patreon.com/curiousdroid Paypal.me : https://www.paypal.me/curiousdroid You can now translate this and other curious droid videos, see my video about it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLPVgIytKyg And if you thought the SR71 blackbird was the fastest jet, then you absolutely correct because the X-15 wasn’t a jet, it was rocket powered single seater aircraft which looked a bit like an oversized dart and had to launched from the underside of a modified B-52 at 45,000 feet, because the XLR-99 rocket engine would burn through all of it’s fuel in just 2 minutes. Not only did the X-15 set speed records it also went past the point of where space officially starts at 100km, 62.1 miles on two occasions, both times piloted by Joseph A Walker at 105.9km, 347,000 feet and 107.8km 353,000 feet. Although in the 1960’s the USAF considered space to start at 80km or 50 miles. Any crew that flew over the 50-mile limit where given Astronaut badges, 13 of the X-15 flights went higher than this and two of the pilots, Neil Armstrong and Joe Engle went on the become fully fledged Astronauts in the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. But apart from being a record-breaking aircraft, Research from the X-15 program lead to things like the first full pressure suit that would work in space, the first use of reaction controls, those are the little jets that position a spacecraft in space, the first use of superalloys in the planes structure that could withstand the heat of hypersonic re-entry and the Development of the first large restartable throttleable rocket engine, the XLR99. These are a small selection of the developments and discoveries that would go on to contribute to later space programs including Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the Space Shuttle. In the early 1950’s, research which had started with the Bell X-1, the 1st supersonic plane, began looking in to the problems that would be encountered by spaceflight. At the time it was still unknown as to what would happen to the stability as well as other issues of the craft, when travelling at hypersonic speeds, that’s between Mach 5 to Mach 10, or between about 3800 and 7,700 mph ( 6,200 to 12,400 km/h). This would be the type of speed that would be required to get to the edge of space and the re-entry. In 1952 the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (N.A.C.A), NASA’s predecessor started looking into the problems and by 1954 they had contacted both the US Navy and Airforce to propose building a research aircraft which would become the X-15. By 1956 the contract for the airframe had gone to North American Aviation and the rocket engine was to be built by Reaction Motors. After the contract had been awarded to North American and before the launch of Sputnik in Oct 1957, North American had considered making an X-15B orbital space plane that could carry a crew of two by launching it in to a low earth orbit on top of a pair of SM-64 Navaho missile boosters. If this had been done, it could have predated the Space shuttle by over 20 years..... Galaxy 2004 The Long Way by Frank Dorittke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/) Source: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Frank_Dorittke/Mare_Tranquillitatis/pcr018_cd02_03_fd_project_galaxy_2004_the_long_way

Before becoming the first man to walk on the moon Neil Armstrong was a proven test pilot for NASA. On April 20, 1962, Armstrong experienced a harrowing flight, testing the new X-15. It was a plane designed to go higher than any other. In 1959, the new plane would drop from a B-52 bomber at 30,000 feet to go straight up. On that flight in 1962, Armstrong reached speeds five times greater than the speed of sound and an altitude of nearly 200,000 feet. But the plane was pointed in the wrong direction that caused it to literally bounce off the atmosphere. It threw Armstrong off course, his only option was to free fall and find a landing space in a dry lake bed nearly 50 miles from his intended destination of Edwards Air Force base.

More Aviation Icons @ https://youtu.be/_pmahj7nRJM The WS-125 was an American super long-range strategic bomber project during the Cold War to develop a nuclear-powered aircraft. In 1954, the United States Air Force (USAF) issued a weapons system requirement for a nuclear-powered bomber, designated WS-125. In 1956, General Electric teamed up with Convair (X211 program) and Pratt & Whitney with Lockheed in competitive engine/airframe development to address the requirement. In 1956, the USAF decided that the proposed WS-125 bomber was unfeasible as an operational strategic aircraft. Finally, after spending more than $1 billion, the project was canceled on March 28, 1961. Two different theoretical ideas for achieving this were produced. The first of these, championed by General Electric, was called “direct cycle”. In this design, air would be channeled directly into the reactor, passing through a series of tubes where it would be super-heated and then fed into the engine nozzle. The second method was called “indirect cycle”. Developed by Pratt & Whitney, this proposed engine would pull the incoming air into an isolated reaction chamber that was entirely separate from the nuclear core, where heat exchangers would drive the atmospheric gas to high temperatures and expel it to produce thrust. Two General Electric J87 turbofan engines were successfully powered to nearly full thrust using two shielded reactors. Two experimental engines complete with reactor systems (HTRE-3 and HTRE-1, which was modified and renamed HTRE-2) are located at the EBR-1 facility south of the Idaho National Laboratory. As of 2022 the reactors are still on display there. Although it was not yet clear which engine concept—if any—would be workable, the Air Force went ahead with a “request for proposals” christened the WS-125, which was taken up by Convair, the manufacturer of the B-36, and by Lockheed. The WS-125 was to have a single atomic power plant in the back of the fuselage running two jet engines, one on either side. The crew would be up front in a shielded cockpit, and several nuclear bombs would be nestled inside the forward fuselage. Each flight made by the new bomber would be limited only by the length of time that the crew could stand being aboard, and each plane could go for months or even years before its uranium reactor fuel began to run out. To make refueling quick and easy, the entire reactor-engine unit was planned to be modular, allowing the whole assembly to be quickly removed and replaced. The super-bomber was intended for deployment in the early 1960s. But the project was already in trouble. The Air Force could never solve the most basic problem of all: safety. The Navy could put nuclear reactors on its submarines and surface ships because they spent nearly all their time out at sea, and if there would happen to be an accident the whole mess would simply sink to the bottom of the ocean and present no danger to populated areas. But a nuclear-powered aircraft would of necessity have to fly virtually anywhere to air bases all over the world—and therefore could potentially crash anywhere, including near or in populated areas. The very idea of a crash in a friendly foreign country that permanently contaminated a large inhabited land area was enough to make the hair of American politicians and Air Force Generals turn white, and there was no way to avoid the risk over the long term. At the same time, by 1956, new developments were making that danger less and less necessary: the Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile was nearing deployment, and it was assumed by many that the strategic bomber would simply disappear and the US bomber force would be replaced with “silo sitters”. On the technical front, moreover, things were lagging: General Electric had come up with a working model of their direct-cycle nuclear engine, but the thrust it produced was far less than expected. Pratt & Whitney, meanwhile, could not get their indirect-cycle engines to work at all. The Air Force ended all effort on the WS-125 airframe until a reliable nuclear engine was available. President Eisenhower was already considering an end to the whole project. After the Soviet Union collapsed, in 1991, American researchers were stunned to discover that while the 1958 Aviation Week story was a fake, the USSR had indeed developed and flown a nuclear-powered aircraft, beginning in 1961 and running to 1969. The way they had done it was, in typical Soviet fashion, both crude and brutal. After producing a rudimentary but functional direct-cycle nuclear-powered jet engine, they modified a Tupolev “Bear” long-range bomber to carry it—unshielded. During each of the 40 test flights, the crew was irradiated, and the airplane spewed out a trail of radioactive fallout as it flew. Most of the two test crews were already dead by the time the Soviet Union fell and the program was revealed.

Had the opportunity to fly a replica of the Wright Brothers 1902 glider. Way Fun !

The Voyager mission is one of the longest-running space missions maintained by NASA! In the 40 plus years that the two spacecraft have been hurtling through deep space, they have performed fly-bys of several plants, sending back stunning pictures and other information that has expanded our knowledge of the Universe! Now, at billions of miles away from us, the Voyager has made more shocking discoveries of the cosmos! What is the Voyager 2 seeing? And what do we learn from them? Join us as we explore the final images sent by the Voyager from space!