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[b]Space Cover #111: Douglas Skyrocket[/b] We have been taking a well-deserved look at the 50th anniversary of human spaceflight of late (SCOTW's #104, 108, and 110). And recently Steve Durst cranked the Wayback Machine back to almost 64 years ago in SCOTW #107. I can’t quite keep up with Steve's amazing collection, but let's take a look at an upcoming 60th anniversary of another manned spaceflight precursor (above). The Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket was the Navy's high-speed rocket-powered research plane in the 1940’s – 1950’s, much like the Air Force's X-1 series. The three swept-wing Skyrockets used different combinations of jet and rocket power to satisfy their research objectives. On June 11, 1951, Douglas test pilot Bill Bridgeman flew the #2, all-rocket-powered Skyrocket to a new record of 1.79 times the speed of sound. He did that while fighting persistent problems of the faceplate on his pressure suit fogging over, and the Skyrocket gyrating back-and-forth laterally at such high speed. This Skyrocket later went on to break twice the speed of sound, but this flight was yet another poster child for the 'right stuff" generation of test pilots who made manned rocket flight work. This cover was carried by Bridgeman on this flight. Unfortunately, Bridgeman erred on writing in the flight date (he wrote in June 12) on the cover. He put it in the mail back to Harry Gordon, and it was postmarked on June 15, 1951 at Muroc (by then known as Edwards, however, the Post Office did not change its name to Edwards until Nov. 1, 1951). Interested in seeing this cover live? Or other such flown rocketplane covers? Or another half-dozen astrophilatelic exhibits? Come to [URL=http://www.napex.org]NAPEX[/URL] in Tysons Corner, VA (near Washington, DC) on June 3 – 5. And you can even get in on a Space Unit meeting on June 4 at 10 am! To plagiarize a famous American game show - C'mon down!!!
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