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[b]Space Cover #586: The X-24B Lifting Body, Part 2[/b] This week's Space Cover of the Week will continue what Dennis began last week about the X-24B lifting body aircraft and will present more covers from the X-24B, NASA's sixth and last lifting body. The X-24B was re-built from the X-24A by the Martin Marietta Corp. in Denver, CO, and the top cover above marks its rollout, the official public presentation of the X-24B at Martin Marietta prior to its delivery to Edwards AFB, CA. The cover below it marks one of the eight (some sources list ten) ground "taxi runs": prior to the beginning of the actual test flights. The speeds were from 40 to 150 knots with the last taxi run with the X-24B mated to the B-52 mothership (The same mothership used in the X-15 flights). The top cover was flown aboard the mothership during the 23rd air-launch and free flight of the X-24B, and the bottom cover was flown aboard the T-38 photo chase aircraft at Mach 1.1 on the X-24B's 29th free flight. The top cover is autographed by all six X-24B pilots and has the type 4 NASA official printed cachet. The cover below - with a Robert Boudwin rubber stamp cachet - is for the aborted flight, B-A-31 ("31" signifying the 31st time the X-24B was carried aloft by the mothership) and autographed by pilot Mike Love. Tragically, Mike Love was killed in an aircraft crash only about three months after the final X-24B flight. The top cover was flown aboard the mothership on the final X-24B flight, with it also being the final lifting body flight, going back to the three M2's, the HL-10 and the X-24A. Mothership pilot George Luck, in a letter to me, stated that the cover was "...carried in my brief case along with the aircraft manuals." The bottom cover marks the departure of the X-24B from Edwards AFB to KSC for display during KSC's 1976 Bicentennial Exposition of Science and Technology, which I attended and saw the X-24B while there. The X-24B's final home is the National Museum of the USAF at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
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