posted 03-04-2017 07:44 AM               

Space Cover #407: Astronaut Joe H. Engle: A Tribute

Joe Engle was born in Abeline, Kansas, in 1932. He was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1966 and flew his first orbital spaceflight in 1981 on the space shuttle's second flight, STS-2.

Engle's many accomplishments and achievements include: flying the X-15 rocket plane sixteen times, with three flights over 50 miles in altitude; being the only pilot to fly two different winged vehicles in space (the X-15 and space shuttle); piloting two of the five Enterprise ALT free flights; flying two space shuttle flights, and on STS-2, being the only pilot to manually fly the space shuttle orbiter at Mach 25 to landing.

Engle was the original Apollo 17 lunar module pilot and would have been the twelfth man to walk on the moon. However, the decision to replace Engle with geologist Harrison Schmitt denied Engle his lunar flight.

The top cover above marks Engle's sixteenth and final X-15 flight and the bottom cover marks the second ALT Enterprise free flight and is signed by CDR Engle and PLT Richard Truly.

The top cover above marks STS-2, crew signed by both Engle and Truly. The cover is canceled for both the launch (KSC) and landing (EAFB, CA), with appropriate launch and landing stamps affixed. The bottom cover marks STS-51I (20th space shuttle flight) and is autographed by CDR Engle and his crew.

Engle retired from NASA in 1986 and from the USAF as a Major General in the Kansas National Guard.

posted 03-09-2017 07:53 PM               

As far as I know, Engle was one (if not the first) astronaut that accommodated requests from space cover collectors to "carry" covers for early space shuttle- related simulation training.

On Feb. 23 and in Mar. 14, 1972 -- when the LMP was in training for Apollo 17 -- covers had been carried by Engle on what I believe may had been the very first space shuttle orbiter mockup test simulations at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Of course, in early 1972, the shuttle program had not been completely allocated by the govermental space agency. That approval came in April 1972 as the Apollo 16 astronauts were on the moon.

posted 07-13-2024 01:35 PM               

Both of those qualities come out in one of my favorite Joe Engle stories that he told of his first X-15 flight, October 7, 1963 (cover below). And the words are copied from NASA Conference Pub 3105 – Proceedings of the X-15 First Flight 30th Anniversary Celebration. I was there and he had the whole auditorium laughing throughout his talk.

One flight that scared me the most was my first flight. It didn't scare me the day I flew it: it scared me 3 or 4 days after I flew it. It was a get-acquainted-with-the-airplane flight, you know – you launched, you flew it at a reduced power setting, and you were coming back over the field and you felt the airplane out, and you pulled and you got different angles of attack.

I looked down, it was the first time I'd ever seen Edwards from that high an altitude, and I looked down and it looked like it was right below me and I thought "Well I've never seen anything about negative angle of attack or pushing over or anything, so I've got to get the nose down and get into some higher q-bar" [think of q-bar as thicker air].

I had done some roll maneuvers, you know, left and right, and it just felt like a dream, so I rolled it over and let the nose dish out and dropped down so the nose was pointed down as that was the easiest way to get the nose down. And I really ... didn't think a thing about it and I landed.

It was the next day — I was still high — and the next day somebody said, "Hey did you roll that airplane?" and I said "Who me?" and he said "Naw, I didn't think you did." I didn't think anything about it, and two days later Bob Rushworth came to me and said "Come here, I want to talk to you."

I didn't ever get to talk to Mr. Bikle [Paul Bikle, the NASA Center Director at Edwards during the X-15 program, sitting in the audience at the celebration]. I was a captain and I never – between me and Mr. Bikle there was a white sheet of cheesecloth and a bunch of beads that held it down – and I never got to cross through there to speak to Mr. Bikle. But Rushworth [sitting just a few seats away from Engle at the celebration] would go in and talk to Mr. Bikle and Rushworth would talk to me. It was kind of an intermediary.

And ... we got into a room and he said "Did you roll the X-15?" I honestly had to think about it and said "Yeah." He said, "We don't do that on this airplane." And I said "Okay, I didn't realize that," and I forget what else you said to me. Bob was a major and I was a – a- (pause) everything he said was okay with me. I don't know if you ever knew about this or not Mr. Bikle...