posted December 26, 2005 08:38 AM               

quote:

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The new $4.05 Priority Mail and $14.40 Express Mail stamps commemorate X-Planes, a series of experimental vehicles involving the U.S. military, NASA and companies such as Bell Aircraft, Boeing, Northrop and Lockheed Martin. From the first X-Plane flight in 1946 to the present, a variety of vehicles - manned and unmanned aircraft, cruise missiles, gliders and spacecraft - has helped extend the nation's reach into space.

Art Director Phil Jordan of Falls Church, Va., selected two computer-generated images of the X-15 from NASA studies. The colors show various scales of pressures and temperatures - blue is the lowest and red is the highest. The Priority Mail stamp shows the X-15 rotated upward to reveal the most surface area. The Express Mail stamp shows the colors against a meshed grid to illustrate how air is forced around and behind the plane. The two designs have text under the image reading, "Computer-generated aerodynamic study of an X-Plane."

Extraordinary technological advances following World War II prompted many different X-Plane concepts, including the X-1, a rocket-powered plane. On Oct. 14, 1947, with Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager at the controls, it became the first plane to intentionally travel faster than Mach 1.0, the speed of sound. In 1956, the X-2 became the first plane to reach an altitude of more than 100,000 feet (nearly 19 miles) and set a new speed record of Mach 2.87.

One of the best known - and the fastest and highest-flying, winged vehicle - was the X-15. By the late 1960s, it had flown at speeds exceeding 4,500 miles per hour and reached an altitude of more than 60 miles. Eight X-15 pilots earned astronaut wings for achieving an altitude of 50 miles or more as a result of their flights in this plane.

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posted December 26, 2005 10:51 AM               

I know tons of beautiful photos and nice art paintings of X-15. I doubt such computer visualization of pressure and temperature was done in the age of X-15. Also the legend of "Computer-generated aerodynamic study of an X-plane" is quite smattering.

posted December 26, 2005 04:22 PM               

And Karel is right too in that there were no computer generated false-color enhancements of the aerodynamic flow fields around the X-15 back in its time. Any computer correlations of X-15 data back then probably came out as line plots from an analog computer or sheets of numbers from a digital computer at the time.

posted January 02, 2006 01:43 PM               

Besides, since these are so "ugly" maybe more people will put theirs in the Dumpsters for me to pick up !

Happy New Year !

posted March 20, 2006 06:52 PM               

One of the most important results of the X-15 program was to refine and validate CFD models and simulations for hypersonic flight. This was the transaction from learning by flying to learning by computer modeling.

Without that shift in technology it would not have been possible to fly the Space Shuttle, which had to cover the complete flight envelope from Mach 28 to Mach 0.7 for the first time on its first reentry.

NASA Langley was a key contributor to advancing simulation technology for both the X-15 and the Shuttle. In my opinion these stamps' images from Langley are very nice and appropriate commemorations of that advancement.

posted March 24, 2006 04:48 PM               

I use space stamps for almost all of my outgoing space mail, and they never fail to get a comment from the clerks at the counter.

Take care,

posted September 03, 2007 05:56 PM               

Thus - if you still want to buy any, hurry up and place your order with USPS.

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Jürgen P Esders
Berlin, Germany