Man's first venture into near space came aboard the X-15, the fastest and most famous aircraft in the U. S. X-plane program, and Collins Radio Co. supplied the communication and navigation equipment. Their gear included a modified ARC-52 UHF transceiver, a backup receiver and modified DF-301 Automatic Direction Finder (ADF) for the pilots to find their way home, plus control boxes and antennas. The radios were housed in pressurized cases to cope with the vacuum of space and cooled by the same liquid nitrogen cooling system that kept the rest of the craft safe from the heat of re-entry. Communication of voice and data from the nearly 750 sensors monitoring the pilot and aircraft was essential and so the Collins engineers designed a "guard" receiver to monitor communications and switch between antennas mounted on the top and bottom of the fuselage so that regardless of any unexpected maneuvers of the plane, communication was ensured.

The X-15 may look like an airplane, but the craft was more of a piloted missile, 50 feet long with a wing span of only 22 ft. A B-52 replaced the first stage of the rocket, carrying the craft to an altitude of 40,000 ft. and a speed of 500 mph before releasing it for rocket ignition, then it achieved speeds of over 4,000 mph. With no atmosphere to provide aerodynamic control, the pilot controlled pitch, yaw and roll with small hydrogen peroxide steam-jets mounted on the nose and wings.

The X-15 program was initiated in 1952 when the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor of NASA, began studies on the problems expected in manned space flight. North American Aviation won the design competition and construction began on three space craft in 1957. Collins started work in August and delivered the first system 12 months later. The vehicle and its radios weren't the only things being tested; the ability of humans to survive Mach 5 acceleration, weightlessness, and to perform the required spacecraft control functions for re-entry and landing was unknown. Life-support systems had to be developed as well as heat-resistant coatings for the plane and heat-dissipation systems for the equipment. A tracking corridor stretching nearly 500 miles was developed to monitor the flights, foreshadowing the global network that Collins Radio later developed for the Project Mercury. Flight tests began in March, 1959. The plane first reached outer space (defined as starting at 50 miles altitude) on Flight 62 in July, 1962.

In all, 199 flights were made before the X-15 program ended in Oct. 1968. The Collins system performed flawlessly throughout. Altogether 12 test pilots flew the X-15, including Scott Crossfield, who made the first unpowered and powered flights; Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, who made 7 flights, and; Joe Engle, who later commanded the space shuttle, 16 flights. Maj. Michael J. Adams was the only casualty. He died on Flight 191 when his plane broke up at 60,000 ft. during re-entry.

USAF and NACA officials briefly made plans in 1958 to send the X-15 into space atop an SM-64 Navaho missile but cancelled the project after NASA adopted the Mercury capsule plans, but the knowledge and experience gained on the program were major steps toward our ultimate space success.

Learn more about the X-15 program and other early Collins space ventures in the upcoming exhibit: The Collins Story: On the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing, coming to the Marion Heritage Center in July, in collaboration with the Arthur A. Collins Legacy Association. ... See MoreSee Less

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A few words about two more of the amazing research scientists Arthur Collins drew to Collins Radio after WWII. Pictured below holding the high-power Resnatron microwave tube are Dr. John W. Clark (L) and Dr. Walter H. Kohl (R) who headed the Collins Vacuum Tube Laboratory. Clark came to Collins in 1946. He left c.a. 1953 to direct the Nuclear Electronics Lab at the Hughes Aircraft Corp. where he developed a "kitchen-table" linear accelerator useful for small labs, and invented the "Mobot," a remote controlled MObile roBOT with televison camera-eyes designed to operate in conditions too dangerous for humans (e.g. inside nuclear reactors). Clark predicted the mobot would be the first "man" on the moon. The photos show his early Mark I Mobot and his advanced underwater model, useful for repairing Gulf oil wells, submarine rescues and underwater farming. Clark joined the lab at the Battelle Memorial Institute in 1963 and later became an ocean engineering-consultant in San Diego where he worked on plans for Jules Verne-like undersea laboratories.

Walter Heinrich Kohl immigrated to Canada from Germany in 1930 and came to the US in 1944. The engineer-physicist's pioneering work in electron optics is credited with leading to the invention of the electron microscope. Kohl wrote the textbook on vacuum tube materials and construction. He left Collins in 1952 to go to Stanford University and later worked for Sylvania in their microwave lab.

Note: The jet-powered VTOL Aerodyne shown in Saturday's post was just a "test bed" and didn't fly but Lippisch regularly flew an electric model. See photo below; also available, a video of the flying vehicle at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-qe5OQaOks ... See MoreSee Less

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When WWII ended in the fall of 1945 the War Dept. cancelled the contracts that had propelled Collins Radio from a niche-market radio supplier with 150 employees into an electronics industry-leader employing over 3,000. Arthur Collins faced an immediate crisis. Other defense contractors had maintained a low level of civilian production during the war, which they quickly ramped up to meet the pent-up demand. Not so Collins Radio. Art had dedicated the entire company to the war effort, and he saw much of his business evaporate over night. He responded quickly by designing new radios for the burgeoning civil aviation industry, stimulated by the many surplus planes suddenly available and a populous now accustomed to flying. He targeted new USAF opportunities in UHF radios, and turned loose the fertile minds of his R&D wizards, like Walt Wirkler and Mel Doelz, reinforced by a few key scientists he lured here to pursue new ventures.

Collins Radio lost money for three years, but it returned to the black in 1949 with a portfolio of products that transformed the company and gave it a leading role in radio navigation, microwave communication, radar, commercial broadcasting, aviation, radio astronomy, space technology and even atom-smashing. Many observers thought Art was crazy--the public wanted televisions and other niceties--why not manufacture TV's like everyone else? But to Art those were just "gadgets" . . . he wanted to build something important, so he endured the critics and the red ink. He established new research labs near the CR airport, at Feather Ridge near Toddville and Echo Hill in Marion, and from there he took Collins Radio into the future.

One of the key scientists Arthur Collins brought to the company was an old friend, Dr. Winfield Salisbury, a UI grad in Physics, who had accompanied Art on his transcontinental road trip in 1927. He became Collins' first Director of Research in 1947. During the war he had developed a high power tube called the Resnatron, capable of transmitting at microwave frequencies (350-650 MHz). The Allies used it to jam German fighter radar. 1949 Iowa State Fair-goers were wowed by its ability to pop corn and cook burgers almost instantly, but Salisbury had bigger things in mind than microwave ovens--the new UHF television industry beckoned, and the FCC was establishing standards for licensing new stations. They came to Collins Radio for help in determining the requirements for transmitter spacing. Ordinarily that was line-of-sight, but Collins researchers noted the Resnatron waves sometimes travelled much farther, and determined they were being reflected over the horizon by layers in the upper atmosphere. The discovery led to new form of radio communication known as "scatter propagation," which Collins ultimately developed for the Distant Early Warning (DEW) system that guarded our northern frontier during the Cold War.

In 1949 Salisbury oversaw construction of a radio telescope at Feather Ridge and made the first ever observation of the moon by radio telescope during a total eclipse. This led directly in 1951 to a contract to construct a giant 50 ft. parabolic dish antenna, the largest ever built at that time, for the Naval Laboratory at Anacostia in Washington D.C. He also bounced a transmission off the moon in 1951, from the CR airport. The signal was received in Sterling, VA, 800 miles away, proving transmissions could be sent through space and that a satellite, the moon, could be used to relay them around the globe.

Dr. John J. Livingood came to Collins Radio in 1945 to serve as Asst. Director of Research. Under his direction the company built the first U.S. commercial cyclotron for the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island in 1947 and another in 1952 for the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. Livingood left soon afterwards to become ANL's assist. director.

Another of the ground-breaking researchers who came to Collins after the war was Dr. Alexander Lippisch, a German aviation pioneer and inventor of the Delta wing. He came to the US in "Operation Paperclip," a program to bring German scientists here and keep them from the Soviets. Lippisch worked at Collins on boat hull research, flying boats, a remarkable flying machine called the Aerodyne, and briefly missile guidance systems. He applied his airflow expertise to the design of cooling systems for many Collins radios.

Learn more about the ground-breaking radio, aviation and space scientists of Collins Radio in the upcoming exhibit: The Collins Story: On the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing, coming to the Marion Heritage Center in July, in collaboration with the Arthur A. Collins Legacy Association.

see Walter H. Wirkler (1909-1988) at Find a Grave memorial # 130193796
see Melvin L. Doelz (1918-2004) at FAG memorial # 50368940
see Dr. John J. Livingood (1903-1986) at FAG memorial # 78984654
see Dr. Winfield W. Salisbury (1903-1999) at FAG memorial # 195190569
see Alexander M. Lippisch (1894-1976) at FAG memorial # 195190184

Photos courtesy of the Collins Aerospace Museum and The First 50 Years by Ken Braband (1983). ... See MoreSee Less

1 week ago  ·