Quote:
Originally Posted by wabpilot
Joe Walker twice flew an X-15 above the FAI defined limits of the upper atmosphere. (100 kilometers, well above the NASA 50 mile or 80 Km limit.) Walker's first and second flights were in 1963.
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Joe Walker was the very man I had in mind, and in fact he was the
world's first astronaut to do the 'double', not just the first American.
But I should think that nearly all X-15 flights that flew above 110,000 feet could be considered as 'space flights' as regards actually advancing the development of space craft technologies - you need spacecraft spec life support systems at that altitude, along with a system of attitude control thrusters. The fact of the matter is, the Americans already had vast experience in the attitude adjustment of spacecraft flying in the vacuum of space (hydrogen peroxide thrusters), a long time before the Mercury and Vostok "man in a can" programmes...
