GOLDEN, Colorado – Rocket sleds,
space monkeys, a record setting sky dive ... and bad piloting skills of an
alien-controlled UFO.
It's all part of aerospace
history at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico – the site of this year's Wirefly X Prize Cup and home base
for a distinctive blend of high-end aviation and the budding public space
travel business.
Holloman Air Force Base is in the
city of Alamogordo, a locale that has scored big-time with history making
events.
"It's the 60th anniversary of
the U.S. Air Force, as well as the 50th anniversary of spaceflight,"
explained Lt. Col. Angelo Eiland, 49th Fighter Wing Deputy Director of Staff at
Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. "This opportunity to partner with
the X Prize helps us round out the picture of telling the air and space
revolutions that have taken place over the last 50 and 60 years, he told SPACE.com.
Eiland said that Holloman has
decades of being intimately involved with space.
Fastest man on Earth
Born in the early 1940s as Alamogordo
Army Air Field, then Holloman Air Development Center, and later the Air Force Missile Development Center, it was during that sweep of time that many missile
launches were orchestrated, such as the Tiny Tim (the first Army rocket),
Rascal, V-2, the Falcon, MACE, and the Matador.
In January 1948, the Alamogordo installation was renamed Holloman Air Force Base, in honor of the late Col.
George V. Holloman, a pioneer in pilotless aircraft and guided missile
research.
A seminal event at Holloman Air
Force Base was the rocket propelled test sled shot of John Stapp. Strapped
tight into Sonic Wind No. 1, he rocket-sledded his way into the record book on
December 10, 1954 by reaching a velocity of 632 miles per hour.
Not only was it a hair-mussing
experience, but Stapp deservedly earned titles like "The Fastest Man Alive"
and "Fastest Man on Earth" in attaining the lickity split rail speed.
From a standing start to a dead stop, Stapp sustained some 40 g's – that's 40
times the pull of Earth gravity. This milestone-making event was staged to
study how gravitational stress affects the human body.
Today, specialists
employ the Holloman High-Speed Test Track, including use of the gear to develop
magnetic levitation (Maglev) launch concepts, among other applications.
High-dive into the
desert
Yet another
Holloman historical highlight is the stratospheric high-dive of Joseph
Kittinger, part of a U.S. Air Force program designed to test whether pilots could
survive high-altitude bailouts.
On August 16, 1960,
Kittinger departed in an open balloon gondola from an abandoned airstrip near
Tularosa, northeast of Holloman Air Force Base. Drifting upwards to 102,800 feet, he stepped out of
the gondola to make the longest skydive from the highest altitude in history.
After a 13 minute
45 second descent, Kittinger parachuted safely into New Mexico desert and into
the books for highest open gondola manned balloon flight, highest balloon
flight of any kind, highest bailout, and longest free fall. During his fall to
Earth, he reached a peak velocity of 614 miles per hour – 90 percent of the
speed of sound.
Hamming it up
As the "space race"
between the then Soviet Union and the United States heated up, Holloman's
Aero-Medical laboratory engaged in several noteworthy events. The Air Force had
under its wing dozens of chimpanzees at Holloman Air Force Base, putting the
animals through various tests as a prelude to human space travel.
For example, there's the January 31,
1961 liftoff of HAM, a three-year-old chimpanzee, from Cape Canaveral inside a
Mercury-Redstone capsule – a final check to human-rate the spacecraft and
booster.
By the way, HAM was an acronym for
Holloman Aero Med, with the "monkeynaut" trailblazing a suborbital trajectory
before Alan Shepard became the first American into space on May 5, 1961.
Enos was another pioneering
chimpanzee. Trained at Holloman, the animal was lofted in a Mercury-Atlas
capsule for a two orbit spin around Earth on November 29, 1961. That mission
helped to provide an all-clear to launch astronaut John Glenn into Earth orbit
on February 20, 1962.
Extraterrestrial oddity
There's also an
extraterrestrial oddity that features Holloman – one that involves that supposed
July 1947 UFO crash in neighboring Roswell, New Mexico.
It turns out that
the base was the prime spot to handle balloon launches for classified Department
of Defense programs. An aspect of that effort made use of anthropomorphic dummy
drops in several U.S. Air Force initiatives.
In the 1990s, the
Air Force pointed to a hush-hush, top secret government undertaking – code
named Project MOGUL that utilized long-range balloons to carry out
reconnaissance duties over the Soviet Union. More to the point, the U.S.
military insisted that purported UFO debris in Roswell and alien pilots are
little more than the recovered wreckage of a MOGUL balloon and its equipment,
coupled to witnesses that have misinterpreted past events due to the "fog
of time."
Of course, UFO
true-believers maintain that the cover-up of a busted up flying saucer and
captured aliens remains in full-force in the 21st century.
Expo travel
Today, Holloman Air Force Base is at
the forefront of military operations, with its F-117 "stealth"
aircraft and serving as the training center for the German Air Force's Tactical Training Center.
On October 27-28, from 10:00 a.m. to
5 p.m. each day, Holloman Air Force Base is the place to be for the Holloman Air
& Space Expo, in collaboration with the Wirefly X Prize Cup. The free event
will comprise more than twenty different aircraft displays and space-related
events.
Continuous aircraft demonstrations
from the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter, P-51 Mustang, NASA's Super Guppy cargo
aircraft and the F-22 Raptor – the newest U.S. Air Force fighter that will be
stationed at Holloman in 2009 – will be on-hand. For its part, the Wirefly X Prize
Cup, among an array of festivities, will conduct the Northrop Grumman lunar
lander competition with teams vying for mega-cash rewards.
If you're ready to travel, Holloman
Air Force Base is located in New Mexico's Tularosa Basin between the Sacramento and San Andreas mountain ranges. The base is about 10 miles west of Alamogordo, New Mexico, on route 70/82; 90 miles north of El Paso, Texas; 70 miles east of Las Cruces, New Mexico.
For detailed
information and updates regarding the 2007 Wirefly X Prize Cup, go to the
Internet web site: http://space.xprize.org/x-prize-cup/
advertisement
