The X-15 Project is a retro remake of NASA's legendary X-15 rocketplane as a small scale drone (UAV) with the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education agenda of giving students their own little stratospheric space shuttle program.
Launched by weather balloon to over 100,000 feet altitude while carrying student and commercial payloads, the X-15 drone will fly back to its original launch point for easy recovery. The mission is to be student led, flown, and run with initial technical support given.
Launched by weather balloon to over 100,000 feet altitude while carrying student and commercial payloads, the X-15 drone will fly back to its original launch point for easy recovery. The mission is to be student led, flown, and run with initial technical support given.
The artistic part of the "A" in the STEAM agenda is in the system's expansion capacity for hosting any variety of UAV flight operations within a 447 mile radius of the ground station. This allows students from around age 10 to graduate school levels to carry out real-world flight test engineering upon any designs of their choice. We have any variety of hypersonic airframes available out to over Mach 22. Older, unstable airframes which teach them about flutter and transonic instability issues to exotic airframes stable from subsonic to over Mach 22. Every form of rocket under the sun is available to us. We also have in the roost NASA/ DARPA "Grumpy Old Men" with advanced jet engine technology capable of serving in boost phase out to Mach 6 and +100,000 feet for reducing rocket size and cost to even put picosats and cubesats in orbit. And, we have manned jets able to provide stratospheric launch services, too.
Whatever youth want to design, fly, and analyze -- an Iron Man spacediving drone for OpenLuna.org, for example; or a composite Starship Enterprise, a Star Wars X-Wing Fighter, various LEGO ships with NASA-LEGO, even ground and sea unmanned systems; stratospheric ornithopters -- it is all one big Maker-thon made possible nationwide and globally. Not just that, but, per project, a student group needs to plan out their costs and figure out how they will fundraise or crowdfund and commercialize a particular flight vehicle within the system. National competitions can arise from such things into the future.
At even the youngest of ages, students learn everything from mission planning, team work, to basic aviation concepts and robotics. They become saturated in modern flight concepts at the edge of space and into space, and have the opportunity to work on cutting-edge aerospace technology not yet even pursued by industry or much by DARPA and NASA.
The more complicated and exotic systems are suitable at the undergrad to graduate level. The basic systems -- with adult supervision -- are ideal for age 10 and up, and there tends to be our focus because maximum STEM impact is made with the least effort and time expenditure. The high school to college level students interested in such things are already pretty smarty pants and will be fine regardless of any STEM. However, the true magic of this program is when the aviation bug infects them at a young age and transforms otherwise "bad", "stupid", "unattentive", "undisciplined", "at-risk" kids into highly confident, competent, little pilots and rocket scientists.
The kids start knowing they can actually become astronauts someday if they just study a little harder, pay attention in class even where boring, do their homework and do even more, stay away from drugs; seek out education & experience and don't wait for others to train you; work together well as a team; don't engage in lying, cheating, and stealing or trying to rip everyone off in business and greed or glory-seeking; and, to look at Math and Science from a more practical perspective along venues which capture the imagination and the soul. Aircraft of all forms have that magic to them.
Most K-12 teachers have a hard time getting kids to like Math -- Algebra, Geometry, and Trig especially throw kids into a tailspin where lessons are not made practical. But, aircraft missions involve all of that mathematics & science at a more practical and simple level than often taught on the blackboard: Weight x Arm = Moment in Weight & Balance computations. Density Altitude computations. Thrust to Weight ratios. Wind Correction angles. Winds Aloft. Rates of ascent and descent. Distance x Rate = Time. Free Body Diagrams -- Lift versus Mass x Gravity.
How far are you going to drift by balloon and what will your flight profile look like when the wind is blowing from 210 degrees and 50 MPH at 5000 feet, from 270 degrees and 80 MPH at 10,000 feet, and at every altitude? How do you sum up those vectors into a flight profile manually? How does it compare to computer simulations? If your parachute is deployed at 60,000 feet and coming down at 15.6 feet / second, how long until impact with the ground and where will it be found on the map with a given winds aloft profile? No GPS and cheating is available to them; for flight test missions push the envelope and nobody has done the homework for you. There are no video games to play. All manual flight the focus. What's the weather like? How much lift gas should go into a balloon at a given payload to achieve maximum rate of ascent? Lift, Weight, Thrust, Drag. All the basics and more are contained in a single mission. Anyone can fly RC airplanes -- the smallest of children can do so -- but not everyone yet brings them back from the edge of space....nor any variety of flying vehicle the kids can dream up and build.
[THIS SPACE RESERVED FOR X-15 INTRODUCTORY VIDEO]
Whatever youth want to design, fly, and analyze -- an Iron Man spacediving drone for OpenLuna.org, for example; or a composite Starship Enterprise, a Star Wars X-Wing Fighter, various LEGO ships with NASA-LEGO, even ground and sea unmanned systems; stratospheric ornithopters -- it is all one big Maker-thon made possible nationwide and globally. Not just that, but, per project, a student group needs to plan out their costs and figure out how they will fundraise or crowdfund and commercialize a particular flight vehicle within the system. National competitions can arise from such things into the future.
At even the youngest of ages, students learn everything from mission planning, team work, to basic aviation concepts and robotics. They become saturated in modern flight concepts at the edge of space and into space, and have the opportunity to work on cutting-edge aerospace technology not yet even pursued by industry or much by DARPA and NASA.
The more complicated and exotic systems are suitable at the undergrad to graduate level. The basic systems -- with adult supervision -- are ideal for age 10 and up, and there tends to be our focus because maximum STEM impact is made with the least effort and time expenditure. The high school to college level students interested in such things are already pretty smarty pants and will be fine regardless of any STEM. However, the true magic of this program is when the aviation bug infects them at a young age and transforms otherwise "bad", "stupid", "unattentive", "undisciplined", "at-risk" kids into highly confident, competent, little pilots and rocket scientists.
The kids start knowing they can actually become astronauts someday if they just study a little harder, pay attention in class even where boring, do their homework and do even more, stay away from drugs; seek out education & experience and don't wait for others to train you; work together well as a team; don't engage in lying, cheating, and stealing or trying to rip everyone off in business and greed or glory-seeking; and, to look at Math and Science from a more practical perspective along venues which capture the imagination and the soul. Aircraft of all forms have that magic to them.
Most K-12 teachers have a hard time getting kids to like Math -- Algebra, Geometry, and Trig especially throw kids into a tailspin where lessons are not made practical. But, aircraft missions involve all of that mathematics & science at a more practical and simple level than often taught on the blackboard: Weight x Arm = Moment in Weight & Balance computations. Density Altitude computations. Thrust to Weight ratios. Wind Correction angles. Winds Aloft. Rates of ascent and descent. Distance x Rate = Time. Free Body Diagrams -- Lift versus Mass x Gravity.
How far are you going to drift by balloon and what will your flight profile look like when the wind is blowing from 210 degrees and 50 MPH at 5000 feet, from 270 degrees and 80 MPH at 10,000 feet, and at every altitude? How do you sum up those vectors into a flight profile manually? How does it compare to computer simulations? If your parachute is deployed at 60,000 feet and coming down at 15.6 feet / second, how long until impact with the ground and where will it be found on the map with a given winds aloft profile? No GPS and cheating is available to them; for flight test missions push the envelope and nobody has done the homework for you. There are no video games to play. All manual flight the focus. What's the weather like? How much lift gas should go into a balloon at a given payload to achieve maximum rate of ascent? Lift, Weight, Thrust, Drag. All the basics and more are contained in a single mission. Anyone can fly RC airplanes -- the smallest of children can do so -- but not everyone yet brings them back from the edge of space....nor any variety of flying vehicle the kids can dream up and build.
[THIS SPACE RESERVED FOR X-15 INTRODUCTORY VIDEO]
PROJECT CREDITS
The X-15 Project was made possible through the generous time, energy and support of the following parties:
ADDITIONAL SPONSORS
[Pending]. Your names and contributions go here on our Hall of Fame, all video credits, and will proportionally decorate any aircraft flown (Similar to NASCAR sponsors). We have a crowdfund campaign in the works which will target an initial $15k to $30k goal ($15k basic; $15k reserve) to kickoff and demo the project with the first X-15, world-record breaking mission flown probably by a 10 year-old as absolute proof of the STEM / STEAM value.
The X-15 Project was made possible through the generous time, energy and support of the following parties:
- Stan Snow, director, Mountain Lake Labs (MLABS) -- Founder, design, organization, aerospace engineering, mission planning, development, fundraising, telemetry systems, systems engineering, flight test engineering, flight ops, UAV flight instruction. Stan is licensing his patent pending Bat Wing UAV ornithopter freely to student Maker projects. MLABS is in discussion with OpenLuna about doing a later Iron Man drone STEM project which overlaps with their own spacediving & spacesuit research needs. MLABS is also providing scientific payloads for: 1) Graphene-based measure of stratospheric elements; 2) Student anti-gravity / "warp" engine research tickler based in a 1990's Lockheed Skunkworks experiment where Galileo's equal ball drop was defied with strong magnets.
- Doug Gard, owner, RetroFlight & X Dark Works -- X-15 aircraft fabrication, subsonic to hypersonic systems consult, flight test engineering consult, rocketry advising. Doug's experience with the X-15 and other hypersonic platforms is mission critical. Doug is keeper of the red-headed stepchild and outcast Sea Biscuit airplane which almost became the fabled Area 51 "Aurora", and that stable airframe from Mach 0 to Mach 22+ is so outcast and non-secret compared to "War Admiral" Aurora...that it actually makes a nice STEM and commercial vehicle which the public can know about!
- Hypersonic Group [notation pending] -- ramjet, scramjet, advanced turbine technology and hypersonic airframes consult. NASA/ DARPA "Grumpy Old Men" (who really aren't so grumpy). Hypersonic & transonic systems advisory.
- Patrick Egan, editor, SUAS News -- UAS systems, STEM / STEAM, and FAA regulatory advising. Patrick's advice, UAS industrial experience, eagerness to always help underdogs in UAS, and NAVAIR / SOCOM experience as a UAV instructor is vital to future STEM program quality.
- Jerry Irvine, owner, U.S. Rockets; principal, Dynamic Propellant Technologies -- solid rocket systems consult, mission computations, rocketry advising, Mojave area launch support, Class 3 launch advising. Dynamic Propellant Technologies was the first corporate pledge of $1,000. Jerry's support and rocketry advising has been priceless.
- Debi-Lee Wilkinson, VP of Membership Development, OpenLuna Foundation -- STEM / STEAM consult. Physics and educational curriculum advisory. Spacesuit, spacediving advisory. Debi-Lee was the first person to articulate to Stan that what he was doing was called "STEM".
- John Hutchison, inventor, Hutchison Effect -- exotic physics & high voltage advisory; STEM anti-gravity student experiment advisory. John is a genius scientist and world-class physicist / electrical / propulsion engineer -- a publicly visible "Father of Warp Drive" -- who was mostly self-taught, and whose perspectives on learning & experimental views are priceless, unconventional, and useful to better STEM curriculum development. Great Ph.D's hover over his work in awe with ability to write fancy-sounding tech papers and bamboozle all the world with their nerdy tech language and theories, but John just bends, breaks, and hurls stuff into the air in Area 51 fashion. Publicly visible academics and their publications have yet to understand what John was doing and probably it will be a few decades more before a true understanding and greater visibility on those matters is allowed to the world by "The Man". In the meantime, MLABS proudly endorses the propulsion and energy work of our friend, John, as no fraud.
ADDITIONAL SPONSORS
[Pending]. Your names and contributions go here on our Hall of Fame, all video credits, and will proportionally decorate any aircraft flown (Similar to NASCAR sponsors). We have a crowdfund campaign in the works which will target an initial $15k to $30k goal ($15k basic; $15k reserve) to kickoff and demo the project with the first X-15, world-record breaking mission flown probably by a 10 year-old as absolute proof of the STEM / STEAM value.