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Wednesday 14 January 2009

Isn't this what Steve Austin Crashed?



H/T Gary P

11 comments:

box2box_player said...

That's an X-38 Crew Return Vehicle. It was designed for the ISS crew to return home in the event that the Space Shuttle couldn't. It was scrapped in 2002. My Bro-in-law worked on it at JSC and I got to see it up close. Pretty cool stuff.

fboness said...

This is Northrop's M2 F2 from the late sixties. It's the Steve Austin crash and the grand daddy of the X-38.

Murray said...

Yes it is and the fottage they used was genuine and the pilot did in fact survive.

Of course given the time zones and the comments vetting five other people have already said that while I type.

Doesn't matter, we're still first in the world and the rest of you are still behind, I can see the international date line from here.

Really does blight the view by the way.

Scott Alfter said...

Looks like the Northrop M2-F2, crash footage of which was used in the opening credits for The Six Million Dollar Man. A pilot-induced oscillation led to other errors, which resulted in it landing off-runway with the gear not fully extended.

steveH said...

The picture looks a lot like the Northrop M2-F2, which was the lifting body that crashed, and was used in the Bionic Man opening credits.

The name of the jpg image is "nasa-M2F2.jpg", too.

The X-38 and HL-10 all look quite a bit like the M2-F2; similar problems tend toward similar solutions.

(Submission is choking, apologies if this is a duplicate)

Not a sheep said...

Steve Austin is described in the show as having crashed in one of Northrop M2-F2 or Northrop HL-10. Consistency was not that programme's strong point.

Unknown said...

It is an M2-F3 lifting body from the 1970s
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/M2-F3/HTML/EC71-2774.html

Here's the pic:
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/M2-F3/Small/EC71-2774.jpg

Steve Austin crashed an HL-10,a very similar lifting body:
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/Fleet/Small/E-21115.jpg

MissionJunkie said...

That's the M2F2 Lifting Body, which was the crashing aircraft in the opening sequence to the TV show. According to the book however, Austin crashed the M3F5. Steve Austin crashed the HL-10 according to the TV show. In reality though, the HL-10 never crashed, and Bruce Peterson, the pilot who crashed the M2F2 lifting body, became the inspiration for Steve Austin in the book "Cyborg".

JP Gibb said...

No, that's definitely the M2-F2. The X-38 was unmanned, and you can just make out the canopy and pilot in this picture.

Also the X-38 was rounded on top with a flat bottom, the M2-F2 was the other way around.

Mike the Marine said...

Actually, that's not the X-38. In fact, it's a good bit older... like about three decades.

It's the Northrop M2-F2... and yes, it was the Six Million Dollar Man's ride.

keith said...

Jason:
Have to offer a correction here. It is the NASA M2-F2 Lifting Body from the 1960s. They were studying the concept of a lifting body for a return vehicle from Earth orbit. Alot of the research went towards the Space Shuttle and yes they did look at using the concept again for an emergency return vehicle from the space station but ditched it.