Guest: Michelle Evans. Topics: The Mike Adams Memorial Re-dedication, X-15, test pilots, & more. Please direct all comments and questions regarding Space Show programs/guest(s) to the Space Show blog, http://thespaceshow.wordpress.com. Comments and questions should be relevant to the specific Space Show program. Written Transcripts of Space Show programs are a violation of our copyright and are not permitted without prior written consent, even if for your own use. We do not permit the commercial use of Space Show programs or any part thereof, nor do we permit editing, YouTube clips, or clips placed on other private channels & websites. Space Show programs can be quoted, but the quote must be cited or referenced using the proper citation format. Contact The Space Show for further information. In addition, please remember that your Amazon purchases can help support The Space Show/OGLF. See www.onegiantleapfoundation.org/amazon.htm. For those listening to archives using live365.com and rating the programs, please email me as to why you assign a specific rating to the show. This will help me bring better programming to the audience. We welcomed back Michelle Evans, author of the best selling book, "The X-15 Rocket Plane, Flying the First Wins into Space." During the first segment of our 1 hour 28 minute program, Michelle started off talking about the May, 18, 2014 Michael Adams re-dedication memorial event. You can see pictures from this event and understand the crash site and location better by viewing the pictures Michelle took and posted. See www.mach25media.com/adams.html. In fact, I strongly urge you to explore her full website, www.mach25media.com as it has the best ever collection of X-15 photos plus other aviation and related material, her presentations on the X-15 and collections from her modeling photography. Michelle took us through the history of the X-15 program and Major Mike Adams up to and including his last and fatal flight. This was the only fatality in the X-15 program which had 199 flights! During this segment, we talked about other X-15 pilots including the very recent passing of pilot Bill Dana. Note the history of the Mike Adams Memorial which had its genesis in a project by Eagle Scout candidate John Bodylski in 2004. Listeners and I asked Michelle about the X-15, the B-52 carrier planes and the location of X-15 historical craft and related hardware. B-52 008 which was one of the carrier planes for X-15 is parked outside Edwards AFB while B-52 003 is at the Pima Air Museum in Tucson. The remaining X-15 rocket planes are at Wright Patterson Air Museum and the Smithsonian. Michelle also spoke about the two nearby towns to the Mike Adams Memorial, Randsburg and Ridgecrest. In the second segment, Michelle noted that the remaining X-15 pilot Joe Engle was invited to the re-dedication but his schedule did not allow it. However, you will find the Joe Engle letter about the re-dedication on Michelle's website per the above URL. Michelle was asked if the X-15 was really a precursor for our space program and she said not so much for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo but definitely for the Space Shuttle, helping to prove the fact that the shuttle could do a power free glide back to Earth and a safe landing. After talking about several dry lake emergency X-15 landing sites, Paul emailed in a question about Chuck Yeager and the X-15. Michelle had much to say about Chuck and the X-15 but as you will hear on the recording, there was lots of scratchy noise and a good part of our discussion on Yeager was lost. I saved as much as I could be saved but about 10 minutes was lost out of the full second segment. In troubleshooting the problem during and after the show, I discovered loose connectors that acted up with the feed going to the computers that record the show. The problem has now been fixed but we did suffer some audio loss during this segment of our program. My apologies to Michelle and The Space Show audience for this problem, the scratchy noise, and subsequent audio loss. Back to Chuck Yeager, as you will hear Michelle say, he was never part of the X-15 program. Michelle did go into the reasons why this was so. We also spoke about other leading and role model astronauts including Wally Schirra and Buzz Aldrin. Near the end of our discussion, I asked Michelle what was next for her after X-15 and she let us know there was still much life left to her work with the X-15. In fact, we learned that her book will soon be an audio book. While she did not know who would be reading it, she did talk about her process in sending the audio publisher a pronunciation guide for the audio version. Please post your comments/questions on TSS blog above. You can reach Michelle through me or through her website. Remember, if you buy the book through TSS/OGLF Amazon portal, Amazon will donate a percentage of their selling price to TSS. See our archive summaries for instructions or visit www.onegiantleapfoundation.org/amazon.htm.
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