Talk:X-15 Flight 3-65-97

Mike Adams died as a result of pilot error
This article presents the sanitized version of how Mike Adams died. It is the same story that has been repeated in so many references on the X-15.

The purpose of an encyclopedia is to present accurate facts. Not eulogized distortions to protect a pilot's legacy, and prevent hurt feelings among the next of kin. Same for the purpose of Mishap Investigations. The entire process is designed to do a meticulous analysis to, yet again, get to the accurate facts.

With Crash Investigations, the deeper purpose is to LEARN from mistakes, so that they can be avoided in future situations. And the process in full leads to a flying culture that evolves to become much safer than its older versions.

The article here never gets to the core problem which created the unrecoverable situation:
 * - Mike Adams made a fatal switch error.
 * - X-15#3 got destroyed, and he got killed, because of pilot error.

Perhaps the reference which best explains this is the NASA JSC Oral History interview of Joe Engle, here: Engle: ...we learned a very painful lesson when [Michael J.] Mike Adams was killed in the X-15. That was determined to be the reason, was that he was getting data above the horizon. Then when he set up to reenter, he had not repositioned the switch back to the reentry position so that the airplane was lined up to land. It was coming in at a very big yaw angle and it just went out of control and broke up. So we learned a very painful lesson there on using one instrument for a multitude of tasks.
 * - https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/EngleJH/EngleJH_4-22-04.pdf(pdf pg31of42)
 * (https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/EngleJH/englejh.htm)

The more complete context of his words quoted here is found in the preceding paragraphs of his answer. There he explains that the X-15 had this tiny payload bay, with doors that would open up to expose the sensors for a particular experiment. This had been a difficult task for pilots to accomplish to get the X-15 into the exact position for the experiment to succeed. They then decided to do a modification to the Guidance Needles on the Primary Flight Reference (PFD) so that it would show the pilot directly the attitude that the experiment was requiring for that flight. To enter this mode, a switch was flipped. Prior to entering back into the atmosphere, it was VITAL for the pilot to flip this switch back to the original position so that it would display the spacecraft's orientation with respect to its flight velocity vector. The Mishap Investigation determined that Mike Adams had forgotten to do this simple, yet necessary step. And the team monitoring on the ground did not have sufficient data to see what his situation was.

THIS is why Mike Adams died. Let's fix this article. And let's fix the article on Mike Adams as well. There are probably other places around Wikipedia where this needs to be fixed also. --Tdadamemd 018 (talk) 02:02, 19 July 2024 (UTC)