EAA493 Mailing List: Can you name the first American killed during a space flight?

[Donald Treadwell (pilot.dt]

     Major Michael James "Mike" Adams was an outstanding pilot, earning his wings at Webb Air Force Base, Texas.  Born May 5th, 1930, he would have been 89 years old this Sunday. Among his many awards, in 1962 he won the A. B. Honts Trophy as the best scholar and pilot in his class at the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base. The following year he graduated with honors from The Aerospace Research Pilot School.

     In October of 1966 he made his first flight in the X-15. On November 15th, 1967, at 10:30 in the morning, his seventh flight of the X-15 began, dropping away from the NB-52B at 45,000 feet. As he passed 85,000 feet, an electrical disturbance degraded control of the X-15 slightly. Mike Adams determined that the back-up controls were adequate to continue the flight. Three minutes into the flight, Mike reached peak altitude of 266,000 feet. Mike began a planned wing rocking maneuver, so an onboard camera could record the horizon as the X-15 was vertical to the horizon. At that altitude, the X-15 was maneuvered solely by thruster rockets located in the nose and wings. The rocking quickly became excessive. By the end of the wing rocking maneuver, the X-15 started a slow drift to the right as Mike pitched the plane to a horizontal attitude. The drifting was momentarily halted, but the yaw began to increase until 30 seconds later, the X-15 was traveling at right angles to the flight path. As the X-15 descended, dynamic pressure began to act on the airframe. Mike radioed Pete Knight, mission controller for NASA 1, that the controls "seem[ed] squirrelly."  The X-15 continued to yaw a complete circle to the right.  

     At 10:34, Mike Adams radioed, "I'm in a spin, Pete."  There was momentary disbelief in the control room as there was no instrumentation on the ground to show attitude and heading and no recommended spin recovery technique for the X-15. 

     Adams repeated, "I'm in a spin." He tried basic spin recovery technique with the aerodynamic controls and the rocket thrusters until at 118,000 feet, he had halted the spin but was inverted in a 45-degree dive and traveling Mach 4.7.  Adams only needed to roll 180 degrees and slowly pull out of the dive. It was at this point that the Minneapolis-Honeywell MH-96 Adaptive Control System began oscillating the pitch with increasing severity. The MH-96 was an early attempt at fly-by-wire with some mechanical connections. It was part of the experimental nature of the flight to determine the rapidly changing aerodynamic forces acting on the X-15 as it reentered the atmosphere. The pitching caused a positive 15-g followed quickly by a negative 15-g and 8-g lateral force when the X-15-3 broke apart at 65,000 feet and Mach 3.93. It was 10 minutes, 35 seconds after launch.

     The Air Force awarded Adams his Astronaut Wings posthumously.  Mike Adams's name was added to the Astronaut Memorial at the Kennedy Space Center in 1991.