At least that was what the engineers confidently assumed. The main engine plus the regular afterburner would take you to about 60,000 feet, and when you cut in the rocket, and that would take you somewhere between 120,000 and 140,000 feet. The rocket engine used hydrogen peroxide and JP4 fuel and would deliver 6.000 pounds of thrust. The other was the NF-104, which was an F-104 with a rocket engine mounted over the tailpipe.

One was a space mission simulator, a device more realistic and sophisticated than the Mercury project simulator NASA had on the boards. Two extraordinary pieces of equipment were being developed specifically for ARPS. Here’s the excerpt from Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff describing Yeager’s NF-104 ejection: Air Force test pilots who were involved in aeronautical research at Edwards Air Force Base (AFB), California, as well as the Mercury Seven, the seven military pilots who were selected to be the astronauts for Project Mercury, the first crewed spaceflight by the US. The Right Stuff movie was adapted from Tom Wolfe’s best-selling 1979 book of the same name about the U.S. 1, 1963, and was destroyed in a crash while being flown by Chuck Yeager on Dec. The third NF-104A (USAF 56-0762) was delivered to the ARPS on Nov.

USAF purchased three NF-104 aircraft (which were a sort of “special” F-104s featuring a rocket engine in the tail that permitted zoom climbs above 100,000 feet, an altitude where reaction control jets must be used instead of conventional control surfaces) to train the students at US Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School (ARPS) in out of atmosphere maneuvering and reentry problems. Though seriously burned, after reaching the ground Yeager gathers up his parachute and walks to the ambulance, proving that he still has the Right Stuff. The videos show the famous sequence of Chuck Yeager’s NF-104 ejection which took place while he was attempting to set a new altitude record at the edge of space but was nearly killed in a high-speed ejection after his aircraft went out of control in a flat spin. The clips in this post feature excerpts from the 1983 The Right Stuff epic historical drama film. He’s exploded out of the cockpit with such force it’s like a concussion… He can’t see… Chuck Yeager hasn’t bailed out an airplane since the day he was shot down over Germany when he was twenty… I’ve tried A! – I’ve tried B! – I’ve tried C!… 11,000 feet, 7,000 feet from the farm… He hunches himself into a ball, just as it says in the manual, and reaches under the seat for the cinch ring and pulls.

Zoom movie finger scene