@x15gal welcome to Mudspike! I am sure Beach will get back to you on this. How did you find Mudspike if I may ask?
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As usual, my work and projects piled up and I did not get back to youā¦let me look around!
Thanks for your patienceā¦
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Hello @x15gal - I did come across your book a bit late in my research for the X-15 article. Iām going to order your book today! Perhaps I can write a follow up āRead It - Do Itā based on some of your findings!
So all the images from the flight simulator (X-Plane) were captured by me yesā¦the charts and stuff were pulled from the book that was the āRead Itā portion of the article (Dennis Jenkinsā X-15 Frontiers Of Flight).
X-Plane and my slightly modded X-15 did a pretty good job of following the flight profile and characteristics for a desktop/consumer flight simulator. It is even more fun when flying them in VR (Virtual Reality). The speed and pace of some of those flights is just breathtaking (10 or so minutes from drop to landing).
Iām going to order it today and dive inā¦Iāll let you know what I think!
That is a really unique experience - and Iām absurdly jealous! A year or so ago I picked up a print signed by Joe Engleā¦so that is one of my treasures. My dream would be to someday sit in the cockpit of the plane, but Iām sure it is off-limits to all but the most dedicated restoration and preservation team members. Iād also like to visit the Mike Adams memorial in the future.
Pretty much anytime I fly a trip out to the southwest Iām always looking down trying to spot the various dry lake beds enroute. Some still have the faintest markings of those thick tar markings on them. Really cool to see that historyā¦and even though my plane only flies at ~ 40-45,000ā it still is a neat perspective on what some of the X pilots were seeing.
What did you think of Ryan Goslingās portrayal of Neil Armstrongās X-15 days? A bit embellished on the āatmosphere skipā flightā¦but the movie was pretty good.
Thanks for the link to your site - Iāll enjoy going through it. Iām sure it is in the book, but what got you interested specifically in the X-15 history?
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One other thingā¦as an X-15 aficionado, you might also enjoy the article I wrote a couple years ago about the more modern day sub-orbital flights that I tried to simulate:
Iām hoping to do a lifting body article whenever I can free up some time tooā¦!
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When I see the big geese dropping down into our yard, I think of your ālifting bodyā planed article!
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I happened across Mudspike from a Google search. Iām currently doing a major upgrade on my X-15 site, and the current page Iām working on has to do with the X-15 High Range, which includes the radar sites and emergency lakebeds. So, I was doing a search just to see what came up and it took me here. Glad I found it.
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Thank you very much for getting a copy of my book. I look forward to hearing what you think about it.
I would love to have a flight sim for the X-15, but as far as I know, none of them run on a Mac, so Iāve been out in the cold in that regard. I helped out with images for one programmer many years ago for an X-15 flight sim.
Youāre definitely right that the X-15 flights are amazingly fast. Normal mission time was about 10 minutes. The longest flight was Neilās āskipā flight on 20 April 1962 of 12 minutes and 28.7 seconds.
I was lucky to start my research and interviews back when 9 of the 12 pilots were still around. It is a terrible thing that only Engle is left with us today. And so many of the others who made the X-15 possible are gone as well. I hate it every time I have to update my interview list with the notation that someone else has passed away. Joe is an amazing guy, and I was thrilled when he accepted the idea of writing the Foreword for my book. Working with him over the years at things like our talks at the Air Force Academy or the panel I moderated at Spacefest a few years ago with him and others from the X-15 are definitely big highlights in my life.
I definitely hope that you get to visit the Mike Adams site at some point. We have done a lot of work out there over the years, and it is an amazing thing to see. I canāt think of any other crash memorial that has accomplished what the Adams site has been able to do. When you go to my web site, youāll find links to download files such as my flight log. There are also links for the tour itinerary that I developed called āIn the Footsteps of the X-15.ā Those files will give explicit directions on how to get to the various X-15 sites in California and Nevada, including the Mike Adams site. Iāll be doing an upgrade to those files in the coming months as I work through all the updates. Iāve been at this project for more than 6 months now, and have added about 1100 new photos so far.
As for āFirst Manā I have to admit that I am not much of a fan of that movie. And I say that after being one of their technical advisors! I was very disappointed in how things were handled, especially with regard to the X-15. There are just so many things wrong that I wonāt go into them now. If anyoneās interested in a full critique, Iād be glad to share it. And this is not just from a technical point of view, but the overall story as well. Neil was a really nice person, who was very generous and had a good sense of humor. When you come out of First Man you get the impression he was the most dour, depressed, and humorless of human beings. So, Iāll let it go at that for now.
Sorry to go on for so long. Appreciate you getting back with me.
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I bought a copy on audible as well. The reviews speak for themselves. Looks a great piece of work.
Not something to worry about, here at Mudspike!
Experience and knowledge are appreciated without limitations!
Also, welcome!
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Thank you for the link to your article about SpaceShip2. Iāll definitely check that out. When giving my X-15 talk at Scaled Composites several years ago, one of the ways that I was āpaidā for my services is that I got to ārideā the SS2 simulator into space. Now that was an exhilarating experience, to say the least! And at least it didnāt cost $250,000. 
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Please elaborate as much as you want, we live for that stuff here!
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Indeed. Please do, Michelle! We enjoy long reads and good stories! The sim that BeachAV8R used is called X-Plane and that should also run on Mac computers. You can download a free demo from their website to see if it works.
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Okay, here goes with my diatribe about āFirst Man.ā
Overall impressions:
Often, when I first watch a movie and have a negative reaction to it, I will go back at a future point and watch it again to see if I was missing something. With that in mind, I find that many times I actually āgetā a movie that I dismissed the first time around, and can appreciate what they were trying to accomplish. I have now seen āFirst Manā three times, and I have to admit that I actually like it less each time I have seen it. That has never happened before in my movie going experience. Maybe itās because I am too close to the subject matter because of knowing Neil and because of my passion for the X-15 and space exploration in general. Iāll leave that for you to decide.
I feel that they did a huge disservice to who Neil was, and skewed the facts to bend the movie to a narrative that simply was not based in reality. I have to say that I have zero problem with a movie maker changing facts in order to make a narrative point. A couple of great examples are āApollo 13ā and āThe Right Stuff.ā Both of these movies messed up on a lot of facts, but both movies did so in ways to make the story more coherent to the movie goer, especially in the limited time available. (The only exception to that is the depiction of Gus Grissom after his Mercury mission in āThe Right Stuff,ā which was despicable when they gave the impression of him as āthat squirming hatch blower.ā)
With regard to āFirst Man,ā look at the expectations before the movie came out. Almost all the press was about how this would be the movie to beat at Oscar time in pretty much all categories. Instead the movie totally tanked at the box office, earning just four Oscar nominations in minor categories, and only winning one for special effects. The audience saw this movie and understood intrinsically that it was not good. Making Neil into a dour and depressing figure, and focusing on the loss of his daughter, Karen, as the motivating factor in everything he did, served to alienate everyone who saw it from the wonder and excitement of the experiences that Neil had over his career in space exploration. It was a huge disservice to the memory of Neil.
Technical Difficulties:
Let me point out some of the technical errors. First off, yes there was a lot of vibration when on the wing of the B-52. In fact, it was noted by the crew the day of Neilās X-15 skip flight (20 April 1962), that the turbulence was about the worst they had had on a flight so far. However, once he was off the shackles and on his way, that vibration would have been down to a much smaller level. Instead, we get vibration that, if real, would have shaken the pilot and the aircraft to pieces. Same goes for both the Gemini and Apollo launches as well. Looked like they were putting in about + and - 100 gs or so!
The X-15 never would have been launched in the heavy clouds that looked like rain. X-15 flights took place on days with relatively clear skies, and never with thick cloud cover. Also, this flight took place around noon, so the low light angles were bogus. The X-15 instrument panel did not have a rotating dial for altitude indication, so that was stupid. In addition, the altitude reached on that flight was 207,500 feet, not 140,000 feet as shown. Using the actual height would have made the scene not only more authentic, but also more dramatic. Neil also did not barely make it over the tree tops of the Mt Wilson area as depicted in the movie, as he headed back north to Edwards! In reality, at that point he was at about 45,000 feet.
The same goes for the terrible weather present on the scenes of the Apollo 11 launch as was wrong on the X-15 flight. They also used close up shots of the booster lifting off the pad that were all stock shots of the night launch of Apollo 17 rather than the early morning (and well-lighted) Apollo 11 liftoff. I could also complain about not getting the roll pattern correct on their Saturn V model, but that would just be nitpicking.
How about the fact that, especially on the Gemini 8 mission, the instrument panel appeared to have gone through about 20 missions already. Everything was extremely dirty! Guenter Wendt (the Pad Leader) would never allow a new spacecraft to get messy like that.
There were aspects of the movie āFirst Manā that reminded me of another movie, āA Beautiful Mind.ā If you havenāt seen that, it is actually really excellent. However, it deals with a mathematician who is mentally ill, and he sees people who arenāt there. They were showing Neil in that same light where he was seeing Karen all over the place after her death. And the whole āKarenās braceletā thing was something that simply never happened. In fact Jan said to Jim Hansen (when he was researching for the book the movie is based on) that she was extremely pissed at Neil for not doing anything with regard to their children during the Apollo 11 mission. Throughout the movie, you can see how Jan gets very upset with Neil about his lack of feelings, and his lack of response to the loss of Karen, but then he supposedly takes Karenās bracelet to the Moon. It is inferred when Neil comes back (although definitely not explicitly stated) that Jan knows what he did, and all is then okay. In the long run, and in reality, Jan cited his lack of dealing with Karenās death as being one of the reasonās for their divorce even 30 years later. So the entire Karen angle was used as a fake story follow-through in order to make the filmmakerās narrative work.
Conclusion:
The real story is plenty compelling and would have made an amazing and dramatic movie. It didnāt need all that made-up garbage from bad weather, to excessive vibration, to Karenās bracelet being dropped into a crater in the Sea of Tranquility. They also neglected the simple fact that Neil actually did have a good sense of humor. He was stoic to those who didnāt know him, but was warm and friendly to those who were his good friends, especially those in aviation and space.
Itās been 25 years since the release of āApollo 13.ā It is still regarded as a wonderful motion picture and a classic. People still get excited about it, even by those who are not āin the knowā with regard to the space program. āFirst Man,ā less than two years after its release, is already an almost unknown movie, and will never stand the test of time as āApollo 13ā has done. The reason for that is that āFirst Manā is just not a good movie.
Believe me when I say that I dearly wanted First Man to be not only good, but Great! It failed.
Hope I havenāt offended anyone in my comments about the movie, and would love to hear anything youād like to share.
Michelle
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Absolutely! You painted a very detailed picture of why the movie doesnāt work so I can only thank you.
I wanted to like it as well but I always felt I lacked (being a non-native English speaker) the terms to describe the feeling.
Now it seems more clear.
ā¦
I know youāre not here @ Mudspike for this but- 
Youāll discover Iām the cheesy guy- Iād like to ask what you thought of the movie Space Cowboys.
Yes, itās absurd butā¦ what did you think of it? (if youāve seen it at all!)
Sryan, Thanks for the info. I was definitely not aware anything as made available for Macs. Iām downloading it now, and hopefully it will work on my system.
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I love āSpace Cowboys.ā Itās a wonderful and fun movie. A bunch of old geezers get a chance to go back into space, what could be better!
Thatās one of the huge things wrong in āFirst Manā in that there was zero humor. Who wants to go to a movie to get depressed. The world can be enough of a downer already.
Glad you enjoyed what I wrote about the movie.
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That was a masterful review. I loved the movie. Now I hate it! Normally I am not nearly so flexible. My love was a reaction against those who, in my mind, were overly disappointed by the lack of a flag scene. But really they were right. Maybe not expressly about the lack of a patriotic and heart-tugging flag moment but about the general malaise of the film. I was too closed-minded to get where they were coming from. I did however know people here in New Jersey who had met Neil and they all agreed that he was a genuinely nice and outgoing guy. A pilotās pilot.
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After waiting 45 minutes for the download, unfortunately, when I tried to open it, it wonāt run on my system. Darn! I was getting excited there for a minute. Hopefully somedayā¦
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Thank you for your comments about my review. I have to say that Iām sorry that it changed your mind to a negative review, but it should have been so much better!
Yes, there was a lot of controversy about the flag raising. My personal opinion was that that specific complaint made no real difference in my mind. If that had been the only major problem I could have justified liking it anyway by saying that the movie was about Neil rather than the country going to the Moon. So, on the basis of Neilās story, thatās where it failed.
If youāre interested, I did an interview on David Livingstonās āThe Space Showā just a few days after the movieās premiere, and the movie was the primary topic we discussed.
https://www.thespaceshow.com/show/16-oct-2018/broadcast-3207-michelle-evans
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