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1950, was later used as a launch vehicle in the manned suborbital flights and in other development flights in Project Mercury.

The NACA determined the characteristics of what later became the X-15 rocket aircraft, one of the steps to manned space flight.

In a meeting, Dr. Wernher von Braun, Frederick C. Durant III, Alexander Satin, David Young, Dr. Fred L. Whipple, Dr. S. Fred Singer, and Commander George W. Hoover agreed that a Redstone rocket with a Loki cluster as the second stage could launch a satellite into a 200-mile orbit without major new developments. Project Orbiter was a later outgrowth of this proposal and resulted in the launching of Explorer I on January 31, 1958.

After 2 years’ study of problems that might be encountered in manned space flight, a joint group—NACA, Air Force, and Navy—met in Washington to discuss the need for a hypersonic research vehicle and to decide on the type of aircraft that could attain these objectives. The NACA proposal was accepted in December 1954, and a formal memorandum of understanding was signed to initiate the X-15 project. Technical direction of the project was assigned to the NACA. On November 9, 1961, the X-15 reached its design speed of over 4,000 miles per hour and achieved partial space conditions on July 17, 1962, when it reached an altitude of 314,750 feet. By the latter date, the Mercury spacecraft had made two manned orbital flights.

The Air Force School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Field, Texas, received the first specifically built space cabin simulator.