Glory Days

Glory Days, originally uploaded by big_pixel_pusher.

I was a little shocked to see the condition of this seemingly famous experimental aircraft. It was rotting away in the boneyard at the Chino Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, CA. It turns out this is just a television prop. It was built and used for a show called Quantum Leap in 1989. The actual X-2 became the first aircraft to fly higher than 100,000 feet with pilot Iven C. Kincheloe at the controls. It was lost after becoming the first aircraft to fly in excess of Mach 3. The pilot Milburn G. "Mel" Apt was killed and the test program was ended.