American Dyna

I'm always on the lookout for new vintage images of NASA's X-20 Dyna Soar. It is probably the most illustrated/photographed of all the spacecraft, which inspired SWORD, despite the fact that it never actually flew. Here are two images found online this week I've not seen before. I'm unable to identify the artists.

Possibley the most commonplace of all X-20 artist's impressions, certainly online, is the one below showing the space-plane heating up on re-entry. It exists also without lettering. Darth kindly identified the artist's surname as McCallister, which lead me to discover his full name, Warren McCallister last year and theorised it's influence on the SWORD box art.

This week I came across a similar image online [below] but here the X-20 is actually redder as it heats up further even it appears to be located above the same point on the Earth's surface.

We have seen a series of similar images before - in an early NASA film on You Tube posted previously on the blog. Summising that the re-entry sequence is a simple cartoon of many static images then perhaps Warren McCallister created a whole series of paintings for NASA's/ Boeing's use of which the two shown here where related? I've re-posted the You Tube clip at the bottom. The X-20 re-entry 'cartoon' is at the start along with a fabulous gallery of X-20 art on the wall behind the Presenter, including McCallister's own rendition. See what you think.

If you interested in an in-depth study of the Dyna Soar X-20 then I can recommend our very own Darth's fabulous book from Apogee as seen here on You Tube: