Rocketship X-15: A Bold New Step In Aviation

Description

This is the story of the most advanced experimental aircraft of our time and of the men—pilots, engineers, scientists, technicians—whose lives are bound up with it. It offers a fascinating glimpse into the anatomy of a Space-Age rocket plane: how it works, how it is used and why its mission is so vital that more time, money and engineering skill have gone into it than into any other single experimental craft. Before a man can actually be sent into Outer Space, the edges of Space must be explored and incredible amounts of data gathered that will reveal how our craft will perform “out there” and how men will react to such an alien environment. The X-15 has been designed solely for this purpose: to take a man higher (between 50 and 100 miles up) and faster (at speeds approaching 4000 mph.) than anyone has ever flown before, up to the very edge of Space. This story is the first day-by-day account of the operation of the X-15. Based on personal observations and interviews at Edwards Air Force Base, it covers the four-day countdown leading up to and climaxed by an actual flight of the X-15. This countdown will be repeated many times until the day, sometime in 1961, when the X-15 makes its maximum stress flight—and history—by carrying a man to an altitude of one hundred miles, subjecting him to tremendous G-forces and to the totally unique and unknown experience of flying under a no-gravity condition for as long as three minutes. Rocketship X-15 is your eyewitness to aviation history as it is being made today and as it lays the ground work for an even more exciting future in Space.