The X-15 Rocket Plane: Flying the First Wings into Space

✍ Scribed by Michelle L. Evans; Joe Engle

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 479
• Series: Outward Odyssey: A People's History of Spaceflight
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

With the Soviet Union’s launch of the first Sputnik satellite in 1957, the Cold War soared to new heights as Americans feared losing the race into space. The X-15 Rocket Plane tells the enthralling yet little-known story of the hypersonic X-15, the winged rocket ship that met this challenge and opened the way into human-controlled spaceflight.

Drawing on interviews with those who were there, Michelle Evans captures the drama and excitement of, yes, rocket science: how to handle the heat generated at speeds up to Mach 7, how to make a rocket propulsion system that could throttle, and how to safely reenter the atmosphere from space and make a precision landing.

This book puts a human face on the feats of science and engineering that went into the X-15 program, many of them critical to the development of the Space Shuttle. And, finally, it introduces us to the largely unsung pilots of the X-15. By the time of the Apollo 11 moon landing, thirty-one American astronauts had flown into space—eight of them astronaut-pilots of the X-15. The X-15 Rocket Plane restores these pioneers, and the others who made it happen, to their rightful place in the history of spaceflight.

Browse more spaceflight books at upinspace.org.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Whole Nine Yards
2. A Record High
3. Gaining Speed
4. Naval Engagement
5. Changing Course
6. Straight and Steady
7. Skipping Out
8. On a Roll
9. Inconel Meets Celluloid
10. Fastest Man Alive
11. Chasing Experiments
12. In the Line of Duty
13. Snow at Edwards
Afterword
Glossary
Sources
Index