by | November 24, 2015 · 9:25 am
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The Fastest Manned Flight Ever – 47 Years ago…

Just read this – the story of a white X-15 and the man who flew it.

What a story.

H/T to a friend of mine, a retired Air Force test pilot.

4 Comments

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4 responses to “The Fastest Manned Flight Ever – 47 Years ago…”

  1. Busbob
    November 25, 2015 at 4:59 pm

    Ho Lee Crepe! Can’t imagine strapping myself in that machine and goin’ flying. The man had a grip on himself and fate.
    That’s moving so fast that you would be there before you were here. Or would it be the other way?
    Hats off. The man led the way for the rest of us.

    Reply
    • Bill Brandt
      November 26, 2015 at 12:34 am

      Learned a couple of things about that Busbob – that the X-15 pilots were given astronaut wings as they were out of the atmosphere – had forgotten that they had retrorockets – and imagine – Knight’s plane is losing pieces with that speed and he survived!

      When I saw an X-15 at the Smithsonian, I was surprised at how much smaller it was in real life.

  2. NaCly Dog
    November 26, 2015 at 4:17 pm

    I was amazed that there were only 3 of them. I thought, from all the press coverage back in the day, that we had more. National Geographic, I blame you.

    Reply
    • Bill Brandt
      November 26, 2015 at 10:06 pm

      I was surprised too – that shows you the influence these planes had. And I read some time ago about its successor that never came to be – the X-20 Dyna-Soar – a winged plane to routinely go into space. Development was stopped to go strictly into rockets like the Atlas.

      Imagine what could have come from the X-20 program!

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