X-15

And now, just because, a photograph of an X-15 high speed research aircraft, taken just at the moment of release from its NB-52 carrier aircraft, probably somewhere over southwestern Nevada. The photograph was probably taken in the early 1960s. Note the white astronaut helmet of the pilot barely visible through the window - yes, there's really a guy in there, and he's about to light the fire on a rocket engine with a thrust of about 60,000 pounds, and in a scant few moments he's going to leave that shiny F-104 Starfighter in the background behind like a dog leashed to a fireplug.

The X-15 has a long and distinguished record, racking up many "firsts" and a very solid body of research data in its 199 flights. Until the first flight of the Space Shuttle, it was the fastest and highest-flying manned winged aircraft ever flown, and most of its pilots are today considered astronauts even though for policy reasons NASA and the US Air Force didn't seem to give X-15 pilots astronaut wings.

Back when I was in elementary school, NASA used to send packages of photographic prints and data sheets to elementary schools. Whatever else could be said for NASA back then, they took excellent photographs, and their shiny prints were highly prized. All us kids were squabbling over the photographs in the NASA school kit, most of them color stuff from the later Gemini missions, but suddenly I saw a photograph of this strange black airplane. Back then I knew nothing about hypersonic flight, rocket engines, thermal issues in high speed flight, or much of anything else. I just knew that when I saw that picture of that airplane, I went oh... my... God...

I am still an X-15 junkie. Though I am widely quoted as saying that the Saturn V is the most impressive machine ever made by mere humans, the X-15 is still my favorite airplane. We just don't seem to do things like this any more. We (meaning NASA) seem to have gotten so caught up in PowerPoint presentations, program management mumbo-jumbo and political wrangling we just don't seem build things like the X-15 any more, or ask men like Pete Knight or Neil Armstrong to take them out see what they'll do.