Posted on 07/22/2025 12:19:05 PM PDT by whyilovetexas111
Decades before the rumored SR-72 “Darkstar,” America had already conquered hypersonic flight with the X-15 rocket plane. In 1967, this remarkable experimental aircraft, developed by North American Aviation, reached a stunning speed of Mach 6.7, a record for a crewed, powered aircraft that remains unbroken to this day.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalsecurityjournal.org ...
Real men of courage.
When we still did shit worth doing. The 1965 Suicide Pact was two years prior, but soon overwhelmed the nation as a whole.
“That stinks.”
Why? It’s great that it is in a museum.
Just put a warhead in its nose and you have a hypersonic missile. Problem solved!
Neil Armstrong flew it IIRC.
North American X-15 BTTT
Just put a warhead in its nose and you have a hypersonic missile. Problem solved!
Watching the replay of the Apollo 11 mission this weekend I realized that that America is long gone. It took energy, risk taking and focus to a level unrecognizable today. What they did, from the astronauts to the guy who swept the floors in Mission Control, is the greatest single achievement in the history of mankind. And it’s utterly impossible to do it or anything like it now.
You might as well deport ...
(4,520 mph)
Aviation Ping!....................
SR-71 was the Blackbird. Our coffee mugs said Mach 6+. We were waiting for it, but it never deployed to my base, Homestead. SR-72 (son of Blackbird) should be something.
X-15 pilots:
A. Scott Crossfield, Joseph A. Walker, Robert M. White, Forrest S. Petersen, John B. McKay, Robert A. Rushworth, Neil A. Armstrong, Joe H. Engle, Milton O. Thompson, William J. “Pete” Knight, William H. Dana, and Michael J. Adams.
The only fatal accident during the X-15 program occurred on November 15, 1967, when Major Michael Adams was killed during the 191st flight. The X-15-3 aircraft, AF Ser. No. 56-6672, entered a hypersonic spin during descent and broke apart at 60,000 feet due to technical difficulties.
Joe Walker set the altitude record on 08/22/1963. 67.1 miles at 3,794 mph (Mach 5.58). Walker was killed on 06/08/1966 when his F-104N Starfighter chase aircraft collided with a North American XB-70 Valkyrie.
Cool.
I knew one who helped develop the ablative coating...
So true
The X-22 was the real, next-gen space plane. It was projected to have been orbital.
As it was, the X-15 had achieved higher altitude and longer duration than Alan Sheppard achieved in Mercury 1 some years later.
But by that time NASA had been invented and that agency was, ab initio, 100% focused on lunar expedition/landing.
A progression, Mercury - Gemini - Apollo - lunar orbit - lunar landing.
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