Mach 6.7: America's Most Dangerous Ride to Space. Piloting a Bomb: Inside the Cockpit of the X-15 [1:44:54]

YouTube ^ | May 2, 2026 | DroneScapes

[SunkenCiv]

Dive into the riveting story of the North American X-15, the legendary rocket plane that bridged the gap between conventional airplanes and the Space Shuttle. Uncover the triumphs and tragedies of the pilots who rode this hypersonic beast to the threshold of space, facing deadly G-forces, blistering heat, and the unforgiving vacuum of the upper atmosphere. Learn about the radical aerospace innovations that made Mach 6.7 possible. 

Mach 6.7: America's Most Dangerous Ride to Space. 
Piloting a Bomb: Inside the Cockpit of the X-15 | 1:44:54 
DroneScapes | 496K subscribers | 47,838 views | May 2, 2026

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TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: aviation; chromium; hypersonic; inconelx; nickel; scottcrossfield; x15

[SunkenCiv]

Engineering the Hypersonic Age Overcoming the intense friction of hypersonic flight required abandoning standard aircraft aluminum. The X-15 was forged from a stubborn nickel-chromium alloy called Inconel-X, painted with heat-radiating black silicone, and eventually coated in ablative armor to survive temperatures that could melt steel. 

General Information on the X-15 Program Operating primarily out of Edwards Air Force Base, the X-15 project was a massive collaborative effort aimed at studying high-speed, high-altitude flight. The aircraft was carried aloft by an NB-52 mothership and released before igniting its powerful XLR-99 rocket engine. The program proved that a winged vehicle could exit the atmosphere, rely on reaction control thrusters in a vacuum, and safely glide back to Earth for a runway landing. It secured invaluable data on aerodynamic heating, structural integrity, and the transition between atmospheric and space flight, directly influencing the design of modern spacecraft. Despite the incredible successes, including absolute altitude and speed records, the program faced dark days, most notably the disintegration of the number three aircraft and the tragic death of Major Michael Adams.

[Steely Tom]

This blew my mind: the X-15 was fueled by anhydrous ammonia. The oxidizer was liquid oxygen.

That was during the same time frame that Lyndon Johnson's pal Billy Sol Estes was selling thousands of tanks of anhydrous ammonia to farmers all over Texas, paid for with federal agriculture grants. Probably a coincidence. But LBJ was VP, and then POTUS, during that time.

[wjcsux]

The X-15 was such an amazing piece of American aviation history. As a kid, I watched every news report on the X-15 and read every article that came out at the time. BTW, Neil Armstrong was an X-15 pilot.

[SunkenCiv]

Before becoming the first man to walk on the moon Neil Armstrong was a proven test pilot for NASA. On April 20, 1962, Armstrong experienced a harrowing flight, testing the new X-15. It was a plane designed to go higher than any other. In 1959, the new plane would drop from a B-52 bomber at 30,000 feet to go straight up. On that flight in 1962, Armstrong reached speeds five times greater than the speed of sound and an altitude of nearly 200,000 feet. But the plane was pointed in the wrong direction that caused it to literally bounce off the atmosphere. It threw Armstrong off course, his only option was to free fall and find a landing space in a dry lake bed nearly 50 miles from his intended destination of Edwards Air Force base.

Neil Armstrong's Perilous X-15 Test Flight - Decades TV Network | 3:55
Decades TV Network | 42.7K subscribers | 312,466 views | April 20, 2016

[SunkenCiv]

Yup.

https://freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/4378055/posts?page=4#4

I visited the Air & Space about 25 years ago and one of the surviving X-15 aircraft was hanging up above. A wing of the gossamer albatross was sticking through from the adjacent room, Friendship 7 was setting there, I think the X-1 is in there, lots of stuff.

[SunkenCiv]

Oh yeah, just a coinky-dinky. 😊

[Steely Tom]

Neil Armstrong was the coolest of cool customers, a hell of a good pilot without any flashiness, and a brilliant engineer with deep theoretical and practical knowledge of digital fly-by-wire systems, feedback and stability theory, and orbital mechanics.

[Steely Tom]

I believed I learned somewhere (probably a YT video) that Armstrong and Chuck Yeager were not friends. Several reasons for this were advanced, one being that Yeager couldn't qualify for astronaut training because he didn't have a college degree, which was a firm requirement. IIRC, they met once; Yeager was a bit unpleasant to Neil Armstrong, and Armstrong completely ignored him. Wouldn't take the bait. Just went on with his job like Yeager wasn't there.

I have the sense that at least when he was functioning professionally, on the job, Neil Armstrong was a bit like Mr. Spok, and I mean that in a good way.

[SunkenCiv]

Early one morning, the LM trainer malfunctioned, Armstrong ejected, and a second later it finished its flip and crashed and burned. In the DVD interviews in one of the Ron Howard projects, Bean said he was told about it, went to Armstrong’s cubicle, asked him about it. He replied, “yup.”

In another of those interviews Dave Scott describes how cool N.A. was during the malfunction during the Gemini VIII mission. “That’s why you put Armstrong in charge.”

There’s a bogus doctored X-15 vid on YouTube, a voice that’s clearly recently added to simulate Neil’s reports “98,000 feet” and then “what’s that?” and a message “censored for viewers” and obviously tentacles are sometimes visible outside the blacked out box. Stupid hoax.

Another annoying hoax is that Buzz claimed that they saw an alien craft on the way to the Moon. In the actual undoctored interview he tells how the Apollo 11 expended third stage intersected with their flight path.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

I was 8 years old when the X-15 took to the air. Dad was in aerospace at GE and we always had Aviation Week magazine on the coffee table. I remember soaking up as much as I could about the X-15 program.

It’s interesting that Kelly Johnson was launching the Oxcart / SR-71 program about the same time.

[SunkenCiv]

Gotta love the late Chuck Yeager, Iloved his memoir, but nothing stopped him from getting a degree of his own, he just wouldn’t do it. He was a big supporter of one of the proposed shuttle replacements, a space plane that took off and landed on a runway on Earth, and made no secret about his desire to be the pilot. Never got built, because SSTOs of all kinds have absurdly low payload mass. Costs $200 million per flight to put a 12 oz can of cola into orbit. Dopey.

[SunkenCiv]

And it was a separate program. The CIA’s A12 was the precursor, and the titanium for that and the S71 was mined in the USSR and shipped to a front company in India, then made into those planes to overfly the USSR. Man, those guys were good.

[Red Badger]

Aviation History Ping!..............

[Steely Tom]

I knew about the LM trainer incident, but I never heard about the "yup" comment. Sounds like Armstrong though.

About the Gemini VIII incident, I've done a fair amount of on-line research, which isn't difficult of course.

That incident was remarkable on so many levels.

It was a serious malfunction, that could easily have cost Armstrong and Scott their lives, and might even have endangered the entire manned space program.

Neil Armstrong detected the problem, tried several fixes of increasing intensity in an effort to solve it, finally realizing that a thruster on the Gemini vehicle was stuck in the "on" state. He then took manual control of the thrusters, killed the one that was malfunctioning (I think by cutting its circuit breaker), and manually de-spun the vehicle, one axis at a time, under conditions in which an ordinary person would have been debilitated by nausea, not to mention severe spatial disorientation.

But he not only figured out the problem, he was rapidly able to operate the appropriate controls in the correct sequence and with the correct timing to bring the capsule to angular rest.

But in so doing, he had to expend so much maneuvering propellant that the mission had to be aborted immediately. Keeping the heat shield oriented correctly to protect the capsule from reentry heat had to be done with active controls, meaning thrusters had to operate during the whole high-temperature portion of the reentry process.

As I understand it, Armstrong's remarkable performance during that incident so impressed the upper management of NASA that he was the unanimous first choice for Apollo 11 lunar module commander. Also he had more hours on the lunar simulator than anyone else.

[cpdiii]

That was during the same time frame that Lyndon Johnson's pal Billy Sol Estes was selling thousands of tanks of anhydrous ammonia to farmers all over Texas, paid for with federal agriculture grants. Probably a coincidence. But LBJ was VP, and then POTUS, during that time.

Totally unrelated is this thou Billie Sol was a scandalous. He went to jail in lieu of LBJ.

Oddly I have been in his home for birthday parties for his daughter whom was a classmate of mine in the middle school, she was a nice lady. Billie Sol came to the party as a proud father.

We were just kids and Billy Sol was the icon in Pecos, Texas. My grandad managed a very large farms for Mr Davidson. He knew how to farm and most successfully. Billie Sol tried to hire him at a large salary and benefits. My grandad said, "There is something about that Son of A Bi--ch I do not trust. My granddad was right.

[Steely Tom]

Totally unrelated is this thou Billie Sol was a scandalous. He went to jail in lieu of LBJ.

Yeah, I didn't seriously think LBJ had anything to do with why anhydrous was chosen to fuel the X-15. But still it's a slightly interesting historical coincidence.

Very interesting story about your family's awareness of Billie Sol and his ways.

Do you happen to have any idea what the farmers were supposed to actually do with the anhydrous ammonia they were talked into buying. I mean, I know it's a nitrogen-bearing compound and can therefore be used as a fertilizer. But it's a cryogenic liquid. What did they do? Get some kind of application machine that was towed behind a tractor and injected the stuff directly into the ground? Did they dissolve it in water and spray it on the plants? I've always wondered about that.

[doorgunner69]

The snarky comments from other pilots about Armstrong’s close pooch screw were funny.

“If he has gone further south, he would have had to check in with L.A. Center’

not sure if he was washed out of the X-15 program after that, but so goes the rumor.

[alexander_busek]

The CIA’s A12 was the precursor, and the titanium for that and the S71 was mined in the USSR and shipped to a front company in India, then made into those planes to overfly the USSR.

Just did some Internet research on the topic of "Why would the Soviets of the 1950s not jealously guard their high-performance titanium?" Fascinating subject!

Regards,

[Pilsner]

This blew my mind: the X-15 was fueled by anhydrous ammonia

Ammonia was recognized was a potential fuel source for internal combustion engines in the late 1800s. One pioneer engineer did a number of experiments with ammonia engines, and found that while it worked as a fuel, it was too dangerous for practical use.

The second time he was hospitalized with lung and eye injuries from ammonia exposure the engineer, Rudolph DIESEL decided that he needed to find a fuel source that was less dangerous to users.

He remember seeing an 1820s patent fire starter, based on an ancient Indonesian fire starter, that produced combustion by slamming a hand onto a tropical hardwood piston, and compressing the air inside so rapidly that it heated the fuel source inside it to the point of combustion.

[Sirius Lee]

That was during the same time frame that Lyndon Johnson's pal Billy Sol Estes was selling thousands of tanks of anhydrous ammonia

So in a way the X-15 was an Estes Rocket.