The X-15 Rocket Plane

Flying the First Wings into Space

Michelle Evans (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

484 Seiten

2022
University of Nebraska Press (Verlag)
978-1-4962-2984-7 (ISBN)

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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.

Michelle Evans is the founder of Mach 25 Media and is an aerospace writer, photographer, and education specialist. She served in the U.S. Air Force working on nuclear missiles, is the producer of several documentaries about space exploration, and is a contributor to Space Daily, space.com, and Ad Astra. Joe H. Engle was the eighth pilot of the X-15 research aircraft and flew sixteen rocket plane missions. He later orbited the earth as the commander of the space shuttle Columbia and again with Discovery.

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

Erscheinungsdatum	10.03.2022
Reihe/Serie	Outward Odyssey: A People's History of Spaceflight
Vorwort	Joe H. Engle
Zusatzinfo	45 photographs, 1 glossary, index
Verlagsort	Lincoln
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Allgemeines / Lexika
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Naturwissenschaften ► Physik / Astronomie ► Astronomie / Astrophysik
ISBN-10	1-4962-2984-3 / 1496229843
ISBN-13	978-1-4962-2984-7 / 9781496229847
Zustand	Neuware