At the Edge of Space: The X-15 Flight Program [Hardcover]

Milton O. Thompson (Author), Neil Armstrong (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1992

In At the Edge of Space, Milton O. Thompson tells the dramatic story of one of the most successful research aircraft ever flown. The first full-length account of the X-15 program, the book profiles the twelve test pilots (Neil Armstrong, Joe Engle, Scott Crossfield, and the author among them) chosen for the program. Thompson has translated a highly technical subject into readable accounts of each pilot's participation, including many heroic and humorous anecdotes and highlighting the pilots' careers after the program ended in 1968.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Initiated in the 1950s, the X-15 program tested a unique rocket-powered aircraft at supersonic speeds in the atmosphere's outer limits. The stubby-winged, needle-nosed craft achieved speeds of 4000 mph, could fly at altitudes of well over 200,000 feet and yielded data crucial to NASA's space missions. Thomson, one of the test pilots, traces the technical developments of the program, emphasizing the viewpoint of the men who (barely) controlled the unpredictable plane in the air. He demonstrates through a series of vivid anecdotes the effect of g forces, extreme vertigo and other mental and physical problems associated with supersonic flight. Thompson includes accounts of hair-raising emergency rescues and a somber description of the death of one of his colleagues during a 1967 test flight. Retired in 1968 along with the program itself, the X-15 now hangs in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. Surprisingly, it is still the world's fastest airplane. Thompson's well-written history of the program captures the technical challenges, the camaraderie and, most of all, the high adventure of X-15 flight. Highly recommended. Photos.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The X-15 was perhaps the most famous of the X series of rocket planes designed to explore supersonic flight regimes. Thompson's engaging account of the joint U.S. Air Force/NASA program is part memoir (he flew 14 X-15 missions), part history. He describes the plane, the pilots, and the program that explored high altitude hypersonic flight, setting altitude and speed records that remain unbroken more than 25 years later. His firsthand account is filled with humorous insider's anecdotes that successfully humanize the technical aspects of these demanding and dangerous flights that paved the way for the space shuttle. Appendixes provide detailed data on all 199 X-15 flights that, in retrospect, make the reader wonder how the program was accomplished with only one in-flight fatality. Recommended for academic and public libraries.
- Thomas J. Frieling, Bainbridge Coll., Ga.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 392 pages
• Publisher: Smithsonian Books (April 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560981075
• ISBN-13: 978-1560981077
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #965,251 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Memoir by a Legendary Research Pilot, May 22, 2004

By 

Roger D. Launius "Historian" (Washington, D.C., United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: At the Edge of Space: The X-15 Flight Program (Paperback)

Much changed at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) between 1941, when it was surprised by the revelation that the British had a working jet engine that was well on its way to powering an aircraft, and 1947 when it contributed significantly to the cracking of the sound barrier. After World War II the high speed frontier became a special province of the NACA, and the transonic flight research conducted at the agency's test facility in the central desert of southern California achieved legendary status. When the NACA was transformed into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), emphasis on the problems of high speed continued unabated. Without question, one of the most dramatic, popular, and successful activities on this score was the X-15 flight research program.

"At the Edge of Space" describes the conduct of this program from the first flight on June 8, 1959, until the 199th and final flight on October 28, 1968. Initiated under the NACA regime--although all of the flights were made following the creation of NASA--the X-15 program was a joint venture with the military to test both the capacities of rocket-powered aircraft at hypersonic speeds (five or more times the speed of sound) and at extremely high altitudes. Milton O. Thompson describes well the major phases of the program: the testing of engine capability, altitude and speed confines, and human abilities to operate under such extreme conditions. The X-15 program yielded not only this information but also engineering and materials information integral to later spaceflight missions.

The author, who spent his career at NASA's Dryden Flight Test Facility in the California desert, was one of the dozen research pilots who worked on the project during its nearly decade-long operation. Because of this background and the emphasis here toward autobiography, sans scholarly paraphernalia, readers learn quite a lot about the inner-workings of a flight research program and the human aspects of the pilots who labored on it. Some of those involved have become well-known figures in aerospace research and development circles, among them Scott Crossfield, Joe Engle, and the author. Moreover, pilot Neil Armstong, who also wrote a foreword for this volume, has become legendary because of his command of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission.

Thompson is especially strong in describing the human dimension of the X-15 effort, enlivening the narrative with both heroic and humorous anecdotes. Readers, for instance, get to go bar-hopping with some of the X-15 pilots and learn something about their concerns in flying an experimental aircraft. These vignettes are both entertaining and illuminating, and while "At the Edge of Space" has some of the elan and persona made so popular by Tom Wolfe in "The Right Stuff" (1979) there is more sense here that research pilots were only one part of a very large and complex team of individuals working on the X-15 project.

Thompson also does a very good job of treating exceptionally technical issues in a manner understandable to non-specialists. In this way, he is able to explain what exactly was at stake in the project. Much of the technical specifications he leaves to an exceptionally useful appendix containing the details of flight-by-flight activities. The result is the publication of the a wholly adequate general history of the X-15 program from inception through last flight. It is a different publication than a professional historian would have written, and Thompson admits as much in a note at the conclusion of the book, but it represents a fine first-person account of the overall effort.

I hope someone will take up his challenge to present a fully- documented historical account that places the X-15 program in the larger context of the history of technology and the development of aerospace systems. As it is, "At the Edge of Space" will stand as benchmark to begin analysis of this important research program.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Why don't kids learn about this in school?, February 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: At the Edge of Space: The X-15 Flight Program (Hardcover)

Milt Thompson isn't a writer. He's a pilot and, for all practical purposes, an astronaut. This book reads like a chat with a pilot who has been there and done that. Although the prose is a bit lacking, the honesty and quailty of the stories more than compensate for the rather dry and unprofessional style. The rough feel may even inprove the overall effect; reading this book is like sitting in an adjacent booth at Denny's and listening to an old pilot tell stories. He assumes you are an acronym expert so don't expect a lot of explantions of the terms he uses every day. I learned just the right amount about the people, the machines, and the program. No fluff here. Just the facts, with the occasional bit of humor. This one is a keeper.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Technical Book about the X-15 Rocket Plane !, March 31, 1998

By 

Jose Portillo (Caracas, Venezuela) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: At the Edge of Space: The X-15 Flight Program (Hardcover)

A technical focus is very important when you write about a experimental project like the X-15. Mr. Thompson wrote this book with some technical feel and all the experience of a test pilot and Systems Engineer. I like his description of the Ballistic Flight Control System and the transition from the Atmospheric flight to the Space flight and return. You can read the dialogs between the X-15 pilot and the B-52 pilots and the Chase planes pilots. In the case of Mike Adams flight, you can feel the moment of the tragedy. In resume, is the best X-15 Book and a apology to the X-15 project and all the people that work in it.