Things You Likely Never Knew About X-15 Rocket Plane

In this episode, we are going to talk about “X-15: the fastest manned rocket plane ever” The North American X-15 was a plane unlike any other. Its shaped more like a bullet than a conventional airplane. The aircraft was billed as the U.S.’ first crewed attempt to ply the outer reaches of Earth’s atmosphere and beyond. Even though most Americans alive today have likely never heard of it, it marked 61 years since the X-15’s first powered test flight in California’s high desert. X-15 is rocket-powered research aircraft built in the 1950s by North American Aviation, Inc., for the U.S military and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in order to gather information on flight conditions beyond the atmosphere. The aircraft was built to find out how aircraft structures, materials, and control surfaces would perform at hypersonic speeds and very high altitudes. First flown in 1959, the X-15 set separate unofficial altitude and speed records for aircraft during the 1960s almost 108 km above the surface