In the early space race, the X-15 stood as a radical leap in aerospace engineering—an aircraft that broke speed, altitude, ...

Michelle Evans is the president of Mach 25 Media and author of "The X-15 Rocket Plane: Flying the First Wings into Space." Ms. Evans contributed this article to SPACE.com’s Expert Voices ...

Blackbird gets all the press, the rocket-powered X-15 has its own richly deserved place in the aviation history record books: ...

The X-15 is the fastest and highest-flying manned ... futuristic – romantic even – about the concept of a reusable space plane rather than a space capsule. Smith says this point was ...

The X-15 rocket plane flew 199 times between 1959 and 1968 ... coat and mounted with additional external fuel tanks. Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching ...

including NASA’s space shuttles. The plane was flown by an elite team of just 12 pilots, including Neil Armstrong, who would go on to lead the moon landing in 1969. “One of the X-15 pilots ...

"Speed" missions saw the rocket plane level off at about 101,000 ... Survey of Operation and Cost Experience of the X-15 Airplane as a Reusable Space Vehicle, NASA Technical Note D-3732, James ...

"The rollout of the X-15 marks the beginning of man's most advanced assault on space," said Harrison Storms, the plane's chief engineer at manufacturer North American Aviation, when the X-15 made ...

The X-15 was a key bridge between conventional ... the air flying branch never attempted to build a true air-space fighter plane. That’s likely because such a plane would have severe difficulty ...

Once the legend of the skies, the X-15 flew faster than a ... from its path as the old rocket plane was rolled out of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum on Tuesday night.

This is the first time anyone in the United States has flown a reusable hypersonic rocket plane since the last flight of the X-15, the iconic ... once considered for Space Shuttle landings.