I think the R.L Burnside track is perfect: lyrics enhance the sense of isolated extreme achievement and the instrumental adds to the sense of speed. Great archival clip! Thanks for posting.
I agree with you, during my lifetime,the USA was great.. even landing on our Moon 6 X's..in todays policitally correct society, the country that was the USA 30 years ago no longer exists..I was so fortunate to have lived during the good times.the era of the X-15 and Apollo....THX
Awesome video!!! The X-15 is my favorite American research craft of all time. Pete Knight was a true American hero; earning his astronaut wings by flying this thing to 208K feet. What an amazing time of research and discovery it must have been back in the mid 60's!
Conventional landing gear would have added a lot of weight, complexity and reduced the room for the rocket engine. There was also the worry about blow-outs, and the possibility of tire failure while still at high altitude.
Awesome video - awesome aircraft. John Lee Hooker was a great choice for music. Looks like even their landing speed broke the records - 300 knots..? Can't get over the heat damage, geez!
Nice compilation video showing all the phases of flight from many angles. Thank you, I am getting the book, Flying to the Edge of Space after reading an old Smithsonian Article and you video brings the words and photos to light.
This is absolutely superb. And, unlike so many other potentially worthwhile videos, the music is appropriate and excellent. It's R.L. Burnside, isn't it?
THANKS MATE... Ive been waiting to see things about the X15 since i was a kid.. And your Video just blew me away...The music is f**king awesome.. Cheers...
@NiqiV I just read a book on this. My understanding is that they were extending it to limit their climb. They would give a shorter engine burn when their target altitude was lower. But the X-15 had so much energy they had to brake at times. Even so, it overshot it's intended altitude by 40,000 feet a couple of times. Imagine that. A lot of planes can't reach 40,000 feet. Yet the X-15 could overshoot it's altitude by that much!
This is my fav part as well - the whole reason I made this video in the first place. Considering the speed of the mothershi, the X-15 just lights up! Flaps that open at the end of the climb are air brakes..
Exactly 3:00 into the video there is a clip that I keep going back and watching. It leaves the "mother ship" so fast, you see the jet along side just disappear. It almost has a 3D rendering quality where your view is rotated to see the jet streams.
Cheers, nice one, Ive been waiting to see stuff like this since i was a kid. Ive read so many things about the X 15, But ive never seen it in action. F'KIN AWESOME soundtrack too. THANKS MATE...
The "white" one is in fact the X-15A-2. It's black underneath; the white is a coat of sealing paint over an experimental ablative heat shield material (designed to burn off) that is itself an eraser-like pink color. It was applied to the A-2 for its last few speed flights, the results of the last (fastest) of which is seen at the end of the video. Pete Knight flew it to Mach 6.7 on that flight, some of the structure burned through, and it never flew again. It's in the USAF Museum in Dayton now.
A superb video, to say the least! And I certainly agree with David that the sound track was most appropriate - The ultimate in "traveling" music... Perhaps HVAC missed the significance of the lyrics - At that altituda (and speed) one is clearly "A LONG Way freom Home!" Again thanks for a most excellent clip . . .
The X-15 must have been a handful to fly! I have see a display of the X-15 at either Wright Patterson or the Smithsonian when I was a kid. I can't remember which location I saw it at. However, it was very impressive.
This is wonderful. Soundless, wordless video. Great music. All the words on the side. All creating the proper incongruity that when the the plane lands among all those hangers and stuff - back to reality - it doesn't belong. Except in the mind of an artist and a scientist. Thanks.
By radar for the most part. A ground radar locates the X-15's position in 3D space by figuring out the azimuth, elevation and distance to the radar. The next time the radar "sweeps" the area it mesures the X-15's new position. Using trigonometry you can figure out the distance from the first position to the second. Using the "sweep time" (the time it takes radar to make a full rotation) you have the time between the two positions.
Three X-15's were built. One was destroyed in a crash. One is in the Smithsonian in D.C. The other one is at the Air Force museum in Dayton Ohio. The cool thing is you can walk up right next to it. It is not roped off or anything. (Do not touch!) It is in an old hanger with lots of other amazing planes like an XB-70 and an YF-12A (fighter prototype of the SR-71). They all just sort of parked there for you to walk around. It's the coolest room in the world.
Not only that - look at the belly of the plane - paint is burned away, metal is burned trough in some spots any rubber wheals will be a black smear on a fuselage if even that remained + the high speed landing.
my dad was stationed at Edwards in the early 60's. When we went to the air and space museum in DC he'd point to this and that plane and say he saw that fly.
Many thanks. I have a copy (somewhere) of the National Geo mag which has a story - "I Fly the X-15" which mainly focuses on the work done by Knight and Walker, i.e. the early days. Read it as a child, iow, had a huge impact. Up till the it was man on the moon, the X15 and other ilk where a unknown universe. Must get some vids on this.
@planesRus They actually experimented with several differet shapes. Belive this is just the one to give the best response at the high speeds and temperatures it was experienceing.
The term "space shuttle" describes the full stack of ET, SRBs, and Orbiter. The "Space Shuttle" is indeed a spacecraft/rocket. The orbiter on it's own is both a spacecraft and an aircraft. It is an aircraft because it maintains flight aerodynamically -- in other words, it's an aircraft because it generates lift. That can be done with or without wings.
This Music from R.L.Burnside is absolutely perfect for this X-15 Video. It sounds like it came straight out of the early 1960's when actually it was 1996. What ever happened to when the USA made timeless aircraft like this?!
@iguanarc It was a test bed for future craft. Once they learned as much as they could it was oof no further use. Much of how we flew the shuttle came from these test.
They used tires on the nosewheel. The skids are more to save weight and space. The earlier X-2, the first aircraft to break Mach 3 (although it killed the pilot in the process) had no wheels at all-just a belly skid and little outrigger skids under the wings-again, to save weight and space.
Conventional landing gear would have added a lot of weight, complexity and reduced the room for the rocket engine. There was also the worry about blow-outs, and the possibility of tire failure while still at high altitude. RE-entry and high speed flight develops very high temperatures, and although the A-12 Article was already in development and had addressed these problems, the X-15 was determined to be OK with the Gear the way it was.
that video, I red a kids book when i was little.Man seemed fast, But it still lands like the shuttle. To bad the Averaero was not around back in 1958-1962. it holds a record not even told. Mach 2.5+ from Barrie Ontario to NY state and Buzzed there tower and was back in Canada, in 10 mins +10 there.they could not even get into there jets.haha. I wish it was around would have matched most of todays planes.* I miss it* Good Video :)
The X-15 is the coolest device ever - loved it when I was a kid and I love it still. Excellent compilation and info and great music, thanks for this. When that thing drops from the mother-ship I'm GONE......:-D
wow its hard to believe. that long ago we were able to create something that could go from california to new york in about 10 minutes. imagine what we could do with the technology today.
@ObiTrev i agree in terms of excitement but the concept of 'worthwhile'? im not sure it was really worth their time or money, probably a pretty fun ride for the pilots though!
Wow I couldn't have said it better myself. I remember being at pre-school, playing in the sand pit and trying as hard as I could to see the apollo spacecraft heading for the full moon! The world was celebrating America then.
at 3:18 some sort of air brake comes out of the tail while it is still in it's initial climb. That scene seems to be sped up, but I don't understand why they would use an airbrake (if that's what it is) during acceleration.
@ratface111 The Space Shuttle is a reusable re-entry vehicle, not a plane (maybe an advanced cargo glider if anything). A plane has the ability to take off with it's own power, sustain flight under it's own power, and land safely. The space shuttle can't actually fly in earth's atmosphere, a modified 747 carries it (or it falls to earth, "Gliding"). A space plane is a vehicle that can take off as a plane in earth's atmosphere unassisted, escape the earth, and orbit before re-entering safely.
Thanks for the vid! Like the blues... Scott Crossfield said the x-15 was the one plane that caused grown men to cray upon its retirement.... bestust and badust...
How do they measure a speed of an object if it's in air? I mean, if speed is space divided by time, how do they measure how much space the object have covered if it's in air?
From 3:00 at the launch, you can see how much speed the plane accualy gained, the smaller figher(wich was purely for filming i presume) dissaperas in seconds, in the video information it says they launched at 500 mph, thats quite fast :D, but to go from 500 to .. eXtreme :D thats just inzane! i would reallly like to be on the backseat of one of those :D Really good video, and great information bout it. Deffinetly 5 star rating from me. *Sry bout bad grammar :D
@ratface111 Yeah the Boeing Dyna-Soar. It would have skipped across the Earth's atmosphere like a stone on a pond. Still it lacked air-breathing engines as well, although it's proposed cieling of operation was in the ballistic missle range. In fact it was proposed to be launched by a ballistic Titan III Missle. This pond skipper sub-space vehicle is still a lucrative design being proposed to start testing as recent as 2010. Still an air breathing space-plane has yet to be fully realized.
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I think the R.L Burnside track is perfect: lyrics enhance the sense of isolated extreme achievement and the instrumental adds to the sense of speed. Great archival clip! Thanks for posting.
@NiqiV The book is 'At the Edge of Space', it's written by Milt Thompson, who made 14 flights in the X-15 from '63 to '69. It's an amazing read.
Well done my man! Alot of people forget this corner of history, and the music rocks!
the best video about X15 j've ever seen on youTube, thank you Bry
in other clips one can't really comprehend how fast it took off.. but at 3:05 you can see it left other planes "in the dust"
REALLY GOOD STUFF!
I suspect that is a tad sped up. In real time it took longer than 11 seconds to go from drop to burnout at 250,000' plus.
Amazing!!!! upon landing, no brakes or droge chute to stop this beast,just friction from the skids,, Balls of American Steel........
Enjoying your uploads as well!!
Thanks for your comments. Planes had to be partially rebuilt before eachflight. The record was 3 flights in one week!!
I agree with you, during my lifetime,the USA was great.. even landing on our Moon 6 X's..in todays policitally correct society, the country that was the USA 30 years ago no longer exists..I was so fortunate to have lived during the good times.the era of the X-15 and Apollo....THX
Damn! The X-15 smoked the shit out of that Super Sabre at 3:05.
i think thats pretty cool when they show all the leading edges and its all charred from getting so hot when traveling that fast...nice vid thanks
Awesome video!!! The X-15 is my favorite American research craft of all time. Pete Knight was a true American hero; earning his astronaut wings by flying this thing to 208K feet. What an amazing time of research and discovery it must have been back in the mid 60's!
Conventional landing gear would have added a lot of weight, complexity and reduced the room for the rocket engine. There was also the worry about blow-outs, and the possibility of tire failure while still at high altitude.
This fantastic video introduced me to the sounds of RL Burnside.. thank you! I think this is the same airframe I saw at Wright Patt AFB circa 2015
Few aircraft are truly iconic, this is one of them.
Much of the technology and development of the SR-71 and the space shuttle came from this airplane. The X-15 program was so ahead of its time.
Awesome video - awesome aircraft.
John Lee Hooker was a great choice for music.
Looks like even their landing speed broke the records - 300 knots..?
Can't get over the heat damage, geez!
Nice compilation video showing all the phases of flight from many angles. Thank you, I am getting the book, Flying to the Edge of Space after reading an old Smithsonian Article and you video brings the words and photos to light.
This is absolutely superb. And, unlike so many other potentially worthwhile videos, the music is appropriate and excellent. It's R.L. Burnside, isn't it?
THANKS MATE... Ive been waiting to see things about the X15 since i was a kid.. And your Video just blew me away...The music is f**king awesome.. Cheers...
I just saw the X-15 at the United States Air Force Museum in Dayton!!!
I didn't expect to see it there - pretty awesome.
@NiqiV I just read a book on this. My understanding is that they were extending it to limit their climb. They would give a shorter engine burn when their target altitude was lower. But the X-15 had so much energy they had to brake at times. Even so, it overshot it's intended altitude by 40,000 feet a couple of times.
Imagine that. A lot of planes can't reach 40,000 feet. Yet the X-15 could overshoot it's altitude by that much!
This is my fav part as well - the whole reason I made this video in the first place.
Considering the speed of the mothershi, the X-15 just lights up! Flaps that open at the end of the climb are air brakes..
Exactly 3:00 into the video there is a clip that I keep going back and watching. It leaves the "mother ship" so fast, you see the jet along side just disappear. It almost has a 3D rendering quality where your view is rotated to see the jet streams.
Cheers, nice one, Ive been waiting to see stuff like this since i was a kid. Ive read so many things about the X 15, But ive never seen it in action. F'KIN AWESOME soundtrack too. THANKS MATE...
The "white" one is in fact the X-15A-2. It's black underneath; the white is a coat of sealing paint over an experimental ablative heat shield material (designed to burn off) that is itself an eraser-like pink color. It was applied to the A-2 for its last few speed flights, the results of the last (fastest) of which is seen at the end of the video. Pete Knight flew it to Mach 6.7 on that flight, some of the structure burned through, and it never flew again. It's in the USAF Museum in Dayton now.
Nicely put together
A superb video, to say the least! And I certainly agree with David that the sound track was most appropriate - The ultimate in "traveling" music...
Perhaps HVAC missed the significance of the lyrics - At that altituda (and speed) one is clearly "A LONG Way freom Home!"
Again thanks for a most excellent clip . . .
The X-15 must have been a handful to fly! I have see a display of the X-15 at either Wright Patterson or the Smithsonian when I was a kid. I can't remember which location I saw it at. However, it was very impressive.
This is wonderful. Soundless, wordless video. Great music. All the words on the side. All creating the proper incongruity that when the the plane lands among all those hangers and stuff - back to reality - it doesn't belong. Except in the mind of an artist and a scientist. Thanks.
By radar for the most part. A ground radar locates the X-15's position in 3D space by figuring out the azimuth, elevation and distance to the radar. The next time the radar "sweeps" the area it mesures the X-15's new position. Using trigonometry you can figure out the distance from the first position to the second. Using the "sweep time" (the time it takes radar to make a full rotation) you have the time between the two positions.
Three X-15's were built. One was destroyed in a crash. One is in the Smithsonian in D.C.
The other one is at the Air Force museum in Dayton Ohio. The cool thing is you can walk up right next to it. It is not roped off or anything. (Do not touch!) It is in an old hanger with lots of other amazing planes like an XB-70 and an YF-12A (fighter prototype of the SR-71). They all just sort of parked there for you to walk around. It's the coolest room in the world.
Sound barrier? I don't need no stinkin' sound barrier!
Man, this song really got me funkin....and great footage too. Love 'em magnificent men and their flying machines...
Wondered the same thing - thought that perhaps the incredibly high landing speeds may have been a tyre blowout risk.
Not only that - look at the belly of the plane - paint is burned away, metal is burned trough in some spots any rubber wheals will be a black smear on a fuselage if even that remained + the high speed landing.
I hope this time is coming back and the world will salute America again!
my dad was stationed at Edwards in the early 60's. When we went to the air and space museum in DC he'd point to this and that plane and say he saw that fly.
Many thanks. I have a copy (somewhere) of the National Geo mag which has a story - "I Fly the X-15" which mainly focuses on the work done by Knight and Walker, i.e. the early days. Read it as a child, iow, had a huge impact. Up till the it was man on the moon, the X15 and other ilk where a unknown universe. Must get some vids on this.
brilliant video and music. thanks uploader
tater:
You are correct. After the first X-15 broke on landing, it was returned to North American and lengthened 35 inches to become the X-15 A2.
@planesRus They actually experimented with several differet shapes. Belive this is just the one to give the best response at the high speeds and temperatures it was experienceing.
Good video with great background blues!
The term "space shuttle" describes the full stack of ET, SRBs, and Orbiter. The "Space Shuttle" is indeed a spacecraft/rocket. The orbiter on it's own is both a spacecraft and an aircraft. It is an aircraft because it maintains flight aerodynamically -- in other words, it's an aircraft because it generates lift. That can be done with or without wings.
This Music from R.L.Burnside is absolutely perfect for this X-15 Video. It sounds like it came straight out of the early 1960's when actually it was 1996. What ever happened to when the USA made timeless aircraft like this?!
I love how the X-15 is just dropped and launched like it's a missal
@iguanarc It was a test bed for future craft. Once they learned as much as they could it was oof no further use. Much of how we flew the shuttle came from these test.
They used tires on the nosewheel. The skids are more to save weight and space. The earlier X-2, the first aircraft to break Mach 3 (although it killed the pilot in the process) had no wheels at all-just a belly skid and little outrigger skids under the wings-again, to save weight and space.
Conventional landing gear would have added a lot of weight, complexity and reduced the room for the rocket engine. There was also the worry about blow-outs, and the possibility of tire failure while still at high altitude.
RE-entry and high speed flight develops very high temperatures, and although the A-12 Article was already in development and had addressed these problems, the X-15 was determined to be OK with the Gear the way it was.
Thanks for your comment!
great footage! Good song too.
Thanks for your comments
that video, I red a kids book when i was little.Man seemed fast, But it still lands like the shuttle. To bad the Averaero was not around back in 1958-1962. it holds a record not even told. Mach 2.5+ from Barrie Ontario to NY state and Buzzed there tower and was back in Canada, in 10 mins +10 there.they could not even get into there jets.haha. I wish it was around would have matched most of todays planes.* I miss it*
Good Video :)
that was a badass landing.
great video with good music
Just love Ol' RL
Long ways from home - Won't do me no harm - yeh hey well well welll!!!!!
The X-15 is the coolest device ever - loved it when I was a kid and I love it still. Excellent compilation and info and great music, thanks for this. When that thing drops from the mother-ship I'm GONE......:-D
SuperShamou, about to send Reddit here. Thanks, Neil!
great video! what group is playing?
Great stuff!
Many thanks
Nice video, Ive just read "at the edge of space" by milton o. thompson which is all about the x-15 program and well worth a read.
Whats that thing on the tail at 3:20? It looks like brakes of some sort.
Thanks - appreciated
WE NEED NASA BACK ON TRACK!
wow its hard to believe. that long ago we were able to create something that could go from california to new york in about 10 minutes. imagine what we could do with the technology today.
@ObiTrev i agree in terms of excitement but the concept of 'worthwhile'? im not sure it was really worth their time or money, probably a pretty fun ride for the pilots though!
what is an Averaero? are you referring to the Avro Arrow?
Wow I couldn't have said it better myself.
I remember being at pre-school, playing in the sand pit and trying as hard as I could to see the apollo spacecraft heading for the full moon!
The world was celebrating America then.
at 3:18 some sort of air brake comes out of the tail while it is still in it's initial climb. That scene seems to be sped up, but I don't understand why they would use an airbrake (if that's what it is) during acceleration.
@ObiTrev
We abandoned the space plane for 50 years?? What do you think the space shuttle is?
@ratface111 The Space Shuttle is a reusable re-entry vehicle, not a plane (maybe an advanced cargo glider if anything). A plane has the ability to take off with it's own power, sustain flight under it's own power, and land safely. The space shuttle can't actually fly in earth's atmosphere, a modified 747 carries it (or it falls to earth, "Gliding"). A space plane is a vehicle that can take off as a plane in earth's atmosphere unassisted, escape the earth, and orbit before re-entering safely.
Thanks for the vid! Like the blues... Scott Crossfield said the x-15 was the one plane that caused grown men to cray upon its retirement.... bestust and badust...
I dont understand why the airbrake on the tail comes on during initial climb/acceleration.
What song is that on the video ?
Cheers - Thanks
Love the tune and Rocketry.
Jaymur:
Like it? Pay more taxes and have it!
What are the black bits at 3:12
I heard that X15 got 7,2 mach, Is this true?
Did the pilots practice with him the atmosferal re-entry turning on?
@pulsejet1 Yeap, X-15 was incredible. What was the book, i could read that too. And thanks! :)
I was on google earth and I found a wooden mock up of a X-15 parked on the tarmac at Edwards.
That was cool man....
but doesn't the air pressure diminished at higher altitudes?
Thanks for posting, what is the music?
Poor Boy Long
Way From Home...R.L.Burnside from the C.D ass pocket full o whiskey
Still the fastest manned aircraft ever built, almost fifty years later.
How do they measure a speed of an object if it's in air?
I mean, if speed is space divided by time, how do they measure how much space the object have covered if it's in air?
initial tests are to ensure safe landing. better knowing right away then being surprised later!
:)
Hmm, that still doesn't make sense to me. If they wanted to slow down, why wouldn't they just throttle back? Aren't they going for a speed record?
Awesome, 1 million people would take the risk just to see the sights!!!!!
Did anyone notice a couple of them are holding their own behinds at 0:25?
What is the music???
If I were to guess I'd say it's either Albert King or maybe Howlin' Wolf, but I may be mistaken. It's kinda got that "Smokestack Lighting" vibe.
Skid main gear ...tires exploded at high altitude..... great digg up on the pld classified footage thanks....*****
Nobody knows, why they opened airbrakes after launch while getting height? Is it just to create turbulentic flow to get more affective rudder?
damn, the US isnt what it used to be
R.L Burnside, Poorboy, Longway from Home.
so it goes 7272 km/h then how long would it take it to fly from America to Japan?
Indeed. As i see footage of the community then. It's quite good and unique. Now. Well. Now it's something else.
From 3:00 at the launch, you can see how much speed the plane accualy gained, the smaller figher(wich was purely for filming i presume) dissaperas in seconds, in the video information it says they launched at 500 mph, thats quite fast :D, but to go from 500 to .. eXtreme :D thats just inzane! i would reallly like to be on the backseat of one of those :D
Really good video, and great information bout it. Deffinetly 5 star rating from me.
*Sry bout bad grammar :D
@ratface111 Yeah the Boeing Dyna-Soar. It would have skipped across the Earth's atmosphere like a stone on a pond. Still it lacked air-breathing engines as well, although it's proposed cieling of operation was in the ballistic missle range. In fact it was proposed to be launched by a ballistic Titan III Missle. This pond skipper sub-space vehicle is still a lucrative design being proposed to start testing as recent as 2010. Still an air breathing space-plane has yet to be fully realized.
if that was in that year... imagine what they have right now!