X-15 Research Results with a Selected Bibliography

NASA SP-60, a semi-technical summary of the X-15 program marking the tenth anniversary of its 1954 inception and the fifth year since its first flight, with a foreword by Flight Research Center director Paul F. Bikle dated November 1, 1964.

Covers the aircraft’s origin and design compromises, then its flight-research results across nine chapters: aerodynamic characteristics from supersonic to hypersonic speed, the heat-sink structure that withstood skin temperatures up to a cherry-red 1300°F, the dynamics of high-altitude reentry (including a roll-yaw coupling problem serious enough to make the airplane briefly uncontrollable above 250,000 feet, solved with a roll-damper and revised tail), man-machine integration (the X-15 met its research objectives on 110 of 120 flights, a 92-percent success rate), and the program’s later role as a flying laboratory for other research.

By late 1964 the three X-15s had made 120 flights, reaching Mach 6.06 and 354,200 feet — more than twice the speed and three times the altitude of any other aircraft then flying. Includes a chronology of the program from 1952 and a selected bibliography of X-15 technical literature.

Government Printing Office issue, wrappers; the front cover carries the contemporary NASA library accession stamp (April 19, 1965) and a Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports (STAR) cataloging notation in a period hand.