 the desert floor. 27 drops from 41 tries. Chalked up an unparalleled. Beginning of the year the X-15 was new, almost untried. At the year's end, it was proven a record holder. Discovering more about hypersonic speeds and extreme attitudes. Started a new crew on acceptance check and pre-flight ready. Joe Walker, chief research pilot, was the first to show that the X-15 is not a one-man airplane. X-15s were flight ready. Number one was involved in the Air Force NASA program to take the airplane with its present engines and push it to the limit of its abilities. And Joe Walker's first flight denotes the start of this research phase. The number two plane was still being flown by North American for investigation of stability, control, flying qualities. Rocket plane flying. 15 pilots club had another new member. The Air Force's project pilot had made his initial run and now was ready to start some serious research flying. With two X-15s flying and North American raking up nine drops with the number two airplane. The Air Force and NASA alternated pilots on a separate series of nine research expeditions. Flights that kept inching up on the world speed and altitude records. Both company and governmental pilots kept investigating the flight abilities of the planes in different quarters. Feeling out the new machines. Steadily pushing the operating area out farther. Gaining confidence. All flying during this period was done with the XLR-11, the small engine package. Its thrust of 16,000 pounds was adequate for early investigations, but everyone was waiting for the big engine. The XLR-99, a brute that would blast out nearly 60,000 pounds of thrust to drive the plane to peak speeds and altitudes. This engine is installed in the third and last plane of the series, which has always been slated to be the test bed for this new power plant. And Crossfield uses his time in between flights to ring out the installation. Preliminaries are out of the way and this run will be one of the final before flight. The throttle, having an idle output of 30,000 pounds, but able to be regulated between idle and 60,000 pounds of thrust is of tests proving the installation. After this start, they're ready for flight. Forward section, the tanks and the cockpit out of the blaze are out of the major part of the blaze. And the firemen were right on their toes and they moved in to blanket the tanks in the fire area with foam. The first reaction we had was that the engine had blown up, but like many first impressions, this was wrong. Soon as the parts cooled down, a disenchanted group of engineers moved in. And as you might imagine, things were pretty well scattered about. Close look at the film that you've just seen and here are a couple of frames that gave us our first clue. Just before the blow up, a cloud of vapor appeared ahead of the engine. So the search was concentrated on this area. Following up this lead, we found that the hydrogen peroxide tank had been round, smashed open. But with what? Lining up with the tank is a center structure of the ammonia tank and its shape matched the impacted area of the hydrogen peroxide sphere. But how could this part fail? Likely through over pressure. Now a check of the instrumentation showed tank pressures far over normal. Again, the question why? The pressure regulator was recovered and checked. It was determined that freezing caused by the very low temperature pressurizing gas that caused the regulator to stick full open. But there's a safety, a valve to relieve over pressure. This valve and the entire relief system was also checked. Here it was determined that a flow sensitive relief valve combined with a vapor disposal equipment had created enough back pressure to fail the tank. So a frozen regulator, a fully relief valve and a high back pressure relief system had gotten together and we had wrecked an airplane. The entire pressurizing and relief systems were analyzed, redesigned, tested and retested. We ran the combination time after time deliberately creating the most severe failures possible. Weeks passed before we and everyone else were convinced that the problem was licked. As a measure of how the confidence was restored, here is what happened on the 4th of August. On this historic date, Joe Walker let out a yip of joy. He had just pushed the modified small-engine airplane to a new speed record, then made his report to the public. Joe, how does it feel to be the fastest living human? I don't know if I feel much different than I did yesterday. He said that the waiting for the flight is over finally. Reached the maximum speed. Now what was your altitude then? Around 66,000. How long were you going that 2150 miles? Just one instant. August, just eight days later, Major Bob White was up before the cameras after his 136,500 foot record-breaking altitude flight. The flight today offered, I would say, no problems and nothing that could be considered a limitation as far as man's ability to fly an aircraft. I was very definitely impressed that I was going well almost straight up. Of course it wasn't straight up but it appears to be that way from the cockpit. Being the most dramatic point of flying at over 130,000 feet. The very dark blue sky and the lighter band that was immediately surrounding the earth and then of course the many many miles off in the distance that you're able to see. Looking to the future I would say that we hope very much and I would particularly like to continue on in work that would take us to a higher altitudes with manned aircraft. Now the full potential of the airplane with the small engines had been fully investigated. While the number two airplane was being fitted with the big engine, number one began a series of training flights. It was now given a chance to try its hand at piloting the research plane. Peterson, the Navy's representative, was the fourth man to ride the X-15. He made two flights in early fall. Then Jack McKay, NASA research pilot, took his first ride at the end of October. Captain Rushworth, the Air Force backup pilot, was next to show his skill at rocket plane flying. NASA pilot Neil Armstrong's last two flights closed the year. Training flights filled the gap while the number two was being given with the large engine, number three ship in half. Maximum effort has been exerted toward getting another engine and installing it in ship two. Months of work, weeks of painstaking trials, round the clock days of final pre-flight, were at last put to the test on the morning of November the 15th. This is the X-15 in its final stage of development. This run, if successful, will mark the beginning of a whole new era of flight research. Well, if you have a chance to check that yourself. Yeah, we got about 80,000 feet and a mock number approaching three. Scott, your radio talks out of it hesitant this morning before takeoff. What was that about? Oh, no, I think you misinterpreted that. Of course, we've been doing the best we can to get this flight off for five years. There's any hesitancy there. Without having observed the minimum thrust performance of the engine, do you think that the airplane now will be able to live up to its design promises of all the truth and speed, or will exceed it or really without question, I got a little faster today than we planned and we have in our previous flights, and my flight's gotten faster than we planned because for once in history, we've underestimated the drag on the airplane. I think it'll exceed its original expectations. Just seven days later, the second flight was launched and on the 6th of December, the 3rd. Both showed the engine to have all the abilities claimed of it. These two eminently successful flights closed the year. Is an unparalleled skill to thrust deep into unexplored areas, capture vital information, then settle to a safe return from that twilight land standing between earth.