English subtitles for clip: File:1959-06-11 X-15 Aloft.ogv
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1 00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:10,400 At Edwards Air Force Base, a B-52 mother plane carries aloft the X-15 rocket plane for another 2 00:00:10,400 --> 00:00:15,400 in the painstaking series of development tests, leading up to the epic mission for which it 3 00:00:15,400 --> 00:00:20,160 was designed, to carry a man beyond the fringes of the Earth's atmosphere and to return him 4 00:00:20,160 --> 00:00:21,160 to the ground. 5 00:00:21,160 --> 00:00:26,160 The X-15 is cut loose seven miles over the Mohave Desert to fall free and glide back 6 00:00:26,160 --> 00:00:30,900 to Earth, testing the stability of the most radically different aerodynamic structure 7 00:00:30,900 --> 00:00:31,900 ever engineered. 8 00:00:31,900 --> 00:00:37,200 A craft designed to reach speeds of up to 4,000 miles an hour, to skim the upper limits 9 00:00:37,200 --> 00:00:42,120 of the world's blanket of air and then to handle like a conventional plane in landing. 10 00:00:42,120 --> 00:00:47,120 In this powerless flight, pilot Scott Crossfield brings the X-15 down through the preplanned 11 00:00:47,120 --> 00:00:48,920 glide pattern without a hitch. 12 00:00:48,920 --> 00:00:56,720 The space plane's first free flight is a success.