English subtitles for clip: File:1959-06-11 X-15 Aloft.ogv

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At Edwards Air Force Base, a B-52 mother plane carries aloft the X-15 rocket plane for another

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in the painstaking series of development tests, leading up to the epic mission for which it

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was designed, to carry a man beyond the fringes of the Earth's atmosphere and to return him

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to the ground.

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The X-15 is cut loose seven miles over the Mohave Desert to fall free and glide back

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to Earth, testing the stability of the most radically different aerodynamic structure

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ever engineered.

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A craft designed to reach speeds of up to 4,000 miles an hour, to skim the upper limits

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of the world's blanket of air and then to handle like a conventional plane in landing.

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In this powerless flight, pilot Scott Crossfield brings the X-15 down through the preplanned

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glide pattern without a hitch.

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The space plane's first free flight is a success.