Air Age: The Pilot

Higher and higher it flew—80.000 ft.

. . . 100.000 . . . 150,000 . . . 200.000.

Roaring into a hell-hot 3.443 m.p.h.. it peaked into a graceful arc. seemed to hover uncertainly for a brief moment, then hurtled downward. Minutes later, its tail skids carved a high rooster tail of dust in the wind-slicked silt of Rogers Dry Lake in California. The plane stopped. "Well." said Test Pilot Joe Walker as he threw off the switches in the cockpit, "there's that one for today." In his X-15, Walker had just streaked to...