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My dad delivered it to the USAF museum back in '69 when he was a C-133 navigator.

https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/220924/dad-X-15A_jpg-1069820.JPG

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https://live.staticflickr.com/7346/9458073379_1f041a6664_b.jpg

X-15 Crash at Mud Lake, Nevada

An engine failure forced Jack McKay, a NASA research pilot, to make an emergency landing at Mud Lake, Nevada, in the second X-15. The aircraft's landing gear collapsed and the X-15 flipped over on its back. McKay was promptly rescued by an Air Force medical team standing by near the launch site, and eventually recovered to fly the X-15 again. But his injuries, more serious than at first thought, eventually forced his retirement from NASA. The aircraft was sent back to the manufacturer, where it underwent extensive repairs and modifications.

It returned to Edwards in February 1964 as the X-15A-2, with a longer fuselage (52 ft 5 in) and external fuel tanks.The basic X-15 was a rocket-powered aircraft 50 ft long with a wingspan of 22 ft. It was a missile-shaped vehicle with an unusual wedge-shaped vertical tail, thin stubby wings, and unique side fairings that extended along the side of the fuselage.

Date: November 9, 1962

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Mud Lake NV is 16 miles NW of the Tonopah Test Range air base i.e. Area 51's little brother.  I wonder if it was trying to land there?  

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Pretty awesome! I saw some really really fast moving unidentified flying object using NVG the other night. Not sure what but it was moving.  

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What could have been if the program kept going:  Mach 5, scramjet powered X-15 growth proposals
https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/318250/serjx15c-777266.jpg

After graduation from Stanford in 1954 with a degree in mechanical engineering, I took a summer position at the NACA Ames Research Center in Sunnyvale, California with plans to begin a master's degree program, but without a clear idea of how. Instead I got married and accepted a position at Pratt-Whitney Aircraft in East Hartford, Connecticut as a Test Engineer, having interviewed that spring.

The job at Pratt was less than expected, and I decided after two years to return to California. Pratt came to the rescue with a position at the Larwrence Livermore Nuclear Laboratory as a mechanical engineer. This job lasted a year, as Pratt decided to continue the work in Connecticut. Again, there was a position open at Edwards AFB in flight test of advanced turbojet engines at Pratt's facility. I was assigned to an F-101 with two test engines and an F-8U with one representing both Air Force and Navy applications. The Pratt facility was closed in December 1959. Across the ramp from Pratt the North American X-15 was undergoing flight demonstration of its contract goals.

I visited the NASA High Speed Flight Center as Pratt was phasing out and was hired as a propulsion engineer specialist. My first assignment on the X-15 was subsystems engineer for the auxiliary power unit, environmental control, and pilot escape systems. One year later I became the operations project engineer on X-15-1, #6670. During the period of 1962 to 1966, under my direction, X-15-1 flew 47 flight missions and a total of 114 in flight events.

NASA conducted two years of high speed research on the XB-70 VALKIRE. My position was operations project engineer with the responsibilities of coordinating and directing modification, flight preparation, and mission activities. At the conclusion of the program, I was promoted to Section Chief of the Flight Operation Engineering Section.

During the 1970's my career included several administrative positions, ending my hands-on engineering work. With passing time and experience, I became Deputy Director of Flight Operations, Acting Director of Administration, Acting Director of Flight Operations, Director of Projects and Liaison Office, and finally the dream job of all, the Director of Flight Operations! I held this position for four and a half years before my retirement in1985 after a 25 year career in the world's premier flight test facility.

The STS Shuttle program was developed and flown by NASA during my tenure as OPS Director, and some seventeen missions were recovered at Edwards for which I had responsibility for preparation for ferry and launch back to Kennedy.

One year after my retirement, the Shuttle Challenger accident occurred. The presidential Rogers Commission was initiated with Neil Armstrong as deputy to Rogers . For five months I participated in meetings in Washington, NASA centers, and contractor facilities. The investigation quickly identified the solid booster "O" ring as the cause of the accident. Also evident was NASA's management's culture of violating its own operating ground rules.

Although NASA's name implies a single organization, it was my experience that in all ways it was "a"eronautics and "S"pace. With Johnson and Kennedy it was always turf and control.

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Precursor to the Space Shuttle.  

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The X-15 was indeed a great airplane. It initially had yaw stability problems that the pilot and the instruments could not really sense. the result was one side of the fuselage would glow red hot!

Northrop Aviation was given the task of coming up with a solution, which my dad was a part of. The came up with the so-called "Q-Ball" (Q referring to Dynamic Pressure) as far forward in the nose as you could get, and it completely solved the stability problem.

The Q-Ball can clearly be seen in a couple of archived X-15 videos in the day.

My dad went on to design and build the attitude control systems for the NSA/USAF spy satellites in the 70's & 80's (and thanks Christopher Boyce, aka The Falcon, with his buddy The Snowman ), but he was always very proud of that Q-Ball system they invented for the X-15.

I miss him every day.