![]() ![]() ![]() The author demonstrates these most clearly through the X-15 flight research program, which discusses the individual choices made by the numerous players. The author partly achieves his aim of documenting the human side of what has been called the Golden Age of test flying at Edwards AFB and the personal decisions that influenced the test and evaluation of these programs. Petty also handily captures some of the grit, both real and figurative, that characterized the experience of working at Edwards Air Force Base, with vivid descriptions of some of the hardships of the early years in the extremes of the base’s high desert location. These arose from the competing interests of the organizations as they cooperated in flight research on numerous joint X-plane projects. ![]() It also illustrates the occasional personal rivalries, and the sometimes prickly nature of the working relationship between the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, later NASA, and the former Air Force Flight Test Center – now the Air Force Test Center. This history connects directly both to the military and national security aims of the United States in the post-World War II world and the dawning of the space race. In Beyond Blue Skies: the Rocket Plane Programs That Led to the Space Age, Chris Petty provides a basic, thoroughgoing primer on the history of rocket plane programs at Edwards Air Force Base, California, beginning with the X-1. ![]()
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