The Research Program

Because the research program was the rationale for the X-15’s existence, flights to obtain basic aero-thermo data began as soon as North American and the government were sure the airplane was relatively safe for its intended purpose. Nevertheless, almost from the beginning, the airplanes carried a few minor experiments that had little to do with its basic aero-thermo research objectives; the B-70 emission coating and a radiation detector were early examples. Still, the first couple of years of the flight program were primarily dedicated to expanding the flight envelope and obtaining the basic data needed by aerodynamicists to validate the wind-tunnel predictions and theoretical models used to build the X-15.

As this goal was increasingly satisfied, more X-15 flights carried unrelated experiments, such as

tests of ablative materials and star trackers for the Apollo program. Usually these experiments required little support from the X-15 itself, other than some power and recording capacity. Later in the program, flights began to be conducted for the sole purpose of supporting the "follow-on" experiments, although even these usually gathered aero-thermo or stability and control data to support continued evaluation. In reality, the X-15 as an experiment ended sometime in 1963 (except for the advanced X-15A-2); after that, the airplane was mostly a carrier for other experiments.