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X-15 Diary: The Story of America's First Space Ship
Built of titanium and a chrome-nickel alloy known as Inconel X, the X-15 was the fastest plane ever built, streaking through the lower reaches of outer space even before the first space capsules reached orbit. First tested in 1959, the X-15 proved to be a crucial testing ground for the astronauts and hardware in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and even the Space Shuttle programs.
The dramatic tale of the golden age of this experimental plane comes vividly to life through the writing of the celebrated reporter Richard Tregaskis, who spent time with the pilots, engineers, and other key personnel involved in the project. We learn of the years of planning and design, devastating onboard explosions, exhilarating triumphs, and, above all, the personal and professional sacrifices that paved the way for the enduring legacy of the blisteringly fast X-15 rocket plane.
The dramatic tale of the golden age of this experimental plane comes vividly to life through the writing of the celebrated reporter Richard Tregaskis, who spent time with the pilots, engineers, and other key personnel involved in the project. We learn of the years of planning and design, devastating onboard explosions, exhilarating triumphs, and, above all, the personal and professional sacrifices that paved the way for the enduring legacy of the blisteringly fast X-15 rocket plane.
329 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2004
24 people are currently reading
145 people want to read
About the author
Richard Tregaskis
29 books21 followersRichard Tregaskis was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on November 28, 1916, and educated at the Pingrie Day School for Boys, Elizabeth, New Jersey, at Peddie School, Hightstonsic, New Jersey, and at Harvard University. Prior to World War II he worked as a journalist for the Boston Herald newspaper.
Shortly after the U.S. entered World War II, Tregaskis volunteered as a combat correspondent representing the International News Service. (In fact, Tregaskis was one of only two journalists on location at Guadalcanal.)
Assigned to cover the war in the Pacific, Tregaskis spent part of August and most of September, 1942 reporting on Marines on Guadalcanal, a pivotal campaign in the war against Japan. He subsequently covered the European Theater of Operations against Nazi Germany and Italy.
Tregaskis' most renowned book, Guadalcanal Diary, recorded his experiences with the Marines on Guadalcanal. As the jacket of the book's first edition noted, "This is a new chapter in the story of the United States Marines. Because it was written by a crack newspaperman, who knew how to do his job. . . . Until the author's departure in a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber on September 26th, he ate, slept, and sweated with our front-line units. His story is the straight day-by-day account of what he himself saw or learned from eyewitnesses during those seven weeks."
As a testimony to the power of Tregaskis' writing, ''Guadalcanal Diary'' is still considered essential reading by present-day U.S. military personnel. (A modern edition is available with an introduction by [[Mark Bowden]], author of Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War.
Tregaskis later covered Cold War-era conflicts in China, Korea, and Vietnam.
Tregaskis died at age 56 near his home in Hawaii as a result of drowning.
Shortly after the U.S. entered World War II, Tregaskis volunteered as a combat correspondent representing the International News Service. (In fact, Tregaskis was one of only two journalists on location at Guadalcanal.)
Assigned to cover the war in the Pacific, Tregaskis spent part of August and most of September, 1942 reporting on Marines on Guadalcanal, a pivotal campaign in the war against Japan. He subsequently covered the European Theater of Operations against Nazi Germany and Italy.
Tregaskis' most renowned book, Guadalcanal Diary, recorded his experiences with the Marines on Guadalcanal. As the jacket of the book's first edition noted, "This is a new chapter in the story of the United States Marines. Because it was written by a crack newspaperman, who knew how to do his job. . . . Until the author's departure in a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber on September 26th, he ate, slept, and sweated with our front-line units. His story is the straight day-by-day account of what he himself saw or learned from eyewitnesses during those seven weeks."
As a testimony to the power of Tregaskis' writing, ''Guadalcanal Diary'' is still considered essential reading by present-day U.S. military personnel. (A modern edition is available with an introduction by [[Mark Bowden]], author of Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War.
Tregaskis later covered Cold War-era conflicts in China, Korea, and Vietnam.
Tregaskis died at age 56 near his home in Hawaii as a result of drowning.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
December 1, 2016
During the 1950s space travel, still borderline fiction, was a source of propaganda and competition between the USSR and USA. Sputnik was up and the challenge now was to get a man out of the atmosphere, however briefly; a step on the way to manned space flight. The X-15, from its photographs clearly a missile rather than a standard plane, but a missile with a cockpit and pilot, was the first plane to get a pilot 25 miles high.
The author was a journalist assigned to cover the detailed, tedious, gripping, gargantuan project. He describes turning out in 1959 - 1960 for test flights that got off the ground and those that didn't, from California to Cape Canaveral, Florida. He still encountered the barrier of classified information, but otherwise was granted access to walk around the planes, touch the space suits, interview the pilots and engineers and metal fabricators. He got to try out the X-15 flight simulator and make three 'flights' having had limited flying experience.
This book is so crammed with detail (at times reading like a shorthand notebook) that it is ideal for engineers, pilots, designers, those who work with metals, fuels, ballistics, telemetrics or indeed giant organisations. We see part of a 68-page check list in which everything has been reduced to a yes or no answer. We see a plastic bubble filled with argon and used for creating welds on the Inconel X, a high nickel-steel alloy - titanium having proved too hard to work. Where most planes are riveted, missiles are welded for smoother stronger joins; the welds kept developing pressure bubbles under stress so eventually the work had to be sent out to an industrial high-pressure welder. Black paint was used to radiate heat. Most of the plane was actually tanks - of lox, of nitrogen, water alcohol, hydrogen peroxide and helium. On one test, a sealing gasket had absorbed too much liquid oxygen and caused problems with the tank. We see that oddly to us today, radio contact systems were one of the hardest aspects to get right. We also see the various designs for ejector seats, and why some had failed the pilots. This was by no means a safe occupation.
The ballistics are well explained, partially in the pilots' own words. The X-15 was carried up by a giant B-52 bomber, fastened under the left wing. When it was released it took off at an angle which would determine the angle of fall on re-entry making a nice smooth arc. At the top of the arc, there would be no air against which the normal plane controls such as ailerons and wing tilt could function. Chuck Yeager had found this the hard way already at this stage. So rocket jets, small by comparison, were planned for controlling by pushing the plane. But Bob White, pilot on the X-15, did not have this advantage when he made it above 25 miles high to 136,500 ft. His voice contact at the Cape Canaveral tower on his flight was Neil Armstrong. Joseph Walker set a speed record of 2,196 mph in an X-15 shortly beforehand.
Given the level of detail, the surgeons and fire-fighters and project managers all specified and many assorted aspects, I found it amusing that when a small cadre of reporters interviewed White after his flight, the author asked him what time he had gone to bed the previous night and how he intended to celebrate his flight. Perhaps this is what he thought the majority of the readers would want to know. The test pilots were all mid-thirties upwards, married with kids. The Air Force and NASA team would have liked younger pilots but was unable to find men with aerophysics degrees and thousands of hours' flight experience below that age.
Hats off to them and to everyone involved in the dogged work of this project, which made the later moon landings possible. Reading this account, we can see just how much technical knowhow had to be gathered in one place and put to use, whatever the risk and expense. I found the book well worth the read. The black and white photos show the planes, the pilots and the author. Snapshots of history including Neil Armstrong.
I downloaded an ARC from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review.
The author was a journalist assigned to cover the detailed, tedious, gripping, gargantuan project. He describes turning out in 1959 - 1960 for test flights that got off the ground and those that didn't, from California to Cape Canaveral, Florida. He still encountered the barrier of classified information, but otherwise was granted access to walk around the planes, touch the space suits, interview the pilots and engineers and metal fabricators. He got to try out the X-15 flight simulator and make three 'flights' having had limited flying experience.
This book is so crammed with detail (at times reading like a shorthand notebook) that it is ideal for engineers, pilots, designers, those who work with metals, fuels, ballistics, telemetrics or indeed giant organisations. We see part of a 68-page check list in which everything has been reduced to a yes or no answer. We see a plastic bubble filled with argon and used for creating welds on the Inconel X, a high nickel-steel alloy - titanium having proved too hard to work. Where most planes are riveted, missiles are welded for smoother stronger joins; the welds kept developing pressure bubbles under stress so eventually the work had to be sent out to an industrial high-pressure welder. Black paint was used to radiate heat. Most of the plane was actually tanks - of lox, of nitrogen, water alcohol, hydrogen peroxide and helium. On one test, a sealing gasket had absorbed too much liquid oxygen and caused problems with the tank. We see that oddly to us today, radio contact systems were one of the hardest aspects to get right. We also see the various designs for ejector seats, and why some had failed the pilots. This was by no means a safe occupation.
The ballistics are well explained, partially in the pilots' own words. The X-15 was carried up by a giant B-52 bomber, fastened under the left wing. When it was released it took off at an angle which would determine the angle of fall on re-entry making a nice smooth arc. At the top of the arc, there would be no air against which the normal plane controls such as ailerons and wing tilt could function. Chuck Yeager had found this the hard way already at this stage. So rocket jets, small by comparison, were planned for controlling by pushing the plane. But Bob White, pilot on the X-15, did not have this advantage when he made it above 25 miles high to 136,500 ft. His voice contact at the Cape Canaveral tower on his flight was Neil Armstrong. Joseph Walker set a speed record of 2,196 mph in an X-15 shortly beforehand.
Given the level of detail, the surgeons and fire-fighters and project managers all specified and many assorted aspects, I found it amusing that when a small cadre of reporters interviewed White after his flight, the author asked him what time he had gone to bed the previous night and how he intended to celebrate his flight. Perhaps this is what he thought the majority of the readers would want to know. The test pilots were all mid-thirties upwards, married with kids. The Air Force and NASA team would have liked younger pilots but was unable to find men with aerophysics degrees and thousands of hours' flight experience below that age.
Hats off to them and to everyone involved in the dogged work of this project, which made the later moon landings possible. Reading this account, we can see just how much technical knowhow had to be gathered in one place and put to use, whatever the risk and expense. I found the book well worth the read. The black and white photos show the planes, the pilots and the author. Snapshots of history including Neil Armstrong.
I downloaded an ARC from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review.
May 14, 2012
This book takes you right back to the time of this rocket plane program. Not only does Tregaskis do a good job of relating the test flights undertaken, he truly conveys what it was like to be an engineer on the job, or test pilot on the job. There are numerous false starts, amazing successes, and real people peppered through the X-15 program.
March 18, 2023
Good contemporary account that captures the zeitgeist of the early Space Age. Good addition to a Space Race library and better than Crossfield's memoir.
August 5, 2018
This work follows people and their effort toward the first record setting flights of the X-15. The book was written immediately following these events, and so it is set in its time but not dated. The author's commentary on the potential futures is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the work. Hearing the discussions between Dynasoar and Project Mercury, how will man first reach space. Which approach is better longer-term. Perhaps most clearly, the fact that Neil Armstrong gets barely a mention in this history, whereas later authors would take the opportunity to show how his backup role with the X-15 would lead to his later space flights, if nothing else for ironic contrast.
I really enjoyed the book, and give it 4.5 stars. The last half star is lost for the story felt incomplete as the last flights featured were only the first of the research testing, all the while many of the events recorded were testing things only used after the end of the book.
I really enjoyed the book, and give it 4.5 stars. The last half star is lost for the story felt incomplete as the last flights featured were only the first of the research testing, all the while many of the events recorded were testing things only used after the end of the book.
September 24, 2020
5 STARS - if not for the terrible narration.
This is a diary, so the writing has a somewhat repetitive nature, but it's not ugly.
Tragaskis comes across almost as a reporter at times and it's almost annoying, but it really gives a feel for the moments when questions where asked and reactions of pilots after flights and such.
One might find the nature of the book boring, due to it's step by step following of the ups and downs of testing, but that's testing. I was in there waiting for the flights to happen, too.
It is interesting to know how much goes flight tests and I enjoyed this very much.
I would give this 5 stars, but the narrator makes it almost impossible to get into what is going on.
If you want to "do" this book - READ IT. Chris Sorensen makes you feel like test flights are the most boring overrated excuse for scientific consideration to grace planet Earth. I will avoid him at all costs in the future of audiobook enjoyment - what a lamo.
This is a diary, so the writing has a somewhat repetitive nature, but it's not ugly.
Tragaskis comes across almost as a reporter at times and it's almost annoying, but it really gives a feel for the moments when questions where asked and reactions of pilots after flights and such.
One might find the nature of the book boring, due to it's step by step following of the ups and downs of testing, but that's testing. I was in there waiting for the flights to happen, too.
It is interesting to know how much goes flight tests and I enjoyed this very much.
I would give this 5 stars, but the narrator makes it almost impossible to get into what is going on.
If you want to "do" this book - READ IT. Chris Sorensen makes you feel like test flights are the most boring overrated excuse for scientific consideration to grace planet Earth. I will avoid him at all costs in the future of audiobook enjoyment - what a lamo.
June 24, 2018
Very much a document of the time at the time it actually happened. The diary form do help you understand the very much step by step, followed by setback events that this is. At the same time after the 5th abort of one flight it gets at to much. I think I wished for something more than this book could be in retrospect. It is written at the time when they where still continuing flying and details where more secret. I would have wished for more details and also the fact that it ends after X-15 broke the first records is a bit of disappointment to me.
January 20, 2020
This was a fairly interesting read. It was written at the time over 50 years ago and the reader needs to keep that in mind. The book is presented in diary form and covers the history of the x-15 with the author's thoughts on where potential space travel would go from there.
I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my nonfiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook page.
I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my nonfiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook page.
Read
June 30, 2019Interesting look at America's early space program. I like these kinds of titles, because you get background information that generally isn't available in the standard educational materials, or in the general media for that matter. I tend to grab these books when I have the opportunity, and if you're a scifi fan, or a space enthusiast, you will probably like this book.
January 31, 2021
Picked for a reading challenge - a book by a journalist or blogger.
WOW-I had no idea about any of this history, or any of the history of the author- he was really cool.
1st I love that this was written like a diary. What happened each day along the path of the X-15 touching outer space. I learned about the evolution of rocket/space ship pilots, from dare devils to engineers. It was well written and had a great pace. A good story.
WOW-I had no idea about any of this history, or any of the history of the author- he was really cool.
1st I love that this was written like a diary. What happened each day along the path of the X-15 touching outer space. I learned about the evolution of rocket/space ship pilots, from dare devils to engineers. It was well written and had a great pace. A good story.
June 28, 2021
Great read. Written like a diary. Tregaskis sought out all the major players for interviews and was not a shy man. Tremendously inquisitive. The book covered testing and the speed and altitude record-setting flights, so it's not a complete history, but it didn't need to be.
February 17, 2022
Very detailed account of the early part of the X-15 program, but it's rather disappointing that it never goes into the later portion after the so-called Big Engine is installed and the REAL record-breaking flights begin.
July 18, 2021
Interesting insights into the X-15 program, but it would have been 2x better if it was half as long.
March 6, 2016
Daily account, written for public consumption, of the testing of this innovative rocket from a journalistic perspective. Profiles of the test pilots and the leading members of their supporting staff give personal drama, albeit sounding very old-fashioned by 2016. NASA's Mercury program was mentioned but the relationship not explained.
February 16, 2021
Detailed history of the X-15 and its pilots. Interesting read.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews