On the sultry morning of August 22, 1963, test pilot Joe Walker was strapped into the X-15, a machine designed to shatter all speed records, preparing to blaze through the stratosphere at a jaw-dropping 4,520 miles per hour. Just a decade earlier, the F-86D Sabre, then the swiftest aircraft in the sky, had set a global record at 698 miles per hour. But today, Walker was gearing up to eclipse that record sevenfold.

Closer to a missile than an aircraft, the X-15 was notorious as one of the most perilous ventures in aviation. Armed with the colossal XLR99 liquid propellant engine, capable of delivering a devastating 57,000 pounds of thrust, every test flight teetered on the razor’s edge of disaster.

Pilots like Walker, pushing the very boundaries of speed and altitude, donned space suits to survive near-orbital flights and the fiery gauntlet of reentry. To prevent a catastrophic failure, NASA capped Walker’s ascent at 400,000 feet—a ceiling meant to save his life.

A mere 1,500 pounds of excess thrust could hurl him into the void of space, turning his high-speed reentry into a lethal inferno.
Catapulted skyward at speeds rivaling an intercontinental ballistic missile, Walker was oblivious to the historic threshold he was about to cross. Then, in a heartbeat, the awe-inspiring curve of Earth and the unfathomable darkness of space sprawled before him.
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Join Dark Skies as we explore the world of aviation with cinematic short documentaries featuring the biggest and fastest airplanes ever built, top-secret military projects, and classified missions with hidden untold true stories. Including US, German, and Soviet warplanes, along with aircraft developments that took place during World War I, World War 2, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Gulf War, and special operations mission in between.

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