Special Hobby 1/32 X15A2 NASA Aircraft Kit

Special Hobby Aircraft 1/32 X15A2 NASA Aircraft Kit

The X-15, NASA's penultimate workhorse for research into the regime of hypersonic flight. Born out of NACA studies initiated in 1952 around problems likely to be encountered in spaceflight, North American Aviation was selected in September of 1955 to produce three research aircraft. The history of this research program contains many milestones and technological advances. Aerodynamics wasn't the only discipline to achieve great advances with the X-15 program, research into Materials Science grew by leaps. Not only the study of the airframe materials in the flight envelope, but the manufacture of these materials benefited as well. Research into control systems also benefited from the X-15 program. How do you control an aircraft heading toward Mach 6? During the early 1960s, this was one of the unanswered questions. What aerodynamic effects will be encountered? How will they manifest themselves? The X-15 grew from a hypersonic research tool into a research test bed carrying various experimental packages. The duration of the program lasted 199 flights. Of these flights, the X-15 achieved a maximum velocity of Mach 6.72 and a maximum altitude of 67 miles.