Crossfield’s passion and humor shine through in this book, written in late 1960 before the end of the X-15 program and before any astronauts ever flew. It’s a fascinating look at the early days at Edwards and really illustrates the tremendous effort that went in to flight testing in those days.

Reading this book you’ll learn some things you probably didn’t expect to, such as why space suits were silver, and what an X-15 cockpit had in common with an International Harvester tractor.

I always knew that rocket planes were complicated, expensive, dangerous and often tricky to fly. Crossfield’s descriptions of the engineering challenges and, especially, of his flights really make it clear why they were complicated, expensive, dangerous and tricky to fly. (You could also just download a PDF of the X-15 flight manual, but it’s a lot drier than Crossfield’s book. Although seeing the switches he refers to is interesting.)

Oh – and I forgot to mention the most important part – fun. Through all the frustration, aborted flights and brushes with death Crossfield cannot hide the fact that flying is fun. He clearly enjoyed the hell out of his flying.

It was a life-long passion. He died flying, at the age of 84, in an encounter with severe weather. Pilots spend a lot of time reading about accidents. His was specially written up in one magazine that I read. I think he’d be happy to know that his last flight provided data that will probably save the lives of other pilots.

It’s terrific that his family has set up that web site to keep his mission and memory going.