When Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human into space on April 12, 1961, the American space program rose to the occasion, and less than a month later, astronaut Alan Shepard became the ...
The North American X-15 was built to flirt with the edge of space, not to cross it by accident. Yet on a research mission labeled Flight 90, a routine test profile slipped just far enough out of ...