This collection of interviews is the second in a continuing series on the history of the Dryden Flight Research Center. The new volume covers the period between the establishment of NASA in 1958 and the beginning of space shuttle flights in the early 1980s. This time frame encompasses the flights of the X-15, the U.S./ Soviet race to the moon, the evolution of the lifting-body concept, and the initial shuttle flights. These events took place as jet propulsion and supersonic flight became everyday occurrences. They transpired amidst the ongoing Cold War and the social, cultural, and technological upheavals of the 1960s, and advances in aerospace technology, such as digital fly-by-wire, of the 1970s. They are told by the people who participated in these landmark activities, in their own words.

Originally published: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2007. https://history.nasa.gov/monograph42.pdf