Scott Crossfield: 1921 - 2006...

One of my favorite movies is “The Right Stuff,” an 80’s classic based on Thomas Wolfe’s book of the same name about the relationship of 50’s era elite test pilots and the budding space astronaut program. Wolfe’s work thoroughly details that time when advanced jets were equipped with rocket motors at Edwards AFB and man first ventured into space.
A key figure in both the book and the movie was Chuck Yeager, the test pilot who chewed Beemans Gum while breaking the sound barrier for the first time. Many Americans only know of Yeager as a shill man for sparkplugs.
Another character, then in the book who was for cinematic expediency not portrayed in the movie was Scott Crossfield, the test pilot who was the first to successfully fly at Mach 2 or twice the speed of sound.
Crossfield was the most famous pilot of my youth, periodically flying various generations of rocket planes, the last one known as the X-15 at faster and faster supersonic speeds. He eventually flew the X-15 to an altitude of more than 88,000 feet, and a speed of 1,960 miles an hour, nearly three times the speed of sound.
The 84 year old Crossfield died on Wednesday when the single engine plane he was flying in bad weather crashed in mountains 50 miles northwest of Atlanta. At the time he was on a flight returning from Alabama to his home in Virginia. He was the only one on board the six passenger Cessna 210A located by the Georgia Civil Air Patrol yesterday.
He served with the US Navy as a fighter pilot and flight instructor during World War II.
According to NASA Scott was still flying approximately 200 hours a year in his eighties.

And now 'tis man who dares assault the sky . . .
And as we come to claim our promised place,
Aim only to repay the good you gave,
And warm with human love the chill of space.

Thomas G. Bergin