Incredible Old-School Footage of NASA’s X-Plane Program

You're looking at the most baller footage

in the history of time.

That'd be a 1963 Pontiac convertible,

speeding across the Mojave desert,

towing a NASA experimental aircraft called the M2-F1,

or more affectionately, the Flying Bathtub.

Or how about this?

When NASA tested a fuel additive meant to suppress fire,

by just crashing a plane,

and not just for the hell of it, of course.

Data collected here helped the FAA set guidelines

for fire prevention on airlines.

Awesomeness all around.

And now you can witness so much more of that awesomeness,

thanks to NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center.

It's just uploaded gobs of archival footage

to its YouTube channel.

Those films join an already impressive collection

of aerospace videos for your viewing pleasure,

and it's not all convertibles and exploding planes.

Included in the mix are major milestones of NASA history,

both in the sky and in space.

Check this out.

That's Neil Armstrong piloting

a lunar landing research vehicle in Houston.

You may remember that Armstrong would later go

on to land on the moon.

And this here is what happens

when you set a flight speed record.

It's the X-15A-2.

After hitting 4500 miles per hour, or mach 6.7.

This thing was so ferocious,

that it burned through its fuel in the first two minutes

after it launched from a B-52 mother ship.

The rest of the flight was coasting.

Oh, and the back wheels were actually skids,

and the nose wheel had no steering.

So the thing had to land on a lake bed

instead of a runway.

Even more insane were the exploits of the X-43A.

It's the black boy here.

The X-43A was an experimental scramjet-powered plane,

meaning it was an air-breather,

whereas your typical rocket combines liquid oxygen and fuel,

this kind of vehicle instead pulls oxygen

straight from the air.

[Announcer] Launch, launch, launch.

[Narrator] That made it light and astonishingly fast,

like 7,000 miles per hour fast,

or ten times the speed of sound.

[Announcer] Discovery is on its way home.

[Narrator] On the YouTube channel,

you'll also find more familiar faces,

like the iconic space shuttle, very nice.

And some less than familiar faces.

And some nifty old behind-the-scenes NASA footage.

Oh, and explosions, did we mention the explosions?

(upbeat music)