Some X-15 builds….

Now that is some cool history right there, and out of paper to boot. Well done. I remember building one of the plastic kits when I was a kid, and not having to paint it (bonus!) because it was molded in black.

Thanks. I'm old enough to remember the old Aurora X-15. The box art looked a lot cooler (and was more accurate) than the actual model, though.

A bit of trivia on the X-15's color.... The body was made of Inconel, a nickel-based alloy. It is silver in color. Prior to the rollout of X-15-1 in October 1958, many of those associated with the program figured the vehicle that would be unveiled to the public would be silver. But a day or so before the rollout, the X-15 was painted black.

All three X-15s were painted black for their respective rollouts. But the heat of supersonic flight burned the paint off, and the exposure to the heat turned the Inconel a bluish-black.

Throughout the program, technicians had difficulty keeping markings on the X-15s because the high speeds turned paint into a gooey mess. The most consistent example of that was the blue NASA "meatball" on the yellow dart on the nose. If you look at post-flight photos, more often than not the meatball is a smudged blue mess or even gone. It was usually always repainted before the next flight.

Here is 66672 (on its last flight before Michael Adams' fatal crash) showing the baked NASA meatball. Curiously, X-15-3 was the only airframe to have its number -- 3 -- painted on its nose.

One of the reasons I wanted to model 66670 as it looked on its last flight was because of the weathered markings. By that point in the program, markings were very minimal -- and those that remained were pretty baked. Oddly, the flaps retain the NO STEP markings that were on the early flights but had burned off or were removed after only a few flights. It is doubtful technicians would have reapplied them, so I'm trying to find if the flaps on 66670's flight were a spare set that had been laying around. The crews had a habit of mixing parts from the three X-15s.

After the last flight, 66670 was placed in storage before being shipped to the Smithsonian; today it hangs in the NASM. Before it was shipped to Washington, NASA restored many of the markings, including the yellow NASA bands on the tail and the national markings on the fuselage and wings.