accurate portrayal of the NASA program. Much of the principal photography for the film was undertaken at Edwards Air Force Base and the NASA High-Speed Flight Station (now the Dryden Flight Research Center) in California, with the direct assistance of NASA, the United States Air Force and North American Aviation. USAF Capt. Jay Hanks and NASA research pilot Milton Orville Thompson served as technical advisors on the film. Thompson himself later became an X-15 pilot. The film featured carefully edited NASA footage of X-15 flights intercut with original photography, with a minimum of special effects work using animation. In a pivotal scene of the chase aircraft crashing, X-15 used US Air Force archival footage of the January 10, 1956, "Sabre dance" crash of a North American F-100 Super Sabre flown by Lt. Barty R. Brooks. Another critical scene involved the X-15-3 being destroyed on the test stand when the rocket engine exploded, using stock footage of the accident. A archived letter from NASA Armstrong (then Dryden) to the movie producers, reviewing the script prior to production, had recommended a different scenario for a fatal X-15 accident. It cited maximum risk as beginning reentry from space with the X-15 at an inappropriate orientation. That situation actually occurred several years later on X-15 Flight 3-65-97, November 15, 1967, in the rebuilt X-15-3, when pilot Mike Adams experienced a hypersonic spin on reentry. The result was final destruction of the #3 X-15 and the only X-15 pilot fatality. The probable cause was pilot vertigo while in space. Aircraft used in the production Boeing NB-52A Stratofortress (carrier/mother ship) Lockheed F-104A Starfighter ("Chase 1" | chase aircraft) North American X-15 (research aircraft) North American F-100F Super Sabre ("Chase 2" | chase aircraft) Piasecki H-21 Work Horse ("Rescue NASA 1" | rescue helicopter) Release Home media After its initial successful introduction, X-15 quickly faded from movie screens, and was unable to gain much traction from foreign releases. Rarely shown on television, with its first airing only in 1979, the film was released briefly in VHS in 1983 and was released on DVD in 2004. Reception Critical response Released just as the actual rocket aircraft was making headlines in breaking speed and altitude records and reaching the upper edges of the stratosphere, X-15 was critically reviewed, receiving praise for its authenticity. Following its premiere in Washington, D.C., The Washington Evening Star raved, "Whatever its serious scientific intentions,