Science: Two More Records

On each flight, as it comes closer to its design speed of 4,000 m.p.h., the experimental X-15 rocket plane usually sets a record. Last week it set another: Test Pilot Joe Walker flew it at 3,370 m.p.h., which is 296 m.p.h. faster than Major Robert White's flight last April 21. Only Russia's Spaceman Yuri Gagarin and the U.S.'s Alan Shepard have ever flown faster. As his ship nosed over, after reaching a peak altitude of 110,000 ft., Walker was weightless for almost a full minute.

U.S. airmen hung up another speed record last week when an Air Force four-jet B58 Hustler bomber reached Paris exactly 3 hr. 19 min. 41 sec. after passing over Roosevelt Field, L.I. (now a shopping center), where Charles Augustus Lindbergh started his famed solo transatlantic flight 34 years ago. The Hustler's speed (average: 1,050 m.p.h.) was nearly ten times as fast as Lindbergh's, who covered the 3,600-mile distance in 33 hr. 29 min. 30 sec. But Lindbergh's single-engined (223 h.p.) ship went all the way on one filling of gas. Between New York and Paris, the Hustler (jet thrust: 62,400 lbs.) was refueled twice—once near Newfoundland and again off the French coast.