The scene of the X-15 landing is on November 5, 1959, when a small engine fire started and forced pilot Scott Crossfield to make an emergency landing on Rosamond Dry Lake. The X-15, not designed to land with fuel, came down with a heavy load of propellants and broke its back, grounding this particular X-15, ship #2 (56-6671), for three months.
One B-52 and three X-15's can be identified in the scenes. NB-52B: tail designation 0-20008, Mothership "Balls 8" can be identified at take-off. It had 140 X-15 launches from June 1959 to October 1968. It was retired from active service with NASA on December 17, 2004, after almost 50 years flying service, having first flown on June 11, 1955, and entering service with NASA on June 8, 1959. It participated in some of the most significant projects in aerospace history.
X-15s: 66672 can be identified after take-off and then when the engine is fired, 66671 is then seen prior to launch, 66672 is seen at time of launch, and 66670 is seen dropping after launch.
66670, the #1 X-15, still hangs in the Smithsonian NASM's Milestones of Flight Gallery.
66671, an X-15A-2 built longer with drop tanks, is at the Air Force Museum.
66672: Neil Armstrong piloted a flight in this craft that ended 12 minutes, 28.7 seconds after it started, the longest X-15 flight of the entire research program.
On Nov. 15, 1967, on Michael Adams' seventh flight, he entered a spin from which he was able to recover but could not pull out of an inverted dive because of a technical problem with the adaptive flight control system. He died in the resultant crash of the X-15 number three (66672).
Don Gordon had been cast to play the part of test pilot Jim Darcy. Gordon had to withdraw at the last minute because of illness, so Gerd Oswald had to scramble to find a replacement. Dewey Martin was then cast mere hours before shooting commenced. Because of that, and because this is mostly a two-person script that required him and Mary Murphy to be on-set all six shooting days, it was realistically not possible to shoot around him until he had a chance to study the script. At least on the first day of shooting, therefore, Martin was essentially fed his lines just before he spoke them on-camera.