"He was no household name, even during his prime as an aviation pioneer. But Scott Crossfield, who was killed Thursday when his small plane crashed in Georgia, was one of those legendary figures whom Tom Wolfe memorably described as having "the right stuff."
Like his better-known colleague, Chuck Yeager, Crossfield was a hotshot pilot who helped U.S. aviation make its post-World War II transition into the race for the moon. He was the first person to fly at Mach 2 - twice the speed of sound - only to be bested weeks later by Yeager, who had first broken the sound barrier.
"He was really one of the major figures," said Peter Jakab of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, describing Crossfield as "the great cutting-edge research pilot."
Back in the days when one out or every four test pilots would die, Crossfield was the second best of the best, and that isn't a knock. Yeager was it, and all others next-to-it, and none higher on the totem than Scott. We need lots more of his and Chuck's right stuff, but today such programs must be even more clandestine than before, as the screamining-meemy media would post headlines of PILOT-KILLED until the sheepple demanded an end to such research.
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