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Engineering is perhaps the most pragmatic of scientific disciplines, so you might assume that engineers would be free of faddish fancies. Maybe, but not so their paymasters. Milton Thompson was an insider on the X-15 aircraft programme, which between 1959 and 1968 flew rocket-powered aircraft at speeds of up to 4500 miles per hour and altitudes of up to 3500 feet. But his team’s chievements, described in At the Edge of Space (Smithsonian, £16.95/$21.95), were overshadowed by those of the more glamorous space programme that ultimately starved it of funds.