Wingless Flight the Lifting Body Story
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NASA SP-4220 Wingless Flight The Lifting Body Story R. Dale Reed with Darlene Lister Foreword by General Chuck Yeager The NASA History Series National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA History Office Office of Policy and Plans Washington, DC 1997 Library of Congress cataloging-in-PuMi~ationData Reed, R. Dale, 1930 a'inglrss Fligllt: The I.tfting Bod) Stoq/R. Dale Rrrtl, HII~Ddrlenc C15ter: foreword bg Chuck ledger. p. cm.-(SP; 1220. NAS,1 Histot7 Series) 111rludrsI~ibliographical references (p. ) and index. 1. Lifting bodies-United States-Design ant1 construction- History. 2. NASA Dryden Flight Research Center-History. I. Lister, Darlene, 1945- . 11. Title. 111. Series: NASA SP; 4220. 11: Seri~s:NASA HistoricaI Series. TL'ilS.i.R44 IN7 629.133'3-dc21 For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office Superintendent of Dcrumenh, Mail Stop: SSOP, Washington, DC 20402.9328 ISBN 0-16-049390-0 ISBN 0-16-049390-0 DEDICATED TO BRAVERY AND FAITH Paul Bikle A leader u~hobelieved in our cause and put his career at high risk bj hae'ing$~irh in us to meet our commitments. Milt Thotnpson A research test pilot z~~honot only put his lge at risk but exhibited complete faith in 1~1inglessfEi~htand those of us who made it happen. CONTENTS ... Acknowledgments ....................................111 Foreword ...........................................v .. Introduction ........................................VII Chapter 1 The Adventure Begins ......................-1 Chapter 2 "Flying Bathtub" ..........................19 Chapter 3 Commitment to Risk ........................41 Chapter 4 On to the Heavyweights ....................-65 Chapter 5 Angry Machines .......................... -87 Chapter 6 Back to the Drawing Board ..................111 Chapter 7 Wingless Flight Matures ....................129 Chapter 8 Lifting-Body Racehorses ....................155 Chapter 9 Wingless Flight Lives On ..................-179 Appendix ..........................................193 Glossary ..........................................201 Bibliography .......................................211 About the Author ...................................215 Index .............................................217 The NASA History Series ............................227 WING1,ESS FLIGHT Foreword When Dale Reed asked me to write the foreword to his book, Wingless Flight: The Lifting Body Story, I had to think back a long ways to remember the day that Paul Rikle asked me to fly the M2-F1 lifting body. It was a very interesting program that would give a space vehicle similar to the present day space shuttle the ability to maneuver. During the time that the lifting body program was being flown, space cap- sules were re-entering the Earth's atmosphere in a ballistic path and had very little ability to maneuver. The concept behind the lifting body program was to investigate the ability of the pilot to land in a horizontal mode which required an excessive angle of attack to flare. I enjoyed flying the lifting body and probably found it easier to Ay than most pilots because of my experience with the XF-92 airplane which landed with extremely high angles of attack similar to those later experienced with lifting bodies. Dale's book covers the warm things that go on during the test programs at Edwards Air Force Base, California. Dale has emphasized the cooperative effort that must take place between the people he calls the Real Stuff (people who create and service the flying machines) and the Right Stuff (pilots who fly the machines). Most of the NASA lifting body crews (about 90 percent) were made up of ex-military mechanics and technicians, mostly Air Force and of excellent caliber. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to many an aircraft crew chief in my career. These crew chiefs provided me with air- craft in first-class condition to fly by working themselves and their people long hours to stay on schedule. Test pilots, on the other hand, were a different story. Dale, being a pilot himself, could see the undercurrent that flows in the macho world of test pilots. Competition has always existed between pilots. There was a special kind of competition between Air Force and NASA test pilots, and Dale has covered it very well in this book. The lifting hotly story covers a little known period at Edwards Air Force Base, and it fills a gap during the transition from space capsules to maneuvering space vehic-les. Chuck Yeager B/Gen., USAF, Ret. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I uoul(1 like to express my appreciation to the following people for their contributions to this book: Dr. J. D. Hutlley, NASA Dryden Historian, who took on the task of reviewing my original manuscript to ensure that it was internally consistent, written for the proper audience, ant1 historically accurate. Dr. Hunley added footnotes, expanded and edited the glossary, and compiled the present bibliography. Dr. Hunley also enlisted Dr. Darlene 1,ister to reorganize the original manuscript for a smooth pre- sentation to the reading audience. To Richard P. Hallion, who is probablj this coun- try's best aviation historian, for his generous offer to allow information from his hooks and documents, including On the Frontier, Test Pilots, and The Hypersonic Ret~oltttion,to be incorporated into this hook. His attention to detail on facts, dates, and management of early aircraft development programs made it easier to correlate my own personal story of the lifting-body program with other activities of the time. Also, I would like to thank Robert Kempel and Wen Painter for their generous offer to allow me to use portions of their personal story of the HI,-10 Lifting Body entitled Developing and Flight Testing the HL-10 Lifting Body: A Precursor to the Spare Shuttle, a NASA Reference Publication published in April 1994, to be used in this book. For their contributions to the book's technical accuracy, I \rouId like to thank the fol- lowing people who reat1 the original nlanuscript and in some cases, the reorganized version, and providecl technical corrections where appropriate: Bill Dana, Chuck Yeager, John Manke, and Bruce Peterson, lifting body pilots; and Robert Hoey, Bob Kempel, Wen Painter, Ed Saltzman, and Joe Wilson, lifting body engineers. Thanks also to Betty Love, aeronautical research technician, for contril~utingboth recorcled and unrecorded flight records on original M2-F1 flights and for her com- ments on the reorganized version of the manuscript; John Muratore, X-38 program manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center, for reviewing the portion of the last chap- ter on the X-38program; David Urie, from Lockheed, and Steve Ishmael, from NASA, for reviewing the portion of the last chapter dealing with the X-33 program; the NASA Headquarters Printing and Design office-Vanessa Nugent and Kimberly Jenkins for their Design and Editorial work, as well as Stanley Al-tis and Michael Crnkovic who saw the 1)ook through the printing process. R. Dale Reed, Aerospace Engineer NASA Dryclen Flight Research Center August 1997 INTRODUCTION Wingbss Flight tells the story of the most unusual flying machines ever flown, the lifting bodies. It is my story about my friends and colleagues who con~niittecla sig- nificant part of their lives in the 1960s and 1970s to prove that the concept was a viahle one for use in spacecraft of the future. This story, filled with drama and adken- ture, is about the twelve-year period from 1963 to 1975 in which eight different lift- ing-body configurations flew. It is appropriate for me to write the story, since I was the engineer who first presented the idea of flight-testing the concept to others at the NASA Flight Research Center. Over those twelve years, I experienced the story as it unfolded day by day at that remote NASA facility northeast of Los Angeles in the bleak Mojave Desert. Benefits from this effort immediately influenced the design and operational con- cepts of the winged NASA Shuttle Orbiter. However, the full benefits would not be realized until the 1990s when new spacecraft such as the X-33 and X-38 would fully employ the lifting-body concept. A lifting body is basically a wingless vehicle that flies due to the lift generated by the shape of its fuselage. Although both a lifting reentry vehicle and a ballistic cap- sule had been considered as options during the early stages of NASA's space program, NASA initially opted to go with the capsule. A number of individuals were not con- tent to close the book on the lifting-body concept. Researchers including Alfred Eggers at the NASA Ames Research Center conducted early wind-tunnel experi- ments, finding that half of a rounded nose-cone shape that was flat on top and round- ed on the bottom could generate a lift-to-drag ratio of about 1.5 to 1. Eggers' preliminary design sketch later resembled the basic M2 lifting-body design. At the NASA Langley Research Center, other researchers toyed with their own lifting-body shapes. Meanwhile, some of us aircraft-oriented researchers at th_e NASA Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) in California were experiencing our own fas- cination with the lifting-hody concept. A model-aircraft builder and private pilot on my own time, I found tlie lifting-body idea intriguing. I built a model based on Eggrrs' design, tested it repeatedly, made modifications in its control and balance character- istics along the way, then eventually presented the concept to others at the Center, using a film of its flights that mj wife, Donna and I had made with our 8-mm home camera. I recruited the help of fellow engineer Dick Eldredge and research pilot Milt Thompson, especially in later selling the idea to others, including Paul Bikle, then the director of the NASA Flight Research Center (redesignated in 1976 the Hugh L. Dryden Flight Research Center). What followed was history, and telling for the first time in print that historic story of the lifting bodies in full and living detail is what this 1)ook is all about.