





Phil> Didn't one of the early jet fighters have these?  I also think
Phil> the germans did some work on these in WWII.

The NACA came up with them before World War II.  NASA is directly
descended from the NACA, with space added in.

You'll notice that I didn't mention sweep wings even though the
X-5, tested at what's now Dryden, had them.  We did steal that one
dirctly from the Germans.  The difference is that swept wings don't
change their angle of sweep, sweep wings do.  Perhaps the similarity
of names has caused some confusion?  747s have swept wings, F-111s
have sweep wings.


Phil> A lot of this was also done by the military...

After NASA aerodynamicists proposed them and NASA test teams
demonstrated them.  Richard Whitcomb and R.T. Jones, at Langley
Research Center, were giants in the field.

Dryden was involved in the flight testing of winglets and area
ruling (in the 70s and 50s, respectively).  It's true that we
used military aircraft as the testbeds (KC-135 and YF-102) but
that had more to do with availability and need than with military
involvement.  The YF-102 was completely ours and the KC-135 was
bailed to us.  The Air Force, of course, was interested in our
results and supportive of our efforts.

Dryden flew the first digital fly by wire aircraft in the 70s. No
mechnaical or analog backup, to show you how confident we were.
General Dynamics decided to make the F-16 flyby-wire when they saw how
successful we were.  (Mind you, the Avro Arrow and the X-15 were both
fly-by-wire aircraft much earlier, but analog.)

Phil> Egad! I'm disagreeing with Mary Shafer!  

The NASA habit of acquiring second-hand military aircraft and using
them for testbeds can make things kind of confusing.  On the other
hand, all those second-hand Navy planes give our test pilots a chance
to fold the wings--something most pilots at Edwards Air Force Base
can't do.

