 a rubber boat tail after it slowed down. The lenticular lifting-body would transition to horizontal flight by extending control surfaces after making reentry much like a symmetrical capsule.
Our concept was to construct the shapes separately, building three wooden or fiberglass shells that could attach to an inner structure common to all three shapes. If we could build the vehicles to be light enough, they could be towed by ground vehicles across the lakebed before being towed aloft by a propeller-driven tow-plane.
Dick suggested a control system that I liked instantly: a mechanical way of mixing controls that was similar to what is done now in modern high-tech aircraft by digital electronic control systems. The scheme was to connect a swashplate on the aft end of the steel-tube structure to the pilot's control stick and rudder pedals. The swashplate, pivoting on one universal joint, took up various positions, depending on the combination of roll, pitch, and yaw commands the pilot sent to the front side of the swashplate. With push rods hooked up to different locations on the backside of the swashplate, and to the horizontal and vertical control surfaces on the aft end of the lifting-body shapes, any combination in control-mixing could be achieved. These controls could be altered easily during the flight-test program or changed to fit another lifting-body shape.
Fired by enthusiasm, Dick and I kept charging down the design road with the lifting-body research vehicles so that we could make a pitch to our boss, Paul Bikle, to gain his support for a lifting-body program. One day I told Dick, "You know, if we had a pilot on our team, we would have a much better chance of selling the program concept." Then, we talked to Milt Thompson, whom we saw as the NASA test pilot most likely to be interested in our project.
Milt was a skilled pilot with a distinguished background as a Naval aviator, Boeing flight-test pilot, and NASA research pilot. As one of the twelve NASA, Air Force, and Navy pilots who flew the X-15 between 1959 and 1968, Milt had fourteen flights in the rocket-powered aircraft to his credit, reaching on separate occasions a maximum speed of 3,723 mph and a peak altitude of 214,000 feet.
Earlier in 1962, before Dick and I talked to Milt about the lifting-body project, the Air Force had selected Milt to be the only civilian pilot for the X-20 Dyna-Soar program scheduled to launch a man into earth orbit and recover with a horizontal ground landing, a program later canceled shortly after construction had begun on the X-20 vehicle. Not having an ego problem, Milt loved flying unusual or unorthodox aircraft configurations as varied as the rocket-powered X-15 and the ungainly Paresev, a vehicle designed and built at the NASA Flight Research Center's "Skunk Works" to test the Rogallo Wing concept for spacecraft recovery.
Milt was easy to talk to and could relate readily to flight research engineers. Very methodical in planning flights, he did not take risks beyond the unavoidable ones normal for first-time aircraft configurations, a characteristic that earned him high regard from both pilots and project managers. A handsome, wild, and wonderful guy, Milt had a winning personality and persuasive charm. All the women seemed to be in love with him. Popular, he was a friend to everyone. Dick and I knew that Milt was the guy who could help us sell the lifting-body program.
We presented to Milt our idea for testing lifting bodies, asking him if he would join us and fly a lifting body-if and when we got one built. Without hesitation, he gave us a solid "yes." Now we were a team of three.
The three of us put our heads together to decide on the next step to take in promoting our program. Milt suggested that if we had one of the originators of the lifting-body reentry concept on our side, we could move our cause along more rapidly.
I phoned Al Eggers at the NASA Ames Research Center, located at Moffett Field in northern California, and described our idea to him. Very enthusiastic, Eggers asked how he could help. At the time, Eggers was a division head at Ames in charge of most of the wind tunnels. We were going to need a lot of support in wind-tunnel tests if we were to figure out how to fly these crazy aerodynamic shapes.
Telling Eggers that we were preparing a pitch to sell the idea to Paul Bikle, I asked him if he would like to hear the pitch. "Definitely," he replied. We arranged a meeting at the Flight Research Center so we could present our idea to both Paul Bikle and Al Eggers.
[17] I presented a simple program plan for building the vehicles in the "Skunk Works" shops at the Flight Research Center, instrumenting the vehicles, and then flight-testing them to measure stability, control, and other aerodynamic characteristics in flight. After I presented the preliminary design drawings that Dick and I had made, I showed the film that my wife had made of my model M2-F1 flights.
Milt Thompson's endorsement of the plan pushed it over the crest. We received a hearty "yes" from both Bikle and Eggers. Eggers offered full use of the wind tunnels for getting any data needed to support the program if Bikle would be responsible for developing and flight-testing the lifting-body vehicles. It was agreed as well, however, that we would take it one step at a time, starting with the M2-F1 configuration and building it as a wind-tunnel model to be tested in the 40-by-80-foot wind tunnel at Ames.
Armed with a cause and fired with enthusiasm, we found ourselves gaining more and more support from our peers. We even came up with an unofficial motto for our lifting-body reentry vehicle project: "Don't be rescued from outer space-fly back in style." With the space program then dependent on the ballistic capsules, the astronauts were being fished out of the ocean, sometimes nearly drowning in the process and usually after some degree of sea sickness. Wen Painter-later a prominent engineer in the rocket-powered lifting-body program-drew a cartoon depicting the difference the lifting-body reentry vehicle would make in how astronauts would return to earth, his cartoon showing the astronaut landing at an airport in style, greeted by a reception hostess.
If the great enthusiasm of the builders at the NASA Flight Research Center resulted in a wind-tunnel model capable of actual flight, well, as Bikle noted, that would be something simply beyond the control of management. Later, we would go through the official process of getting approval from NASA Headquarters for flying the vehicle. In the meantime, we decided to get to work while everyone was enthusiastic and ready to start. With this decision, the lifting-body program was launched.
1 Hallion, On the Frontier, pp. xiv-xv.
2 Hugh L. Dryden, "Introductory Remarks," National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, Research-Airplane-Committee Report on Conference on the Progress of the X-15 Project, (Papers Presented at Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, Oct. 25-26, 1956), p. xix. I am indebted to Ed Saltzman for locating this quotation, the words for which are common knowledge at the Center named in honor of Hugh Dryden but the source for which is not well known.
3 See Richard P. Hallion, "ASSET: Pioneer of Lifting Reentry," in Hallion, Hypersonic Revolution, pp. 449-527.
4 National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NACA Conference on High-Speed Aerodynamics, A Compilation of the Papers Presented (Moffett Field, Calif.: Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, 1958). Notable in this connection was the paper by four Ames researchers--Thomas J. Wong, Charles A Hermach, John O. Reller, Jr., and Bruce E. Tinling--at a session chaired by Allen. The paper's title was "Preliminary Studies of Manned Satellites--Wingless Configurations: Lifting Body" and appeared on pp. 35-44 of the volume just cited.
5 Maxime A. Faget, Benjamine J. Garland, and James J. Buglia, "Preliminary Studies of Manned Satellite Wingless Configuration: Nonlifting" in NACA Conference on High-Speed Aerodynamics, pp. 19-33 with the quotation on p. 25.
6 Wong et al., "Preliminary Studies: Lifting Body," pp. 35-44.
7 See M. Grosser, "Building the Gossamer Albatross," Technology Review 83 (Apr. 1981): 52-63; Paul McCready, "Crossing the Channel in the Gossamer Albatross," Society of Experimental Test Pilots, Technical Review 14, No. 4 (1979): 232-43.
8 Henry R. Jex and David G. Mitchell, "Stability and Control of the Gossamer Human-Powered Aircraft by Analysis and Flight Test" (Washington, D.C.: NASA Contract Report 3627, 1982).@Arno.Nyhm – that appears to work only sometimes; I had to change it back to “#{locals[:name]}” in order to get it to work so I’d just avoid doing it the way you suggested.
So if the variable is a whole paragraph, that works a bit better, I think.Mayfran