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| Keywords: M2-F1 in flight on tow line DVIDS680085.jpg en The M2-F1 Lifting Body is seen here under tow at the Flight Research Center later redesignated the Dryden Flight Research Center Edwards California The wingless lifting-body aircraft design was initially concieved as a means of landing an aircraft horizontally after atmospheric reentry The absence of wings would make the extreme heat of re-entry less damaging to the vehicle In 1962 Flight Research Center management approved a program to build a lightweight unpowered lifting body as a prototype to flight test the wingless concept It would look like a flying bathtub and was designated the M2-F1 the M referring to manned and F referring to flight version It featured a plywood shell placed over a tubular steel frame crafted at Dryden Construction was completed in 1963 The M2-F1 project had limited goals They were to show that a piloted lifting body could be built that it could not only fly but be controlled in flight and that it could make a successful landing While the M2-F1 did prove the concept with a wooden fuselage and fixed landing gear it was far from an operational spacecraft The next step in the lifting-body development was to build a heavyweight rocket-powered vehicle that was more like an operational lifting body albeit one without the thermal protection system that would be needed for reentry into the atmosphere from space at near-orbital speeds The first flight tests of the M2-F1 were over Rogers Dry Lake at the end of a tow rope attached to a hopped-up Pontiac convertible driven at speeds up to about 120 mph These initial tests produced enough flight data about the M2-F1 to proceed with flights behind a NASA C-47 tow plane at greater altitudes The C-47 took the craft to an altitude of 12 000 where free flights back to Rogers Dry Lake began Pilot for the first series of flights of the M2-F1 was NASA research pilot Milt Thompson Typical glide flights with the M2-F1 lasted about two minutes and reached speeds of 110 to l20 mph More than 400 ground tows and 77 aircraft tow flights were carried out with the M2-F1 The success of Dryden's M2-F1 program led to NASA's development and construction of two heavyweight lifting bodies based on studies at NASA's Ames and Langley research centers--the M2-F2 and the HL-10 both built by the Northrop Corporation and the U S Air Force's X-24 program The Lifting Body program also heavily influenced the Space Shuttle program The M2-F1 program demonstrated the feasibility of the lifting body concept for horizontal landings of atmospheric entry vehicles It also demonstrated a procurement and management concept for prototype flight test vehicles that produced rapid results at very low cost approximately 50 000 excluding salaries of government employees assigned to the project NASA Identifier NIX_ECN-408 2009-12-10 Glenn Research Center https //www dvidshub net/image/680085 680085 2012-10-10 10 00 WASHINGTON DC US PD-USGov NASA M2-F1 Images from DoD uploaded by Fæ | ||||
