166 Sentences With "lifting body" | Random Sentence Generator

It's a "lifting body," able to take flight without wings.

The X-24 program of the 1960s and '70s led to the development of the "lifting body" design that brought the space shuttle back to Earth.

In her lecture, a video of which has been on the internet for years, she suggests that the material could become a "lifting body" with the right amount of electromagnetic static and certain RF frequency.

By the time you reach the final painting, high up under the museum's great skylight, you've been through a rich life, and had a spirit-lifting, body-lightening lesson in what abstraction can be and can do.

When you watch him in the ring, it seems at moments like his movements were imprecise, arms dangling like wind chimes, exhausted, staggering, bent backward at the waist, like lifting body parts was too tiresome a task to invest in completely.

Gentry made his 30th and final lifting body flight in the M2-F3 on February 9, 1971. He was the only lifting body pilot to fly five different vehicles in the program. While working on the lifting body program, Gentry earned a master's degree in aerospace systems management from the University of Southern California.

The lifting body was conceived as long ago as 1917, when it was described in a patent by Roy Scroggs.US patent 1,250,033. However at low airspeeds the lifting body is inefficient and did not enter mainstream airplane design. Aerospace-related lifting body research arose from the idea of spacecraft re-entering the Earth's atmosphere and landing much like a regular aircraft.

Orbital Sciences proposed a commercial lifting-body spaceplane in 2010. The Prometheus is more fully described below.

Capt Gentry by M2-F2 in 1966 Gentry's most notable contributions to flight test occurred when he was assigned to the lifting body research program in 1965. The lifting body program, operated jointly by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Air Force, performed the initial manned tests to evaluate the feasibility of landing a wingless spacecraft on a pre-determined runway. Gentry was the eighth pilot assigned to the lifting body program and made his first air-towed flight in the NASA M2-F1 on July 16, 1965. He transitioned to the heavyweight Northrop M2-F2 lifting body which he first flew on October 12, 1966 in an unpowered mission air-dropped from a B-52 Stratofortress.

Tow release was at . The lifting body descended at an average rate of about 3,600 feet per minute (1,100 m/min). At above the ground, the nose was lowered to increase speed to about , flare was at from a 20° dive. The landing was smooth, and the lifting-body program was on its way.

To pick up the opponent by his mawashi from behind and throw him down on the dohyō (rear lifting body slam).

While wrestlers face each other, to pick up the opponent by his mawashi and slam him onto the dohyō (lifting body slam).

Given the Russian Space Agency's preference for Energia's lifting body proposal this part of the article concentrates entirely on Energia's design for Kliper.

The lander had a tub-shaped lifting body with winglets, and was one of the first detailed designs for Mars lander although it would not be able to fly in the revised figures for the Mars atmospheric conditions. The Aeronutronic Mars lifting-body lander design was based on Mars atmosphere of mostly nitrogen about 10% of Earth. The July 1965 marked a shift away from lifting body and winged glider style Mars landers to ballistic entry gumdrop style landers. In the 1970s the Mini-Sniffer aircraft were made in several versions so it could also operate in an all- environment.

X-15 pilots (Dana: far right) From 1960 through 1962 he was a pilot astronaut in the U.S. Air Force X-20 Dyna-Soar program. That program was canceled before the vehicle flew, but Dana later tested several other lifting-body space vehicle projects. He made one of the earliest flights in the plywood M2-F1, and flew the HL-10, the M2-F3, and the X-24B. He made the highest-ever flight in a lifting body, to 90,303 feet, in the HL-10. He also made the final powered flight of a lifting body, in the X-24B (1975).

Dale Reed with model of NASA M2-F1 lifting body prototype in front of full- size aircraft. Robert Dale Reed (February 20, 1930 - March 18, 2005) was an aerospace engineer who pioneered lifting body aircraft and remotely piloted research aircraft programs at Dryden Flight Research Center in 1953. Reed is also known for conducting aerodynamic loads research on the X-1E, X-5, F-100, and D-558-II aircraft. Reed retired in 1985, but returned as a contract aerospace engineer to work on the X-33, X-36 and X-38 research vehicles, two of which featured lifting body configurations.

Eugen Sänger (22 September 1905 – 10 February 1964) was an Austrian aerospace engineer best known for his contributions to lifting body and ramjet technology.

Vincent Justus Burnelli (November 22, 1895 - June 22, 1964) was an American aeronautics engineer, instrumental in furthering the lifting body and flying wing concept.

The wingless, lifting-body aircraft design was initially conceived as a means of landing a spacecraft horizontally after atmospheric reentry. The absence of wings would make the extreme heat of reentry less damaging to the vehicle. Rather than using a ballistic reentry trajectory like a Command Module, very limited in manoeuvering range, a lifting-body vehicle had a landing footprint of the size of California.

Wainfan Facetmobile FMX-4 homebuilt lifting-body aircraft, photographed from above in flight Lifting bodies have appeared in some science fiction works, including the movie Marooned, and as John Crichton's spacecraft Farscape-1 in the TV series Farscape. The Discovery Channel TV series conjectured using lifting bodies to deliver a probe to a distant earth-like planet in the computer animated Alien Planet. Gerry Anderson's 1969 Doppelgänger used a VTOL lifting body lander / ascender to visit an Earth-like planet, only to crash in both attempts. His series UFO featured a lifting body craft visually similar to the M2-F2 for orbital operations ("The Man Who Came Back").

These requirements were further exacerbated by military requirements (the USAF would use the future shuttle for defense satellite payloads and other missions) that extended the Shuttle's flight landing envelope. Although a lifting body configuration would not have been vulnerable to the wing leading edge failure that caused the second shuttle loss, such a configuration could not meet the flight envelope requirements of both NASA and the military. Nonetheless, the lifting body concept has been implemented in a number of other aerospace programs, the previously mentioned NASA X-38, Lockheed Martin X-33, BAC's Multi Unit Space Transport And Recovery Device, Europe's EADS Phoenix, and the joint Russian-European Kliper spacecraft. Of the three basic design shapes usually analyzed for such programs (capsule, lifting body, aircraft) the lifting body may offer the best trade-off in terms of maneuverability and thermodynamics while meeting its customers' mission requirements.

Thompson (right) with NASA astronaut Gus Grissom and the NASA Paresev M2-F2 Lifting Body Thompson was hired as an engineer at the flight research facility on 19 March 1956, when it was still under the auspices of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). He became a research pilot in January 1958. On 16 August 1963, Thompson became the first person to fly a lifting body, the lightweight NASA M2-F1. The plywood and steel-tubing prototype was flown as a glider after being released from an R4D tow plane. He flew it a total of 47 times, and also made the first five flights of the all-metal Northrop M2-F2 lifting body, beginning 12 July 1966.

The Prometheus design was based on an earlier NASA design, the HL-20 Personnel Launch System. Prometheus also included other NASA-funded design improvements to HL-20 by Orbital Sciences that were done some years ago as part of NASA's Orbital Space Plane program. Whereas the HL-20 was a pure lifting body, the Prometheus design was for a Blended Lifting Body (BLB). This design combines volumetric efficiency with superior aerodynamic qualities.

For his contributions to the lifting body program, Dana received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal. In 1976 he received the Haley Space Flight Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) for his research work on the M2-F3 lifting body control systems. A member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, Dana is the author of several technical papers. In 1993, he was inducted into the Aerospace Walk of Honor.

Wax model Predating and influencing the design of the Space Shuttle, several lifting-body craft, including M2-F2, M2-F3, HL-10, X-24A, and X-24B, were flown by test pilots from 1966 through 1975. The M2-F2 and the HL-10 were proposed in the 1960s to carry 12 people to a space station following launch on a Saturn IB. The HL-20 PLS concept was evolved from these early shapes, being further influenced by the Russian MiG-105 and especially BOR-4. The "HL" designation stands for horizontal lander, and "20" reflects Langley's long-term involvement with the lifting-body concept, which included the Northrop HL-10. A lifting-body spacecraft would have several advantages over other shapes.

He was the pilot on the final (199th) flight of the 10-year program. In the late 1960s and in the 1970s, Dana was a project pilot on the manned lifting body program, which flew several versions of the wingless vehicles and produced data that helped in development of the Space Shuttle. He completed one NASA M2-F1, nine Northrop HL-10, nineteen Northrop M2-F3 and two Martin Marietta X-24B flights, for a total of 31 lifting body missions.

Once in Earth orbit, it was planned that a robotic extraction arm would remove the HL-10 from the rocket's third stage and place it adjacent to the crewed Apollo CSM spacecraft. One of the astronauts would then spacewalk from the Apollo and board the lifting body to perform a pre-reentry check on its systems. It was planned that there would be two flights in this program. In the first, the lifting body pilot would return to the Apollo and send the HL-10 back to earth uncrewed.

Starting 1965 the Russian lifting-body Mikoyan- Gurevich MiG-105 or EPOS (Russian acronym for Experimental Passenger Orbital Aircraft) was developed and several test flights made. Work ended in 1978 when the efforts shifted to the Buran program, while work on another small-scale spacecraft partly continued in the Bor program. The IXV is a European Space Agency lifting body experimental re-entry vehicle intended to validate European reusable launchers which could be evaluated in the frame of the FLPP program. The IXV made its first flight in February 2015, launched by a Vega rocket.

A ducted propfan engine with contra- rotating fans, the NK-92 was also a powerplant option on versions of the Ilyushin Il-90 and Ilyushin Il-96 widebody passenger airliners and the EKIP "flying saucer" lifting body aircraft.

Rendering of Prometheus in orbit Prometheus was a proposed crewed vertical- takeoff, horizontal-landing (VTHL) lifting body spaceplane concept put forward by Orbital Sciences Corporation in late 2010 as part of the second phase of NASA's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program.

However, the rocket engine failed shortly after launch resulting in an emergency landing on Rosamond Dry Lake. On April 17, 1969, Gentry flew the first, unpowered, glide-flight of the Martin-Marietta X-24A—a short teardrop shaped lifting body.

The Burnelli RB-1, often known as the Remington-Burnelli Airliner, was an American passenger biplane from 1920, designed by Vincent Burnelli.Taylor 1989, p.225 It incorporated Burnelli's lifting-body design. Following several more conventional designs during the WWI years, Burnelli came up with the idea of a lifting body: an airfoil-shaped fuselage that could be used to generate up to 50% of the lift, improving performance, due to reduced wing area and fuel consumption. The RB-1's body contributed about 27% of the total lifting area and was designed to support about 15% of its weight.

NASA based its Martin Marietta X-24B test aircraft on the FDL-7 lifting body, and valued the added range and stability of the sleek, sharp-nosed design. FDL-7's lifting body design was projected to be able to give the Silver Dart about twice the lift coefficient of NASA's space shuttles at subsonic speeds. The design was expected to have a higher glide and cross range than the Shuttle Orbiter, since it was designed with a 4,000 mile cross range. The ship was intended to use a metal skin that would be more resistant to weather conditions than the Space Shuttle.

X-24 was built as part of a 1963 to 1975 experimental US military program. A lifting body is a configuration in which the body itself produces lift. In contrast to a flying wing, which is a wing with minimal or no conventional fuselage, a lifting body can be thought of as a fuselage with little or no conventional wing. Whereas a flying wing seeks to maximize cruise efficiency at subsonic speeds by eliminating non-lifting surfaces, lifting bodies generally minimize the drag and structure of a wing for subsonic, supersonic, and hypersonic flight, or, spacecraft re-entry.

The beginning of space and the ending of the air is considered as 100 km above the ground according to the physical explanation that the air pressure is too low for a lifting body to generate meaningful lift force without exceeding orbital velocity.

Early flight testing of the M2-F1 and M2-F2 lifting body reentry configurations had validated the concept of piloted lifting body reentry from space. When the M2-F2 crashed on May 10, 1967, valuable information had already been obtained and was contributing to new designs. NASA pilots said the M2-F2 had lateral control problems, so when the M2-F2 was rebuilt at Northrop and redesignated the M2-F3, it was modified with an additional third vertical fin - centered between the tip fins - to improve control characteristics. After a three-year-long redesign and rebuilding effort, the M2-F3 was ready to fly.

X-24 was built as part of a 1963–1975 experimental US military program A lifting body is a configuration in which the body itself produces lift. In contrast to a flying wing, which is a wing with minimal or no conventional fuselage, a lifting body can be thought of as a fuselage with little or no conventional wing. Whereas a flying wing seeks to maximize cruise efficiency at subsonic speeds by eliminating non-lifting surfaces, lifting bodies generally minimize the drag and structure of a wing for subsonic, supersonic, and hypersonic flight, or, spacecraft re-entry. All of these flight regimes pose challenges for proper flight stability.

Martin–Marietta X-24B The Air Vehicles Directorate, located at Wright- Patterson AFB, has the mission of developing technologies that support cost- effective and survivable aerospace vehicles capable of accurate and quick delivery of a variety of future weapons or cargo anywhere. The current Director is Col Michael Hatfield. The Directorate has previously collaborated with NASA in the X-24 project to research concepts associated with lifting body type aircraft. The X-24 was one of a series of experimental aircraft, including the M2-F1, M2-F2, HL-10, and HL-20, by NASA and Air Force programs to develop the lifting body concept into maturity.

Jerauld Richard "Jerry" Gentry (May 16, 1935 – March 3, 2003) was a United States Air Force (USAF) test pilot and Vietnam combat veteran. As chief USAF pilot of the Lifting Body Research Program, he helped validate the concept of flying a wingless vehicle back to Earth from space and landing it like an aircraft—an approach used by the Space Shuttle and to a greater degree by vehicles such as the Lockheed Martin X-33 and NASA X-38. Gentry completed thirty lifting body flights including the first flight of the Martin-Marietta X-24A and the second flight of the Northrop HL-10.

The Horus probes are used for the surface operations of the Darwin IV expedition. The Von Braun carries three probes. Each probe is essentially identical with the exception of their behavior and external color. Each probe is carried to the surface in a lifting body lander.

The M2-F1 was soon nicknamed the "Flying Bathtub". In 1963, NASA began programs with heavier rocket-powered lifting-body vehicles to be air launched from under the starboard wing of a NB-52B, a derivative of the B-52 jet bomber. The first flights started in 1966.

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 Northrop M2-F2 and the Northrop 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 research vehicles that produced rapid results at very low cost (approximately US$50,000, excluding salaries of government employees assigned to the project).

The proposed Silver Dart spacecraft. Based on the FDL-7, a lifting body aircraft designed for near earth orbital flight by the US Airforce Flight Dynamics Laboratory, the Silver Dart was a lifting body concept designed to glide from hypersonic speeds of Mach 22 down to landing. The goal was to develop an orbital space craft/hypersonic glider capable of carrying around eight passengers. The spacecraft was expected to launch vertically atop a two-stage-plus-boosters rocket, propelled at takeoff by 28 Canadian Arrow rocket engines (slightly updated replicas of the German V-2 engine) and land horizontally on an aircraft runway, in an arrangement reminiscent of the Dynasoar project by NASA.

The aerodynamic approach is similar to that of a lifting body aircraft, although the airspeeds involved are much lower. Attainable dynamic-lift-to-drag ratios are significantly below those of efficient fixed wings, in part because induced drag increases with decreasing aspect ratio.Crichner and Nicolai; "Hybrids - The Airship Messiah?" Lockheed.

Drag curve for a lifting body in steady flight Parasitic drag is drag that acts on an object when the object is moving through a fluid. In the case of aerodynamic drag, the fluid is the atmosphere. Parasitic drag is a combination of form drag and skin friction drag.Clancy, L.J. (1975).

Continental Aircraft Corporation was an American aircraft manufacturer based in Amityville, New York. The company also maintained offices at 120 Liberty Street, in New York. Continental's chief engineer was Vincent Burnelli, a future advocate of lifting body aircraft. The company built the Christmas Bullet scout aircraft for the Cantilever Aero Company.

Retrieved: August 1, 2011. The vehicle was a lifting body design, where the body of the aircraft provides a significant amount of lift for flight, rather than relying on wings. The aircraft weighed roughly . The X-43A was designed to be fully controllable in high-speed flight, even when gliding without propulsion.

Closeup of rear of LASRE pod LASRE cold test dumping water after first in- flight cold flow test - 4 March 1998 Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment (LASRE) ground cold flow test. LASRE was NASA's Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment which took place at the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, California, until November 1998. The experiment sought to provide flight data to help Lockheed Martin validate and tune the computational predictive tools used to determine the aerodynamic performance of the Lockheed Martin X-33 lifting body and linear aerospike engine combination and to lay groundwork for a future reusable launch vehicle. LASRE was a small, half-span model of the X-33's lifting body with eight thrust cells of an aerospike engine, rotated 90 degrees and mounted on the back of a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird aircraft, to operate like a kind of "flying wind tunnel." The experiment focused on determining how a reusable launch vehicle's engine plume would affect the aerodynamics of its lifting body shape at specific altitudes and speeds reaching about 750 miles/hour (335 meter/second or 1207 km/h).

By May 1967, he had made five unpowered flights in the M2-F2 to define the vehicle's aerodynamic characteristics in preparation for upcoming rocket-powered supersonic flights. M2-F2 testing ended prematurely when the vehicle crashed on May 10, 1967 severely injuring fellow lifting body test pilot, Bruce Peterson. Major Gentry by HL-10 in 1968 Gentry transitioned to another heavyweight lifting body, the Northrop HL-10, and made the second flight of this vehicle on March 15, 1968. The HL-10 had just returned to flying status after nearly sixteen months of modifications to correct handling deficiencies. Gentry confirmed that the modifications were successful and reestablished confidence in the HL-10. On October 23, 1968, Gentry attempted the first powered flight in the HL-10.

The M2-F1 was flown until August 16, 1966. It proved the lifting-body concept and led the way for subsequent metal "heavyweight" designs. Chuck Yeager, Bruce Peterson and Donald L. Mallick also flew the M2-F1. More than 400 ground tows and 77 aircraft tow flights were carried out with the M2-F1.

Following the jettison of the DPS, the X-38 would have glided from orbit and used a steerable parafoil for its final descent and landing. The high speeds at which lifting body aircraft operate can make them challenging to land. The parafoil would have been used to slow the vehicle and make landing easier.

All three designs employed a mission module cabin separate from the command module (piloting and re-entry cabin), and a propulsion and equipment module. Martin studied three different reentry module shapes, including a conical capsule vehicle similar to the STG configuration. GE also studied several reentry module shapes. GD/Convair's proposal employed a lifting body shape.

Retrieved: March 26, 2013. Some experimental aircraft designed for airborne launches, such as the Northrop HL-10, have made both unpowered drop tests and powered drop launches. Prior to powered flights using its rocket engine, the HL-10 made 11 unpowered drop flights in order to study the handling qualities and stability of the lifting body in flight.

NASA HL-20 web site Of all the options, a lifting body presents the most ideal medical environment in terms of controlled environment as well as low g-loading during reentry and landing. However, the price tag for the HL-20 project was US$2 billion, and Congress cut the program from NASA's budget in 1990.

In July 2009, he defeated Harumafuji by an "inner thigh throw" or yaguranage, a technique not seen in the top division since 1975. His trademark, however, was tsuriotoshi, or "lifting body slam", a feat of tremendous strength normally only used on much smaller and weaker opponents. In 2004, Asashōryū twice dumped the Kotomitsuki using this technique.

The Dream Chaser is a crewed suborbital and orbital vertical-takeoff, horizontal-landing (VTHL) lifting-body spaceplane being developed by Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC). The Dream Chaser design is planned to carry up to seven people to and from low-Earth orbit. The vehicle would launch vertically on an Atlas V and land horizontally on conventional runways.

It is assembled hours prior to launch and consists of 5 parts: The MEV (Martian Exploration Vehicle), the main fuselage, Lifting Body 1 and 2, two wing-like structures loaded with thruster packs and also incorporate landing gear at the ends, and the reflective Nose Cone, which is a large metallic nose which attaches to the MEV.

The Dream Chaser Cargo System will fly cargo resupply missions to the ISS under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services-2 program. This system features the Shooting Star, an expendable cargo module with solar panels, and the Dream Chaser, a reusable lifting body capable of returning 1,750 kg (3,860 lb) of pressurized cargo to Earth while undergoing maximum re-entry forces of 1.5g. The Dream Chaser design is derived from NASA's HL-20 Personnel Launch System spaceplane concept from the 1990s, which in turn is descended from over 20,000 hours and six decades of experimental lifting body vehicles, including the X-20 Dyna-Soar, Northrop M2-F2, Northrop M2-F3, Northrop HL-10, Martin X-24A and X-24B, and Martin X-23 PRIME. The vehicle to be used in SNC Demo-1 is named Tenacity.

He also memorably defeated newcomer Gōeidō with a spectacular technique known as okuritsuriotoshi or "rear lifting body slam."this technique is illustrated here . He finished with a 10–5 score and won his first shukun-shō or Outstanding Performance award. He picked up his second Outstanding Performance award in November with another defeat of Hakuhō, and earned promotion back to sekiwake.

Induced drag vs. liftClancy, L.J. (1975) Aerodynamics Fig 5.24. Pitman Publishing Limited, London. Hurt, H. H. (1965) Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators, Figure 1.30, NAVWEPS 00-80T-80 Lift- induced drag (also called induced drag) is drag which occurs as the result of the creation of lift on a three-dimensional lifting body, such as the wing or fuselage of an airplane.

The Crew Exploration Vehicle program was based on four groups of concepts considered for the physical design of the space plane itself — or the vehicle architecture: a capsule, a lifting body, a sharp body with wings and a blunt body with wings. After the Columbia accident investigation, the capsule design with a separate escape system was considered the optimal design for crew safety.

The Verticraft Verticar of 1961 was a similar single-fan, directed-thrust, all-wing (or lifting body) aircraft, of conventional but very low-aspect-ratio wing planform. It failed to fly. A tandem-fan version was proposed but never built.Retro Mechanix (retrieved 11 March 2014 ) By contrast the Ryan XV-5 Vertifan of 1964 was an otherwise conventional delta-wing jet.

Newcastle, Washington: Aviation Supplies & Academics, 1997. . p. 224. This contrasts with a flying wing, which has no distinct fuselage, and a lifting body, which has no distinct wings. A BWB design may or may not be tailless. The main advantage of the BWB is to reduce wetted area and the accompanying form drag associated with a conventional wing-body junction.

Subtle movements of the wings were able to induce the small deflections which controlled the direction of flight, while trim was maintained by adjusting the angle of sweep to compensate for the varying position of the centre of lift at different speeds.Wood, 1975.Morpurgo, 1981. For supersonic flight a delta-planform lifting body is more suitable than a simple ichthyoid.

With affordability in mind, the Space Rider spaceplane is be based on technologies developed and tested on the IXV. The Space Rider is also a lifting body without wings or vertical fins. For landing, it will deploy a parasail and land on a field. Conceptual Design of the Descent Subsystem for the Safe Atmospheric Re-Entry Flight of Space Rider.

The HL-20 Personnel Launch System is a NASA spaceplane concept for crewed orbital missions studied by NASA's Langley Research Center around 1990. It was envisaged as a lifting body re-entry vehicle similar to the Soviet BOR-4 spaceplane design. Its stated goals were to achieve low operational costs, improved flight safety, and a possibility of landing on conventional runways. No flight hardware was built.

Non-axisymmetric shapes have been used for manned entry vehicles. One example is the winged orbit vehicle that uses a delta wing for maneuvering during descent much like a conventional glider. This approach has been used by the American Space Shuttle and the Soviet Buran. The lifting body is another entry vehicle geometry and was used with the X-23 PRIME (Precision Recovery Including Maneuvering Entry) vehicle.

Nedivi managed to bring his F-15 to a complete stop approximately from the end of the runway. He was later quoted as saying "(I) probably would have ejected if I knew what had happened." However, he also stated that above a certain speed, the F-15 acted "like a rocket" and did not need wings, effectively becoming something similar to a lifting body.

The experiment itself was a small, half-span model of a lifting body shape. The model contained eight thrust cells of an aerospike engine and was mounted on a housing known as the "canoe," which contained the gaseous hydrogen, helium, and instrumentation gear. The model, engine, and canoe together were called the "pod." The entire pod was 41 feet in length and weighed 14,300 lb.

It also flew missions for the X-24, HiMAT, Lifting Body vehicles, X-43, early launches of the OSC Pegasus rocket, and numerous other programs. At its retirement on 17 December 2004, Balls 8 was the oldest active B-52 in service, and the only active B-52 that was not an H model. It also had the lowest total airframe time of any operational B-52.

Another use of a lifting body is SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket's first stage. During landing attempts, the first stage deploys grid fins which steer lift produced by the cylindrical body of the first stage. According to SpaceX, the grid fins can tilt the first stage to approximately twenty degrees to generate lift and steer the stage towards a floating landing platform or ground landing pad.

The KB-1 was Burnelli's second production aircraft after his Burnelli-Carisi Biplane. Burnelli's KB-1 tandem pusher biplane was a somewhat conventional design compared to his future lifting-body designs. The aircraft, developed for a U.S. Air Service reconnaissance contact was not awarded a production contract despite successful demonstration flights by test pilot Bert Acosta over New York at temperatures as low as −11 °F.

These efforts proved successful, and he left his position at Farnborough to emigrate to the United States. At Martin, he assisted in the design of the XB-51 medium bomber, the design of which reflected his work in swept wing design and T-tail aerodynamics, and by 1963, he had been promoted to the position of chief scientist at Martin. In this position, as part of a U.S. Air Force contract for the development of a full- scale model of a high-volume lifting body design for manned spaceflight, he developed the "SV-5" aircraft. The SV-5, the centerpiece of the START (Spacecraft Technology and Advanced Reentry Tests) project, was promoted by Multhopp as superior to NASA's M2 and HL-10 lifting body shapes, having a better lift-to-drag ratio and greater re-entry cross-range capability, along with better aerodynamics and improved design efficiency.

It made 55 flights in support of short programs, chase on X-15 missions and lifting body flights. The F-4 also supported a biomedical monitoring program involving 1,000 flights by NASA Flight Research Center aerospace research pilots and students of the USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School flying high-performance aircraft. The pilots were instrumented to record accurate and reliable data of electrocardiogram, respiration rate, and normal acceleration.

All three ramjets would fire for "boost", after which the rear portion would fall away. The unmanned booster could also be used as a weapon, if armed. For Project Gusto, the concept had been simplified and reduced to a single aircraft. Code-named FISH or First Invisible Super Hustler, the aircraft was based on a lifting body design that bears some resemblance to the ASSET spacecraft of a few years later.

The DLR Smartfish Smartfish is a proposed two seat experimental aircraft design by Konrad Schafroth which uses a lifting body configuration. There are a few working model examples of the Smartfish. A fuel cell-powered model has been built in collaboration with German Aerospace Center (DLR) and, according to the factory, flew in April 2007. Unlike most aircraft designs, the Smartfish is modeled after the Tuna species of fish.

Alien Planet starts out with an interstellar spacecraft named Von Braun, leaving Earth's orbit. Traveling at 20% the speed of light (37,000 miles/s), it reaches Darwin IV in 42 years. Upon reaching orbit, it deploys the Darwin Reconnaissance Orbiter, which looks for potential landing sites for the probes. The first probe, Balboa, explodes along with its lifting body transport during entry, because one of its wings failed to unfold.

The experiment, mounted on the back of an SR-71 Blackbird aircraft, operated like a kind of "flying wind tunnel." The experiment focused on determining how a reusable launch vehicle's engine plume would affect the aerodynamics of its lifting-body shape at specific altitudes and speeds reaching approximately . The interaction of the aerodynamic flow with the engine plume could create drag; design refinements look to minimize that interaction.

The lifting-body concept originated in the mid-1950s at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics' Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, Mountain View, California. By February 1962, a series of possible shapes had been developed, and R. Dale Reed was working to gain support for a research vehicle. The construction of the M2-F1 was a joint effort by Dryden and a local glider manufacturer, the Briegleb Glider Company. The budget was US$30,000.

He began flying X-15s on 29 October 1963, only 74 days after his first Lifting Body flight. He flew the aircraft 14 times during the following two years, reaching a maximum speed of 3,712 mph (Mach 5.48) and a peak altitude of 214,100 feet on separate flights. The X-15 program provided a wealth of data on aerodynamics, thermodynamics, propulsion, flight controls, and the physiological aspects of high-speed, high-altitude flight.

NASA envisioned a four-phase program of development for the STS. "Phase A" was a series of initial studies to select an overall technology path, and development contracts for proposals were released in 1968 with the proposals expected back in the fall of 1969. A number of designs were presented from a variety of industry partners. Almost universally, the designs were small, fully reusable, and based around delta wing or lifting body spaceplanes.

As Zero-X re-enters Earth's atmosphere on 2 September, a lifting body fails to connect with the spacecraft and damages various systems, including flight control and the escape pod circuit. With the astronauts unable to eject and Zero-X set to impact Craigsville, Florida,Craigsville is located in Florida (Archer and Nicholls, p. 116; Archer and Hearn, p. 140) and background shots filmed in Portugal for the climax are intended to represent that area.

After an extensive hospitalization, he recovered from his injuries but lost sight in one eye due to a secondary infection while in the hospital. He also made 17 NASA M2-F1, 2 other M2-F2 and 1 Northrop HL-10 lifting body flights. Portions of M2-F2 footage including Peterson's spectacular crash landing were used for the 1973 TV movie and subsequent series, The Six Million Dollar Man during the opening credits of every episode.

Designer John Dyke said his inspiration for the aircraft came from Alexander Lippisch's delta designs, specifically the LP-6 glider and later the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger. The double delta layout of the Saab 35 Draken was incorporated into the design. A lifting body fuselage was incorporated after tests. For research into the proposed layout, Dyke built models mounted on the front of his car and flew radio-controlled models to determine aerodynamic qualities.

That is why the DASS engine will be integrated into a lifting-body vehicle. For an SSTO vehicle, reduced vehicle mass and increased payload mass fraction translates to lower operation costs. For transport, the ability to travel at hypersonic speeds drastically decreases the time required to cover long distances. The altitude at which hypersonic cruise vehicles operate is usually much higher than conventional transporters (30 km for A2 vs 13.1 km for A380).

The dialogue spoken by actor Lee Majors during the opening credits is based upon communication prior to the M2-F2 crash that occurred on May 10, 1967: ("Flight com, I can't hold her! She's breaking up! She's break—"). Test pilot Bruce Peterson's lifting body aircraft hit the ground at approximately and tumbled six times, but survived what appeared to be a fatal accident, though he later lost an eye due to infection.

The Dream Chaser spacecraft is based on the HL-20 lifting-body design. It was developed by SpaceDev for the 2004 Commercial Orbital Transportation Services competition and was being developed by Sierra Nevada Corporation for the Commercial Crew Development program (CCDev).Frank Morring Jr., Sierra Nevada Pushing Ahead with Dream Chaser, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 1 October 2012. The crewed Dream Chaser was not selected by NASA for the final phase of development of commercial crew (CCtCap).

Better understanding of the hypersonic lift process also led to the lifting body designs of the 1960s. McDonnell Aircraft proposed a development of the Alpha Draco concept for the USAF requirement that evolved into the Minuteman missile program, but the boost-glide concept was considered too immature for operational development.Brulle 2008, p. 106. To be on the safe side, Minuteman silos were built deeper than required in case a boost- glide weapon would be fitted in the future.

The design was a significant one, as it incorporated new rocket technology and the principle of the lifting body, foreshadowing future development of winged spacecraft such as the X-20 Dyna-Soar of the 1960s and the Space Shuttle of the 1970s. In the end, it was considered too complex and expensive to produce. The design never went beyond mock-up test. The Silbervogel was intended to fly long distances in a series of short hops.

This provided both seating and lounge space. At the rear of the cabin there was a small kitchen and toilets. The pilots sat in open cockpits placed at the wing leading edge.Flight, 1929_03_28 Earlier Burnelli lifting body designs had fuselages which were rectangular in plan, with the empennage directly attached, but the CB-16's fuselage tapered and the tail unit was mounted beyond the lifting body's trailing edge on a pair of thin panels extending from its sides.

Accessed: 15 November 2018. On 11 February 2015, the IXV conducted its first 100-minute space flight, successfully completing its mission upon landing intact on the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The vehicle is the first ever lifting body to perform full atmospheric reentry from orbital speed. Past missions have flight tested either winged bodies, which are highly controllable but also very complex and costly, or capsules, which are difficult to control but offer less complexity and lower cost.

Wooden CBY-3 wind-tunnel test model The CBY-3 "lifting fuselage" was an evolution of the earlier Burnelli UB-14. Burnelli worked as a designer at Canadian Car and Foundry (CanCar) in Montreal, and the CBY-3 was intended for bush operations in northern Canada. The sole prototype was extensively tested but failed to gain a production contract. Burnelli had a lifelong career devoted to exploiting the advantages of the lifting body airfoil concept that characterized many of his earlier aircraft designs.

The S-11 was conceived as a unique single seat sport aircraft, based on the lifting body concept pioneered by NASA in the 1960s. The aircraft design derives 80% of its lift from the aircraft fuselage and associated strakes and only 20% from its straight wings. The Pursuit is a straked, low wing single or dual seat aircraft with tricycle landing gear and dual rudders. It is made from a welded steel fuselage with aluminum ribs and a composite shell.

In May 1983, two Israeli Air Force aircraft, an F-15 Eagle and an A-4 Skyhawk, collided in mid-air during a training exercise over the Negev region, in Israel. Notably, the F-15, (with a crew of two), managed to land safely at a nearby airbase, despite having its right wing almost completely sheared off in the collision. The lifting body properties of the F-15, together with its overabundant engine thrust, allowed the pilot to achieve this unique feat.

A modern Skunk Works project leverages an older: LASRE atop an SR-71 Blackbird. LASRE was a NASA experiment in cooperation with Lockheed Martin to study a reusable launch vehicle design based on a linear aerospike rocket engine. The experiment's goal was to provide in-flight data to help Lockheed Martin validate the computational predictive tools they developed to design the craft. LASRE was a small, half-span model of a lifting body with eight thrust cells of an aerospike engine.

The HAV 304 dynastat, seen bow-on A hybrid airship is a powered aircraft that obtains some of its lift as a lighter-than-air (LTA) airship and some from aerodynamic lift as a heavier-than-air aerodyne. A dynastat is a hybrid airship with fixed wings and/or a lifting body and is typically intended for long-endurance flights. It requires forward flight to create the aerodynamic lift component. A rotastat is a hybrid airship with rotary wings and is typically intended for heavy lift applications.

The hybrid airship combines the airship's aerostatic lift, from a lighter-than-air gas such as helium, with the heavier-than-air craft's dynamic lift from movement through the air. Such a hybrid craft is still heavier than air, which makes it similar in some ways to a conventional aircraft. The dynamic lift may be provided by helicopter-like rotary wings (the rotastat), or a lift-producing shape similar to a lifting body combined with horizontal thrust (the dynastat), or a combination of the two.Khouty (2012).

Model of General Dynamics Corporation's proposed Apollo circumlunar mission design Convair/Astronautics' entry was designed primarily for lunar orbit, with flexibility and growth potential built in to accommodate lunar landing. The company estimated a total program cost of $1.25 billion over about six years. Convair selected a lifting body for the return vehicle (command module), similar to one conceived several years earlier by Alfred J. Eggers of NASA-Ames. This had an abort tower attached through launch, and nestled inside a large mission module.

Bell's experiments with tetrahedral kites had explored the advantages of utilizing great banks of cells to create a lifting body leading to the Cygnet I. On 6 December 1907, Thomas Selfridge piloted the kite as it was towed into the air behind a motorboat, eventually reaching a height of 168 ft (51 m). This was the first recorded heavier-than-air flight in Canada."The “Silver Dart” Legacy: Alexander Graham Bell’s Flying Machines of the Future~ A Chronology." Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site of Canada, 2012.

Shenzhou 1 was designed primarily to test the Long March 2F rocket. The only systems and capabilities tested on the spacecraft were the separation of the modules, attitude control, lifting body reentry, the heat shield, and ground recovery. The spacecraft is thought to have carried of seeds to investigate the effects on them of the space environment. It is also thought that the front of the Orbital module was equipped with a dummy ELINT package, with Shenzhou 2 onwards equipped with fully functional models.

The X-24 (Model SV-5P) was built by Martin Marietta and flown from Edwards AFB, California. The X-24A was the fourth lifting body design to fly; it followed the NASA M2-F1 in 1964, the Northrop HL-10 in (1966), the Northrop M2-F2 in 1966 and preceded the Northrop M2-F3 (1970). The X-24A was a fat, short teardrop shape with vertical fins for control. It made its first, unpowered, glide flight on April 17, 1969 with Air Force Maj.

Of the Dryden lifting bodies, all but the unpowered NASA M2-F1 used an XLR11 rocket engine as was used on the Bell X-1.NASA Dryden fact sheet - lifting bodies A follow-on design designated the Northrop HL-10 was developed at NASA Langley Research Center. Air flow separation caused the crash of the Northrop M2-F2 lifting body. The HL-10 attempted to solve part of this problem by angling the port and starboard vertical stabilizers outward and enlarging the center one.

Almost half of it is concerned with earlier high-speed, high- altitude flight as a means of paving the way for the Shuttle. It recites and publishes photographs of early aircraft, such as the Bell X-1, the X-15, and lifting body studies before going into a discussion of the Shuttle. This discussion focuses on the technological development of the orbiter, especially test and evaluation. A chapter is then devoted to each of the Shuttle orbiters built, dealing with their procurement, construction, test and evaluation, and mission performance.

Wade LOX and some of the LH2 fuel was carried in tanks in the fuselage, but most of the LH2 was carried in a large external tank. The tank was shaped like an upside-down V, matching the shape of the sharply swept leading-edge of the lifting body. LH2 would be drawn from this tank first, and when it was empty it would detach and be released during the ascent. It was mounted and shaped such that the airflow around the craft would pull the tank up and over the spacecraft.

Dream Chaser is under development for NASA's Commercial Resupply Services program. In December 2010, Sierra Nevada Corporation made a commercial proposal to NASA to develop the lifting-body Dream Chaser in response to NASA's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) solicitation. The vehicle would be launched on a human- rated Atlas V rocket but would land on a runway. In September 2014, the spaceplane was not retained into the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) stage of development, with contracts instead being awarded to SpaceX's Crew Dragon and Boeing's Starliner spacecraft.

Thompson was a member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, and received the organization's Iven C. Kincheloe Award as the Outstanding Experimental Test Pilot of 1966 for his research flights in the M2 lifting bodies. He also received the 1967 Octave Chanute Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) for his lifting-body research. The National Aeronautic Association named Thompson as one of its 1990 "Elder Statesman of Aviation". This distinction, given since 1955, highlights contributions "of significant value over a period of years" in the field of aeronautics.

Lifting bodies were a major area of research in the 1960s and 1970s as a means to build a small and lightweight manned spacecraft. The US built a number of famous lifting body rocket planes to test the concept, as well as several rocket-launched re-entry vehicles that were tested over the Pacific. Interest waned as the US Air Force lost interest in the manned mission, and major development ended during the Space Shuttle design process when it became clear that the highly shaped fuselages made it difficult to fit fuel tankage.

The ACES incorporates gloves on disconnecting lock rings on the wrists, liquid cooling and improved ventilation, and an extra layer of insulation. The ACES suit is analogous to the Sokol suits used for Soyuz missions and its functions are virtually the same – the primary differences being the ACES suit having a detachable helmet and survival backpack, while the Russian suit has an integrated helmet and no backpack (due to the limitations in space aboard the Soyuz, and that the spacecraft is an entry capsule, not a winged spacecraft or lifting body).

The original proposals used a lifting body spaceplane known as MURP to support crewed missions. The MURP was based on the HL-10 design already under study by North American Rockwell as part of their STS efforts. MURP was fitted on top of a cargo container and fairing, which was long overall.CR-150241, slide 2-5 In the second version of the study, Chrysler also added an option that replaced MURP with a "personnel module", based on the Apollo CSM, which was long when combined with the same cargo container.

As a follow-on to the HL-20 program, the NASA intent was to apply Administrator Dan Goldin's concept of "better, faster, cheaper" to the program. The CRV design concept incorporated three main elements: the lifting-body reentry vehicle, the international berthing/docking module, and the Deorbit Propulsion Stage. The vehicle was to be designed to accommodate up to seven crew members in a shirt-sleeve environment. Because of the need to be able to operate with incapacitated crew members, flight and landing operations were to be performed autonomously.

Data from: Miles aircraft since 1925 ;X.2 :The X.2 design was first published in Flight in 1938Flight likened it to the " Nurflügel (all- wing) aircraft visualised more than twenty years ago by the late Professor Junkers", from work begun in 1936. A projected 300 mph 38-seat transport of about 48,000 lb loaded with 1,000 mile range, it did not use a lifting body fuselage.Flight 21 April 1938 p 378Flight 1943 p 703Flight 28 April 1938 p 411 Initial design powered by four unspecified air-cooled Rolls-Royce piston engines.

The Dream Chaser Cargo System is an American reusable lifting body spaceplane being developed by Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) Space Systems. Originally intended as a crewed vehicle, the Dream Chaser Space System, to be produced after the cargo variant is operational, is capable of carrying up to seven people and cargo to and from low Earth orbit. The cargo Dream Chaser will resupply the International Space Station with both pressurized and unpressurized cargo. It will be launched vertically on the Vulcan Centaur rocket, and autonomously land horizontally on conventional runways.

"Flying wing" aircraft, such as the Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing and the Northrop B-2 Spirit bomber have no separate fuselage; instead what would be the fuselage is a thickened portion of the wing structure. Conversely, there have been a small number of aircraft designs which have no separate wing, but use the fuselage to generate lift. Examples include National Aeronautics and Space Administration's experimental lifting body designs and the Vought XF5U-1 Flying Flapjack. A blended wing body can be considered a mixture of the above.

From the late 1980s to the early 2000s NASA, in one form or another, pursued the Crew Return Vehicle; a small spaceplane / capsule capable of returning crew from a space station in the event of an emergency. Candidates evaluated included an Apollo derived capsule, NASA's HL-20, HL-10, and M2F2, and the Air Force's X-24A. A sub-scale variant of the shuttle was proposed based on the ballistic return pod that was studied for the HLLV. The pressurized crew section would be modified into a lifting body.

Kliper (Клипер, English: Clipper) was an early-2000s proposed partially- reusable crewed spacecraft concept by RSC Energia. Due to lack of funding from the ESA and RSA, the project was indefinitely postponed by 2006. Designed primarily to replace the Soyuz spacecraft, Kliper was proposed in two versions: as a pure lifting body design and as spaceplane with small wings. In either case, the craft would have been able to glide into the atmosphere at an angle that produces much less stress on the human occupants than the current Soyuz.

On return from space, Kliper's lifting body design would not only allow a smoother descent into Earth's atmosphere than the capsule design, such as Soyuz; but also permit control. RKK Energia claimed that the craft would be able to land in a predetermined one-square-kilometre area. Artistic impressions showed that the Kliper would have resembled a cylinder topped by a cone. Originally, landing proposals involved both a landing by parachute and as an alternative, in a modified version, a landing on a runway similar to an aircraft, or the Space Shuttle.

In February 2015, the European Space Agency's experimental lifting body spacecraft, the Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle, successfully conducted its first test flight. In March 2015, Ceres became the first dwarf planet to be visited by a spacecraft when Dawn entered orbit. In July 2015, New Horizons visited the Pluto-Charon system after a 9-year voyage, returning a trove of pictures and information about the former "ninth planet" (now classified as a dwarf planet). Meanwhile, the MESSENGER probe was deliberately crashed into Mercury after 4 years of in-orbit observations.

HYFLEX was an uncrewed lifting body space plane for gaining technological prowess in the design, production, and flight of hypersonic crafts, as well as technology validation of atmospheric reentry. The experimental vehicle was covered in carbon–carbon, ceramic tiles, and flexible thermal insulation, which were materials that was to be used for HOPE. Launched on 11 February 1996 (UTC) from Tanegashima Space Center by a J-I rocket, separation from the rocket was conducted at an altitude of , speed of approximately 3.8 km/s. Attitude control was performed by gas thrusters and aerodynamic rudders.

One of Roscosmos's projects that was widely covered in the media in 2005 was Kliper, a small lifting body reusable spacecraft. While Roscosmos had reached out to ESA and JAXA as well as others to share development costs of the project, it also stated that it will go forward with the project even without the support of other space agencies. This statement was backed by the approval of its budget for 2006–2015, which includes the necessary funding of Kliper. However, the Kliper program was cancelled in July 2006,www.flightglobal.

The CEV would be an Apollo-like capsule, with a Viking-type heat shield, not a lifting body or winged vehicle like the Shuttle was. It would touch down on land rather than water, similar to the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. This would be changed to splashdown only to save weight, the CST-100 Starliner would be the first US spacecraft to touchdown on land. Possible landing areas that had been identified included Edwards Air Force Base, California, Carson Flats (Carson Sink), Nevada, and the area around Moses Lake, Washington state.

On November 11, 2005 Canadian Arrow teamed up with former X-Prize competitor Romanian aerospace company, ARCASPACE, to develop privately built spacecraft. On December 15, 2005 PlanetSpace Corporation unveiled plans for an orbital commercial vehicle capable of carrying eight passengers. This vehicle to be called the Silver Dart is based on the U.S. Air Force's Flight Dynamics Laboratory-7 lifting body program from the 1970s. PlanetSpace Corporation defunct as of 6 February 2013 On June 21, 2013 Blackburn news reported that the full scale engineering mock-up of the Canadian Arrow rocket was purchased by Sarnia Ontario's Preferred Towing.

All of these flight regimes pose challenges for proper flight stability. Lifting bodies were a major area of research in the 1960s and 70s as a means to build a small and lightweight manned spacecraft. The US built several famous lifting body rocket planes to test the concept, as well as several rocket-launched re-entry vehicles that were tested over the Pacific. Interest waned as the US Air Force lost interest in the manned mission, and major development ended during the Space Shuttle design process when it became clear that the highly shaped fuselages made it difficult to fit fuel tankage.

According to a paper delivered to the Interagency Workshop on Lighter than Air Vehicles in 1974 by AEREON president William Miller, the 26's shape—dubbed an "aerobody"—was "a lifting-body [sic] of deltoid planform, elliptical cross- sections, and a fineness ratio of 4:5."Miller, p. 455. Among the advantages claimed for this hull form were proximity of the aerodynamic center, center of buoyancy, and center of gravity and a minimal need for trim-control devices, thus facilitating the transportation of "a full range of tonnages at various speeds without major trim requirements."Miller, p. 445.

The Dream Chaser was intended to launch on an Atlas V, fly a crew to the ISS, and landing horizontally following a lifting-body reentry. However, in late 2014 NASA did not select the Dream Chaser to be one of the two vehicles selected under the Commercial Crew competition. On 4 August 2011, Boeing announced that it would use the Atlas V as the initial launch vehicle for its CST-100 crew capsule. CST-100 will take NASA astronauts to the International Space Station and was also intended to service the proposed Bigelow Commercial Space Station.

Archer, p. 29. The cockpit was based on that of Concorde, a prototype of which was under construction at Filton Airfield in Bristol. A long shot of the Zero-X lifting body exploding in Earth's atmosphere was the only effects work that was filmed outdoors; the shot was mounted on a gantry at a nearby power station against the actual sky, with Cordtex explosive strips, gunpowder, naphtha, magnesium and petroleum gel used to create a "fireball" effect. The film's effects later became so well known in the industry that the crew of James Cameron's film Aliens (1986) used them for reference.

In 1917, Aeromarine was one of the few companies in the country capable of mass-producing aircraft. The United States Navy, anticipating possible involvement in World War I, and the need for trained pilots, issued one of the first major contracts for 250 aircraft to Aeromarine for its Aeromarine 39 trainer. After the war, the sell off of cheap military surplus aircraft made it very difficult for aircraft manufacturers and, in 1924, Aeromarine ceased production of aircraft and aircraft engines In 1924, Uppercu formed the Uppercu-Burnelli Airplane Co to develop lifting body aircraft designed by Vincent Burnelli. The Aeromarine aircraft patents and designs were transferred to this company.

Artwork of Apollo command module flying with the blunt end of the heat shield at a non-zero angle of attack in order to establish a lifting entry and control the landing site Reentry capsules have typically been smaller than in diameter due to launch vehicle aerodynamic requirements. The capsule design is both volumetrically efficient and structurally strong, so it is typically possible to construct small capsules of performance comparable to lifting body or spaceplane designs in all but lift-to-drag ratio for less cost. The Soyuz spacecraft is an example. Most capsules have used an ablative heat shield for reentry and been non- reusable.

SNC Demo-1, also known as Dream Chaser Demo-1, is the planned first flight of the Sierra Nevada robotic resupply spacecraft Dream Chaser to the International Space Station under the CRS-2 contract with NASA. The demonstration mission is planned for launch on 14 September 2021 on the second flight of the ULA Vulcan Centaur rocket. Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) developed a new reusable spacecraft to provide commercial cargo resupply services to the International Space Station (ISS), based on decades of lifting body programs. Under the Commercial Orbital Transportation System (COTS) program, SNC designed Dream Chaser, an advanced spacecraft, with industrial partner Lockheed Martin.

The Hyper III was designed to help in the M2 lifting body program, it had a flat bottom and sides, and a simple straight wing with no control surfaces that was designed to simulate a pop-out wing that had been proposed for a re-entry vehicle. The Hyper III had twin fins and rudders canted at 40° from the vertical, and hinged elevons on the horizontal surface. The landing gear was a fixed tricycle type, using spring steel legs from a Cessna aircraft. It was fitted with an emergency parachute system and controlled by 5-channel radio link; instrument data was downlinked using a 12-channel radio.

With the crew launched on a planned seven-month mission docked to the S-4B workshop, ground controllers, including NASA Director Charles Keith, decide to terminate the flight two months early as Lloyd begins showing signs of fatigue and deteriorating performance. The astronauts have separated from the station; now, with the Apollo main engine inoperative, they have insufficient fuel to return to the station. Pruett's friend, now named Ted Dougherty, plans a rescue mission using an experimental X-RV lifting body spacecraft, an early study for the space shuttle orbiter. The X-RV will be mounted on a Titan III-C rocket reassigned for the purpose.

The engineers at McDonnell Douglas had a hard time believing > the story of the one-winged landing: as far as their planning models were > concerned, this was an impossibility.History Channel-Heavy Metal F-15 In 2010, Orbital Sciences proposed the Prometheus "blended lifting-body" spaceplane vehicle, about one-quarter the size of the Space Shuttle, as a commercial option for carrying astronauts to low-Earth orbit under the commercial crew program. The Vertical Takeoff, Horizontal Landing (VTHL) vehicle was to have been launched on a human-rated Atlas V rocket but would land on a runway.Orbital Proposes Spaceplan for Astronauts, Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2010, accessed December 15, 2010.

The majority of X-plane testing has since taken place there. X-planes have since accomplished many aviation "firsts" including breaking speed and altitude barriers, varying wing sweep in flight, implementing exotic alloys and propulsion innovations, and many more.Miller 1983, p.9. New X-planes appeared fairly regularly for many years until the flow temporarily stopped in the early 1970s. A series of experimental hypersonic projects, including an advanced version of the Martin Marietta X-24 lifting body, were turned down. Eventually issues with the Rockwell HiMAT advanced UAV led to a manned X-plane with forward sweep, the Grumman X-29, which flew in 1984.

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. The "M" refers to "manned" and "F" refers to "flight" version. "HL" comes from "horizontal landing" and 10 is for the tenth lifting body model to be investigated by Langley. The M2-F2 made its first captive flight (attached to the B-52 carrier aircraft throughout the flight) on March 23, 1966. The first flight of the M2-F2 - which looked much like the M2-F1 - was on July 12, 1966.

Lockheed's Star Clipper was a proposed Earth-to-orbit spaceplane based on a large lifting body spacecraft and a wrap-around drop tank. Originally proposed during a USAF program in 1966, the basic Star Clipper concept lived on during the early years of the NASA Space Shuttle program, and as that project evolved, in a variety of new versions like the LS-200. Although the Star Clipper design did not progress far in the Space Transportation System (STS) program, it had an enormous effect on the emerging Space Shuttle design. The detailed study of the cost advantages of the drop tank design demonstrated a dramatic reduction in development risk, and as a result, development costs.

Although the idea can be dated to Vincent Justus Burnelli in 1921, interest was nearly non-existent until it appeared to be a solution for returning spacecraft. Traditional space capsules have little directional control while conventionally winged craft cannot handle the stresses of re-entry, whereas a lifting body combines the benefits of both. The lifting bodies use the fuselage itself to generate lift without employing the usual thin and flat wing so as to minimize the drag and structure of a wing for very high supersonic or hypersonic flight as might be experienced during the re-entry of a spacecraft. Examples of type are the Northrop HL-10 and Martin-Marietta X-24.

At the surface the MEV extends caterpillar tracks to negotiate the rocky terrain.Thunderbirds Are Go (1966), Century 21 Cinema/United Artists. The concept of a reusable first-stage lifting body (or in this case, bodies) boosting a smaller spacecraft to high altitude for more efficient use of its propulsion was in direct competition with the vertical-ascent rocket doctrine of the 1960s as a means of achieving spaceflight, and for some time lost out to it, as even the Space Shuttlewhich landed as a conventional aircraftmakes a vertical rocket-powered ascent in the "classical" manner. In more recent years Virgin Galactic have re-established the concept, providing the first private commercial suborbital spaceflights in a similarly launched vehicle.

The Addax 1 was schemed as a twin-engined, single-seat STOL fighter/ground-attack aircraft. It was to have a swept wing with blown flaps with large Leading-edge extensions, and twin tails, while the centre-section of the fuselage, known as the SSA (Self Stabilized Aerofoil), was to act as a lifting body, and was fitted with a large blown flap between the twin tail booms. Two thrust vectoring turbofan engines, (either the Rolls-Royce Spey or General Electric TF34 were suggested) were mounted on the sides of the fuselage. A heavy cannon armament was fitted under the aircraft's nose, while a large internal weapons bay and external hardpoints could carry bombs and missiles.

Soyuz TMA-6 spacecraft approaching the International Space Station - the Soyuz spacecraft would have been replaced by Kliper In February 2004 Nikolai Moiseyev, the deputy director of Russian Federal Space Agency (FSA) told journalists that the Kliper project had been included in the Russian federal space program for 2005-15. At that point he announced that if the program is implemented successfully the first launch may even take place in five years' time. Kliper had been developed since 2000 and reportedly relied heavily on research studies as well as proposals for a small Russian lifting body spacecraft from the 1990s. Externally its design was comparable to the cancelled European minishuttle Hermes or the NASA study X-38.

In the Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space computer game, a modified X-24A becomes an alternative lunar capable spacecraft that the player can choose over the Gemini or Apollo capsule. The 1970s television program The Six Million Dollar Man used footage of a lifting body aircraft, culled from actual NASA exercises, in the show's title sequence. The scenes included an HL-10's separation from its carrier plane—a modified B-52—and an M2-F2 piloted by Bruce Peterson, crashing and tumbling violently along the Edwards dry lakebed runway. The cause of the crash was attributed to the onset of Dutch roll stemming from control instability as induced by flow separation.

When NASA astronaut USAF Colonel Steve Austin is severely injured in the crash of an experimental lifting body aircraft, he is "rebuilt" in an operation that costs $6 million (equivalent to $ million in ). His right arm, both legs and left eye are replaced with "bionic" implants that enhance his strength, speed and vision far above human norms: he can run at speeds of over , and his eye has a 20:1 zoom lens and infrared capabilities, while his bionic limbs all have the equivalent power of a bulldozer. He uses his enhanced abilities to work for the OSI (Office of Scientific Intelligence) as a secret agent. Caidin's novel Cyborg was a best-seller when it was published in 1972.

Star Clipper was based around a large lifting body re-entry vehicle known as the LSC-8MX, which was based on the FDL-5LD and FDL-8H designs developed at the Air Force's Flight Dynamics Laboratory. At hypersonic speeds, during re-entry, the craft had a lift-to- drag ratio of 1.8 to 1, giving it ample maneuvering capability. In the lower atmosphere this was far too low to allow safe landings in the case of a go- around, so the Star Clipper featured small wings that rotated out of the side of the spacecraft at subsonic speeds, improving the L/D to 8.1:1. To aid landings, two jet engines extended from the top of the fuselage, giving it the ability to abort landings.

During the design of the Space Shuttle orbiter in the 1970s, engineers debated whether to design the orbiter to glide to an unpowered landing or equip the orbiter with pop-out jet engines in order to make a powered landing. While powered landing design required carrying the engines and jet fuel, adding weight and complexity to the orbiter, engineers began favoring the powered landing option. In response, NASA conducted unpowered drop tests of the X-24B to demonstrate the feasibility of landing a lifting-body aircraft in unpowered flight. In 1975, the X-24B aircraft was dropped from a Balls 8 at an altitude of above the Mojave Desert, and then ignited rocket engines to increase speed and propel it to .

Bruce Peterson with actor James Doohan (left) discussing the M2-F2 Lifting Body Milt Thompson, Don Mallick and Chuck Yeager (in the cockpit of the M2-F1) Following attending UCLA, Peterson enlisted as a naval aviation cadet and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1954. He was released from active duty three years later. Upon receiving his bachelor's degree from Cal Poly, Peterson joined NASA in August 1960 as an engineer at the Dryden Flight Research Center. After graduating from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School (Class 62C) at Edwards Air Force Base, California, and transferring to flight operations in 1962, he was assigned as one of the project pilots on the Rogallo paraglider research vehicle (Paresev) program.

He made his first Paresev research flight on March 14, 1962. He was injured when the craft crashed from a height of about 10 feet (3 m) during a ground tow flight. Always the consummate engineer, his first question after impact was, "What happened to the lateral stick forces?" As a NASA research pilot he flew a wide variety of airplanes including the F5D-1, F-100, F-104, F-111A, B-52, NT-33A Variable Stability Trainer, the wingless lifting bodies and numerous general aviation aircraft as well as several types of helicopters and sailplanes. On May 10, 1967, during the sixteenth glide flight of a lifting body Northrop M2-F2, a landing accident severely damaged the vehicle and seriously injured Peterson.

His last design, the CBY-3 was manufactured by CanCar in Montreal, but ownership reverted to Burnelli, when the CBY-3 was unable to gain a production contract. The name of the aircraft, CBY-3, was derived from the name of the three partners involved in its creation: CanCar, Burnelli and Lowell Yerex and "3" from the number of partners involved. Lowell Yerex was a New Zealander who had formed TACA – Transportes Aéreos Centroamericanos (Central American Air Transport) in Honduras in 1931, and joined the project when Burnelli convinced him that the CBY-3 could be used as both a cargo and passenger aircraft. A follow-up design in 1942 for the CC&F; B-1000, a bomber using the same lifting body principles, remained a "paper project".

In 1918, the Danish science fiction film Himmelskibet (aka A Trip to Mars) included an aerospace craft called Excelsior for a manned trip to Mars. Before the start of Mars exploration with spacecraft, the density of Mars' atmosphere was suspected to be higher than was later measured to be, leading engineers to think that winged flight would be much easier than it actually is. In his "Mars Project" ("Das Marsproject") concept, Wernher von Braun proposed winged vehicles for landing human missions on Mars. The first detailed Mars lander contracted by NASA was to Ford/Philco Aeronutronic in the early 1960s, which was for a lifting body design for the lander; this is when some of best estimates for the Mars atmosphere were significantly denser than revealed by the Mariner IV measurements in July 1965.

Induced drag consists primarily of two components: drag due to the creation of trailing vortices (vortex drag); and the presence of additional viscous drag (lift-induced viscous drag) that is not present when lift is zero. The trailing vortices in the flow-field, present in the wake of a lifting body, derive from the turbulent mixing of air from above and below the body which flows in slightly different directions as a consequence of creation of lift. With other parameters remaining the same, as the lift generated by a body increases, so does the lift-induced drag. This means that as the wing's angle of attack increases (up to a maximum called the stalling angle), the lift coefficient also increases, and so too does the lift-induced drag.

Airlander 10 in Hangar One at Cardington Airfield, January 2016 The HAV 304 / Airlander 10 is a hybrid airship, achieving lift, and thereby flight, via both aerostatic and aerodynamic forces. Unlike most airship designs, it does not have a circular cross-section, having adopted an elliptical shape with a contoured and flattened hull. This shaping is deliberate so that it acts as a lifting body, contributing aerodynamic lift while the airship is in forward motion; generating up to half of the airship's lift in a similar manner to that of a conventional fixed-wing aeroplane. Buoyancy is also provided by helium contained within the envelope, the pressure from which maintains the airship's unique shape, between 60 percent and 80 percent of the aircraft's weight is supported by the lighter-than-air helium.

The HL-20 Crew Rescue Vehicle was based on the Personnel Launch System (PLS) concept being developed by NASA as an outgrowth of earlier lifting body research. In October 1989, Rockwell International (Space Systems Division) began a year-long contracted effort managed by Langley Research Center to perform an in-depth study of PLS design and operations with the HL-20 concept as a baseline for the study. In October 1991, the Lockheed Advanced Development Company (better known as the Skunk Works) began a study to determine the feasibility of developing a prototype and operational system. A cooperative agreement between NASA, North Carolina State University and North Carolina A&T; University led to the construction of a full-scale model of the HL-20 PLS for further human factors research on this concept.

Navigator Maj. E. B. Underwood, Jr. ejects before the crash and is hospitalized in stable condition. After serving in the lifting body program as chase pilot on various Northrop M2 and X-24A flights, Love made his first X-24B flight on 4 October 1973, and piloted the plane to its fastest speed—better than 1,860 km/h—before terminating the program with a hard-surface runway landing at Edwards on 20 August 1975.Washington Star, 2 March 1976, page A-5.The Washington Post, 3 March 1976, page A-20. ;5 March: F-14a bureau number 159826 crashed at NAS Patuxent River after entering the first F-14 flat spin while conducting aileron/rudder interconnect tests. Strike Aircraft Directorate Chief Test Pilot CDR D.D. Smith and RIO LCDR Pete Angelina ejected successfully.

He was Chief Engineer and then Program Manager of the SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance system before initiating and heading the Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) and X-33 Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) Programs at Lockheed. Urie's work as the program manager for the previously classified Have Region project demonstrated that rocket- powered single-stage-to-orbit vehicles were technically feasible, which led to the Lockheed Martin SSTO design approach. As a Director of the Lockheed-Martin Skunk Works SSTO/RLV Advanced Technology Demonstration Program, Urie conceived and developed the aerospike rocket propelled lifting body that was selected by NASA as winner of the X-33 competition. He holds the patent on the design(), and he formed and headed a multi-company team encompassing all aspects of SSTO/RLV.

The crew is effectively marooned in orbit. NASA debates whether a rescue flight can reach the crew before their oxygen runs out in approximately two days. There are no backup launch vehicles or rescue systems available at Kennedy Space Center in Florida and NASA Administrator Charles Keith (Peck) opposes using an experimental U.S. Air Force lifting body, the X-RV, that would be launched on an Air Force Titan IIIC booster rocket; neither the spacecraft nor the booster is man-rated, and there is insufficient time to put a new crewed NASA mission together. Even though a Titan IIIC is already on the way to nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for an already-scheduled Air Force launch, many hundreds of hours of preparation, assembly, and testing would be necessary.

The crest of the current first (senior) class is displayed in the center position. Another display often used as a symbol of the academy, the Eagle and Fledglings Statue was given as a gift to the Academy in 1958 by the personnel of Air Training Command. It contains the inscription by Austin Dusty Miller, "Man's flight through life is sustained by the power of his knowledge." Static air- and spacecraft displays on the Academy grounds include an F-4, F-15, F-16 and F-105 on the Terrazzo; a B-52 by the North Gate; a T-38 and A-10 at the airfield; an F-100 by the preparatory school; a SV-5J lifting body next to the aeronautics laboratory; and a Minuteman III missile in front of the Fieldhouse.

The Lockheed Martin X-33 was an uncrewed, sub-scale technology demonstrator suborbital spaceplane developed in the 1990s under the U.S. government–funded Space Launch Initiative program. The X-33 was a technology demonstrator for the VentureStar orbital spaceplane, which was planned to be a next-generation, commercially operated reusable launch vehicle. The X-33 would flight-test a range of technologies that NASA believed it needed for single-stage-to-orbit reusable launch vehicles (SSTO RLVs), such as metallic thermal protection systems, composite cryogenic fuel tanks for liquid hydrogen, the aerospike engine, autonomous (uncrewed) flight control, rapid flight turn-around times through streamlined operations, and its lifting body aerodynamics. Failures of its 21-meter wingspan and multi-lobed, composite-material fuel tank during pressure testing ultimately led to the withdrawal of federal support for the program in early 2001.

Reflecting his personal interests, McPhee's subjects are highly eclectic. He has written pieces on lifting-body development (The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed), the psyche and experience of a nuclear engineer (The Curve of Binding Energy), a New Jersey wilderness area (The Pine Barrens), the United States Merchant Marine (Looking for a Ship), farmers' markets (Giving Good Weight), the movement of coal across America ("Coal Train" in Uncommon Carriers), the shifting flow of the Mississippi River ("Atchafalaya" in The Control of Nature), geology (in several books), as well as a short book entirely on the subject of oranges. One of his most widely read books, Coming into the Country, is about the Alaskan wilderness. McPhee has profiled a number of famous people, including conservationist David Brower in Encounters with the Archdruid, and the young Bill Bradley, whom McPhee followed closely during Bradley's four-year basketball career at Princeton University.

In the episode "Pilot Error" Austin is shown to be wearing both the Vietnam Service Medal and the Vietnam Campaign Medal on his dress uniform, implying that he is a Vietnam veteran. In both versions of his origin, Austin is testing an experimental lifting body aircraft when a malfunction causes a crash. Austin's injuries are severe: both legs and one arm are lost, and he is also blinded in one eye and his skull is fractured (the TV version does not suffer the skull injury). One of Austin's best friends is Dr. Rudy Wells, a doctor and scientist who is a specialist in the newly emerging field of bionics; unknown to Wells, a secret American government intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Operations (OSO; later changed to Office of Scientific Intelligence or OSI for TV) has been looking at a way of reducing agent casualties.

The suits were designed to withstand pressures up to 40,000 feet (12 kilometers), and immersion in the ocean for up to 24 hours at 5 °C (40 °F). Because of the limitations of protection the LES could offer, NASA and the David Clark Company introduced the current ACES design in 1995, which thereafter was the only suit used for Shuttle missions. Based on the LES, but being a full-pressure suit, the ACES suit now incorporates gloves on disconnecting lock rings on the wrists, liquid cooling and improved ventilation, and an extra layer of insulation. The ACES suit is analogous to the Sokol suits used for Soyuz missions and its functions are virtually the same, the only differences being the ACES suit having a detachable helmet and survival backpack, while the Russian suit has an integrated helmet and no backpack, due to the limitations in space aboard the Soyuz, and that the spacecraft is an entry capsule, not a winged spacecraft or lifting body.

The idea had been proposed by Walter Dornberger, who had moved to McDonnell after working for a short time at Bell Aircraft. Dornberger had originally worked on the idea as part of efforts to extend the range of the V-2 missile late in World War II. The Alpha Draco missile was a two-stage vehicle, the first stage comprising a Thiokol TX-20 solid-fuel rocket of the type used in the MGM-29 Sergeant theater ballistic missile, and the second stage using a Thiokol TX-30 solid-fuel rocket. The payload vehicle was aerodynamically shaped, using the lifting body principle to provide aerodynamic lift; following burnout of the first stage, the vehicle would coast for a short time before ignition of the second stage, burnout of the second stage was followed by the vehicle entering the glide phase of flight, which would be terminated by a dive upon the target.Yengst 2010, pp. 38-39.

Monument to Jerry Gentry Gentry was awarded the following decorations for his military service: Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross with one oak leaf cluster, Meritorious Service Medal with two oak leaf clusters, Air Medal with two silver and three bronze oak leaf clusters, Vietnam Service Medal with four bronze service stars, Air Force Longevity Service Ribbon with one silver and one bronze oak leaf cluster, and the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal. For his work on the HL-10, Gentry was awarded the 1968 Harmon Aviator's Trophy for outstanding contribution to the science of flying. In 1969, the Society of Experimental Test Pilots presented Gentry with the Iven C. Kincheloe Award for his work on the NASA/Flight Research Center (FRC) Lifting Body Program. In 1970, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics presented Gentry with the Octave Chanute Award presented for an outstanding contribution made by a pilot or test personnel to the advancement of the art, science, and technology of aeronautics.

Vega rocket The IXV project also benefitted from and harnessed much of the research data and operational principles from many of the previously conducted studies, especially from the successful Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator (ARD), which was test-flown during 1998. Early on, during the mission definition and design maturity stages of the project, thorough comparisons were conducted again between existing ESA and national concepts against shared criteria, aimed at evaluating the experiment requirements (technology and systems), programme requirements (technology readiness, development schedule and cost) and risk mitigation (feasibility, maturity, robustness and growth potential). The selected baseline design, a slender lifting body configuration, drew primarily upon the CNES-led Pre-X the ESA's ARD vehicles. Development work quickly proceeded through the preliminary design definition phase, reaching a system requirements review by mid-2007. On 18 December 2009, the ESA announced the signing of a contract with Thales Alenia Space, valued at , to cover 18 months of preliminary IXV work.

X-33 model being prepared for testing in a wind-tunnel in 1997 Test of the X-33's thermal protection system, 1998 Space art of X-33 in orbit Another concept of it in space Through the use of the lifting body shape, composite multi-lobed liquid fuel tanks, and the aerospike engine, NASA and Lockheed Martin hoped to test fly a craft that would demonstrate the viability of a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) design. A spacecraft capable of reaching orbit in a single stage would not require external fuel tanks or boosters to reach low Earth orbit. Doing away with the need for "staging" with launch vehicles, such as with the Shuttle and the Apollo rockets, would lead to an inherently more reliable and safer space launch vehicle. While the X-33 would not approach airplane-like safety, the X-33 would attempt to demonstrate 0.997 reliability, or 3 mishaps out of 1,000 launches, which would be an order of magnitude more reliable than the Space Shuttle.

Option 2 was based on technology available for practical use in 1997, so the HL-42 used many of the same materials as the Shuttle; it had a structural skeleton of aluminium alloy, and a very similar thermal protection system. The structural core of the HL-42 was the cylindrical aluminium pressure-cabin, with two access hatches: a large one at the rear for docking with the Space Station after the launch adapter had been jettisoned (and for pre-launch horizontal cargo-loading), and a much smaller hatch on the roof of the cabin for crew access while vertical on the launch pad (and as an alternative exit after landing, especially after parachuting to an emergency ocean splash- down). Aluminium frames extended from either side of this strong cylindrical core to support the rest of the structure. The whole lower surface of the lifting-body was protected from the heat of re-entry by Toughened Unipiece Fibrous Insulation (TUFI) tiles, a tougher, more impact-resistant version of the Shuttle's HRSI tiles; the upgraded TUFI tiles came into use in 1996.

Following atmospheric re-entry, the traditional capsule-like spacecraft from the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo series had very little control over where they landed. A steerable spacecraft with wings could significantly extend its landing envelope. However, the vehicle's wings would have to be designed to withstand the dynamic and thermal stresses of both re-entry and hypersonic flight. A proposed solution eliminated wings altogether: design the fuselage body itself to produce lift. NASA's refinements of the lifting body concept began in 1962 with R. Dale Reed of NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center. The first full-size model to come out of Reed's program was the NASA M2-F1, an unpowered craft made of wood. Initial tests were performed by towing the M2-F1 along a dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base California, behind a modified Pontiac Catalina.Classical Pontiac and NASA Later the craft was towed behind a C-47 and released. Since the M2-F1 was a glider, a small rocket motor was added in order to extend the landing envelope.

Major White also became the first man to fly an airplane in space when he climbed to on 17 July 1962. NASA's Joe Walker flew the airplane to its peak altitude of on 22 August 1963 and Maj William J. "Pete" Knight reached in the modified X-15A-2 on 3 October 1967, a speed that remains the highest ever attained in an airplane. In addition to the X-15 Program, AFFTC and NASA also teamed up to explore a new concept called "lifting reentry" with a series of wingless lifting body aircraft. These rocket powered-vehicles – the M2-F2, M2-F3, HL-10, X-24A and X-24B – paved the way for the Space Shuttle and future spaceplane designs when they demonstrated that they could make precision landings after high-speed gliding descents from high altitude. The major aircraft systems that were tested and developed during the 1960s, the T-38 Talon, B-52H Stratofortress, F-4 and RF-4 Phantom II, the F-111 and FB-111, C-141 Starlifter and C-5 Galaxy, all became mainstays in the USAF operational inventory.

He also did graduate work at Stanford University and the Harvard Business School. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, of the American Astronautical Society, and of the California Council on Science and Technology (emeritus), a member of Tau Beta Pi and Tau Omega honorary societies. In 1948, Syvertson joined Ames, then known as the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (N.A.C.A.). For the first decade he was engaged in aerodynamic research in the high supersonic and hypersonic speed ranges. His research led to some significant results including the design of the first lifting body entry vehicle, the NASA M2-F1, a research precursor to the Space Shuttle. Earlier work included development of the aerodynamic concept on which a Mach 3 experimental bomber, the XB-70 Valkyrie, was based. Only two XB-70s were ever built; one was lost in a mid-air collision and the other is now in the Air Force museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. The potential threat of a force of Mach-3 Bombers led the Soviets to build an expensive defense system.

Even though true supermaneuverability lies outside the realm of what is possible with pure aerodynamic control, the technologies that push aircraft into supermaneuvering capability are based on what is otherwise a conventional aerodynamically controlled design. Thus, a design that is highly maneuverable by traditional aerodynamics is a necessary base for a supermaneuverable fighter. Features such as large control surfaces which provide more force with less angular change from neutral which minimizes separation of airflow, lifting body design including the use of strakes, which allow the fuselage of the aircraft to create lift in addition to that of its wings, and low-drag design, particularly reducing drag at the leading edges of the aircraft such as its nose cone, wings and engine intake ducts, are all essential to creating a highly maneuverable aircraft. Some designs, like the F-16 (which in current production form is regarded as highly maneuverable, but only the F-16 VISTA tech demonstrator is considered supermaneuverable) are designed to be inherently unstable; that is, the aircraft, if completely uncontrolled, will not tend to return to level, stable flight after a disturbance as an inherently stable design will.