First published in 1996 as volume 5 in the NASA "Monograph in Aerospace History" series. This study contains photographs and illustrations.

Flight research takes up where the other instruments of aeronautical research -- wind tunnels, fluid dynamics, and mathematical analyses -- leave off. No matter how the equations suggest it ought to fly, only by studying actual flight, often demanding complicated and dangerous maneuvers, can researchers discover the limits of flight and the true characteristics of experimental flight vehicles. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (1915) and its successor, The National Aeronautic and Space Act (1958) were created to find out.

Expanding the Envelope is the first book to explore the full panorama of flight research history, from the earliest attempts by such nineteenth-century practitioners as England's Sir George Cayley, who tested his kites and gliders by subjecting them to experimental flight, to the cutting-edge aeronautical research conducted by the NACA and NASA.

NASA historian Michael H. Gorn explores the vital human aspect of the history of flight research, including such well-known figures as James H. Doolittle, Chuck Yeager, and A. Scott Crossfield, as well as the less heralded engineers, pilots, and scientists who also had the "Right Stuff". While the individuals in the cockpit often receive the lion's share of the public's attention, Expanding the Envelope shows flight research to be a collaborative engineering activity, one in which the pilot participates as just one of many team members.

Here is more than a century of flight research, from well before the creation of NACA to its rapid transformation under NASA. Gorn gives a behind-the-scenes look at the development of groundbreaking vehicles such as the X-1, the D-558, and the X-15, which demonstrated mannedflight at speeds up to Mach 6.7 and as high as the edge of space.

Foreword by Dr. Roger D. Launius, Former NASA Chief Historian For the past 75 years, the U.S. government has invested significant time and money into advanced aerospace research, as evidenced by its many experimental X-plane aircraft and rockets. NASA's X-Planes asks a simple question: What have we gained from it all? To answer this question, the authors provide a comprehensive overview of the X-plane's long history, from the 1946 X-1 to the modern X-60. The chapters describe not just the technological evolution of these models, but also the wider story of politics, federal budgets, and inter-agency rivalries surrounding them. The book is organized into two sections, with the first covering the operational X-planes that symbolized the Cold War struggle between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R, and the second section surveying post-Cold War aircraft and spacecraft. Featuring dozens of original illustrations of X-plane cross-sections, in-flight profiles, close-ups, and more, this book will educate general readers and specialists alike.

Foreword by Dr. Roger D. Launius, Former NASA Chief Historian For the past 75 years, the U.S. government has invested significant time and money into advanced aerospace research, as evidenced by its many experimental X-plane aircraft and rockets. NASA's X-Planes asks a simple question: What have we gained from it all? To answer this question, the authors provide a comprehensive overview of the X-plane's long history, from the 1946 X-1 to the modern X-60. The chapters describe not just the technological evolution of these models, but also the wider story of politics, federal budgets, and inter-agency rivalries surrounding them. The book is organized into two sections, with the first covering the operational X-planes that symbolized the Cold War struggle between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R, and the second section surveying post-Cold War aircraft and spacecraft. Featuring dozens of original illustrations of X-plane cross-sections, in-flight profiles, close-ups, and more, this book will educate general readers and specialists alike.

This account of the life of Dr. Hugh Latimer Dryden describes his enormous contributions to aviation and space. Hugh Dryden was a research scientist of the highest order, an aeronautics pioneer, the Director of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and then the first NASA Deputy Administrator. Dr. Hugh Dryden's special relationship to the Dryden Flight Research Center goes far beyond its name. Among Hugh Dryden's first actions after becoming the NACA's Director of Research in September 1947, was to inform Walt Williams, the director of the (light research operation here in the desert, that the NACA Muroc organization, formed the previous year, would now become a permanent facility known as the NACA Muroc Flight Test Unit. Hugh Dryden strongly supported the flight research conducted here with the early rocket-powered aircraft. He represented the NACA on the interagency Research Airplane Committee that supervised the beginnings of the critically important X-15 research at the High Speed Flight Station. As Dr. Gorn recounts, Hugh Dryden had begun work in the transonic region very early in his career, and in fact it was he who coined the word "transonic," because no such word existed to describe speeds at or near that of sound in the early 1920s. Much of the research conducted here at the Center has concerned transonic flight, so that is another link between Dryden the man and Dryden the Center. Dr. Gorn also describes Hugh Dryden's work with the "crucial transition from laminar to turbulent flow," another very important aspect of flight research here at DFRC over the five decades of its existence. This work continues today in the research being done on the F 16XT. to examine Supersonic Laminar Flow Control-a project that would have been dear to the heart of Hugh Dryden. Finally, Hugh Dryden wrote a description of flight research that has served ever since as the unofficial motto of the Center that bears his name and, in a very real sense, carries on his work. It separates, he stated, "the real from the imagined," and makes known the "overlooked and the unexpected." That brief line more effectively describes exactly what we do at the Dryden Flight Research Center than anything that has been written before or since.

This book consists of two World War II documents essential to the history of American air power: Where We Stand and Science: The Key To Air Supremacy. These technology forecasts - produced under the direction of famed Hungarian-American aerodynamicist Dr. Theodore von Karman at the request of General of the Army Air Forces Hap Arnold - established the U.S. Air Force's research and development agenda for much of the Cold War. Includes tables, diagrams, illustrations, photos, suggested readings. Abstract: Since the days of ancient warfare, commanders have relied on science and technology for success in war. Their use in military affairs increased dramatically after the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, particularly in the nineteenth century. For example, chemists and metallurgists contributed greatly to World War I, while World War II is sometimes referred to as the physicists' war. During the fifty-year conflict known as the Cold War, scientists from diverse disciplines collaborated to multiply the effectiveness of military force and meet national security needs. Of all the federal organizations devoted to science and technology, none has been more important or influential than the U.S. Air Force's Scientific Advisory Board. In the midst of World War lithe Com- manding General of the Army Air Forces, Henry H. 'Hap' Arnold grasped the absolutely essential relationship between post-war science and national security. To realize his objective of inextricably linking science to air power, he called upon his friend, the brilliant Hungarian physicist Theodore von Karman, to assess and predict the future of military aeronautics. In Where We Stand and in Science, the Key to Air Supremacy, Karman and his hand- picked staff devised a multi-disciplinary approach to preserving the technical advantage gained by U.S. air power during the war.

Separating the Real From the Imagined relates the history of flight research practiced 1915 to 1998 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and its successor, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. While it covers many subjects, it is not a comprehensive, exhaustive, or encyclopedic treatment.

Separating the Real from the Imagined relates the history of flight research practiced from 1915 to 1998 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and its successor the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). While it covers many subjects, it is not a comprehensive, exhaustive, or encyclopedic treatment. Rather, it represents a selective overview in which projects illustrative of an era, of pivotal technologies, or of advances in the art of flight research itself receive most of the coverage. Its overall intents is to emphasize some of the major themes, events, and accomplishments in this sometimes misunderstood field of aeronautics, to provide historical perspective about the development of the discipline, and to demonstrate the ways in which it contributed not just to the design and improvement of aircraft, but to that of spacecraft as well.

Air power has always been linked closely to science and technology. The very reality of flight depended upon a technical innovation. Unlike other services, where machines merely support the mission, technology is for the Air Force at the very heart of its existence as an institution. As a consequence, the USAF and its predecessor organizations have always recognized the singular importance of science to their survival. This book describes and analyzes the methodologies and conclusions of the five main science and technology forecasts undertaken by the Air Force since before its birth as an independent service.

This little known classic history of flight-testing the Xplanes is reborn, sweepingly revised and updated with new and recently released information. Aviation enthusiasts will savor the most detailed account available of record-setting aircraft like the X-1 and XZ-15, flown by Chuck Yeager and other legends, as well as all the cutting-edge NASA and Defense Department programs that perfected the aeronautical concepts and technology used in US military, space, and commercial craft. A completely updated and reinterpreted text, three new chapters, dozens of rare photographs, and the complete statistical record of nearly six decades of testing make this required reading for anyone interested in manned flight.

First published in 1996 as volume 5 in the NASA "Monograph in Aerospace History" series. This study contains photographs and illustrations.