NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) 19930001912: Winds of Change: Expanding the Frontiers of Flight. Langley Research Center's 75 Years of Accomplishment, 1917-1992

147 Pages·117.1 MB·English

by  NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

(NASA- P-130) WINOS OF CHANGE: N93- 11100
EXPA DING THE FRONTIERS OF FLIGHT.
LA GLEY RESEARCH CENTER·S 7S YEARS
OF ACCO PLISHMENT, 1917-1992 Unclas
(NASA) 146 P
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* /99 0117627
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Contents
Introduction VII
Prologue IX
A Laboratory for Flight
1
Perfecting the Plane: 1917-1939 23
Swords and Plowshares: 1940-1957 45
Beyond the Home Planer: 1958-1969 71
Charting New Courses: 1970-1992 and Beyond 101
Suggested Further Reading 132
Credits 133
On the Cover: The image on the cover oft his publication
was digitally composed from two photographs: one ofa
National Aero-Space Plane model that was tested at
Langley Research Center and the other oft he Langley
30- by GO-Foot Tunnel, which has been operational
since 1931.
Left: A Langley researcher ponders the foture, in mid-
1927, oft he Sperry M-1 Messenger, the first foil-scale
airplane tested in the Propeller Research Tunnel.

Introduction
I t gives me great pleasure to congratulate the NASA Langley Research
Center on its 75th Anniversary in 1992.
This National Research Laboratory occupies a special place in the
nation's aviation and space history. Established on July 17, 1917, Langley
served as the first research laboratory for NASA's predecessor, the National
Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). In this unique role, the
Center bore primary responsibility for nursing U.S. aviation from infancy to
world leadership.
With the birth of NASA in 1958, Langley added another unique
dimension, this time as a leader in the nation's fledgling Space Program.
Langley could look beyond Earth and to the limitless vistas of space. The
Center again was on the cutting edge of an exciting new era.
Langley continues to make significant contributions to space and civil
aeronautics. The Center's work has made commercial, military and general
aviation aircraft safer and more efficient, and has helped make air travel and
space exploration a part of every person's life.
On this 75th Anniversary, Langley can look back with pride on its
accomplishments and forward to many more. Men and women of Langley
Research Center, our nation thanks you. Your pioneering work has been vital
to making us first in aviation and space, and I am confident that your
continuing efforts will help keep us there.
Congratulations and best wishes ...
Daniel S. Goldin
NASA Administrator
A 1951 Look into the 16-Foot VII
High-Speed TunneL.

Prologue
Seventy-five years ago, in 1917, the Langley Langley has a proud histoty and a long list of
Research Center was born. This book is a technological firsts. Langley has hired and
testament to the years between then and now. In trained generations of aeronautical engineers,
words and pictures, these pages will take you on technicians, managers and leaders, and in the
a trip through time, starting when Langley was process helped establish the nation's aeronaurical
little more than pasture and marshland. You will infrastructure. From Langley came a group of
witness the struggles of early aviation, the people who broke technological barriers, created
breaking of the sound barrier and the dawn of an inventory of aeronautical research tools,
the space age. Through it all, you will see the helped set up the country's aviation industry,
major role that Langley played-and still does. I contributed to the establishment of aeronautical
think you will find it an exciting journey. departments at universities throughout the
The trip begins in 1915 with the creation of nation, and worked to create five of ASA's
the National Advisory Committee for centers: Ames, Lewis, Dryden, Wallops and
Aeronautics (NACA), ASA's predecessor. Johnson.
Congress established the NACA largely in Langley's early focus was aviation. But the
response to the growing dominance of European minds and talents of the Center's work force PauL F HoLLoway
aircraft. The Wright brothers had given the were soon challenged anew, first by jet LangLey Research
United States the early lead with their hi to ric propulsion and supersonic flight in the ' 40s, Center Director
flight in 1903. By World War I, however, it had then by spaceflight in the '50s. Langley achieved
become clear that the edge had been lost to major breakthroughs in all areas. Our researchers
German, British and French aviation advances. and test pilots helped break the sound barrier at
One of the NACA's first steps toward Edward Air Force Base. Other Langley
regaining air superiority was to establish a researchers were instrumental in designing the
research center for aviation. Committee Mercury capsule, setting the stage for the
members sought a tract of land that was close to Center's leadership role in the space program in
the water, not far from the nation's capital, and 1958. The original seven astronaurs trained at
inexpensive. The search ended in Hampton, Langley. Langley designed the lunar rendezvous Opposite page: Top view of
Virginia. When Langley Memorial Aeronautical technique, proving that two spacecraft could the LangLey HL-20 Lifting
Laboratory, later to become Langley Research maneuver and dock in orbit. Langley mapped Body. This concept is a
Center, was built, it became the nation's first the Moon for the Apollo missions and achieved candidate for a future
civilian aeronautical laboratory. Langley's the only fwO successful spacecraft landings on personneL launch system
mission was forthright: To find practical Mars. proposed to carry people and
solutions to the problems of flight. We can be proud of such a past. We can be smaLl payloads to Space
A lot has happened since then. Who could equally proud of the present, and we can look to Station Freedom.
have imagined that Neil Armstrong and the future knowing that we have the talent, drive
colleagues would practice lunar landings in a and vision to achieve Out goals. And what does
cow pasture that once was part of the birthplace the future hold? Rest assured that whatever it is,
of George Wythe, a signer of the Declaration of Langley will be in the forefront. Meanwhile, sit
Independence. Or that, less than a mile away on back, turn the page, and enjoy your journey
the historic Chesterville Plantation, Langley through our first 75 years.
scientists in the hypersonic tunnel complex
~.~
would learn how to break the grasp of gravity
and orbit the Earth.
Langley Research Center Director
IX
A Laboratory for Flight
hen just a young man, novelist Thomas
Wolfe set out to see the world. His travels eventually led him to the Virginia port city of Norfolk
and, when he heard of work available nearby, to the fishing hamlet of Hampton. There, in the
summer of 1918, Wolfe and hundreds of others labored in the oppressive heat and humidity to
construct a "Flying Field." In his fictional, semiautobiographical book Look Homeward, Angel
Wolfe's alter ego Eugene Gant recalls the experience as "the weary and fruitless labor of a nightmare."
The workers, wrote Wolfe, reshaped the landscape, blasting ragged stumps from spongy soil, filling
the resultant craters that "drank their shovelled toil without end," grading and leveling the ground
Smoke flow visualization
from dawn to dusk. Meanwhile, overhead, the "bird-men filled the blue Virginia weather with the
shows the flow ofa ir
around a model airfoil
great drone of the Liberties," practicing aerial observation and photography in British-designed and
at 100 feet per second.
I