Douglas Skyrocket being dropped from a
B-29 Superfortress. NASA's predecessor,
NACA, operated the
Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket. A successor to the
Bell X-1, the D-558-2 could operate under
rocket or
jet power. It conducted extensive tests into aircraft stability in the
transsonic range, optimal supersonic wing configurations, rocket plume effects, and
high-speed flight dynamics. On November 20, 1953, the Douglas Skyrocket became the first aircraft to fly at over twice the speed of sound when it attained a speed of Mach 2.005. Like the X-1, the D-558-2 could be air-launched using a
B-29 Superfortress. Unlike the X-1, the Skyrocket could also
takeoff from a
runway with the help of
JATO units.
Controlled Impact Demonstration is destroyed in the
Controlled Impact Demonstration. The Controlled Impact Demonstration was a joint project with the
Federal Aviation Administration to research a new jet fuel that would decrease the damage due to fire in the crash of a large airliner. On 1 December 1984, a remotely piloted
Boeing 720 aircraft was flown into specially built
wing openers which tore the wings open, fuel spraying everywhere. Despite the new fuel additive, the resulting fireball was huge; the fire still took an hour to fully extinguish. Even though the fuel additive did not prevent a fire, it still prevented the combustion of some fuel which flowed over the fuselage of the aircraft, and served to cool it, similar to how a conventional
rocket engine cools its nozzle. Also, instrumented
crash test dummies were in the airplane for the impact, and provided valuable research into other aspects of crash survivability for the occupants.
Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment 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 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.
Lunar Landing Research Vehicle . The Lunar Landing Research Vehicle or LLRV was an
Apollo Project era program to build a simulator for the
Moon landing. The LLRVs, humorously referred to as "
Flying Bedsteads," were used by the FRC, now known as the Armstrong Flight Research Center, at
Edwards Air Force Base, California, to study and analyze piloting techniques needed to fly and land the
Apollo Lunar Module in the moon's airless environment. == Aircraft on display ==