Free Republic

Private industry could be prepared to go where NASA fears to tread and develop a spaceplane to replace the space shuttle and ferry crews to and from the International Space Station. But if industry succeeds, it will be thanks to decades of work by the space agency on lifting-body reentry vehicles. While its plans for replacing the shuttle are in flux, NASA has a small program underway intended to stimulate private-sector efforts to develop commercial human spaceflight services. While most of those involved are pursuing Apollo-style capsules similar to NASA’s Orion crew vehicle, one is designing a spaceplane. The Dream...

Bruce A. Peterson, a NASA test pilot who flew the wingless "lifting body" vehicles that led to development of the space shuttles and survived a filmed crash that became part of the opening scenes of "The Six Million Dollar Man" TV show, has died. He was 72. Peterson died Monday in Laguna Niguel after a lengthy illness, NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center said in a statement Tuesday. The specific cause was not disclosed. Lifting bodies, conceived in the 1950s, were highly unusual wingless aircraft that derived aerodynamic lift from their shape, unlike conventional planes that get their lift from wings....

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Robert Dale Reed, an aeronautics researcher who pioneered the "Lifting Body" and remotely piloted aircraft programs with NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in the 1960s and 1970s, has died. He was 75. Reed died Friday due to complications of cancer, NASA said in a statement Monday. Reed began his career with NASA in 1953. The "Lifting Body" program - his most recognized achievement - grew out of Reed's belief that a wingless craft could serve as an orbiting vehicle, re-enter Earth's atmosphere and land safely. Reed's research eventually provided guidance to the design of the Space...

LOS ANGELES - One was a rocket plane that flew at the edge of space and with blistering speed. The other was a series of odd-shaped aircraft designed to fly and land without wings. Both research programs are direct ancestors of today's space shuttle, making space travel in reusable, winged vehicles possible, and contributed much to aeronautical knowledge in general. A joint Air Force and NASA research program, the X-15 is considered one of the most successful ever, completing 199 flights from 1959 to 1968 using the skies and dry lake beds of Edwards Air Force Base. A. Scott Crossfield...