{"id":454,"date":"2010-06-02T09:50:51","date_gmt":"2010-06-02T09:50:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=454"},"modified":"2010-06-02T09:50:51","modified_gmt":"2010-06-02T09:50:51","slug":"another-space-shuttle-precursor-flies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/another-space-shuttle-precursor-flies\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Space Shuttle Precursor Flies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forty years ago today — June 2, 1970 — NASA test pilot William H. “Bill” Dana flew the Northrop M2-F3 lifting body on its first flight.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(M2-F3 lifting body on the dry lakebed at Edwards AFB. NASA image.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nThe M2-F3 was one of a series of lifting bodies<\/a> flown by NASA and the USAF to test spacecraft reentry. On this flight, it was dropped from its B-52 mothership and Dana glided it to an unpowered landing on the dry lake bed at Edwards AFB, much the way Shuttle pilots glide their vehicle back to Earth.<\/p>\n

The M2-F3 was rebuilt from the crashed M2-F2, with a center stabilizer added to reduce the pilot-induced oscillations that had caused the M2-F2 landing mishap. Powered flights of the rocket-equipped M2-F3 eventually took it up to Mach 1.6 and over 70,000 feet of altitude.<\/p>\n

On a personal note, I wish I had known more of this history back in the late 1980s, so I could have asked Mr. Dana some pertinent questions when I met him at Edwards.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forty years ago today — June 2, 1970 — NASA test pilot William H. “Bill” Dana flew the Northrop M2-F3 lifting body on its first flight. (M2-F3 lifting body on the dry lakebed at Edwards AFB. NASA image.) The M2-F3 was one of a series of lifting bodies flown by \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[13,16,37,11],"class_list":["post-454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","tag-air-force","tag-edwards","tag-nasa","tag-space-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}