Oct 11 1996
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
NASA marked the 50-year anniversary of the Bell X-1 aircraft's first flight, which took place at the site of Edwards Air Force Base, home of NASA's DFRC. According to Jay Miller, the author of The X-Planes: X-1 to X-33, the X-1 had given flight researchers and engineers their first full-scale tool to study transonic aerodynamics. The Bell Aircraft Corporation, the U.S. Army Air Forces (predecessor of the U.S. Air Force), and NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, had collaborated to get the first test plane off the ground. The X-1 test not only provided aeronautical data, but also pioneered the test methods later adopted by DFRC flight researchers.
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