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Lifting body

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US X-24A, M2-F3 and HL-10 lifting bodies

Alifting bodyis afixed-wing aircraftorspacecraftconfiguration in which the body itself produceslift.In contrast to aflying wing,which is a wing with minimal or no conventionalfuselage,a lifting body can be thought of as a fuselage with little or no conventionalwing.Whereas a flying wing seeks to maximize cruise efficiency atsubsonicspeeds by eliminating non-lifting surfaces, lifting bodies generally minimize the drag and structure of a wing for subsonic,supersonicandhypersonicflight, orspacecraftre-entry.All of these flight regimes pose challenges for proper flight safety.

Lifting bodies were a major area of research in the 1960s and 70s as a means to build a small and lightweight crewed spacecraft. The US built a number of lifting body rocket planes to test the concept, as well as several rocket-launched re-entry vehicles that were tested over the Pacific. Interest waned as theUS Air Forcelost interest in the crewed mission, and major development ended during theSpace Shuttle design processwhen it became clear that the highly shaped fuselages made it difficult to fit fuel tankage.

Advancedspaceplaneconcepts in the 1990s and 2000s did use lifting-body designs. Examples include theHL-20 Personnel Launch System(1990) and thePrometheus spaceplane(2010). TheDream Chaserlifting-body spaceplane, an extension of HL-20 technology, was proposed as one of three vehicles to potentially carryUScrew to and from theInternational Space Station,but eventually was selected as a resupply vehicle instead. In 2015 theESAIntermediate eXperimental Vehicleperformed the first ever successful reentry of a lifting body spacecraft.[1]

History[edit]

The lifting body had been imagined by 1917, in which year an aircraft with something like a delta wing plan form with a thick included fuselage was described in a patent byRoy Scroggs.[2]However at low airspeeds the lifting body is inefficient and did not enter mainstream airplane design.[citation needed]

Aerospace-related lifting body research arose from the idea ofspacecraftre-enteringthe Earth's atmosphere and landing much like a regularairplane.Following atmospheric re-entry, the capsule spacecraft from theMercury,Gemini,andApolloseries had very little control over where they landed. A steerable spacecraft with wings could significantly extend its landing envelope. However, the vehicle's wings would have to be designed to withstand the dynamic and thermal stresses of both re-entry and hypersonic flight. One proposal eliminated wings altogether: design the fuselage body to produce lift by itself.

The Martin Aircraft CompanyX-24built as part of a 1963 to 1975 experimental US military program

NASA's refinements of the lifting body concept began in 1962 withR. Dale ReedofNASA'sArmstrong Flight Research Center.[3]The first full-size model to come out of Reed's program was theNASA M2-F1,an unpowered craft made of wood. Initial tests were performed by towing the M2-F1 along a dry lakebed atEdwards Air Force BaseCalifornia, behind amodifiedPontiac Catalina.[4]Later the craft was towed behind aC-47and released. Since the M2-F1 was aglider,a smallrocket motorwas added in order to extend the landing envelope. The M2-F1 was soon nicknamed the "Flying Bathtub".

In 1963, NASA began programs with heavier rocket-powered lifting-body vehicles to be air launched from under the starboard wing of a NB-52B, a derivative of theB-52jet bomber. The first flights started in 1966. Of the Dryden lifting bodies, all but the unpowered NASA M2-F1 used anXLR11rocket engine as was used on theBell X-1.[5]A follow-on design designated theNorthrop HL-10was developed at NASALangley Research Center. Air flow separation caused the crash of theNorthrop M2-F2lifting body.[citation needed] The HL-10 attempted to solve part of this problem by angling theportandstarboardvertical stabilizersoutward and enlarging the center one.[citation needed]

Starting 1965 the Russian lifting-bodyMikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105or EPOS (Russian acronym for Experimental Passenger Orbital Aircraft) was developed and several test flights made. Work ended in 1978 when the efforts shifted to theBuran program,while work on another small-scale spacecraft partly continued in theBorprogram.

TheIXVis aEuropean Space Agencylifting body experimentalre-entryvehicle intended to validate European reusable launchers which could be evaluated in the frame of theFLPPprogram. The IXV made its first flight in February 2015, launched by aVegarocket.[6]

Orbital Sciences proposed a commercial lifting-body spaceplane in 2010.[7]ThePrometheusis more fully described below.

Aerospace applications[edit]

Lifting bodies pose complex control, structural, and internal configuration issues. Lifting bodies were eventually rejected in favor of a delta wing design for the Space Shuttle. Data acquired in flight test using high-speed landing approaches at very steep descent angles and high sink rates was used for modeling Shuttle flight and landing profiles.

In planning for atmospheric re-entry, the landing site is selected in advance. For reusable reentry vehicles, typically a primary site is preferred that is closest to the launch site in order to reduce costs and improve launch turnaround time. However, weather near the landing site is a major factor in flight safety. In some seasons, weather at landing sites can change quickly relative to the time necessary to initiate and execute re-entry and safe landing. Due to weather, it is possible the vehicle may have to execute a landing at an alternate site. Furthermore, most airports do not have runways of sufficient length to support the approach landing speed and roll distance required by spacecraft. Few airports exist in the world that can support or be modified to support this type of requirement. Therefore, alternate landing sites are very widely spaced across the U.S. and around the world. The Shuttle's delta wing design was driven by these issues. These requirements were further exacerbated by requirements that extended the Shuttle's flight landing envelope.

Nonetheless, the lifting body concept has been implemented in a number of otheraerospaceprograms, the previously mentionedNASA X-38,Lockheed Martin X-33,BAC'sMulti Unit Space Transport And Recovery Device,Europe'sEADS Phoenix,and the joint Russian-EuropeanKliperspacecraft. Of the three basic design shapes usually analyzed for such programs (capsule, lifting body, aircraft) the lifting body may offer the best trade-off in terms of maneuverability and thermodynamics while meeting its customers' mission requirements.

Current systems[edit]

TheDream Chaseris asuborbitalandorbital[8]vertical-takeoff, horizontal-landing(VTHL) lifting-bodyspaceplanebeing developed bySierra Nevada Corporation(SNC). The Dream Chaser design is planned to eventually carry up to seven people to and fromlow Earth orbit,and the spaceplane is currently planned to be used for delivering cargo to theInternational Space Stationunder theCommercial Resupply Servicesprogram. The vehicle will launch vertically on anAtlas Vandland horizontallyon conventional runways.[9]

Body lift[edit]

Burnelli General Airborne Transport XCG-16, a lifting body aircraft (1944)

Some aircraft with wings also employ bodies that generate lift. Some of the early 1930s high-wing monoplane designs of theBellanca Aircraft Company,such as theBellanca Aircruiser,had vaguely airfoil-shaped fuselages capable of generating some lift, with even the wing struts on some versions given widened fairings to give them some lift-generating capability. TheGee Bee R-1 Super Sportsterracing plane of the 1930s, likewise, from more modern aerodynamic studies, has been shown to have had considerable ability to generate lift with its fuselage design, important for the R-1's intended racing role, while in highly banked pylon turns while racing.[10]Vincent Burnellideveloped several aircraft between the 1920s and 1950 that used fuselage lift. Like the earlier Bellanca monoplanes, theShort SC.7 Skyvanproduces a substantial amount of lift from its fuselage shape, almost as much as the 35% each of the wings produces.

Fighters like theF-15 Eaglealso produce substantial lift from the wide fuselage between the wings. Because the F-15 Eagle's wide fuselage is so efficient at lift, an F-15 is able to land successfully with only one wing, albeit under nearly full power, with thrust contributing significantly to lift. In the summer of 1983, an Israeli F-15 staged a mock dogfight with Skyhawks for training purposes, near Nahal Tzin in the Negev desert. During the exercise, one of the Skyhawks miscalculated andcollided forcefully with the F-15's wing root.The F-15's pilot was aware that the wing had been seriously damaged, but decided to try and land in a nearby airbase, not knowing the extent of his wing damage. It was only after he had landed, when he climbed out of the cockpit and looked backward, that the pilot realized what had happened: the wing had been completely torn off the plane, and he had landed the plane with only one wing attached. A few months later, the damaged F-15 had been given a new wing, and returned to operational duty in the squadron. The engineers at McDonnell Douglas had a hard time believing the story of the one-winged landing: as far as their planning models were concerned, this was an impossibility.[11]

In 2010,Orbital Sciencesproposed thePrometheus"blended lifting-body"spaceplanevehicle, about one-quarter the size of theSpace Shuttle,as acommercialoption for carrying astronauts tolow Earth orbitunder thecommercial crew program.[7] TheVertical Takeoff, Horizontal Landing(VTHL) vehicle was to have been launched on a human-ratedAtlas Vrocket but would land on a runway.[12] The initial design was to have carried a crew of 4, but it could carry up to 6, or a combination of crew and cargo. In addition to Orbital Sciences, the consortium behind the proposal includedNorthrop Grumman,which would have built the spaceplane, and theUnited Launch Alliance,which would have provided the launch vehicle.[13] Failing to be selected for a CCDev phase 2 award by NASA, Orbital announced in April 2011 that they would likely wind down their efforts to develop a commercial crew vehicle.[14]

Design principles of lifting bodies are used also in the construction ofhybrid airships.

Armstrong Flight Research Center[edit]

TheUS governmentdeveloped a variety ofproof-of-conceptandflight-testvehicle lifting body designs from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s atArmstrong Flight Research Center.[3]These included:

Pilots and flights[edit]

Pilot M2-F1 M2-F2 HL-10 HL-10
mod 		M2-F3 X-24A X-24B Total
Milton O. Thompson 45 5 - - - - - 50
Bruce Peterson 17 3 1 - - - - 21[citation needed]
Chuck Yeager 5 - - - - - - 5
Donald L. Mallick 2 - - - - - - 2[citation needed]
James W. Wood 1* - - - - - - 1*
Donald M. Sorlie 5 3 - - - - - 8
William H. Dana 1 - - 9 19 - 2 31[citation needed]
Jerauld R. Gentry 2 5 - 9 1 13 - 30[citation needed]
Fred Haise 1* - - - - - - 1*
Joe Engle 1* - - - - - - 1*
John A. Manke - - - 10 4 12 16 42
Peter C. Hoag - - - 8 - - - 8
Cecil W. Powell - - - - 3 3 - 6
Michael V. Love - - - - - - 12 12
Einar K. Enevoldson - - - - - - 2 2
Francis Scobee - - - - - - 2 2
Thomas C. McMurtry - - - - - - 2 2
TOTAL 80 16 37[15] 36 27 28 36 224[citation needed]
  • Wood, Haise and Engle each made a single car-towed flight of the M2-F1.

Popular culture[edit]

Wainfan Facetmobile FMX-4homebuilt lifting-body aircraft, photographed from above in flight

Lifting bodies have appeared in somescience fictionworks, including the movieMarooned,and as John Crichton's spacecraft Farscape-1 in the TV seriesFarscape.TheDiscovery ChannelTV series conjectured using lifting bodies to deliver a probe to a distant earth-like planet in the animatedAlien Planet.Gerry Anderson's 1969Doppelgängerused aVTOLlifting body lander / ascender to visit an Earth-like planet, only to crash in both attempts. His seriesUFOfeatured a lifting body craft visually similar to the M2-F2 for orbital operations ( "The Man Who Came Back" ). In theBuzz Aldrin's Race Into Spacecomputer game, a modifiedX-24Abecomes an alternative lunar capable spacecraft that the player can choose over theGeminiorApollocapsule.

The 1970stelevision programThe Six Million Dollar Manused footage of a lifting body aircraft, culled from actual NASA exercises, in the show'stitle sequence.The scenes included an HL-10's separation from its carrier plane—a modified B-52—and an M2-F2 piloted byBruce Peterson,crashing and tumbling violently along the Edwards dry lakebed runway. The cause of the crash was attributed to the onset ofDutch rollstemming from control instability as induced by flow separation.[citation needed]

The episode "The Deadly Replay" (season 2 episode 8 aired 9/22/1974) features the HL-10 as a prop of the story.[16]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^"ESA Bulletin 161 (1st quarter 2015)"(PDF).ESA.2015. p. 23.ISSN0376-4265.Retrieved30 May2015.
  2. ^US patent 1,250,033.
  3. ^ab"Wingless Flight: The Lifting Body Story".NASA.1997-01-01.Retrieved2014-12-13.
  4. ^Classical Pontiac and NASA
  5. ^NASA Dryden fact sheet - lifting bodies
  6. ^"Europe's mini-space shuttle returns".BBC News.11 February 2015.Retrieved12 February2015.
  7. ^ab"The Shape of Things to Come – Orbital's Prometheus™ Space Plane Ready for NASA's Commercial Crew Development Initiative"(PDF).
  8. ^ "Private Spaceflight Innovators Attract NASA's Attention".Space.7 February 2011.Retrieved2012-09-05.Dream Chaser will become a fully capable suborbital vehicle on the way to reaching orbital capability.
  9. ^It is currently used "Dream Chaser Model Drops in at NASA Dryden – NASA.gov".NASA. 17 December 2010.Retrieved29 August2012.
  10. ^"Granville Gee Bee (series) Racing Aircraft".Militayrfactory. June 8, 2009.Retrieved20 December2011.
  11. ^Jon Easley(9 Aug 2001 09:01:17 EDT) NO WING F15JEasley198@aol
  12. ^Orbital Proposes Spaceplan for Astronauts,Wall Street Journal,December 14, 2010, accessed December 15, 2010.
  13. ^Jumping into the New Space Race, Orbital Sciences Unveils Mini-Shuttle Spaceplane Design,Popular Science,2010-12-16, accessed 2010-12-18."Orbital Sciences isn’t the kind of independent, private, “new space” enterprise as, say, SpaceX. It’s a consortium of defense and aviation heavy-hitters: Northrop would build the plane, and the rockets would be provided by United Launch Alliance (read: Boeing and Lockheed). "
  14. ^"Orbital may wind down its commercial crew effort".NewSpace Journal.2011-04-22.Retrieved2011-04-25.CEO Dave Thompson said... "I don't, at this time, anticipate that we'll continue to pursue our own project in that race. We'll watch it and if an opportunity develops we may reconsider. But at this point, I would not anticipate a lot of activity on our part in the commercial crew market."
  15. ^"NASA Dryden Past Projects: Lifting Bodies, HL-10".NASA.2009-08-14.Retrieved2014-12-13.
  16. ^"The Deadly Replay".IMDb, Inc.RetrievedOctober 22,2021.

Other sources[edit]

External links[edit]

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