Those of us who grew up in the 70's probably watched the television series "The Six-Million Dollar Man". If you remember the opening sequence, you certainly remember the footage of the horrendous crash of an odd looking aircraft (The aircraft which Lee Major's character, Steve Austin, was allegedly piloting). What many people DON'T know is that this aircraft was real, as was the footage of the crash.

The M2-F2 was an early NASA experiment in the concept of lifting bodies. The "Flying Bathtub" as it was nicknamed was designed by Northrop, and first flown on July 02, 1966.

On it's first flight it was mated to and airdropped from a B-52 mothership, from an altitude of 45,000 feet. It attained a speed of just under 452 mph, with a flight duration of 217 seconds.

It went on to perform a total of 16 flights, with 4 different test pilots.
It's 16th and final flight occurred on May 10, 1967. The pilot on that fateful day was Bruce Peterson.

After being airdropped by the mothership from 45,000 feet, the M2-F2 managed a speed of 402 mph, and all seemed well. But, on Peterson's final approach, the aircraft began a series of violent rolling oscillations. Once he recovered control, he was no longer lined up with the runway, and became concerned that a rescue helicopter, hovering beside the runway, was too close. He attempted to realign himself with the runway, and apparently deployed the landing gear too late. The gear was only partially deployed when he contacted the runway. The vehicle began a violent series of rolls and tumbled end over end , finally coming to rest upside down. This was the horrific accident that was forever etched in our minds by "The Six-Million Dollar Man".

The M2-F2 was destroyed. Bruce Peterson was seriously injured, losing the sight in one eye, which ended his career as a test pilot.

Peterson did, however, stay on at NASA, and after his recovery, became an engineer on the digital fly-by-wire program in the late 60's and early 70's. After leaving NASA, he became safety officer for the Northrop B-2 Spirit Program.

Joey,

Do you have any additional details on what the objective of the program was? Was it an aircraft built soley for research purposes?

Hi Justin,

My understanding is that the program was specifically targeted at building and testing lifting bodies and focused on the production of a reusable "space plane". The M2-F1 was originally a plywood mock-up that was towed behind (I believe) a '47 ford, and later by a C-47, to prove that the shape of the body could actually produce enough lift to keep it airborne.

One thing that the test pilots noticed in the M2-F2 was that while it did provide lift, the descents (when airdropped) were quite steep, and the approaches to landing were quite fast. It seems apparent that, while these early aircraft were indeed lifting bodies, there was much work to do.

It should be noted that our present-day Space Shuttles are, by and large, lifting bodies, and probably owe at least some credit to the M2-F2 (and later the M2-F3).

Somewhat similar is the SR-71, which is itself a lifting body. While it certainly has wings, a large portion of it's lift is generated by the shape of the entire vehicle, not just the wings.

Joey

The History and Status of the Lifting Body program
 

There were two vehicles used in the filming of the Six Million Dollar television pilot and a subsequent episode filmed out at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California. One was the HL-10 and in the episode drops away from B52 "Mothership 008." Just a short word about this "NASA loaner." This plane, a B-52B was recently replaced by a B-52H, and it was the oldest B-52 in service at the time of its retirement this year, and it also had the least flight hours. Its last use from being "loaned" from the Strategic Strike Bomber forces of the USAF in the early 1960's to launch X-15's was to launch the Hyper-X which made news late last year. This B-52 that was in the television pilot was the same one used to drop most of the X-15's and all of the Lifting Bodies, in addition to serving as the test platform for the Shuttle landing chute, a lot of Pegasus booster launches into space, and the list goes on and on. If you go to http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/home/index.html you can get a lot of information on this B-52 which had a remarkable career.

Now on to the Lifting Body program ... this was the brainchild of a genius that NASA Headquarters seemed to think was a little eccentric, with his half-cone shape with a low lift-to-drag ratio that would still be able to flare from a cross-range descent from space at a survivable rate. This genius, named Dale Reed, submitted ideas that were supplemental to the X-20 DynaSoar program in which Milt Thompson and Neil Armstrong were involved with. NASA HQ cancelled the DynaSoar believing the other experts that said that ballistic capsules with no real atmospheric guidance but to fall where they may based on the angle and speed of Entry Interface were the answer, protected by ablative shielding, and if the math worked out, to be softened by a drogue and main parachute descent into soft water. The slower cross-range descent made it possible for the vehicle to expend energy from the speed of (atmospheric) Entry Interphase (EI) at a slower rate - in short, making it possible to land and re-use the vehicle with much less damage than what the ballastic capsules would see.

The difference with the half-cone "Lifting Body" design was that by adding control fins to control pitch, yaw and roll, atmospheric entry would allow for a cross-range deliberate controlled flight - although a rapidly descending one, and on a marshal to final approach, the nose would go down for even more rapid descent to pick up what is called pre-flare airspeed needed to prevent a stall over the runway in horizontal nose-up flight. The Air Force was simultaneously interested in the same program called "PRIME" separate from NASA's efforts. Neil Armstrong left to fly capsules, and Milt Thompson stayed behind, with no oversight (or permission) from NASA Headquarters to build the M2-F1 prototype from tubular steel, a Cessna landing gear set, and plywood. The first flights were made behind a souped-up car towing it across the lakebed, and soon, a C-47 (DC-3) was used to tow the vehicle on a cable for a release around 25,000 feet. After this program was a huge success, Thompson told NASA Headquarters about it - and through his power of persuasion - once NASA HQ got over the anger at being out of the loop, they authorized two competing designs to be tested in a "Heavyweight" version to be launched from the B-52 at about 45,000 feet. One was Ames Research Center's M2-F2 - a heavyweight version of the M2-F1, and the other was the Langley HL-10. Both were built by Northrop at a cost of about $2,000,000 (U.S.) each and both also used off-the-shelf technologies such as F-104 landing gear. With XLR-11 rocket engines tested earlier in the Bell X-1 and the X-15 early variants, these vehicles would rocket up to 83,000 feet or so - if possible, and from there a simulation of a space reentry would take place in a controlled approach to a horizontal landing on a runway. Prior to installation of the rocket engines, ballast tanks were installed to simulate center of gravity, and the need was seen early to put far more weight in the forward cockpit for proper centerline/weight & balance. This added steel protection probably saved Peterson's life in his crash. Bruce Peterson nearly crashed the HL-10 on its maiden flight because of a design flaw that was corrected that would provide for more air to go over the side flaps, and in hindsight, his ability to land the vehicle was seen as both miraculous and a testament to his flying skills.

He was also on Flight 16 of the M2-F2, in the last planned flight prior to installation of the XLR rockets, and he found himself in a violent PIO. (Pilot-induced oscillation), which is a known issue related to wingless designs with low lift-to-drag ratios and without wings, very little roll control. Any variation in the "Stability Augmentation System" caused these PIO's - rocking like a swing-set, and it happened on more than one flight. The normal recovery is to reset the SAS and to move the stick down, which ends the PIO while causing diving conditions, increased speed, and lower altitudes. Once he recovered from that, he had to keep the nose down to pick up the necessary pre-flare airspeed, and this meant that no matter what he would do, he would land short of the intended Runway 22 - which was little more than paint on a lakebed. Then, as he discovered that an observation helicopter was in his way, so he had to make movements that would place him too low to complete the flare, complicated by the fact that on the desert, it is very hard to judge altitude with a terrain with no features but sagebrush. His landing gear was just coming down when he struck the lakebed, rolling over several times. Instrumentation recorded a maximum of 4 gs during the crash, but in the last flop-over, the bubble canopy struck directly into the lakebed, causing his extensive facial and head injuries. It took some time to get him out of the wreckage, and he was flown by Medivac to March AFB for what would be a long, but miraculous recovery in which he would fly again as a USMC Reserve Pilot and in which he would become the safety officer at the Dryden Flight Research Center until the mid 1990's. In retirement, with a patch over his left eye, a miraculously reconstructed face, but no bionic limbs, Bruce Peterson still hangs around Dryden and lives nearby. His most recent public appearance was last year, and I believe him to still be alive, as are many of his contemporaries - Neil Armstrong, Joe Engle, Bill Dana, Gerald Gentry, and others. Others are not, including Milt Thompson, Pete Knight, Dick Scobee, and that list goes on and on, too. Milt Thompson was very personable with site visitors, and one of the things he like to say most often was that if a man were to fall out of the B-52 the same time that the Lifting Body dropped off the wing, the Lifting Body would be on the ground first.

Milt Thompson was convinced that the craft should be rebuilt, and it was. In addition to strengthening the canopy area of the cockpit in the event of future crashes, a middle vertical stabilizer was added to the vehicle, renamed the M2-F3, and this gave the vehicle much better roll stability. XLR-11 engines were installed and both the HL-10 and M2-F3 made several dozen flights, giving NASA the confidence to proceed with an unpowered landing for the future Shuttle. However, the idea of flying without wings was not such an easy sale, and the Shuttle program competitors for the Shuttle design lost out to the Rockwell proposal to place delta wings on the vehicle. Simultaneously, the Air Force experiments went well, and their X-24A manned Lifting Body was mirrored in every design line for the X-38 CRV prototype - but that the latter had a parachute and no on-board pilot, and the former made a horizontal landing on the lakebed with a pilot. This plane, the X-24A was modified to become the X-24B, and copies of both are now in the Wright-Patterson Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. The HL-10 is now on a pedestal at the entrance of the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, and the M2-F3 is now in the National Air & Space Museum. The cancelled VentureStar X-33 program was the latest major attempt to place the Lifting Body school of thought into service, and there will be others, the most likely being the Blended Wing Body aircraft that is remarkably efficient with fuel - and the likely design of passenger jets in our lifetime. But the ultimate goal of the Lifting Body Program is in the ability to produce a reusable space vehicle. A serious effort was made to replicate the HL-10 with heat shielding and put it into the LEM area of the Apollo-Soyuz Saturn launch into space. Two of the astronauts were to return to Earth on the Apollo capsule, and the third was to fly home on the modified HL-10. Obviously budget cuts made it impractical, but not impossible. Scaled Composites made history with its reusable "SpaceshipOne" - a private duplication of the "SOP" from the Lifting Body and X-15 programs ... the air launch, the rocket carrying the vehicle to the edge of space, the unpowered approach and landing, and the low-maintenance ability to turn the vehicle around quickly for another launch - something that was never practical in the existing Shuttle program.

Boeing has borrowed many of the concepts of the Lifting Body program in their proven prototype called the X-40A, and it stands a very good chance of being the origin of the appearance of the replacement platform for the U.S. Space Shuttle, which at most, has only 15 launches left, and this week, hopefully, I'll be back at the Cape, as I was last Wednesday, to witness one of Discovery's last five flights.

How Bruce Peterson Became Steve Austin
 

There was an Air Force Tech Sergeant named Martin Caidin on the Air Force side whose interest in the Lifting Body program was expressed in his book "Marooned," and he took the crash and miraculous recovery of Peterson as the basis for a fictional and quite exagerated account of the events there, using "rumors" of a "secret project" that were never proven as the basis of his fiction that Peterson had been wheeled out to a top secret laboratory in Colorado and turned into the bionic man. I honestly don't know how Peterson ever put up with the profit off of his trajedy that would come from Caidin's book "Cyborg" or the subsequent TV series "The Six Million Dollar Man," but from what I hear, he took it all in stride, grateful that his NASA center which had always been the end of a long line of budget items would get some widespread media coverage. There were some excellent "Movies of the Week" that followed the television pilot, also called Cyborg, and the series got off to a good start with Star Trek's Harve Bennet at the helm of production. But, he stayed only a few seasons, and the "mechanical 007" concept rapidly degenerated into Sci-Fi.

A very good page for the real Lifting Body programs, including a picture of Bruce Peterson the test pilot and the rebuilt craft as the M2-F3 go here: http://area51specialprojects.com/lifting_bodies.html

If you want to see the carnage on the desert following Bruce Peterson's crash - clearly identifying how the damage to his face came to be - yet also identifying how the steel shell around the cockpit saved his life - go here:

http://www.digikitten.com/playhousev.../M2F2Crash.jpg

That day, Bruce Peterson was wearing the flight helmet seen in this picture and an orange flight suit, as the pressure suits were only employed during the missions where the XLR-11 would carry the craft at rocket power to the edge of space. Even so, one has to wonder just how a valsalvo works when dropping from 45,000 feet falling at the speed of a falling brick before flaring for a horizontal approach and landing. Actual cockpit footage of Peterson's flight were used in the opening sequence of the Six Million Dollar Man - but out of order. From the left over-shoulder view when the character of Steve Austin when you see the flashes as he says "I've got a blowout - Vapor Three," these flashes are actually from the contact with the sand at the moment of impact. The television pilot actually incorporated much of the actual audio transcript from the crash of Flight Sixteen, but had none of what ended up as audio on the television series. The grainy black and white film was the actual crash footage, yet in late seasons, an alternate view was added of the vehicle in a violent PIO, but this was not from Peterson's flight, but from Milt Thompson's pioneering first flight aboard the vehicle, which Thompson blamed on pilot error when he had the SAS (Stability Augmentation System) switch in the wrong position. He said jokingly that getting his head knocked into the side of the canopy woke him up, he realized his error and set the switch into the correct position, and the rest of the flight performed as if he were in a Cessna out of gas. The tests were a huge success, showing that supersonic and subsonic trims were viable regimes for the Lifting Bodies, yet every pilot said that more often than not, the performance made it hard to believe that the vehicle did not have wings. And recovery of the PIO did mirror standard stall recovery in light winged aircraft - when operating subsonic. Problems when operating supersonic are obviously more troublesome, as witnessed by Major Mike Adams aboard X-15 #3 or by the crew of Columbia.