ECN-2064

The HL-10 Lifting Body is seen here parked on Rogers Dry Lake, the unique location where it landed after research flights. This 1968 photo shows the vehicle after the fins were modified to remove instabilities encountered on the first flight. It involved a change to the shape of the leading edge of the fins to eliminate flow separation. It required extensive wind-tunnel testing at Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va. NASA Flight Research Center (FRC) engineer Bob Kempel than plotted thousands of data points by hand to come up with the modification, which involved a fiberglass glove backed with a metal structure on each fin's leading edge. This transformed the vehicle from a craft that was difficult to control into the best handling of the original group of lifting bodies at the FRC.