Dryden Chief Researcher killed

Marta Bohn-Meyer, the chief researcher at NASAs Dryden Flight Research Center was killed early yesterday in the crash of an aerobatic aircraft. She was begining aerobatic practice, when the Giles G-300 she was flying crashed near Oklahoma City.

During her career at NASA Dryden, Bohn-Meyer worked on a variety of research projects, specializing in flight test operations, developing test techniques, and laminar flow research. Among these projects were flight tests of space shuttle thermal protection tiles with a NASA F-104, B-57 gust gradient evaluations, and the F-14 aileron-rudder interconnect and variable sweep transition laminar flow programs, in addition to her work on the F-16XL laminar flow project before becoming project manager.

Bohn-Meyer was the author of several publications and reports on sailplane performance, laminar flow experiments and composite construction. Bohn-Meyer was one of two flight engineers assigned to fly in the SR-71 high-speed flight research program at Dryden. She was the first female crewmember from NASA or the Air Force -- and the second woman -- to fly in one of the triple-sonic SR-71s. NASA used the SR-71s to obtain high speed, high altitude data that can be applied to improve the designs of future civil and military aircraft.
www.nasa.gov...