shhhhh its confidential... NASA

found this rooting around on nasa website..
the document says confidential just wondering if anyone has read it before?

www.nasa.gov...

if so what is it?

It's an old paper, written by NACA (NASA's predecessor, mostly concerned with aerodynamics and not spaceflight). It concerns the Bell X-1, which was the first manned plane to reliably reach Mach 1 in level flight. Since supersonic flight is much different than subsonic flight, lots of different studies were done on how to improve various aspects of supersonic planes and the effects of various additions. This paper explores one of these things.

en.wikipedia.org...

Yes, it used to be confidential, but it's not anymore. After all, it is publicly available on NASA's site. Nothing shady is going on, if that's what you were thinking.

nope nothing shady...
ill stumble accross something shady maybe... hahhaa
thanks for the info.

dangler - In 200 words or less, here is what that is all about:

The tail rudder of the Bell X-1 (the plane Chuck Yeager flew when he broke the "sound barrier" in 1947) originally had a traditional tail rudder. You can see this rudder on page 5 and 7 of the document. This rudder became useless at high speeds (around mach 1). I'm not an aerospace engineer, but I believe this document is describing this problem.

In any case, whether that was the point of this paper or not, to alleviate the problem, engineers designed the tail to become one large movable surface, effectively making the entire tail a rudder. This was a relativly easy fix, and it would not require a total redesign of the X-1 aircraft. The X-1 tail was redesigned, and the problem was solved.

This was a major milestone in the history of supersonic flight. Almost all fighter planes these days use this concept of a movable tailplane rather than a traditional tail flap.



[edit on 21-12-2006 by Soylent Green Is People]

To give credit were credit is due at deserves to be noted that it wasn't NACA that was responsible for this breakthrough but the concept of an all-moving tailplane originated in the UK with the Miles M.52.

So lets give our friends across the pond some much deserved props.

I didn't read it all but it seems unreliabal and un relastic. Even if scaned onto a computer i dout it woult be messed like that.

Also this is just a pun but it says By: blah, blah, Harry P, and Blah(blah is insignifagent).

Harry P could = Harry Potter (pun)

Erm... WW 1 biplanes had all moving rudders


What you lot are talking about is control reversal:

en.wikipedia.org...


It also applies to ailerons and elevators.