EDITORIAL INFORMATION

The present Dryden Flight Research Center, a part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, has a flight research history that extends back to the mid-1940's. The parent organization was a part of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and was formed in 1946 as the Muroc Flight Test Unit. This document describes 13 selected examples of important supersonic flight research conducted from the Mojave Desert location of the Dryden Flight Research Facility over a 4 decade period beginning in 1946.

(Extracted from the Abstract.)

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-Contents.

-Abstract.

-Nomenclature.

-Introduction.

-Discussion.

-Stage 1: Barriers to Supersonic Flight.
-Stage 2: Correlation-Integration of Ground Facility Data an Flight Data.
-Stage 3: Integration and Disciplines.

-Concluding Remarks.

-Acknowledgments.

-References.

-Table.

OUR REVIEW

In this short monograph, Saltzman and Ayers show us some of the most important works carried out by NACA and NASA in the field of supersonic flight from just after World War Two up to our days. The research, mostly developed in the Mojave Desert, from the historical breaking of the sound barrier till the latest advances in supersonic aeronautical technology, prove the capital role the Dryden center has had in all that. Such legendary planes as the X-1 or X-15, have been at their facilities, as well as the most sophisticated craft ever developed up to now.

This monograph makes a chronological review, yet it is centered above all in the technical and technological achievements, rather than in a succession of experimental flights carried out by the different test craft. Thus, 13 are the examples of specific research carried out since 1946 that the authors present to us, of which a third utilized aircraft of the X series, and the rest used normal test planes. The result of all this effort was the fact that a whole sequence of new techniques, designs, technologies and even instruments which step by step have been incorporated to the aeronautic industry proved their worth.