The Wild Blue Ponder : Tests at Dryden Flight Research Center Have Aided Aviation for 50 Years

The most famous person ever associated with the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, which is about to mark its 50th birthday, will probably not be invited to speak on its behalf any time soon.

Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier here in 1947, but he’s made no secret of his belief that cautious government officials with NASA’s precursor--the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics--delayed the project unreasonably.

“NACA did not contribute a hell of a lot,” said the retired Air Force general, speaking last week from his home in Northern California. “They only reduced the data for us.”

Yeager acknowledged in his best-selling autobiography, however, that the data the committee collected in its 500-pound payload on the X-1--the rocket-powered craft with which he made history--provided invaluable feedback.

That was the job of NACA, as it is now of NASA, at the Dryden center, which in characteristic, low-profile style plans no public commemorations of its golden anniversary. Gathering data for basic research may not be the sexiest part of aviation, but it has played a vital role in landmark projects at the center, beginning with the X-1 and including the legendary X-15--which flew at six times the speed of sound--the lunar landing vehicle and the space shuttle.

These days, engineers, programmers and pilots at Dryden are conducting research on projects including systems that could be used on civilian supersonic jets, and high-altitude pilotless aircraft that would have the ability to stay aloft for several days at a time.

It was announced this year that Dryden will be the primary testing site for the X-33, a prototype for the next generation of reusable spacecraft.

Dryden has had its ups and downs over the decades, but the need for basic research seems unending.

“There is a lot we still don’t know about aerodynamics,” said Dryden spokesman J.D. Hunley, “even though we have been doing it for almost a century.”

The remote, high-desert air base that is home to Dryden was not the first choice for a national flight test center. Before World War II, most of this work was done at Wright Field near Dayton, Ohio, according to “On the Frontier,” a NASA-sponsored history of Dryden by Richard Hallion.

But Wright was too close to residential areas to allow for hazardous test flights, and the Army, which ran most of the testing then, wanted a more private locale where secret aircraft could be put through their paces. Officials also wanted a place with better year-round flying weather than Ohio.

NACA did early test flights of the X-1 at Pinecastle Field in Orlando, Fla., but “they didn’t have clear enough conditions,” Hunley said. “They wanted open skies so that they could monitor flights at all times.”

In the fall of 1946, the X-1 team arrived at Muroc Army Air Field, which became known as Edwards Air Force Base in 1950. Yeager had been there in 1945. “For a pilot, it was a godsend,” he said.

“You couldn’t ask for better weather, clearer skies most of the time, plenty of room. It’s a dream place.”

At the heart of Edwards is the largest dry lake bed in the world, a 44-square-mile area now known as Rogers Lake. Dry lakes are not only the flattest of all land forms, they also have an extremely hard surface, making them ideal natural runways.

Edwards does get high winds, but they generally come from one direction. “It’s a predictable element,” Hunley said, “so that is OK for aviation.”

The crew chief on the X-1, Jack Russell, who had come from Buffalo, N.Y., loved more than the area’s good flying conditions. “I had had enough of that Buffalo snow,” recalled Russell, who was working at the time for the Bell aircraft company, which manufactured the X-1.

The fact that temperatures on the dry lake bed can hit 115 degrees in summer didn’t faze him. And these were the days before air-conditioning.

“The dry heat didn’t bother me,” said Russell, who retired 17 years ago and lives in nearby Lancaster. “I thought I had died and gone to heaven.”

Others believed they had gone in the other direction.

“There was a story about an engineer,” said Betty Love, who began work at the flight test center in 1952 compiling test data. “He signed in at administration, got his desk, and an hour later he was gone.”

The engineer, who had come to Muroc from Virginia, found the remote, Mojave Desert landscape unnerving.

“It was pretty desolate compared to what they had come from in the East,” said Love, who grew up in the area and was used to it.

Yet the center grew and officially became known as the Muroc Flight Test Unit in the summer of 1947. Yeager’s breaking through the sound barrier on Oct. 14, 1947, still reigns as its most significant flight. In 1954, the testing unit left its hangars and buildings on what is known as Edwards’ South Base, and moved northward to build its own facilities on the east side of the lake bed. The flight research center was still a tenant of the base but is now a more independent operation.

For many who worked there, it was a great time in their lives, even though conditions could be difficult. Swamp coolers, which made everything damp, were the only devices available to cool interior work spaces. Sandstorms were a frequent nuisance, and grit got into everything.

But the worst times were when a pilot died during a test accident. “The only way we could get data was sacrificing lives,” Yeager said. “It’s that blunt.”

Many streets on the base are named for test pilots killed in crashes. One, in the Dryden complex, is Lilly Avenue.

“It was a family atmosphere in the old days,” said Don Borchers, who started there in 1947 and was crew chief of an X-1. “Everyone knew everyone. Everyone loved Howard Lilly.”

In May 1948, Lilly was flying a D-559-1, better known as a Sky-streak, when the rocket-powered engine broke up shortly after takeoff and the aircraft plunged into the lake bed and exploded.

The accident was caused by engine failure, and the crew was not to blame. But Borchers, who was chief inspector of the unit, took it hard.

“I had to leave. I was devastated,” said Borchers, now 74 and living in Lancaster. He eventually went to work for the Postal Service and retired in 1977.

The center was named in 1976 for the late Hugh L. Dryden, a pioneering aeronautical scientist who was the highest-ranking NACA official at the time of Yeager’s historic flight.

The current staff includes about 450 full-time government employees and an equal number of contract workers. The budget for fiscal ’95 totaled about $240 million.

Among the aircraft now used for tests at the center is the SR-71, the famed Blackbird spy plane that once flew from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., in 68 minutes, 17 seconds.

Instead of slide rules, employees now use computers. Because of highly advanced simulators, flight testing is more predictable. And all the buildings are air-conditioned.

But some veterans miss the old days. For women, for instance, the center offered a rare chance to break into new fields.

“I was going to go to nursing school but then like most young girls at the time, I got sidetracked by marriage and a family,” Love said.

A friend told her jobs were available at the flight research center. She became what was known as a “computer.”

The job extracting and analyzing information from test instruments required spending long hours over a small light box, measuring marks made during a flight on film. “You would get maybe 12 to 16 rolls of film from a test flight,” said Love, now 74 and a resident of Lancaster. “They would tell you the speed, altitude, acceleration.”

All the “computers” in the days before electronic calculators and digital readouts were women. Love admitted the work was repetitious and at times tedious.

“I imagine a man would get very tired of that,” she said.

But it gave her the chance to be a part of an exciting endeavor, and eventually she advanced to become an aeronautical engineering technician. She worked at the center for 25 years, until she retired.

“I just feel real blessed I got to be part of it,” she said. “Reading the pilot notes, checking the test results. I was fascinated by everything.”

The Dryden history, “On the Frontier,” is available at no cost on a NASA World Wide Web site on the Internet. (https://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/History/Publications/SP-4303)