>>Flashing across California desert skies, the airplanes you see
here are writing new chapters in the story of man made flight....there she goes!
>>This is my first opportunity to greet you as deputy administrator
of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
>>Together, you and I must make our new agency
>>A most unusual place
>>An organization that can challenge conventional wisdom.
>>We can engineer anything we can write the requirements for.
>>We're going to make your idea work.
This particular idea is quite disruptive.
>>A typical flight, of course, starts under the wing of the B-52 mothership.
>>This sleek, high speed machine would have made Rube Goldberg proud.
>>The manner in which we fly reentry from space,
on the space shuttle was pioneered on the X-15.
>>The X-31 pretty much wrote the book on thurst vectoring, along with its sister program, the F-18 HARV.
>>An observation of an occulation is
one of the more challenging missions that SOFIA can do.
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>>Right now, we are looking at the dawn of a new era of aviation.
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[Music]
>>Electrical pulses,
transmitted with the speed of light...
>>...to help man to see,
to control, and tame the environment of hurtling speed
his science has created.
>>Called telemetry,
each craft has its own signature, a unique tone
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>>Tracking radar is designed to keep one target
continuously centered in its beam.
>>...facilities and equipment for air to ground
monitoring of test flights were primitive.
>>When I got here, they had just barely converted from one where the guy
sat there and he actually looked at the airplane
and steered that thing by hand.
>>The radars are accurate to within three meters.
We know that if the radar is locked on to the airplane,
that if we slave the telemetry dish or the LRO to it,
that that dish will also be right on the airplane.
>>Flight research results depended mostly on air to air chase
observations and onboard data recording for later examination.
>>When I came here, they were taking data from the airplanes on these oscilloscopes.
We had to read the times off of ticks on the film.
Now there is onboard computers that uplink and downlink...
>>...real time data rather than coming down and analyzing data between flights...
>>...large computational problems are resolved in real time
as opposed to waiting until the data gets down.
>>Radar coverage is limited to line of sight and is unable to see over the horizon
or behind mountainous terrain...
>>Before the X-15,
all of that coverage could be accomplished from a single location.
The X-15 didn't allow that because it had to extend much farther away
from the base.
>>Dryden engineers developed a complex system for flight monitoring
that went far beyond anything yet known.
>>The range allowed researchers
on the ground to track the X-15 throughout its entire mission.
>>My experience with the implementation and operation of the high range was in line
with the extension of flight profiles from some few hundred miles
through circling the Earth.
>>A hypersonic research
vehicle or trans-atmospheric research vehicle;
You are going to be completely dependent on the range for a successful mission.
>>The Western Aeronautical Test Range of today is the high range grown up,
a functioning integration of state of the art communications,
tracking equipment, computers and electronic display systems.
>>Every critical function of the X-29 is monitored from the ground.
>>We actually collect on the order of 250 to 300 pieces of data
telemetered to the ground.
>>AFTI's total dependence on computers
and enormous data output require a great deal of range support.
>>The shuttle's safe return depends heavily on the range's precision
operation monitoring the space plane during its return to Earth.
>>Pilots fly remotely piloted research vehicles from cockpits on the ground,
depending completely on telemetry provided by the range to receive sensory
information from and send commands to the airplane.
>>The key to a successful research
mission is uninterrupted communications and data links with test vehicles.
>>The capability that we have here is probably better
than any existing capability anywhere in the country.
>>We have radar, we have telemetry, video,
communications, flight termination, long range optics, ramp cameras.
We've supported everything from the X-1 all the way up
to modern projects.