Great photo of the HL-10 lifting body!

[sojourner]

OK, doesn't this photo just make you want to fire up the software and start modeling this plane? I mean, look at that cross-section!

http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/photo/HL-10/Medium/ECN-1463.jpg

Oh, and read the story with this pic, lol:

http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/photo/HL-10/HTML/ECN-2409.html

 

[The Axeman]

Some nice photos in there, very atmospheric stuff. The X-24 lifting body could be johns ship from Farscape, and the M2-F2 one looks like the one who's crash was used at the star of the 6 Million Dollar Man. Pretty steeped in sci-fi, eh? Very nice looking ships.

 

[B.J.]

Nice pics! I've seen this aircraft many times, but I never realized how thick the trailing edges of the control surfaces were. I have to assume that's partly to provide room for the split rudder and elevons, but I've seen much thinner versions.

From the linked webpage:

his 1954 Ford was "borrowed" from the parking lot, painted with yellow-green zinc-chromate primer, and decorated with large stick-on flowers about one foot in diameter

Ew. That's the same primer that's still used today for aircraft structures. Not a flattering color for any era.

 

[sojourner]

Couldn't leave this alone so I am taking a crack at it in Sketchup. I will probably scale this up to be a 5 to 10 man shuttle for my Dropspace project.