NASA SP-2000-4523

The Eclipse Project

byTom Tucker

Monographs in Aerospace History #23

NASA SP-2000-4523

The Eclipse Project

byTom Tucker

NASA History DivisionOffice of Policy and Plans

NASA HeadquartersWashington, DC 20546

Monographs inAerospace History

Number 232000

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tucker, Tom, 1944- The Eclipse Project/by Tom Tucker. p. cm. — (Monographs in aerospace history; no 24) (NASA history series) (NASA SP-2000 ; 4524) Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Eclipse Project (U.S.)—History. 2. Rockets (Aeronautics)—Launching—Research—United States. 3. Towing—Research—United States. I. Title. II. Series: III. NASA history series IV. NASA SP ; 4524

TL789.8.U6.E42 2000629.43’2'072073—dc21

00-067616

_______________________________________________________________

For sale by the Superintendant of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2250

Mail Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001

Foreword .............................................................................................................................................................................iv

Preface .................................................................................................................................................................................. v

The Eclipse Project.........................................................................................................................1

Start Up ......................................................................................................................................................................... 1

The Elements................................................................................................................................................................. 4

Names.......................................................................................................................................................................... 17

Subsystems and Worry ................................................................................................................................................ 18

Space ........................................................................................................................................................................... 32

The Proof..................................................................................................................................................................... 33

Documents ...................................................................................................................................45

Eclipse Flight Log, Doc. 1 ...………………………………................................................46

Kelly Patent Number 5,626,310, Doc. 2 ...………………………………...........................49

EXD-01 Flight 5, Docs. 3-7 .....…………………………………………............................60

EXD-01 Flight 6, Docs. 8-13 ……………………………………………….......................75

EXD-01 Flight 7, Docs. 14-21 .……………………………………………........................87

EXD-01 Flight 8, Docs. 22-30 ...………………………………........................................101

EXD-01 Flight 9, Docs. 31-40 ...……………………………………………....................114

EXD-01 Flight 10, Docs. 41-52 ...…………………………………………......................130

Eclipse Acronyms and Definitions, Doc. 53.………………………………..................... 148

Note, Dan Goldin to Ken [Szalai], Doc. 54…………………………................................149

Project Pilot’s Slides about Eclipse, Doc. 55………………..............................................150

Index ................................................................................................................................................................................. 169

About the Author .............................................................................................................................................................. 171

Monographs in Aerospace History ................................................................................................................................... 171

Table of Contents

i

Foreword

The Eclipse Project by Tom Tucker provides a readable narrative and a number of documents that record animportant flight research effort at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center. Carried out by Kelly Space &Technology, Inc. in partnership with the Air Force and Dryden at Edwards Air Force Base in the MojaveDesert of California, this project tested and gathered data about a potential newer and less expensive way tolaunch satellites into space. Whether the new technology comes into actual use will depend on funding,market forces, and other factors at least partly beyond the control of the participants in the project. This is afamiliar situation in the history of flight research.

Frequently, the results of discoveries through flight research are not implemented immediately afterprojects are completed. A perfect example of this phenomenon is the lifting-body research done in the1960s and 1970s that finally lead to new aerodynamic shapes in the world of aviation and space only in the1990s. Even then, the lifting-body shapes (for the X-33 technology demonstrator and the X-38 prototypecrew return vehicle) were only experimental. Other technologies emerging from flight research, such asmovable horizontal stabilizers, supercritical wings, winglets, and digital fly-by-wire moved more rapidlyinto actual use in operational flight vehicles, but it was never crystal clear at the start of a flight researchproject whether the results would simply inform future practice or would be adopted more or less com-pletely by air- and spacecraft designers.

Regardless of the eventual outcome in the case of the Eclipse Project, it was a unique and interestingexperiment that deserves to be recorded. Tom Tucker has told the story in an interesting way that shouldmake the monograph a joy to read. I thank him for his hard work, writing skill, and his flexibility as themonograph went through the coordination process. He was busy with teaching and writing another book;yet he unfailingly responded to my requests for technical changes in the monograph as various participantsrefined the details of the events surrounding the tow testing of the QF-106 behind its C-141A tow vehicle.

As editor of the monograph, I also want to express my appreciation to Jay Levine for his expert work aslayout artist and to Carol Reukauf, Mark Stucky, Al Bowers, Bob Keltner, Fred Johnsen, and Bill Lokos fortheir comments on the drafts of the study. Their assistance has made the account much fuller and moreaccurate than it could have been without their taking time in very busy schedules to apply their personalknowledge and expertise to the text at hand. I recommend the result to anyone interested in the history ofaviation and space technology. It will be especially valuable to anyone undertaking tow testing in thefuture.

J. D. Hunley, HistorianNASA Dryden Flight Research Center5 December 2000

ii

Star

When I was writing this history of a space technology issue, I was also busy at work on a book aboutBenjamin Franklin’s lightning science and deeply immersed in 18th century culture. In pursing the 18thcentury project, I found myself seeking out dust-covered documents from archives. What a relief it was toresearch the Eclipse story whose participants were all among the living and so willing to provide informa-tion. Eclipse was a joint effort uniting the efforts of three agencies, and to them all I owe a debt of gratitude,to Kelly Space & Technology, the U.S. Air Force, and NASA Dryden Flight Research Center.

Another Enlightenment perspective guided my approach to the Eclipse project. In the 18th century, scien-tists and technologists focused on certain key issues, such as a practical means of finding longitude at seaand locating the Northwest passage. The solutions to these problems would have dynastic import for nations,and individuals or groups finding practical solutions would earn a fortune worth a king’s ransom.

In our day, there has been a similar key issue, one just as important to the course of human history, just aspotentially rewarding for those who find the solution. In the aerspace industry, it has become a sort ofinvisible barrier. For more than twenty years, the cost for space launch has remained about $10,000 perpound. No innovation has appeared to solve this problem. Among the scores of creative, exciting ideasconceived by small start-up companies trying to meet the challenge was the Eclipse project. Behind the tinyEclipse project resonated a large issue.

I owe a great debt to the many individuals, programs, and organizations which enabled me to write thishistory. First, I am grateful to the NASA-ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program which brought me toNASA Dryden Flight Research Center out in the Mojave Desert and supplied me with every kind of supportneeded for research and writing. At Dryden Center, Don Black and Kristie Carlson provided much courtesyand good advice. At the Stanford University Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Melinda FrancisGratteau, Program Administrator, and Michael Tauber, Co-director of the Program, aided me invaluably withtheir help, consideration, and provision of opportunities. The programs which brought me in contact withscientists and engineers who were NASA ASEE fellows at the NASA Ames Research Center helped me inthinking about and clarifying this invention-history project.

Many people inside and outside the three participating agencies gave generously of their time and expertisein interviews and correspondence. These included: Bill Albrecht, Mike Allen, Don Anctil, Bob Baron, AlBowers, Tony Branco, Dana Brink, Robert Brown, Randy Button, Bill Clark, Mark Collard, Bill Dana,Dwain Deets, Casey Donohue, Bill Drachslin, Ken Drucker, Roy Dymott, Stuart Farmer, Gordon Fullerton,Mike Gallo, Joe Gera, Tony Ginn, Ken Hampsten, Stephen Ishmael, Mike Kelly, Bob Keltner, KellyLatimer, Bill Lokos, Mark Lord, Trindel Maine (again), Jim Murray, Todd Peters, Bob Plested, DebraRandall, Dale Reed, Carol Reukauf, Wes Robinson, Kelly Snapp, Phil Starbuck, Mark Stucky, GaryTrippensee, Daryl Townsend, Mark Watson, Roy Williams, and Joe Wilson.

Readers of drafts along the way offered many valuable comments. I especially thank: Al Bowers, FredJohnsen, Mike Kelly, Carol Reukauf, and Mark Stucky. I am grateful to Dennis Ragsdale and Erin Gerena ofthe NASA Dryden Library for tracking down my numerous research requests. Steve Lighthill, Jay Levine,and the NASA Dryden Graphics Office as well as the NASA Dryden Photo Lab went above and beyond thecall of duty in giving this project the benefit of their talents. Steve Lighthill also deserves recognition for hisexpert work arranging for the printing of the monograph through the Government Printing Office.

Last and most, I owe a debt to Dill Hunley, editor, historian, advisor, facilitator, friend, and when a phraseneeded a different turn in the face of an impossible deadline, co-author. He made this book much better thanit started.

Tom TuckerRutherfordton, NC12 December 2000

iii

vi

Start Up

If you wander the halls and look in officespaces at NASA’s Dryden Flight Re-search Center in the Mojave Desertnortheast of Los Angeles, you’ll see thatnearly every researcher has walls deco-rated with mementos from projectscompleted. Trophies, keepsakes, awards–these often take shape as photographs.Hundreds of projects have resolved onthese walls into 8-by-10-inch glossies.

When you look in some offices, however,you see what looks like a yachtingtrophy. It’s a snippet of heavy-duty rope.It is installed on a generic mementoplaque, but it was also recently thecenterpiece in a futuristic projectbrought to Dryden by a small venturecompany named Kelly Space & Tech-nology, Inc. This company hoped todemonstrate a new approach to satellitelaunching by first towing a spacelaunch vehicle to altitude behind atransport airplane.

Aerospace engineer Jim Murray keeps aunique memento of his participation inthe aerotow project–a large, messyjumble of monster rope that dangles fromthe ceiling. It’s the only trophy in hisoffice space. When Murray leanedforward one day under the fluorescentglare, rubbing his hand back through anunruly mop of hair so that he remindedme of the inventor in the movie Back tothe Future, he preferred to talk of hiscurrent assignment, designing an airplaneto fly the atmosphere on Mars. But Icouldn’t help noticing the rope over hisshoulder.

It is an eerie, snarled trophy–utterlyunlike the polite snippets of rope thatdecorate other offices. In a glance, youcan see the lengthy strand in an entangle-ment no human fingers have devised.You assume correctly that it representsthe aftermath of some violence thousands

TheEclipseProject

Tom Tucker

of feet overhead in the desert sky–a ropethat has outslithered any mathematicalprediction, a mesh of energies, a witnessto unknown forces.1

If you stare too long, you imagine thescent of jet fumes, the deafening roar ofengines, the rope itself powering off thewall toward you. It represents a curiousproject, one that generated controversy atthe research center and at NASA Head-quarters in Washington, D.C. This was sobecause its central technology, for all theleading-edge electronics and aeronauticsdeveloped around it, was the rope. NASAinvolvement began in 1996 when a smallstart-up company first approached NASADryden from just over the next mountainrange in San Bernardino.

Mike Kelly, founder of Kelly Space &Technology (KST), is a pleasant-lookingman in his mid-forties with graying hair,and when he speaks, he often brings bothhands up as if trying to frame an idea inmidair. He has an engineer’s hesitationwhen he starts talking, which soondisappears as his enthusiasm takes over.He remembers when he had the towlaunch idea. It came to him late in thewinter of 1993. He was working out of hishome office, then in Redlands, California,just after he and TRW had parted ways. Forsome time, he had been thinking about aproblem in the communications industry:the stiff costs of placing satellites into orbit.Despite the rapid growth of Internet andtelecommunications technology, despitemany breakthroughs in efficiencies that hadlowered costs, there had been no break-throughs in the satellite delivery system.The high cost of launch had not changedfor several decades. It is difficult math-ematics to estimate exact costs for thisservice with its federal subsidies, but alaunch price tag might come in near$10,000 a pound.

“I was sitting at my desk,” recalls Kelly.“I had been thinking for a long time

1 James Murray, interview by author, 14 June 1999, and the author’s observations during it.

1

about strategies for taking off from theground with a reusable rocket.” Duringone period at TRW, he had investigatedreusable launch vehicles, RLVs theindustry calls them. He thought about theShuttle approach, how the piggybackworked, and he thought of Pegasus, howthe under-wing stowing worked. Andthen he thought of pulling gliders on arope.2

The moment was the genesis of hisproject. Curiously, he recalls no excite-ment at the moment, merely a sense ofone hazy concept among many possibili-ties to file away for later evaluation. “ButI went for a walk,” he says, “and thetowing idea came back, and I begansaying to myself, ‘you know this makes alot of sense,’ and the ideas began to comefast and furious. By the time I got back tomy desk, it had me.”

If you keep adding weight to a spacelaunch vehicle, reasoned Kelly, to getmore thrust you add more propellant–which adds more weight and adds greateroperating costs. But Kelly’s concept–andit was a leap for an engineer/managerwho had devoted his career to ballisticmissiles–was to adapt to space launchtechnology what was essentially thetechnology of a glider towed on a rope.

It takes formidable engine thrust to get alaunch vehicle to 20,000 feet. Kellyreasoned, why not let a transport airplanedo all that first-stage work? Kelly nextpursued a bit of research in the SanBernardino Public Library and discov-ered historical precedent. He found thatin the 1920s a British woman, the ro-mance novelist Barbara Cartland, hadaddressed the same problem because shewanted fresh vegetables from the Conti-nent on her plate. At the time, airplanepeople explained to Cartland they did not

have a technology for carrying vegetablecargoes. Although their airplanes couldcarry the weight, the problem was lowdensity. The airplanes could not carry thevolumes of something like Frenchlettuce, for instance, that would make thecargo profitable. She had replied, whynot pull a big airplane with plenty ofvolume behind a small airplane with anengine? A glider on a rope offers a simpleway to transport more volume (and moreweight).

“You can pull more than you can carry,”says Kelly. The point can be intuitivelygrasped without understanding airplanelift and thrust. Consider, for example,moving heavy boxes. Consider carryingthe load in your arms and walking.Consider instead putting the boxes on asled and pulling the sled by rope onsnow. The difference is rocket launchversus tow launch.

As Kelly’s idea grew, its efficienciesseemed to multiply. For example, where aspace launch pad might cost as much as$75 million to construct and is expensiveto maintain, Kelly’s idea depended on aconventional airport runway. Where one-shot rockets are costly disposables, Kellyenvisioned his transport and his second-stage vehicle returning home to theairport. Where weather conditionsimposed costly delays on launch padtakeoffs, Kelly’s approach offeredflexibility in departure site and schedul-ing.

The ideas flooded around him on thatbrisk late-winter afternoon. In terms ofspace launch, he had moved from theballistic missile paradigm to the commer-cial airline paradigm. By the time heapproached the sidewalk to his Redlandshome, Kelly had covered quite a bit ofground.3

2 Mike Kelly, interview by author, 16 July 1999. The Shuttle launches piggyback, so to speak, on its external tank withtwo solid-rocket boosters attached. Pegasus launches from under the wing of an L-1011 (initially a B-52) launch aircraft.

3 Kelly interview.

2

* * *

A few years later, Mike Kelly turned upat NASA Dryden with his experiment. Inthe interim, he had formed his company,Kelly Space & Technology, foundpartners and investors, and hired a smallteam of engineers, many of them retireesfrom aerospace enterprises in the SanBernardino valley. He had filed a patentapplication for his winter afternoonbrainstorm. “Space Launch VehiclesConfigured as Gliders and Towed toLaunch Altitude by ConventionalAircraft” he called it, and the patent waslater granted on 6 May 1997.4

After six months in business, KST hadencountered a kindred spirit on theissue of low-cost access to space. Hewas Ken Hampsten of the Air ForcePhillips Laboratory,5 who had pub-lished a new topic for SBIR, SmallBusiness Innovation Research, a broadfederal program that encouragesgroundbreaking and creativity in smallcompanies. That year Hampsten askedfor proposals to be submitted in thearea of space launch technology. InApril 1995, he chose KST from morethan thirty applicants and gave it fundsfor a Phase I SBIR grant, a feasibilitystudy on paper. With that successbehind them, the Kelly people nextapplied for and received a Phase IISBIR grant for a study that would be ademonstration of concept in real flight.Kelly wanted to do a subscale demon-stration of bigger things that lay ahead.He wanted to take off and tow a high-performance delta-wing aircraft behinda transport aircraft. His hope was analliance. The Air Force Flight TestCenter (AFFTC) at Edwards Air ForceBase (AFB) would supply and fly thetransport (a C-141A). The towedairplane would be lent or bailed from

another Air Force unit, and NASADryden would contribute its flightresearch expertise.

From the start, Eclipse flight issuesdivided experts at Dryden. Would therope introduce some new and possiblydangerous dynamic to the airplanes? TheKST visionaries and many of the Drydenpeople, who were recreational gliderpilots and had experience being towed ona rope all the time, saw no problem. Oneof the early project managers, Bob Baron,addressed this issue in the cover designson Eclipse reports. He had an artistintroduce images of the transport in frontof the interceptor and then draw a whiteline from the tail of the C-141A to thenose of the F-106 to represent the rope.Ultimately, the rope path proved fascinat-ingly different. But at the time, there wasno available evidence to the contrary.Baron reduced the problem for his report-readers. He reduced it to a reassuringstraight line.

There arose a growing suspicion,however, among many engineers andpilots at the center, within and outsideof the project, that the hazards were notas minimal as those attending recre-ational gliding, not so negligible as tobe reduced to a straight line–thatsomehow dangling a 30,000-poundCold War interceptor on a barge ropemight be dangerous.

Curiously, there was little literature onthe subject. There existed no validatedmodelings of towed flight reality. Re-search through the library at Drydeninitially turned up the pioneer AnthonyFokker patenting tow technology in 1919,misty accounts of extensive Germanaerotow experimenting before and duringWorld War II, and some brief accounts ofthe United States working on the WACO

4 Mike Kelly, United States Patent 5,626,310, “Space Launch Vehicles Configured as Gliders and Towed to LaunchAltitude by Conventional Aircraft,” 6 May 1997 (See document 2 of this monograph).

5 Redesignated the Propulsion Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory in October 1997.

3

glider.6 Mostly, the research turned upanecdote.

The anecdotes did not bode well.

One account came from the legendaryRoyal Navy Test Pilot, Captain EricBrown. Rogers Smith, who was thenChief Pilot at Dryden, had a personalconnection to Brown and asked for hisinput. Brown had flown the German-builtMe 163A and Me 163B when they weretowed in flight tests by Spitfires. Hewrote, “If the tug’s slipstream wasinadvertently entered, a very rough rideensued and control was virtually lostuntil the towed aircraft was tossed out ofthe maelstrom.”7

During the same period, a B-29 towedthe Me 163 at Muroc Army Air Field(now known as Edwards AFB). BrigadierGeneral Gustave Lundquist–writing laterabout the experience–stated, “Thissounds simple enough, although it wasanything but. In fact, it was the scariestexperience I have ever encountered in allmy flying.”8

The desert base had more history to offer.Several older Dryden pilots had flownwake turbulence tests in the 1970s andwitnessed Cessnas and Learjets tossed

upside down as if they were toothpicksby the wake of Boeing 747s. There wasthe case of test pilot Jerauld Gentry whoflew on tow in the lifting-body programand twice rolled over on tow release.9

Perhaps the earliest local anecdoteconcerned a tow crash in September1944. The test pilot had walked awayunscathed, and the incident–reported in asort of deadpan, gosh-gee-whiz, 1950sstyle by eyewitnesses in their swornstatements–assumed the proportion ofcomic legend on the base.10 But thestory of a nylon rope rubberbanding backat the towed airplane seriously concernedthe Eclipse investigators.

They felt even more troubled by theaccounts from Europe. There was theincident involving the Germans whosuffered 129 deaths in a 1941 towingaccident. The ropes to their vast glider,the Gigant, snarled in a crash that madeaviation history.11

The Elements

Kelly planned to use a modified Boeing747 for his ultimate tow plane. Noexpensive design, no lengthy develop-ment, no vast web of flight qualificationtesting awaited KST. The towed airplanewas named the Eclipse Astroliner, and it

6 James E. Murray, Albion H. Bowers, William A. Lokos, Todd L. Peters, and Joseph Gera, An Overview of anExperimental Demonstration Aerotow Program (Edwards, CA: NASA TM-1998-206566, 1998).

7 Eric Brown, personal letter, 17 June 1997.

8 Gustave E. Lundquist, “From the PT-3 to the X-1: A Test-Pilot’s Story,” ed. Ken Chilstrom and Penn Perry, Test Flyingat Old Wright Field (Omaha, NE, 1993).

9 R. Dale Reed with Darlene Lister, Wingless Flight: The Lifting Body Story (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4220, 1997),pp. 60-62. The phrase “on tow” simply means that the aircraft was being towed by another vehicle.

10 U.S. War Department Report of Aircraft Accident, no number, (Moffet Field, CA, 5 September 1944).

11 The Gigant’s technical designation was the Me 321. It was a large glider aircraft that could be towed by a single largeaircraft or up to three twin-engine aircraft. The Discovery Channel has shown a video of the glider accident on its Wingsof the Luftwaffe series produced by Henninger Video, Inc. See also Jane’s 100 Significant Aircraft, 1909-1969, ed. JohnW. R. Taylor (London: McGraw-Hill, 1969), p. 108, and especially William Green, The Warplanes of the Third Reich(Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1970), pp. 645-648. Thanks to Al Bowers and Fred Johnsen forguidance to the sources listed here.

4

was a conceptual re-combination, with itsessential element the wing root andfuselage of another airplane, theLockheed L-1011, and its motors, flight-control systems, instrumentation, andthermal protection all borrowed fromother current and flight-qualified aircraft.

To test this concept, Kelly neededairplanes, vehicles whose identities wereat that point unknown. Because theAstroliner was a delta-winged vehicle,Kelly sought out a delta-winged intercep-tor so that it would provide a proof of hisconcept using an aerodynamically similartowed vehicle. He also was looking for atransport aircraft that would be a scaled-down version of the airplane that wouldtow the Astroliner in his concept.12

Kelly needed a transport airplane, aninterceptor airplane, pilots, crews, flight-test engineers, and a rope.

* * *From the beginning, the rope was there:Patent 5,626,310, column 7, paragraph 2of Kelly’s claim text, “The launch vehiclewould be coupled to the tow aircraft by aflexible cable. . . .” The rope was destinedto become part of space technology, but itspedigree dated back over the centuries.The apprehension about the concept wasthere in the beginning, too. Column 7,paragraph 2 of the patent continued: “. . .the cable . . . would be attached to theaircraft . . . at or near the tow aircraft’scenter of gravity. This is done to minimizethe overturning moments which would beapplied to the aircraft by the tow line.”13

And as he and his partners discovered,aeronautical data on overturning momentsgenerated by tow-rope configurationsturned out to be nil.

The primary objective of the Phase 1SBIR study had been to define a basic

Figure 1.Aerotow spacelaunch conceptschematic.(Design 980440by the DrydenGraphics Office)

12 Comments of Mark P. Stucky, project pilot, on the original draft of this study, 16 September 1999.

13 Kelly, patent.

5

system for a tow demonstration includ-ing the tow and towed aircraft, tow rope,test criteria, and operational procedures.One of the more critical tasks was theselection of a towline. Planners investi-gated four materials: high-strength steeland three synthetic-fiber ropes–Kevlar,Spectra, and Vectran. Tracor Aero-space, a Phase 1 sub-contractor, recom-mended Vectran as a result of thecompany’s experience in towing targets.

Rope is old technology, dating back toancient Egypt. Rope of earlier centurieswas hemp, and the earliest ropes werehand-woven with strands no longer thanthe six-foot lengths supplied by bushesalong the Nile. When KST Manufactur-ing Manager Roy Hofschneider wentlooking for a Vectran vendor, hediscovered a small New York-statesupplier, Cortland Cable, which hadprimarily produced high-test fishing linebut then branched out into the manufac-turing of rope for barge towing. Ulti-mately, Cortland Cable would supply theproject with 1,000-foot lengths of asynthetic rope, every strand woven inand never broken or spliced but continu-ous from end to end, as specified by theEclipse team.

Vectran® was, indeed, an amazingmaterial. It was a liquid-crystal polymerfiber with many virtues. It had thequalities required for the difficult task athand, including strength, the ability todamp vibration, minimal inclination toabsorb moisture, high dielectric andchemical resistance, a high meltingpoint, strong disinclination to degrade inextreme temperatures, and great abilityto withstand the effects of abrasion. Theother synthetics shared many of theseattractions, but Vectran® offered the bestmatch with operational requirements.

From the standpoint of cost, steel was atempting choice, but a steel cable ofequivalent strength would weigh fivetimes as much as Vectran®. The largestrength-to-weight ratio and resistance totemperature degradation decided theEclipse team on Vectran®.14

As a shock absorber of dangerousoscillations, nylon had appeal. Not onlywas nylon of interest because it coulddamp energy exchange between aircraft,but the Air Force already had extensiveexperience with nylon rope (when aC-141A at Edwards set the world record,70,195 pounds for heavy cargo drop, itextracted and dropped the load on nylonchute lines).15 But nylon was good andbad–it damped energy, which was good,and stored energy, which was bad. Andunfortunately, nylon weakened as it wasstretched. In effect, it destroyed itself, thefibers actually cutting one another.

The Vectran rope, on the other hand,got stronger when stretched–at least thefirst time. In fact, an initial stretching ofthe rope became part of every Drydenflight preparation. Vectran had interest-ing abrasion qualities, too. When thepolymer rope began to wear, it fuzzed upon the outside and thus protected theinner rope from wearing. Yet despite therope’s great strength, Vectran also had aweakness–it was vulnerable to sunlight.After the ropes were prepared for flight,the crew had to find a closed storage areawhere it could safely store the puzzlingrope, which was used only for one flightper 1,000-foot length.

* * *

From the start, Kelly’s concept required abig tow airplane. It had to be a real brute.In his patent under “Summary of the

14 Above three paragraphs based upon comments provided by KST on coordination, 15 November 2000.

15 Mark Watson, interview by author, 29 June 1999. Robert Brown of Lockheed Martin confirmed that a C-141A haddropped a sequence of loads weighing a total of 70,195 pounds at El Centro Naval Air Station in July 1965 by callingthe Air Mobility Command History Office, whose archives contained that information.

6

Invention,” Kelly explains, “The towaircraft contributes only thrust, not lift, tothe launch vehicle.”16 The tow planehad to have power and deliver it duringthe critical milliseconds of takeoff.

The CV-990 first gleamed with promise asa tow aircraft. The Kelly engineers wereintrigued. Although they knew the transporthad some performance shortcomings, therewas a CV-990 at NASA Dryden FlightResearch Center already instrumented forresearch but at the time devoted to testingShuttle tires. KST negotiated to use thisaircraft but could not gain access. Wherecould it find a testbed?

A C-141A Starlifter rested on the ramp atEdwards Air Force Base. This airplaneand its ilk had been workhorses for theAir Force for a generation. They were notfancy transports. The C-141A crew knewthis particular vehicle very well. Itpossessed a special history and had evenset a world’s record for heavy cargochute drop. The airplane bore serial

number 61-2775 and was the first to rolloff the assembly line. It was a pre-production model devoted to testing.Although the airplane had logged a mere10,000 hours, its days were numbered. Acalendar date would soon arrive requir-ing perhaps more than a million dollarsin maintenance expenditures, whichwould not be forthcoming. The transportwith the illustrious history was itselfabout to become history.

Capt. Stuart Farmer, the Air ForceC-141A test pilot on the Eclipse project,compared the transport he flew to theB-52 in the sluggishness of its response.No finesse was there–or ever intended.“As far as roll and pitch control [wereconcerned],” he grinned, “it’s kindadeadbeat.”17 But the airplane hadpower. In the equation of operationswhich Kelly had sketched, in the part ofthe equation that represented thrust, thiswas, as Air Force Loadmaster KenDrucker later explained, “one overkillairplane.”18

16 Kelly, Patent 5,626,310, column 4, paragraph 4.

17 Stuart Farmer, interview by author, 25 July 1999.

18 Ken Drucker, interview by author, July 1999.

Side view of theC-141A towaircraft. (NASAphoto EC9844391-25 byCarla Thomas)

7

Kelly negotiated with the Air Force formonths. At one point, he received anoffer of “limited support.” Of course,when someone comes along asking for afour-engine jet transport, flight crew,maintenance crew, airplane modifica-tions, and instrumentation, to offer“limited support” is one way of sayingno. The next months resulted in intensenegotiation and leveraging.

Curiously, the skepticism about Eclipsemay have kept the project afloat. Be-cause the project was viewed in variousAir Force units as so underfunded, sounlikely, no one took the responsibilityfor killing it off. Eclipse continued tosurvive.

At some point in the summer of 1995,Eclipse established a relationship withDryden. There were meetings with GaryTrippensee, who would be assigned asthe first NASA project manager, andStephen Ishmael, who was advising theproject from a pilot’s point of view.Nowhere did Dryden pledge flight safetyresponsibility. Nor did Dryden offer apilot to fly. Eventually, this situationwould change. However, at the time,Ishmael received an assignment to amanagement position with the X-33project involving a prototype for apossible future launch vehicle,19 andEclipse was given a different pilot.

* * *

Pilot: in column 4, paragraph 2 of thePatent under “Summary of the Inven-tion”, Kelly described the towed plane ashaving “a control system which permitsit [to] fly either autonomously or underremote control.”20 In the final version of

the invention, the pilot would be op-tional. But for test flight, Kelly needed areal research pilot very badly.

“I was the new kid on the block,” saysMark Stucky, a young former Marine testpilot who came to the Dryden researchpilot’s office early the next spring. Hehad the trim build all the pilots do, greeneyes, and an expression somewherebetween politeness and amusement. Hearrived with a nickname, Forger, that hadnothing to do with aeronautics, which infact dated back to some obscure event inhis college days, but instantly, it seemed,the whole base knew him as Forger.

Coincidentally, more than a year before,Forger had a glimpse of the Eclipseproposal. It was at NASA’s JohnsonSpace Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas.His boss had called the former Marineinto the offices to look at some papersfrom Kelly. His supervisor knew he hadyears of experience flying gliders andsailplanes on tow and wanted his think-ing on the feasibility of aerotow involv-ing jets. At the time, the possibility thatForger might ever work for NASADryden, let alone pilot Eclipse, seemedas remote as flying around the rings ofSaturn. He thumbed the neatly drawnpages. What did he think, inquired hisboss as they stared at a drawing of thepilot in the airplane pulled by a rope.

“I would love to be that guy,” Forgerthought.

If you ask him now, Forger tells you hewas assigned by Dryden as project piloton Eclipse “because no one thought itwould happen.”21 In February 1996, hisassignment to Dryden offered him a

19 In a conversation with NASA Dryden Chief Historian J. D. Hunley, Ishmael indicated that during this period ofnegotiation, he contemplated the possibility of becoming the project pilot as an employee of KST. As suggested in thenarrative, this never came to pass.

20 Kelly, Patent 5,626,310.

21 Interview of Mark Stucky by author, 15 June 1999.

8

chance to accumulate some local-styleproject experience, if only in the meetingsand briefings.

Joe Wilson remembers watching Forgerfly the F-18 High Angle-of-AttackResearch Vehicle. Wilson, a controls andhandling qualities engineer, is a sandy-haired, tall man with eyes that gleam withcuriosity, who functions at Dryden as theBoswell of the center.22 Over the years,he has kept journals, partly on computer,in which he records the daily events atDryden, nothing by way of official report,but personal notes on what he has seenand heard in this almost small-towncommunity of experimenters.

Wilson remembers watching Forger flyingspin tests, acrobatic descents from 40,000feet and then afterwards tracking testswhere he followed another airplane at highspeed and through abrupt rolls, trying tokeep the airplane in his gunsights. Nomatter what the other pilot did, he was inForger’s crosshairs. “When you see asmooth trace on that,” says Wilson, “youknow you’ve got a good pilot.” How goodwas Forger? Wilson’s eyes get big.

“Very, very good,” he nods his head.

But there’s a tricky paradox confrontingresearch engineers, Wilson says. “Smoothpilots can lead you down the primrosepath.” He explains that there are twopiloting styles. “There are low-gainpilots,” he says, “and high-gain pilots. Alow-gain pilot–if you look at the charts–seems barely to touch the stick, almost asif the airplane is flying itself. A high-gainpilot is working the stick constantly,

giving it inputs the whole time.”23 Butthat day as he scanned control strips, herealized Forger, upon request, could beeither.24

Yet as Forger established a reputation atthe center that spring, Eclipse flightremained unlikely. A plane had not yetbeen identified. The KST engineers knewthat many airplanes might serve as thetowed vehicle. They preferred a deltawing. That is, they preferred the wing ofa Space Shuttle, the shape that enablesreasonable handling characteristics whenthe airplane descends from space into theatmosphere. Over at KST, one of thecompany’s major investigators, engineerDon Anctil, came up with the idea thatthey might be able to use an airplane thatwas nearing the end of its operationaldays decaying in the humid, swelteringFlorida subtropics. This was the F-106,which Anctil had worked on years ago asa young structural engineer at Convair inSan Diego.

The F-106 was a remarkable airplane. Ithad an incredibly robust structure, beautifulclean lines, and power to spare. If youasked the Air Force pilots who flew andserviced the old warrior, they smiled–it wasa Cadillac; they loved it; they had a softspot in their hearts for it. They bestowedupon it the affectionate nickname, “Six.”

The F-106 was born in the mid-1950s, anall-weather interceptor created to defendthe country from enemy weapons sys-tems. It still holds the official worldspeed record for single-engine aircraft,1,525.95 miles per hour set at EdwardsAFB in 1959.25 Pilots remembered it as a

22 James Boswell was the biographer of Samuel Johnson. His name has become a synonym for an admiring biographer orchronicler.

23 Joe Wilson, interview by author, 22 July 1999.

24 Joe Wilson, interview by author, 28 June 1999.

25 According to KST reviewers of a draft of this monograph. Of course, this has to be qualified to air-breathing engines,as the X-15 with a single rocket engine went 4,520 mph unofficially on 3 October 1967.

9

forgiving flyer both at high and lowspeeds, and it boasted the lowest acci-dent rate of any single-engine aircraft inthe Air Force. In those days severalmissiles had been stowed in its weaponsbay, one of which might have a nuclearwarhead, a spear to be hurled in somefinal, desperate war.26

When the winds of history shifted to anew direction, these interceptors nolonger had a mission. Following their de-commissioning, they had been stored atthe Air Force depot at Davis-MonthanAFB in Tucson, Arizona. They were laterremoved from storage, modified fortarget service as unpiloted drones,redesignated QF-106s, and transferred toTyndall AFB, Florida. Once a month onelucky individual was rewarded with a“hot” missile to demolish another 106.27

Few of the airplanes remained. Down atTyndall near Panama City, the last oneswere parked, Cold War interceptors onthe tarmac waiting to be used for targetpractice.

Could the F-106 be the towed airplanefor the Eclipse project? Could KSTnegotiate an agreement to pull the oldwarrior on a rope? Another questionintrigued KST engineers. Could theF-106 later be modified, outfitted with arocket, and used as an operational launchvehicle?

On 22 May 1996, an Eclipse teamrepresenting KST, Dryden, and the AFPhillips Lab made the journey to Tyndall

to look at the F-106s. It resembled a tripto a used car lot to kick the tires. Whichof the remaining airplanes might servethe project? But a larger issue was notcompletely defined–corrosion. Years ofsitting exposed to the salty air beneaththe Florida sun had taken a toll on allaluminum parts in these airplanes.

KST had sent two veteran engineers asits representatives. The KST lead wasDon Anctil, an engineer whose experi-ence included work on numerous aircraftincluding the F-102, F-111, and C-5A aswell as prototype design on the F-106.The other was Bill Drachslin, a designerwho had worked on many differentmissiles and in his early years had beenan Air Force maintenance crew chief onthe F-86 in Korea. Anctil rubbed hisgrisly chin and stared at the Air Forcefaces across the table. His West Coastbuddies had been taunting him. Theysnorted that Anctil might be on a missionto retrieve “tuna cans” and “hangarqueens,” industry terms for airplanes nolonger suitable to fly.28

The initial briefing did not bode well.The commander spoke. He had orders torelease a pair of F-106s, but he also hadcrash movies to show them first. Thehopeful aspect of the F-106, he ex-plained, was that the Air Force “had lostaircraft but no pilots to date.” What wasthe problem? In essence, the problemwas a 38-year-old airplane. The bad newswas four crashes resulted because offailures in the aging landing gear. Cracks

26 See, e.g., Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft, 1964-65, ed. John W. R. Taylor (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), p. 219; F.G. Swanborough with Peter M. Bowers, United States Military Aircraft Since 1909 (London & New York: Putnam,1963), pp. 154-155.

27 The F-106 was variously called the F-106 interceptor and the Delta Dart. At Tyndall after the airplane was modifiedas an unpiloted vehicle, it was named the QF-106, and at NASA Dryden for the Eclipse project, it was named EXD-01for Eclipse Experimental Demonstrator number 1. Both of these designations were local to very specific times andplaces. In conversation, Eclipse personnel who worked with the airplane during all of these stages often referred to theairplane simply as the F-106 or even 106. It is important to recognize these various names. But for the sake of simplicity,throughout this history, the airplane will usually be referred to as the F-106.

28 Don Anctil, interview by author, 14 July 1999. Comments of KST reviewers.

10

had also been discovered in the wingspars of several aircraft, causing minorfuel leaks. The good news? Four timespilots ejected safely. But when theEclipse team went outside to the steamyheat of the tarmac and hangar and talkedto the crews, they received anothermessage, one with a different emphasis.

Every airplane waiting in the rows had apersonality, and the mechanics whoworked on them knew it. They knewevery inch of these aircraft. The mainte-nance crew had picked the two best theycould find. They scurried about withrecords, logbooks, and grease-stainedservice manuals. Forger, Dryden’s TonyGinn (a young engineer assigned to theproject) and KST’s former crew chief,Bill Drachslin, climbed over the vehicles,peered inside, and took photographs.There were no hydraulic leaks, no fuelspills, no cracks in the control surfaces.In the briefing room, the message hadbeen that the F-106 was marginal.

Out in the hangar, the emphasis wasdifferent. “Safe enough,” said the me-chanics. Age, of course, would remain aproblem. For instance, most of theF-106’s parts could not be replaced,simply because replacements were nolonger available in warehouses. The fuelsystem was not maintainable if anythingwent wrong–it required 196 fuel valves.The tires were worn. The landing-gearsupport structure was suspect.

But as Forger, Ginn, Hampsten,Drachslin, and Anctil looked up beneaththe airplanes the mechanics had pickedfor them, they exchanged smiles. Thesewere flyable aircraft.

And the news got better. When Anctilattended subsequent meetings, he had theimpression that at the Air Force’s admin-istrative level, the F-106s were almost an

inconvenience. The command waslooking forward with anticipation to anarrival of F-4s, a new generation of targetdrones. As Anctil tried to listen betweenthe lines and plumb beneath politephrases, his eyes grew wide. His pencilscribbled on the yellow pad, “If selectedaircraft are modified beyond the normalF-106 envelope, Tyndall does not wantthem back under any conditions.” Hiseyes grew even wider and he scribbledfaster: (“Personal note: Tyndall does notwant them back period!!”)29

Another issue resolved as neatly. MikeKelly had voiced the hope of acquiringtwo different models, the F-106A, theoriginal single-seat interceptor, and theF-106B, a later modified two-seater.Kelly had public relations uses in mindfor the second seat. He was a realist. Hewas not demanding or pressuring.Clearly, there were downsides withhaving two different vehicles to maintain.And the Air Force’s “horror movies”raised liability issues. As the questionwas discussed in a tiny meeting room atTyndall, Dryden’s Tony Ginn jotted in hisnotebook, “Why risk two lives?”30

But Ginn did not have to voice hisopinion. The Air Force’s Dick Chase in abriefing pointed out that many significantdifferences existed between the modelsincluding different pilot training, mainte-nance procedures, aerodynamics, fuelsystems, paperwork, official reporting,and correspondingly different simulationand test operations. A bonus of keepingtwo F-106As was that one could be“cannibalized” to supply the other withreplacement parts that otherwise wouldbe unavailable. Chase finished hispresentation and sat down. The two-seatissue vanished.

In the months that followed, Forger, too,grew attached to the F-106. When asked

29 Don Anctil, personal meeting notes.

30 Tony Ginn, interview by author, 27 July 1999.

11

about it recently, he leaned back in hisswivel chair in the Dryden pilots’ office,balancing in midair. “It was,” he de-clared, “a grand machine.”

He especially liked the afterburner. TheF-106 had one like none he had everseen. Typically, when a pilot selectsafterburner in modern engines, the fuelcontrol meters in a small amount ofadditional fuel to spark plugs in the rearof the engine, which safely ignite theafterburner. Once it is lit, additional fuelis then available for full afterburnerthrust. This gradual “light-off” results ina smooth acceleration. But when anF-106 pilot selects afterburner, a“bucket” of jet fuel is dumped into thehot exhaust for a sudden and dramatictorch ignition. There’s a loud explosion,and the pilot slams into his seat from thedramatic increase in thrust.

“It was incredible. You’d select after-burner,” remembered Forger, tiltingforward in his chair, and then “there wasa very pregnant pause. Finally, a bigboom and off you go.”

How robust was the F-106? At the start,Ed Skinner, a veteran engineer assignedby KST to examine the plane’s mainte-nance records, smiled at the issue. Heobserved that although the aircraftseemed as ancient as some of KST’sretirees, it was well maintained and stillin great shape for the demanding tasksahead.

Another Eclipse worker who became anF-106 admirer was Todd Peters, theyoungest member of the team and anengineer who had recently graduatedfrom college. After an early test to getsome data on the F-106, Chief EngineerAl Bowers remembers walking awayfrom the control room with Peters, whofollowed behind him in typical brash

fashion, making scathing remarks aboutworking with ancient airplanes.

Bowers remembers a silence next,following behind him, and then a rustlingof pages as Peters scanned the data. Theyoung engineer’s voice emerged againbehind him, but much softer. There was anew note. It was awe.

“F-106 rocks,” he said.31

In any event, the Eclipse project at lasthad an airplane to tow, a geriatric war-plane, robust in its power but question-able, especially in a few unsettlingaspects of its emergency and life-supportsystems. In the months ahead, headswould shake, camps of debate form, andseveral Dryden employees would findthemselves called upon to make dramaticdecisions. But when the group returnedhome on the airline from Panama City on26 May 1996, questions had been an-swered, and a decision made.

F-106 was Eclipse.

* * *

Al Bowers became NASA’s chief engi-neer on the Eclipse project that summer.At the time, real flight tests were only aproposal, but Forger must have glimpseda chance. “I recommended Al,” recallsForger, “because he had both the engi-neering intelligence and also the passionto make it happen.”32 Bowers is a genial,dark-haired engineer in his mid-thirtieswho sometimes gets so excited about aflight validation that he has been knownto leap up on a desktop in a technicalmeeting, shouting and pointing to hisdata printouts. But Dryden managementhad already spotted something in him farbeyond a scientific cheerleader, appoint-ing him as chief engineer on the presti-gious High Angle-of-Attack Research

31 Albion Bowers, interview by author, 25 June 1999.

32 Mark Stucky, interview by author, 22 July 1999.

12

Vehicle (HARV) project. Behind hispositive, upbeat approach was an engi-neer who could weigh positives andnegatives and judge procedures andpersonnel assignments with a remarkablecoolness and insight. He would serve thedemands of Eclipse very well.

While management wrestled with fund-ing issues, the team began to address thetechnology. In addition to Forger andBowers, there was now Bob Baron whoreplaced Gary Trippensee as projectmanager. Bill Lokos came on board aslead structures engineer, responsible forensuring that all modified and newstructures were strong enough to ensuresafety of flight; also, Jim Murray broughtto the technical team his skills as anaerospace engineer and analyst; fromsimulations came Ken Norlin; MarkCollard served as operations engineer andthe flight controller; and Joe Gera, arespected Hungarian-born engineer withhalf a century of experience in soaring,was called back out of retirement byBaron as the flight controls engineer. Theteam also included Tony Branco and BillClark, teamed as instrumentation engi-neers; Roy Dymott, systems engineer;and the newly-hired Debra Randall as testinformation engineer. Later they wouldbe joined by aerial video photographersLori Losey, Carla Thomas, and Jim Ross.For many naysayers about Eclipse as wellas for NASA managers and potentialinvestors for KST, it was videotapesrather than technical data that oftenproved the points Eclipse was trying todemonstrate.

From the start, there was debate. As theteam began to plan flight-test procedures,the initial issue became “high tow,” thetraditional approach, versus “low tow.”Traditional glider aircraft have large wingareas, resulting in large lift-to-drag ratiosand correspondingly low takeoff speeds.

They take off before the tow aircraft andremain above them throughout flight, inwhat is called high tow. The F-106, onthe other hand, has a much smaller lift-to-drag ratio and a correspondingly hightakeoff speed of about 115 knots. Toacquire a high-tow position wouldrequire the F-106 to traverse the C-141’swake turbulence from the initial low-towtakeoff position. This position wouldhave been foreign to traditional gliderexperience.

There were fierce differences amongteam members. Jim Murray recalled theseemingly endless meetings.“Everyone’s got an opinion,” he smiled;“they’re more readily available thanideas are.” Every test program spawneddifferences, but again and again, Eclipsecreated a spectrum. “It was unusual howextreme the positions were,” noddedMurray. 33

Many of the differences were betweenpeople who had gliding experience andthose who did not. If you had flowngliders or sailplanes or gone soaring, youhad been at the end of a tow rope. If youhad, towing was casual. It was matter offact. Some felt simply that if it flew, itcould be towed. Researchers with thisbackground felt that there were almost notest issues. In their minds, the logicalnext step was simple flight. Gera sumsup this viewpoint; he says, “It was apiece of cake.”34

The gliding people tended to argue forthe traditional high-tow position, appar-ently minimizing the risk involved intraversing the C-141’s wake. And ifgliding people grew emotional in debate,the response fed on the emotions experi-enced in thousands of hours of recre-ational flight on weekends. The clincherin the debate came from Jim Murray. Hissimulations demonstrated that the Eclipse

33 James Murray interview.

34 Joe Gera, interview by author, 16 June 1999.

13

had to fly low-tow. The sims indicatedinstabilities for the rope and the F-106when flown high-tow, results which werein fact echoed, but more benignly, inlater flight.35

The Eclipse project stayed aloft by morethan technology efforts. There was also asocial context. On 28 October 1996, KSTscheduled a kick-off party. At Drydenpeople will tell you that in the genus andfamily of party animals, engineers haveno place.

KST president Mike Kelly, of course,was an engineer. But Kelly, despite allthe folklore and jokes about engineersand their poor socializing skills, didknow how to throw a party. He arrangeda splashy celebration for Eclipse in anold hangar at what had been Norton AFBin San Bernardino. There was food,drink, music, and the tables overflowedwith more than six hundred people.Guests included two congressmen andNASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin.Kelly had hoped to make an impact bydisplaying the F-106 at this party. Aftersome debate, he had to settle for the C-141A and one of NASA’s F-18s. WhenDryden research pilot Ed Schneiderdeparted the party early in the F-18, heswooped down over the merrymakers ina fly-by, evoking oohs and ahs.

Dan Goldin gave a speech. He describedhis vision of future NASA-commercialcollaboration in space travel. He reiter-ated his mandate, “Better, Faster,Cheaper.” And he gave a nod to NASA’scollaborative partner in this effort andalso to hundreds of other small, visionarystart-up companies feverishly pursuingthe dream of a breakthrough in low-costaccess to space.

Coincidentally, that night a movie wasbeing shot in another hangar nearby. On

break, the movie stars and crew joinedthe crowd. If the movie people workedwith the stuff of dreams, the Eclipsepeople did, too. As one engineer wan-dered through the crowd, he and his wifemight turn and find themselves face toface with some starlet they recognized.

There were two sets of dream-makers inthe crowd that night.

* * *

In the weeks that followed, the Eclipseteam settled down to work. First it took acloser look at historical precedent, asKelly himself did at the outset. As notedabove, the earliest patent of the conceptdated from 1919 and was awarded to thepioneering Anthony Fokker, but usefulinformation was hard to come by. Be-cause of restrictions on the use of pow-ered aircraft in the Treaty of Versaillesafter World War I, the Germans didextensive experimentation with towedvehicles. But they did not create a bodyof theoretical literature. Nor had thesailplane and gliding fliers establishedvalidated numerical models. A fewtheoretical papers had found their wayinto journals. Murray described theflight-test information on towing as“largely qualitative and anecdotal.”36 Ifthe Dryden Eclipse team members neededdata, they would have to do the teststhemselves.

* * *

Of all the agencies KST negotiated with–and they were legion (Mike Gallo, KSTvice president for marketing and sales,once estimated that he had negotiatedwith more than 33 federal units and sub-units in managing Eclipse)–Tracor FlightSystems, Inc., the F-106 maintenancecontractor, seemed to present the leastlikelihood of creating problems. This was

35 Bowers interview.

36 Murray interview.

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had no control. A recent restructuringhad placed responsibilities for man-agement of the Mojave work at Tracorheadquarters in Austin, Texas. Thecompany also had been fortunate towin a lucrative contract with theBoeing Company at the Boeing facilityin Palmdale, California. Tracor priori-ties, therefore, had shifted dramati-cally since the initial arrangementswith KST. Consequently, disputesbegan to arise between KST andTracor over work performance andcompensation. It appeared to KST thatTracor was charging more and doingless. 37 “My guess,” said Bob Baron,“was they put such a high price on itbecause they didn’t want the busi-ness.”38 Clearly, Tracor had its handsfull with much larger projects crucialto its own future. KST also was drivenby profit. But in the mega-budgetworld of aerospace, it could get drivenout by profit, too.

37 This section based on KST comments on the original draft of this monograph.

38 Robert Baron, interview by author, 11 June 1999.

a commercial firm. It had a hangar,first-rate technicians to service theF-106, and the original drawings fromthe manufacturer. The NASA pilot wasto fly two Air Force F-106s used by theEclipse project and just park them atthe Tracor facility in Mojave, Califor-nia. The support was expected toinvolve a simple money transaction.There would be none of the paperworkand serpentine federal-governmentprocedures involved in interagencytransactions. But there were glitches.Baron and Forger found themselvesfrustrated and stalled when they triedto arrange to fly the airplane. Becausethe planes still belonged to the AirForce, that service’s local representa-tive was required to enforce everyregulation. No one at Dryden enjoysremembering those days.

Behind the scenes at Tracor, however,events were occurring over which KST

QF-106 aircraftin flight duringFebruary 1997before thetethered flightsbegan. (NASAphoto EC9743932-12 by JimRoss)

15

At this point, Dryden would cross theRubicon. The decision would be made inMay of 1997 for the Air Force to transferthe F-106s to NASA, which would housethem, service them, modify and instru-ment them in a Dryden hangar. (Becausethere was only one government agencyinvolved in flight approval, the businessof flight research was simplified.) Andwith these arrangements new responsi-bilities for flight safety began falling intoplace–not without debate.

The Air Force C-141 team had it muchsimpler. The Air Force owned andoperated the C-141A. In fact, the 418th

Flight Test Squadron had a C-141A in itshangar at Edwards AFB. The 418th hadqualified Starlifter maintenance crews,and it would supply the pilots, theengineers, the technicians, and theground and flight crews, albeit on a non-interference basis. In other words,Eclipse’s work would get done, butwithout any priority. As Carol Reukauf,who replaced Bob Baron as projectmanager, later noted, when you lookedon the Air Force priority list, thereEclipse was, on the bottom, number 17.39

The 418th assigned Capt. Stuart Farmeras its project pilot. Farmer, a dark-hairedyoung man with an affable manner whorevealed a sharp interest in technicalissues in the months to come, was a “newkid on the block,” just as Forger hadbeen. For several weeks, Farmer hadbeen sitting at his pilot’s desk withoutany major projects to work on. When hewas called into a meeting and asked torespond to very skeptical questions abouttowed flight, Farmer gave the conceptthumbs up. He later admitted he was notsure of the aerodynamics issues. He just

wanted to fly. By the late date at whichEclipse actually flew, Farmer would havefive other Air Force projects on hishands, and non-interference wouldbecome an issue. But initially, his enthu-siasm helped keep the project alive.40

The 418th assigned Mark Watson as itsproject manager, replacing Bob Plestedwho had guided Eclipse through thepaperwork of transferring the F-106s toNASA. Watson is a heavy-set young manwith a shrewd ability for making thingshappen. Co-pilot Kelly Latimer came tothe project fresh from the U.S. AirForce’s Test Pilot School. A slenderyoung woman with reddish hair in aJoan-of-Arc cut and a sense of humor,she also qualifies as one of many Eclipselandmarks: when Latimer flew in theright seat on four of the Eclipse flightsand the left seat on two missions,41 shebecame the first woman ever known tofly as a pilot on a NASA Dryden flightresearch mission.

Other Air Force crew and personnelassigned included Morgan LeVake,operations engineer; Bob Wilson, thelieutenant colonel who oversaw safety;Roy Surovec, the deputy Air Forceproject manager; Senior Master SergeantJohn Stahl, the chief flight engineer; ArtTecson, who handled instrumentation; thescanner, Sergeant Dana Brink, source ofsome brilliant unofficial aerial photogra-phy; and Sergeant Ken Drucker, theloadmaster, assigned vulnerable duty atthe end of the rope.

For the Air Force, answering operationsquestions for the C-141A was simply amatter of looking in the regulations. Butfor Dryden–and to the dismay of the

39 Carol Reukauf, interview by author, 11 August 1999.

40 Farmer interview.

41 Her two flights as pilot rather than co-pilot were flights 8 and 9 (tethered flights 4 and 5), 28 January and 5 February1998. Daily/Initial Flight Test Reports, C-141A, Flights F-5 through F-10, 20 Dec. 97, 21 Jan. 98, 23 Jan. 98, 28 Jan. 98,5 Feb. 98, and 6 Feb. 98 respectively (see documents 16, 24, 32, and 44). Incidentally, Latimer was a major.

16

commercially-driven Kelly–in thebusiness of aerotow, it was a matter ofmaking engineering science. As Drydenincreased its presence on the project, twonew goals were added to the experi-ments: one, the establishment of safeoperating procedures, a Dryden hall-mark over the years, and two, thediscovery of new technical information,Dryden’s primary purpose as a flightresearch organization.

As the project gained status, Eclipseflight began to seem remotely possible.Forger and Gera both argued that flightsafety was a non-issue, but Drydenscheduled batteries of ground tests andflight simulations to make sure.42

During the summer of 1996 the Drydenpilots took cautious note. Several thoughtthat the greatest risks attended the take-off; there were scenarios of rope break oraccidental release, slacks and snarls aboutairplane gear. The hazard scenarios weremany. Joe Wilson remembered a conver-sation with Gordon Fullerton, ex-astro-naut, crackerjack pilot, and a shrewd,practical thinker about flight issues.Wilson recalled Fullerton cocking hishead, pointing out that there was noforgiving altitude. In the simulator,Forger had been doing inadvertentreleases at 10,000 feet–at which altitude,if something went wrong, he had sometime to plan and do something–but ifsomething happened on the Eclipsetakeoff, Forger only had his reflexes.43

If something went wrong with Eclipse ata low altitude, it was going to go wrongfast.

Dryden Chief Engineer (and former ChiefResearch Pilot) Bill Dana also questionedthe safety of Eclipse. He explained that

he personally had a sense Eclipse flightscould be done but that as chairman of theAirworthiness and Flight Safety ReviewBoard, his job was to raise safety ques-tions. “I was the devil’s advocate,” heexplained.44

Names

If you ask Mike Kelly where the nameEclipse came from, he doesn’t blink orhesitate. He recalls that he and MikeGallo dreamed it up in their conferenceroom one afternoon. What does the namestand for? He acknowledges there is nosignificance–it’s a name with a “feel,”easy to broach in a meeting, lofty sound-ing, a bit of verbal flare short on thedenotative aspect of language. In bluntfact, there is no eclipse in the Eclipseproject.

But names can decide destinies. If youpick the right name, Dryden engineerssay, it helps when you appeal forbudget or support–especially if youfind yourself in competition withanother project as worthy as your own.And some engineers say that the wrongname, an unusually clumsy one, can doharm. At NASA Dryden, the engineersunderstood the importance of names tobureaucratic approvals, and over atKST, they also understood the impor-tance of a name when approachinginvestors or a bank.

A second name appeared later. It was anunofficial name. To this date, no oneclaims to be its coiner. It first appearedin public one day when Forger, climb-ing into the cockpit dressed in pilot’ssuit, test point cards clipped to hisknee pad, looked down. He saw arough inscription hand-painted on theside of the F-106.

42 Mark Stucky, interview by author, 22 July 1999.

43 Joe Wilson, interview by author, 28 June 1999; Gordon Fullerton, interview by author, 26 July 1999.

44 Bill Dana, interview by author, 26 July 1999.

17

Certainly the gleam of humor blessed thename, some inscription dreamed upperhaps during a stop at a desert saloonon the drive home, but it also fed on thedismay of expert pilots back at Drydenconcerning Eclipse. It read:

DOPE ON A ROPE

Daryl Townsend had been present thatday. The crew chief remembered peekingaround the maintenance truck. Forgerwas new. What would he do? If he was aby-the-rules sort of guy, a storm wouldfollow. Dryden was a flight researchcenter, and without expert researchpilots, it could not do its business. Thus,although they were often the butts ofjokes, pilots also had formidable clout,which they could wield.

There was no storm. The new pilotpaused. Townsend describes a smileperhaps, a subtle nod of the head. Subtleenough that Townsend had to ask Forgerlater, was he sure he didn’t mind? Forgersaid it was OK.

The crew didn’t scrub the name off.45

Subsystems and Worry

One mechanism needed for Eclipse wascalled by the technicians the “knuckle,” ahunk of metal, three pounds or more,much larger than a human knuckle infact, larger than a heavyweight’s fist, anasty bit of hardware in some events tocome but created for elegant purposes. Itwas crucial.

If the sole project intent were to pull anairplane, the knuckle could be omitted.But if technical data was needed or if thepilot needed real-time information onwhat was happening to the rope in flight–and in fact he did–this knuckle was anecessity. This universal joint attached to

the release ironwork, gave the rope freeplay, and instrumented both azimuth andelevation angles of the rope.

The Dryden engineers moved swiftly toanalysis and testing. Much of the analysisconcerned the rope. “One assumption wemade early on was that the lift and dragof towrope is negligible,” explainedBowers, “but that was an invalid assump-tion.”46 If that was not surmised, muchelse was. As soon as they decidedwhether they would operate in high towor low, the engineers could start lookingfor solutions. It was a given that the ropewould attach to the rear of the C-141A.In low tow, the rope would attach to thetop of the F-106.

But where some glider enthusiasts mayhave assumed the rope had to attach nearthe center of gravity (CG) of the F-106,the technical requirements for the Eclipseairplane were different. In fact, therelationship of the distance of the towattachment to the CG as compared to thedistance of the control surfaces to the CGwas the exact opposite of the arrange-ment that occurred on a conventionalsailplane. A sailplane has the rope attachclose to the CG while the control surfaces(elevator, rudder, and ailerons) are somedistance away from the CG. This meansthe tow forces can easily be countered bythe aerodynamic control forces. On theF-106, the tow attachment was in front ofthe canopy while the CG was locatedmany feet farther back in the center of theairplane, much nearer to the controlsurfaces. This meant the potential existedfor tow forces that could exceed thepilot’s ability to counter them.

Once the engineers had a plan for takeoffconfigurations, they could make otherdecisions. What would be the ropelength? How much weight would therope bear? What stresses did it have to

45 Daryl Townsend, interview by author, 25 June 1999.

46 Albion Bowers, interview by author, 8 June 1999.

18

endure? These and other difficult ques-tions required answers.

Kelly’s original plan had been to reusetow rope. To be sure, the rope came inexpensive at $9.30 a foot. Perhaps KSTgrew impatient with Dryden’s approachto decisions about the rope. Or perhaps itwas a generational thing–the majority ofKST’s employees were gray-haired semi-retirees who came of age working onaircraft and ballistic-missile projects back

in the 1950s. (Their employment as part-time workers was one of Kelly’s efficien-cies.) In personal remarks in interviews,younger Eclipse team members oftenbrought up generational remarks; theylooked across an age gap at the olderengineers, sometimes with fascination,sometimes with dismay, and occasionallywith humble respect. One youthfulengineer described the KST retiree-engineers as the kick-the-tires-and-go-flygeneration.47

47 Phil Starbuck, interview by author, 29 July 1999.

F-106 tow cableattachment andrelease mecha-nism for theEclipse program.(NASA photoEC97 44233-5 byTony Landis)

19

And they used that approach withVectran rope abrasion tests. Withgenuine zest and enthusiasm, two KSTengineers, Archie Vickers and BillWilliams (system engineering managerand test manager, respectively, for KST),describe an impromptu test of cablereusability. They took a length ofVectran to a Hemet Valley airfieldwhere they used it all day towing gliders.They beat it on concrete. They beat it ongravel. Breathless, they beat it finally ondirt and tossed it in a box where itrumbled with sand, dirt, and rock on thedrive home. Although they noticed slightdamage, they came to the conclusion thatthe rope was reusable. The rope wastough.

Early on, KST had investigated a cablespool to reuse the rope. After such reuse,would the rope still be as strong? Wouldit degrade or carry over unsettlingmemories (energies) from the coiling?Dryden pointed out it would be lessexpensive and speed up the schedulesimply to buy multiple ropes and useeach of them only once, thereby eliminat-ing a good deal of fabrication and testing.Dryden’s agreement to purchase theadditional ropes made the decision easyfor KST.

As the rope questions were slowlyanswered, the subsystem work movedalong. Tony Ginn had the early inspira-tion to convert an Air Force parachutequalification pallet to the uses of airplanetowing. The pallet was already flight-qualified and designed to be attached tothe floor at the rear of the C-141A. Thisconcept saved months of development,design, fabrication, and testing. The palletcame complete with a guillotine designedto cut the nylon straps used to attach theheavy loads to the extraction chutes.Rope release devices constituted a crucialsafety issue and here was an unplanned

blessing. But when they loosed thespring-load force of the guillotine blade,it failed. It would not cut the toughVectran rope. The solution was toattach the rope with a three-pin connec-tor designed by Dryden contract-employee Roy Dymott to a nylon strap, asubstance the guillotine could slice. If thatshould fail, the loadmaster might cut thenylon strap with a hand knife (a devicewhich, to outsider eyes, resembled asmall ax).

The device for releasing the F-106 fromthe rope also proved an unforeseen gift.When operations engineer Bill Albrecht,who had long been associated with theB-52, attended a planning meeting forEclipse, he asked, why not use B-52parachute release hardware, a device thatresembled an iron jaw?48 This wasqualified hardware, in regular use, inAir Force stock, and would more thancarry the load. Forger could activatethe release jaw electrically, and in caseof malfunction, he had a mechanicalbackup.

The emergency release device for theF-106 was the frangible link, or “weaklink” as it came to be called. The fran-gible link–a safety mechanism–wouldbreak before the rope or nylon ever broke.Although it was designed for emergencyrelease, on later flights the Eclipse teamstarted breaking the frangible link torelease from tow because it kept theinstrumented knuckle assembly attachedto the F-106’s release mechanism where itcould readily be used again. When theteam initially used the release in theconfiguration designed for the first flight,the knuckle was on the end of the 1,000-foot rope still attached at the other end tothe Starlifter. It whipped so wildly in thehurricane-force winds that the frangiblelink snapped and the knuckle was lost inthe desert.

48 Bill Albrecht, interview by author, 17 June 1999. According to Al Bowers, the idea arose earlier among Collard,Forger, and himself, but it could not be implemented without Albrecht’s OK. Bowers’ comments on a draft of thismonograph.

20

KST had designed the basic frangiblelink. Its initial plan had been to couple itwith off-the-shelf load cells from acommercial source. At Dryden, however,Bill Lokos redesigned the link; it was anifty solution that eliminated the need fora separate load cell on the C-141A (tow-train) end of the assembly. To accomplishthis, Lokos incorporated an integratedload measurement feature using two full-strain-gage tension bridges installed inthe link itself, and also made othermodifications, including changes in thealloy to ensure proper hardness through-out and changes in the neck diameter ofthe link (on the basis of extensive ten-sion-failure testing). With these modifica-tions, Bill was confident the link would

break at the predicted load. The concernon the issue of obtaining a consistentbreaking load continued. The solutionwas machine-shop fabrication andcalibration of the links, each of whichwas to be used only once. To ensureconsistency, all ten of the links to beused in the ten planned flight testswere made from the same lot of steelbar stock that supplied the links used inlab testing.

Along the way the team divided sharplyinto two camps. The strength of the weaklink had to be decided upon relativelyearly in the design phase because itsstrength, by definition, set the maximumloading the F-106 could be subjected to.

Figure 2a.Schematicdrawing of theinitial tow-trainconfiguration.(Design 980441by the DrydenGraphics Office)

Figure 2b. Sche-matic drawing ofthe simplifiedtow-train con-figuration.(Design 980497by the DrydenGraphics Office)

21

The stronger the value of the weak link,the greater the potential loading of thefuselage and the greater the “beef-up”required to the fuselage. The FederalAviation Administration’s regulations forgliders or sailplanes stipulated that thelink must break at a maximum force of80 percent of the weight of the gliderbeing towed. If this criterion wereapplied to the F-106, the breakingstrength would be approximately 24,000pounds. Although the Eclipse tests werenot subject to FAA regulations, thisfigure was a valuable reference point fordesign of the frangible link for the F-106tow-testing.49

There were those who were advocates of“strong” weak links and those whoadvocated “weak” weak links. The“strong”-weak-link group was concernedprimarily about the hazards of a low-altitude, inadvertent link breakage andfelt the F-106 would crash into the desertif the weak link broke during the criticaltakeoff phase. The “weak”-weak-linkgroup, of which Forger was a vocalmember, was more worried about thestability-and-control issues under towand wanted the weak link to break beforethe airplane could go out of control ontow. For this group’s argument to prevail,its members first had to demonstrate thatthe F-106 could power up quicklyenough to fly out of a low-altitude,emergency release before disasterensued.

Forger’s claim that he could fly theF-106 out of a low-altitude, inadvertentrelease was eventually accepted. Usingthe newly instrumented Eclipse aircraft,he demonstrated landing approaches inwhich he swooped down with the enginestabilized at idle, the landing gear down,

and the speed brakes fully deployed–theworst-case drag situation. He held theaircraft inches off the runway as theairspeed bled down to 150 knots, a fullfifteen knots less than the planned towtakeoff speed. This slow speed simulateda rope break at the most critical time,including several seconds for pilotreaction. Forger then selected “militarypower”50 and retracted the speed brakes.The venerable J75 engine took sixseconds to spool up, during which timethe F-106 slowed precariously, but Forgerwas always able to maintain control untilusable thrust was regained. The test wasrepeated numerous times, the data stripsdemonstrating conclusively that the F-106had the flying qualities and engineresponse to fly out of any threateningsituation from the moment the aircraft leftthe runway.

Ultimately, the “weak” value of 24,000pounds was accepted for the weak link.On the eve of the first flight, there stillremained a number of team members whothought the link should have been signifi-cantly stronger.51

Another problem was that although theC-141A had an off-the-shelf tow ropeattachment available for a tow assembly,the F-106 did not. The KST engineersremedied this by providing a weldmentapparatus that was riveted to the nose ofthe F-106. It was black, a bizarre object.Because of its shape, the crews called itThe Bathtub. Like other new structures, ithad to be tested by structures engineerBill Lokos.

Meanwhile over at KST, Wes Robinsonled his engineers in shepherding the ropethrough breaking tests subcontracted to alaboratory in Los Angeles. “When the

49 Based on KST and Bill Lokos’ comments on the original draft of this monograph.

50 The term “military power” refers to the use of maximum power without use of the afterburner. It is differentiatedfrom “maximum power,” which includes the use of the afterburner.

51 This section of the narrative is heavily indebted to editorial notes from Mark Stucky, 16 September 1999.

22

rope was at last close to failing,”remembers Robinson, “it got hot and itwould weld and I remember the smell,that burnt plastic sort of smell.”52

When the rope finally snapped, thesound resembled a small cannon beingdischarged.

* * *

Eclipse had started with Gary Trippensee asproject manager and had transitioned toBob Baron and now changed again. CarolReukauf, a diminutive woman in herforties, came aboard as project manager inApril of 1997. Reukauf tended to be casualin manner, but behind the informal appear-ance was a woman with remarkableorganizational abilities and a shrewd abilityto deal with groups of people. She cameaboard just as the mechanical assembly ofthe fixtures on the F-106 converted it to itstow (EXD-01) configuration and theground testing began. This was also when aseries of safety review meetings appearedon the horizon, a few of them viewed asthreatening by the team. “There wereprocedures and papers to be filed,” saysBowers, “and we knew she would be goodat it.”53

In the flight reports, however, Reukaufwrote in a style very different from thatused in typical NASA reports. Herlanguage seemed to come from the worldof self-improvement and group support.For example, her last report states, “Iadvise everyone to reflect on their Eclipseexperience, take the personal lessons thatyou learned and apply [them] to yourfuture endeavors.”54

Her upbeat comments in these reportswere, in a sense, directives. They were nota threat. But in retrospect, they firmlypointed many people in the same directionat a point when the multi-partner effortseemed in some weeks about to collapse.“It was important to stay on a positivenote,” she says, “because you don’t needany negative notes when you are trying toget the project done in a rush.”55

She was also famous for extended meet-ings, although she insists they never lastedmore than one and a half hours; theyhappened every Tuesday morning in thelakebed conference room, a meeting areathat looked out on the runway. The primaryEclipse members were required to come,and her insistence kept everyone focused,every unit and agency in the loop. If youask today, many Eclipse members reportan unusual sense of involvement and funwith the unruly project. Ken Drucker of theAir Force, for instance, testifies, “It was thehighlight of my career.”56

To the dismay of some, Reukauf in-volved as many members as she could indebate on issues that were related tosafety, instead of deferring to expertopinion only. Bud Howell, KST repre-sentative at the weekly meetings, notedthat Carol’s insistence upon hearing allsides of an issue had a very positiveeffect on team morale. Forger, on theother hand, recalls lengthy discussionsspent “ferreting out the ridiculous.”57

Reukauf’s response? “It was good forForger,” she smiles. “We needed every-one to consider the ramifications ofdecisions on this complex project.” She

52 Wes Robinson, interview by author, 30 July 1999.

53 Albion Bowers, interview by author, 10 August 1999.

54 Project Manager’s Comments, Eclipse EXD-01 Flight 10, 6 Feb. 1998, Eclipse Flight Report (see document 41).

55 Reukauf interview.

56 Drucker interview; Reukauf’s comments on a draft of this monograph.

57 KST comment; Mark Stucky, interview by author, 22 July 1999.

23

also emphasizes that she applied thisapproach “for the specific reason that Iwas concerned that the stronger, morearticulate members of the team tended toexpress their views to the exclusion ofthose who differed with them.” She sawthe potential for damage to a team whosemembers already had sometimes contra-dictory agendas.58

Reukauf also made a point at the end ofeach meeting to ask for a comment fromeach member. “Jim Murray would sitsilently throughout the meeting,” sherecalled, and when she called on thebrilliant engineer at the end, “he wouldbring up a point nobody had thought of–and usually, he was right.”59 In hind-sight, her approach created a unifiedteam.

One of the great debates raging waswhether the rope’s oscillations mightdevelop some pitching motion or un-stable energy. The antithesis was thestraight-line rope illustrated on the earlyreport covers. Joe Gera defendedstraight-rope theory. “You can’t push arope,” he said. Jim Murray argueddifferently. He suggested there might bea bungee effect. “What,” he asked, “if therope goes boing-boing?”60

Later, Murray and Gera decided to put thequestion to an unauthorized test. It was agood-natured jaunt–and also a secret as faras management was concerned. The twosigned out for a day of leave (vacation),borrowed some load instruments from thelab, and set off to do the experiment ontheir own. They found a glider-towingcompany with an owner cynical but willingto pull their rented glider on an instru-mented rope behind his tow airplane so

they could gather data. Space technology?Uh-hum. When the two returned to Drydenthe next day, word had already reachedproject management. Reukauf spoke witheach of them immediately. She came ontough, but curiously, Murray remembered,“It was very much like a mother scolding achild.”61 It was a tone that commanded,and she halted a growing Eclipse tendencyto take legal risks on this high-visibilityproject so casually.

Reukauf herself in a few days found anauthorized way for them to continue thesevaluable tests and still deal with liabilityissues. In fact, she found a way to use afederal government credit card and adhereto regulations about use of governmentequipment. This permitted Murray,Forger, and Gera to gather more experi-mental data in an unconventional way.

One great fear of skeptics was that some-how the wake turbulence of the C-141Awould upset the F-106. In one test in the fallof 1996, the experimenters put smokegenerators on the wings of the Starlifter andflew to see what patterns were traced in thesky. Forger took a leading role in actualflight tests addressing the issue. There wereseveral factors. One was downwash, thestreaming of air off the transport’s wing, adisturbance that later Forger described as nomore unsettling than driving a car on agravelly road. But the big concern wasvortices, severe air disturbances comingfrom each wingtip of the mammoth trans-port. The vortices proved to be smalltornadoes which, as they moved away fromtheir source and increased in size, for somedistance at least also increased as hazards.

In the spring of 1997, Forger flew an F-18into the wake of the C-141A. He flew in

58 Comments by Reukauf on a draft of this study, September 1999.

59 Reukauf interview and corrections in her review of a draft of this study.

60 Murray interview.

61 Ibid.

24

near the transport’s tail. He would takestabs at the vortices with his wing tip andevery time he did, the F-18 rolled off.Even at a distance, team members couldsee a vortex. “Sometimes it would mixwith the exhaust blowing, and in the glintof the sun,” remembered Mark Collard,“you could see it was tubular. I could seeit. He could, too, at times.”62

How big across was the vortex whenencountered a thousand feet behind thetransport? “About as wide across as avolleyball,” grinned Forger. “It was anon-issue.”63 So there he was up in thesky, playing volleyball with violent air.Later in the summer, he flew the F-106behind the Starlifter in similar tests.There were no problems for Eclipse.

One regulation did, however, become anissue. The engineers had air-speed andaltitude windows they wanted to investi-gate to validate the research simulation.The hunch was that an airspeed around300 knots would provide ideal towing

conditions. If the petal doors were openin the tail, however, regulations requiredthe C-141A to fly at less than 200 knots.The Eclipse team asked: if the petal doorswere removed, did that speed restrictionstill exist? The petal doors provided nostructural stability. Obviously, the restric-tion came from a concern with unstabledynamics on the opened doors.

Lockheed, the manufacturer of the C-141,had performed dynamic analyses forflight with the doors open because usersneeded to know the maximum speed forpallet air drops, which required, ofcourse, open doors. Authorization to flyat a greater speed with the doors eitheropen or removed would require furtheranalysis by Lockheed. Reukauf remem-bered that the Eclipse team resigned itselfto the limit because there was “no time[or budget] for a new stability analysis.”But to this day, Ken Drucker, the AirForce loadmaster, regrets that he did notintervene in time with informal advice toget the team past the barrier.64

62 Mark Collard, interview by author, 18 June 1999.

63 Stucky interviews.

64 Drucker interview; comments of Reukauf on a draft of this study.

The aft end ofthe C-141A towaircraft. (NASAphoto EC9844392-1 by JimRoss)

25

On many other occasions, Drucker andWatson did in fact help the Eclipse teamnavigate around Air Force regulations.But the speed limit remained at 200 knots.

* * *

Dryden and the AFFTC may have sharedthe same runway, but they came from twodifferent cultures. Often parties to bothagencies would have moments of cultureshock. Once Watson remembers depart-ing one of the lengthy Eclipse meetingsaccompanied by Lieutenant Colonel BobWilson. Wilson shook his head slowly atwhat he had just been hearing, astonishedat the intense interest of the NASApeople in issues that struck him as purelytheoretical.65

KST felt these cultural differences, too.Late in the summer of 1997, KST projectmanager Bob Keltner paid a visit toDryden. He had worked on the Atlasmissile earlier in his life and later spentdecades at TRW. He got out of his car inthe sweltering heat of the Dryden parkinglot with some trepidation. He was aboutto present a list of grievances to CarolReukauf. It was a curious documentroughly printed in capital letters by hand.The title was “PROGRAM DELAYRESPONSIBILITY.” He noted quite anumber of these responsibilities andattributed a few of them to KST. He nexthad penned a section entitled “ACTS OFGOD,” which left, of course, “ACTS OFNASA.”66

There were many acts of NASA, asubstantial number of them concerningDryden’s level of safety preparation andDryden’s commitment to generating data.It was another clash of cultures, really.And any slips in the schedule related togovernment regulation or a need for

additional safety factors or simplycuriosity about some interesting data andthe time taken to pursue it, all added up toexpenses for KST–and new trips to theinvestors to keep the project floating.

Later Keltner told his KST associatesabout Reukauf’s reaction. She sat amoment in silence after reading thepages, her hands folded on the table, thenstarted shaking her head back and forth.

“You know, I am really disappointed inyou,” she said. It was couched in a sympa-thetic tone, but he could sense the iron inher, too. “No question,” Keltner told hiscolleagues, “she was one angry lady.”67

But curiously, the conference did seem toclear the air. Some of the issues weresimply non-resolvables. But Keltnernoticed that now at the Tuesday meetingswhen the Dryden data-gathers and analyz-ers threatened to stampede, she appealed tothem to consider KST. She reined them in.

* * *

Many safety issues had to be resolved.One concern was the cockpit canopy.During a Configuration Control Boardmeeting someone asked, what if the stresson the F-106 fuselage bent the fuselage tothe point the canopy could not be jetti-soned? In an emergency scenario, itwould entail disaster because the canopyhad to be jettisoned from the aircraftbefore the ejection seat would fire. “Thiswas another question that the projectteam judged to be a non-issue,” explainsReukauf. “But nonetheless, regard toflight safety dictated a responsible pursuitof the real answer.” The engineers movedquickly to gauge the risk. They found areplacement canopy and Dryden’sstructural testing lab under Bill Lokos’

65 Watson interview.

66 Robert Keltner, private papers.

67 Robert Keltner, interview by author, 30 July 1999; comments of Keltner on a draft of this study.

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direction loaded the fuselage with shotbags and stressed the fuselage with loadswhich would be experienced in towing. Itwas not elegant, a rough sort of test. Butthe rough, reassuring answer was that thepyrotechnics could still blast the canopyfree.

One of the many operational requirementsidentified in the initial KST test plan was toprovide a cockpit display of rope tensionfor the pilot. This display was the work ofPhil Starbuck, a brilliant young engineer(formerly of KST). It consisted of ahorizontal row of lights that would changecolors, ending in red as the rope loadreached prescribed limits. In the millisec-ond scannings and judgments required attake-off, the monitor was a necessity.

Someone also had to weave an attach-ment loop in the rope. This was no small

task, because the splice had to retain thefull strength of the virgin rope. Theassignment eventually went to Drydenlife-support technician Kelly Snapp.“Because I spent some time in the Navy,”grinned Snapp when you ask him why.68

He was adept at splicing a loop in theVectran lines. It was a skill, and if youthought the task simple, when youwatched what Snapp had to do, it seemeda difficult and tedious trick.

To be sure, it was a task that might takean outsider half a week, but the ex-Navytechnician could do it–and withoutdamaging the rope, which was crucial–inperhaps half an hour. “He was quick,”recalled crew chief Daryl Townsend inadmiration.69 And Vectran did notcooperate when Snapp went to cut it. Forall the worry about the vulnerability ofthe rope, he could wear out six to eight

68 Kelly Snapp, interview by author, 25 June 1999.

69 Townsend interview.

Canopy stiffnesstest setup.(NASA photoEC97 44303-01by Tony Landis)

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blades or dull one sharp hacksaw trying to cutit. Although Snapp never damaged the rope,his razors did slip his own way and on severaloccasions, the rope ascended into the skieswith his loop and his blood stains on it.

Bill Lokos ground-tested six loopsspliced for the experiment. Every timethe rope failed, not the loop. And duringthe flight tests, the loops always held.

One of the paradoxes of the Eclipseproject was that such a small projectgenerated a number of landmarks. Oneof these developed when Al Bowers andKen Norlin devised a simulation for theC-141A. They first modified the existingF-18 simulator at Dryden to representthe F-106. The Air Force did not have aC-141A sim available at Edwards, and asa result, NASA tests were producinguseful results for the F-106 but none forthe Starlifter. Early on, because thetransport was so much heavier than theF-106, the Dryden engineers had mod-eled it in simulation simply as what theycalled an infinite mass. Bowers thenaddressed the need for a C-141 sim.Once this was done, the engineers set upthree simulations–of the C-141, the rope,and the F-106–to operate together in realtime (simultaneously) with data ex-changed among them based on thedynamics of the simulated tow ropebetween the F-106 sim and the C-141sim. The researchers actually set up thesims in separate rooms with radiocommunication between them and acontrol-room unit. It provided valuablerehearsal for the complexities whichwere only beginning to be recognized. Itwas groundbreaking.

Another landmark was the engineers’clever GPS contrivance. GPS, GlobalPositioning System, is a technology thatuses satellite information to calculateexact location and rate of change–for

instance, an airplane’s geographiclocation and speed in flight. Most previ-ous GPS uses consisted of linking onemoving unit to a stable reference point.The Eclipse engineers scored high markswhen they used GPS to chart in real timedistances between two moving units, thetow airplane and the towed F-106.

* * *

On an August afternoon, Mark Collard sat inhis office cubicle and stared at a paper. Hehesitated. This was a moment when a personmight take a long, deep breath before signing.The memo had just issued from his printer. Aspace waited at the bottom of the page for hissignature. The whole business had to do withthe pyros, the tiny units of explosive hard-ware, the only devices which would enablethe Eclipse pilot to eject if there were acatastrophe. To no avail the engineers andsupport crew had searched for replacements,and none were to be had. The pyros on theF-106 were long past their expiration dates.This document would approve an extension.

He searched for a pen, found one–a federal-issue ballpoint. Such extensions were notunusual in flight research at Dryden, but if aproblem arose in flight, the pyros had to workfor Forger to eject successfully.

It was not a reckless moment for Collard.But the step raised questions. How muchconfidence do you have in this project?How deeply do you believe the presenta-tions made in your own safety briefings?Are you sure go-fly hysteria has nottaken over? Are you certain the momen-tum of fifty people working on thisproject for a year and a half is not theenergy fueling your decision?

He signed his name. And he sent it toTom McMurtry, Director of FlightOperations, who surely had his owninternal debate before he signed.70

70 People interviewed for this history voiced two different viewpoints about the extension for use of the pyros. Oneperson argued, “The fact that we needed senior management to approve the extension means we were thorough.”Another view was that Collard’s signature, at least, could have had career-ending ramifications.

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Extensions were an issue with the AirForce’s aging warrior, too, and theC-141A had run out of time. There was aPDM awaiting the Starlifter that couldnot be avoided if it were to continue tofly. A PDM, Programmed Depot Mainte-nance, is a four-year cycle of attentionthat must be paid to Air Force airplanes.“This is serious maintenance,” explainedBob Plested, the first Air Force projectmanager for Eclipse. “They take theairplane down to Warner-Robbins AFBand basically take it apart and put it backtogether again.” The cost of a PDMweighed in at nearly three million dollars.And there was no Eclipse budget to cometo the rescue. Because there were noother paying customers for the C-141A,the Air Force had decided to retire it forgood.

“We had gotten another six months,”Plested continued, “but there were nomore extensions. It’s what you call adrop-dead date. The first six-monthextension is pretty much paperwork. Butthe second is bought more dearly.” Whenall the Eclipse instruments and modifica-tions were stripped out of the C-141A,wherever the airplane ended up on 18February 1998 was going to be its finalresting place.71

There were many safety reviews of theEclipse project. Their number wasextraordinary. Some personal commentswere quite intense. One individual sent amemo concerning Eclipse flights thatstated, “There have always been projectswhere people were willing to go out andkill someone, and this is one of them.”

Dryden Director of Aeronautics Researchand Technology Dwain Deets remembersthat at NASA Headquarters in Washing-ton, DC–where his job took him fre-quently–three or four times a weeksomeone would come up and ask about

this tiny project. “Would you give me abriefing?” he was asked. Deets notes thatthis modulated into a different question,“Are you sure of what you’re doing?”72

The informal reviews numbered in thehundreds.

Ken Drucker, the Air Force sergeant whowas in charge as loadmaster at the rear ofthe tow plane, faced reviews, too. Onewas at mess lunch with other Air Forcesergeants whose hands had been soiledwith decades of jet plane grease andwhose eyes had seen everything underthe aeronautical sun. They suggestedloudly that if the Eclipse project put atowload at the end of the C-141 where nodesigner intended one, the tail mightbreak off. The polite phrases of theearlier memos in the offices conveyed thesame message. But the mess-hall concernwas more bluntly put.

The big reviews, however, were theformal ones. There was the PDR, apreliminary design review early in theproject, followed by the CDR, a criticaldesign review once 90 percent of thedrawings had been done. As flight testdrew near, there appeared the sternprocedures of flight readiness review, theFRR. If the FRR was hurdled, its panelmembers, not the project members,presented it to the Airworthiness FlightSafety Review Board. If that was cleared,a project could fly. But in the case ofEclipse, there were other significantreviews. One was the video conference inthe early summer of 1997 involving Dr.Robert E. Whitehead, the NASA Associ-ate Administrator who headed the Officeof Aeronautics and Space TransportationTechnology. He gave a thumbs up to theproject, satisfied the group knew what itwas doing.

The least expected review came last. Itwas done by something dubbed the IRT,

71 Robert Plested, interview by author, 11 August 1999.

72 Dwain Deets, interview by author, 4 August 1999.

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the Independent Review Team, anassessment group called into being byNASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin.At the time, the event was the exceptionto the rule. In every review, the Eclipseteam proved its case. Reukauf, Forger,Bowers, Collard, Murray, Lokos, andsometimes Gera devoted countless hoursover these months to proving what theywanted to do was safe. Looking back,Reukauf thinks it was a good exercise,one that thoroughly rehearsed them all inthe procedures to come.73 And Forger,often impatient at the sheer number ofpresentations, in retrospect, alsoagrees.74

* * *

Late in August 1997, the Eclipse projectgathered impetus. As the first day ofactual flight research with the F-106 inthe Eclipse configuration drew near, themost junior member of the team satdown to check some figures. He wasTodd Peters, a structural loads engineer.He brought up on his computer screenthe finite-element stress analysis of theF-106 fuselage and looked closer.

To an outsider, the image might haveseemed lovely. You can see similarimages in the opening montage se-quences on Discovery Channel scienceshows where some real-world object istransformed into geometrical lines. TheEclipse project analysis displayed avision of the F-106 fuselage reduced togeometrical patterns. The purpose of thefinite-element stress analysis was todiscover how much stress the F-106fuselage could bear. The analysis hadoccurred long ago. KST had subcon-tracted the work in the days beforeNASA assumed test responsibility. TheDryden machine shop had alreadyfinished most of the work the analysis

had indicated. But as Peters stared at theimage on the screen, his eyes grew wide.The image of the finite-element stressanalysis suggests precision and math-ematical certainty, but the paradoxremains that every line is also, in somesense, false. The model is really anillusion–a deft engineer can manage thetrick, which is to combine these illusionsinto a sum that produces something true.For example, when the F-106 nose wasanalyzed, the sub-contracted engineersimplified its structure into a model to gethis results.

“It’s important when you simplify,”explains Peters, “that you don’t simplifyan area that is crucial. If you do, theanalysis can show everything is finewhen it is not.”75

According to Peters, the model seemed tohave integrity on the screen when, in fact,it did not. And the next day, he took asignal step. He sent a young co-opengineer, Mike Allen, down to the hangar

73 Reukauf interview.

74 Stucky interviews.

75 Todd Peters, interview by author, 23 June 1999.

Figure 3. Finiteelement model ofthe forwardfuselage of theQF-106. (Design980442 by theDryden GraphicsOffice)

30

with tracing paper, white paint, flashlight,and calipers. Allen and a colleague wouldmap the rivets and structural supports inthe forward fuselage. As Peters continuedhis re-analysis at the computer, Allensweated over real metal. There was a tinyhatch on the side of the airplane’s nose. Itwas so small Allen could only reach hishand holding the caliper inside andawkwardly peer around his arm to see.From the hatch on the other side, anotherco-op shined a flashlight. By millime-ters, they charted.

Allen, a polite, shy young engineeringstudent, tells the story of all the rivetsmeasured and today smiles and recalls, “Ithink everything was in good workingorder.” But he also recalls late oneafternoon during this intense period whenPeters stopped by his desk.

“How are things going?” asked Allen.

“We’re in deep, deep trouble,” came theanswer.

The crux was this: the F-106 was alightweight airframe attached to one bigengine. Not surprisingly, its nose was notdesigned for any tow load, let alone24,000 pounds. According to Peters, whathad gone wrong with the analysis wascomplex. It turned out that some modifi-cations done to the airplane were notnecessary, some were done incorrectly,and some important issues had not evenbeen addressed.

There was a joint in the longerons(support members) in the nose. If you rana finger, for instance, along the longeron,you would feel the break (a bolted jointthat had been overlooked during visualinspection against airplane drawings), butthis important reality did not appear inthe finite-element stress analysis andthereby its author gave a forgiving nod toloads up to 24,000 pounds. But the joint

would not support that substantial a load.According to Peters, that area of thefuselage might have failed at loads wellbelow 10,000 pounds.

A complex web of complications re-sulted from such mistakes. If Peters wereright, a possible scenario turned out to bethe one several veteran pilots had frettedabout early on–a mishap at takeoff whenairplane and pilot were most vulnerable,some incident angle where the stresseson the fuselage later in fact did peak at18,000 pounds, a catastrophe when justas the F-106 lifted into the air, its nosebroke off.

Peters reported his findings up the chainof command. His superiors were nothappy. They were all ready to fly.Suddenly he became an Issue–or felt hewas one–at a time when everyone on theproject wanted to be a non-issue and getin the air.76

The next day the managers scrambled. Aphone call was put through to BobKeltner at KST, and there were yowls ofdisbelief and pain on that end. Keltnercalled the subcontractor about theanalysis that was being questioned, butthe subcontractor had no answers, for hehad subcontracted the task to someoneelse who could not be reached. What todo? How to figure this? There was noanswer to these untimely questions.

NASA assigned Mark Lord to join Petersin the task. Lord was more easy-goingthan Peters, a quiet engineer mellowedwith a generation of experience. Lordbegan re-doing the analysis with apencil. Engineers call this approachclassical analysis. It did not replace theanalysis Peters had done with thesoftware NASTRAN. Rather, it looked atthe fuselage from a different angle and ina sense focused more closely. Bothanalyses, of course, were deft illusions

76 In an editorial comment, Reukauf makes the point that the project was grateful to Peters, although he may have felt hewas an issue.

31

aimed at understanding something real.At first, Lord’s work with the pencilseemed to contradict that of Peters. Yes,of course, the analysis by the subcontrac-tor had no validity, but Lord felt that theresults would turn out, in his polite term,“beneficent.”77 But as Lord probedfurther, he too encountered seriousproblems.

Lord and Peters worked together,moving back and forth between theiranalyses, comparing, putting in agrueling seven-day-a-week, 7-a.m.-to-11-p.m. push to get the answers. Theresult was that the team did have to fixthe fuselage. Rivets needed to beadded to reinforce what had beenincorrectly done. Lord designed metalstraps to hold together questionablepanels on the fuselage.

As the winter holidays of 1997 ap-proached, the team raced to get finishedbefore the Air Force put its tow airplaneon the shelf.

Space

Space: defined in dictionaries as theregion beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.Of course, exactly where atmosphericparticles thin out to virtual nothingness issubject to interpretation. But NASA hadput a number on it, defining space by theinternational standard as a region begin-ning 62 miles above the surface of theEarth. It was a yardstick that decidedwho was an astronaut. The Air Force, onthe other hand, had chosen to definespace as a region 50 miles off-planet,awarding astronaut wings to X-15 pilotswho ventured that high but not up to 62miles.78

Space: its definition was not crucial tointellectual property in Kelly’s patent.But it was the goal. And that Decembereven as the Eclipse team raced to fly itstests over the desert, some KST engineerswere asking themselves about modifica-tions to make to the F-106 afterwards thatmight take it higher. Perhaps spacewasn’t so far away.

Kelly shared this enthusiasm. He hadmemories of watching Apollo flights ontelevision as a child. While still anadolescent, he had penned an unpub-lished novel based on somewhat-real-world technology about teenagers flyingto the Moon. Yet although Kelly was avisionary, he was also a very practicalengineer. Hadn’t retired Air Force Lt.Col. Jess Sponable, himself a hard-bittenrealist in aerospace, suggested that allthat was needed for economically fea-sible space flight was a reconfiguration ofwhat had already been invented? “WhatAmerica needs is not newer launchtechnology,” said Sponable, “but today’stechnology applied to RLVs designed tofly with aircraft-like efficiencies.”79

Al Bowers shared and shares his dream ofspace travel. His very office is somethingnear a museum stacked with mementos ofaerospace history, of the human race’seffort to escape the gravitational pull ofEarth. As a child, Bowers had watchedwith excitement the Apollo missions onlive television. Despite his heavy workloadat the center, he continued to donate time topublic schools, talking about space explo-ration. But when he mentions the Apollomissions in his presentations, most of theschool children have no idea a humanbeing ever stepped on the Moon. It did nothappen in their time.

77 Mark Lord, interview by author, 15 July 1999.

78 Dennis R. Jenkins, Hypersonics Before the Shuttle: A Concise History of the X-15 Research Airplane (Washington,DC: NASA SP-2000-4518, 2000), p. 61.

79 Kelly interview; Lt. Col. Jess Sponable (USAF, Ret.), “The Next Century of Flight,” Aviation Week & SpaceTechnology (24 May 1999): 94.

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And as NASA budgets dwindled fromtheir levels in the Apollo era, as timepassed and the only humans on the planetto visit the Moon became gray-hairedmembers of the retirement generation,Bowers had a sharp sense of the rope’simportance. Behind the tiny EclipseProject wavered a question. When NeilArmstrong set foot on the Moon’s surfacein July 1969, whose shoes did he walk in?

Was it Leif Ericsson’s?

Or Christopher Columbus’s?

The Proof

On a bitter, cold Saturday morning inDecember, Forger ran his eyes over thegauges in his cockpit. This was the day.They were ready for flight test. His pilotflight cards clicked against an aluminumcockpit panel. The vast web of possibilityhad been refined to these simply printedcards. Here he was parked behind aC-141A, the stench of its fumes biting hisnostrils. As he later reported, there wassomething unsettling in it all–despite hisexperience flying formation and flyingrefueling–something that seemed aviolation of the most elementary com-mandment: never get behind a bigtransport on take-off.

Pilots snapped the flight cards on akneeboard mounted on the left thigh. Thecards were stiff, laminated, about the sizeof wine lists at restaurant tables. Typi-cally, they had four punches in the leftmargin, the holes sometimes obliteratingparts of words. They had indexes dis-played along the bottom.

Forger knew many of the passages byheart. He knew the test sequences to

come, the engineer commands such as“Cleared for pitch doublet!” that wouldbe transmitted from the control room. Heknew the emergency procedures, themost dire directives on take-off, the fivesteps of “abort” leading to the sixth:“Follow FLAMEOUT LANDINGPROCEDURES.”80

Delays had stalled them. It was a Satur-day morning, 20 December 1997. Threeweeks down-time lay ahead of them, twoweeks for the holidays and a third weekthat annually shut down all projects forsafety workshops. Could the Eclipseproject squeeze in one flight test beforethe long layup? The Air Force’s “drop-dead” date for the C-141A–February1998–would not be extended. Unfortu-nately, Dryden Maintenance had decidedthat although the center director mightgive them special dispensation for a testthe Saturday before Christmas, it was notlikely to happen. On this assumption, thetechnicians had not fueled the safetychase airplanes ahead of time. MerryChristmas, Eclipse! The crew waited 30minutes in the cold for refueling.

Finally, with all airplanes fueled and inposition, the rope truck had done its worklaying out the line, a carefully plannedprocedure carried out by a world-classcrew that had trained itself for hookingup the rope without any abrasive damage.It was a cautious thousand-foot marchdown the runway between the twoairplanes. Daryl Townsend, the big, easy-going crew chief was in front, followedby a technician with what looked like ashepherd’s crook that he deftly maneuveredto keep the line from snarling on the noseof the F-106 and slapping on the concrete.The Air Force comedians liked to call thisexercise “the parade of the Pharaohs.”81

80 Eclipse Project test cards, unpublished (see an example, document 21).

81 By this, apparently they meant that the cautious walk of the NASA ground crew down the runway with the technicianin back maneuvering what NASA folk described as a “shepherd’s crook” wielded to keep the rope from slapping down,resembled the stately marches depicted in Egyptian art where some god or some ruler walked holding aloft a rod whichoften had a curved neck.

33

The minutes to come were crucial forForger. He had to avoid a rope slack thatmight somehow initiate the worst-casescenario, two airplanes trying to take offwith the connecting line serpenting aroundtheir gear. He also had to avoid too suddena tug that might damage the towrope orlead to a break in the frangible link andshut them down. The week before on thetaxi-tow test (an exercise limited to runwaywork), he had a problem. He was too quickon the brakes as the Starlifter began itsslow acceleration. The F-106 jumpedforward, the rope slapping on the ground,and in a blink he counted three oscillationsbefore he controlled it, just hoping thecontrol room would not call abort. He didnot intend to let that happen again.

At a distance of a thousand feet, theC-141A was in position, gleaming fromthe early sun, and to his right and left,Forger saw the rope technicians, clearnow from the flight path, their breathspluming in the air, shifting from one footto the other, still poised even whennothing was left for them to do, as ifsomething still might be needed.

Forger’s knees braced. If all otherEclipse procedures were carefullyrehearsed science, these momentstensioning the rope with his feet on thebrakes were close to art.

The large transport moved. The big jetsshuddered and roared, and he watched asthe rope slack started taking up. Heworked his brakes. The important thingwas not to slap the rope, not to start someoscillation. The rope seemed to drawalmost gently off the tarmac and thencleared at 5,000 pounds just as Bowershad predicted from the very first. Hecalled for Farmer to hold position at6,000 pounds of tension, the rope straightas a ruler edge.

“Arris82 ready for flight,” raspedFarmer’s voice on the radio.

“Eclipse ready for flight,” answeredForger.

“Roger 20 seconds,” crackled from theStarlifter. For the next 20 seconds,everyone on radio in the control room, aswell as Forger, would sit in silence. Hecould hear the whine of the chase jetscircling past, ready to move in. Then hecould hear Drucker’s voice, curiouslymodulated by radio from the tail of theC-141A, counting down, “Eclipse . . . 5 . .. 4. . . .”

When LeVake called “Brake release,” thetransport really started moving. The jetsroared louder. “Smooth the brakes,smooth them,” Forger thought as herelaxed his feet.

82 The C-141A’s radio call sign.

The “Parade ofthe Pharaohs.”(NASA photoEC98 44393-32by Carla Thomas)

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He was moving.

Suddenly, the tarmac blurred. He wasracing down the oil-stained history ofRunway 04. The yellow taxi markswhizzed past. The misty chain of moun-tains separating desert and sky waited inthe distance. Thousand-foot markers, tinsheds fled past him. His gauge said 120knots. When he hit 140 knots, he rotatedthe airplane to 7 degrees nose-up for

takeoff. But as he continued gatheringspeed, he realized there was no radio.Where was the Air Force? He could seethe big bird above him lifting, climbing outas steeply as it could. He could feel thewake turbulence. But where were the radiocalls rehearsed as the C-141 passed 100,200, 300 feet to cue him for takeoff? Thisomission was not a “Red Light,” not arequired abort. But his pilot card advisedhe might choose to abort. “Follow therope” had been the advice from KST andother joshing veterans at the base. And hedid.83

The lift-off came with the Starlifter quitehigh in the envelope of operations.Farmer later commented he felt on thisflight as if he dragged the interceptor offthe ground. But Forger was off theground.

“Eclipse airborne,” called Forger.

He heard a familiar squawk. The AirForce came back on the radio. Down

83 Stucky interviews; report of Chief Engineer Al Bowers on Eclipse Flight 5 (1st towed flight), 20 December 1998 inEclipse Flight Report (see document 6).

Eclipse projectQF-106 andC-141A take offon first tetheredflight 20 Decem-ber 1997. (NASAphoto EC9744357-8 by TomTschida)

Eclipse projectQF-106 andC-141A climb outunder tow on firsttethered flight, 20December 1997.(NASA photoEC97 44357-13by Tom Tschida)

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below cheers erupted in the packedcontrol room as if a team had scored in asports event. Forger realized he flew nearthe bottom of the planned low-tow area,and he climbed a few degrees. The goodnews was this: as he rolled out behind theC-141A and circled the eastern shore ofthe dry lakebed, he tracked very nicely,almost without pilot input. He continuedthe tests, step by step edging the F-106 todifferent areas beneath the tow airplane.Control was excellent.

This first tethered flight was a triumph.And at 10,000 feet as Forger was pulledby the Starlifter into a 40-degree roll,Mark Collard and Al Bowers stared inamusement at the video monitor in thecontrol room, its image transmitted fromthe chase airplane. The engineers sawForger seem to rise up from his seat.84

“He’s not going to do what I think he’sgoing to do, is he?” asked Bowers.85

But he was. He really was.

Forger raised both hands free of theaircraft’s controls. The F-106 flew asmooth course.

“Forger,” advised Collard over the radio,“if you are going to do this, move yourhands so the camera can see.” And thepilot clenched his fingers and waved hisfists. To anyone who had labored throughall the doubts, the briefings, the reviews,it was clear this moment was not show-boating. It was validation.86

Mike Kelly remembers, too, and recountsthe story now without any note of I-told-

you-so. He sums up the first flight tests.“The only surprise was that there were nosurprises,” he says.87

* * *

But Kelly was forgetting about oneincident that no one had foreseen. AsForger was flying behind the C-141 onthe first flight, abruptly the rope releasedat his end. The whole 225 pounds ofVectran and metal for a few momentsbecame a violence in the sky. The partici-pants were unprepared for what theysaw–a vast flailing–and on the secondwhipping, the metal knuckle snapped freeand rocketed off into the blue.

Recovery of the knuckle remained a greathope for several days, and it became anextracurricular project. The pilot and

84 As Stucky commented on the first draft of this monograph, “I didn’t really stand up. I was, after all, strapped into anejection seat. I simply twisted in my seat towards the chase video aircraft, raising my hands up over my head, and wavedthem when they asked to see some motion.”

85 Albion Bowers, interview by author, 25 June 1999.

86 Interview with Collard.

87 Kelly interview; cf. the documents on Eclipse Flight 5 in Eclipse Flight Report (see documents 3-7).

Tow rope afterbeing whippedaround by theknuckle assemblyon the firsttethered flight.(NASA photoEC97 44357-23by Carla Thomas)

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engineers launched a search mission.Using GPS data from the test flight,Forger flew over the area in a smallairplane while below him rumbledseveral of the Eclipse people in their off-road vehicles, tracing grid-patterns acrossthe desert wastelands. The task proveddifficult. “If you look out there, it seemsnice and flat, but when you drive in, it’slittle ravines and creek washes,” saidcrewman Randy Button, who joined thepursuit.88 “It’s a big desert,” smiledKelly Latimer, nodding with irony.89

But optimism prevailed for a time.Even a week later, a team membermade one last Saturday sortie driving ajeep, wielding a GPS and metal-detector. They never found the knuckle,however.

The knuckle had been, of course, a flyingweapon. According to Bowers who has agenius for predictive numbers, theknuckle might have been sailing at 300miles per hour and possibly have burieditself in the sand ten feet deep. When hefiled the pilot’s report, Forger made 19recommendations. Number 12 read:“Recommend future operations immedi-ately occur in the Precision Impact RangeArea (PIRA) airspace over uninhabitedareas.”90

Post-flight inspection revealed nothingwrong with the F-106 hardware, andpost-flight data analysis showed nosudden stress on the tow line. The Drydenengineers could tell you of past testflights where something went awry.Reports would be filed that something didnot “function.” But sometimes it has been

the pilot who has not functioned asintended.

In an afternoon meeting, Forger spokeup. He offered the opinion that he hadinadvertently released the rope. Theengineers had situated the pneumaticrelease button on the pilot’s control stick.When Forger had his hand on the stick,his index finger rested a hairline fromthis button. He must have touched thebutton. His honesty here became part ofthe Eclipse story. If he had remainedsilent, everyone on the project half-guessing the release scenario, it would insome way have fed the worry that itcould happen again. Immediately theengineers offered to move the buttonelsewhere–perhaps its placement had notbeen a great idea. Forger said they didnot need to lose the time on installation.Daryl Townsend remembered how thepilot’s eyes grew narrow. “It won’thappen again,” he said.91

And it did not.

When the Starlifter towed the F-106, theAir Force pilots could barely tell theyhad a tow load. It was a subtle difference.In flight, they could not see the F-106,nor did they have video display. WhenForger released the rope, the Air Forcepilots felt a gentle surging forward,nothing else. On the second test flight,Farmer claimed to hear a low noise thathe thought was transmitted through therope, a low-frequency rumbling thatdisappeared after the rope release.“Sure,” grinned co-pilot Latimer, inton-ing her disbelief.92

88 Randy Button, interview by author, 25 June 1999.

89 Kelly Latimer, interview by author, 6 July 1999.

90 Pilot’s Flight Test Report, First Tethered Flight in Eclipse Flight Report (see document 4).

91 Townsend interview.

92 In editorial comments, Stucky wrote, “The quivering/shimmering the canvas sleeve caused to the towrope was, I feel,the source of the rumbling in the rope that was transmitted to the C-141 and [that] Farmer could feel.” See below fordiscussion of the canvas sleeve.

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But Latimer and Farmer felt some twingeof regret hearing the Air Force crew inback at the tow connection, shouting inastonishment, “You should see this! Thisis the coolest!” It was the rope they saw. Itwas moving in wild, beautiful oscillationsnobody had predicted. Sergeant DanaBrink, the scanner, recalls, “Once the ropedisconnected, it was like when you takeand whip a garden hose, at first the curvegets bigger and slower at the same time.”Brink and Drucker both viewed thewrithings at close hand, and at a flightdebriefing when Eclipse engineers saidwistfully they wished they had a betterlook at the rope (its thin stripe difficult tosee by eye or chase video against theglaring desert sky), Brink admitted he hadunauthorized photography.93 Accordingto several project members, thesergeant’s pictures were the moststunning images recorded during theexperiments.

* * *

In January, when the Eclipse team hadreturned to flight research, the drop-deaddate still loomed ahead for the C-141A,and for practical purposes, the groupcould not work past 6 February 1998.On 21 January, the airplanes ascended fortheir second tethered flight.

The engineers had anticipated a flightenvelope of easy operation, one thatproved easier in real flight than the simspredicted, so easy that the rope, which infact bowed, might as well have beenstraight in certain low-tow configurations.But Forger had parameters to explore inthese tests. There were places Forger triedto fly where the F-106 “turned into abucking bronco,” and he brought it back.At another point in high tow, he spikedhis control stick (an abrupt control inputto see if the airplane would return to

93 Dana Brink, interview by author, 1 July 1999.

View of theF-106 and thetow rope from theC-141A. (NASAphoto EC9844393-52 byCarla Thomas)

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stability or oscillate). Suddenly, every-thing changed. The idyllic curve of therope was turned “to an unnerving andchaotic spaghetti-like appearance.”94 Itwas, he said, a place he did not want tobe, but it was part of the test. He immedi-ately pushed over and descended to thesafety of the low-tow position.

During ground tests, the team had antici-pated that 50 feet of nylon attachment atthe C-141A end of the rope might create aproblem. The engineers had moved thissegment to the middle of the Vectran towline to damp the oscillations. They hadcovered this 50-foot damping section witha canvas shroud to protect the nylon during

hookup on the runway. The canvas was toobig, and on the first flight, it began tearingapart in the air.

“At first,” recalls Forger, “I could see itjust quivering.” Then objects flung pasthim. “I could see what came off,” he says,“I could see it fly.”95

On the second flight, the crew taped thecanvas down tightly, but during theexperiment it was “shimmering” andinterfering as an aerodynamic factor inthe tests. Finally, from the third flight on,the engineers decided to do away with thenylon in the middle–Vectran couldhandle the damping.96

94 Mark Stucky, interview by author, 22 July 1999.

95 Ibid.

96 See Pilot’s Flight Test Reports, EXD-01 Flight 5—First Tethered Flight; Flight 6—Second Tethered Flight, 21 January1998; Flight 7—Third Tethered Flight, 23 January 1998, all from Eclipse Flight Report (documents 4, 8, and 15).

Side view of theC-141A towingthe F-106.(NASA photoEC98 44415-19by Jim Ross)

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As Murray had guessed, there was adynamic in the tow line. Whenever Forgermade large control inputs to the F-106,the Air Force pilots could feel the effectsthrough the rope. But Murray wanted toknow more about the loads on the rope.All of the measurements were being madefrom Forger’s end of the rope. Thetechnicians now raced for a new measure-ment procedure involving a load cellsignal taken at the C-141A end, whichwould be recorded on a modified laptopcomputer and monitored by a technicianseated in the rear of the transport. They begangathering this data on the fifth flight.97

No one had yet put a mathematical modelon the real ferocity of the rope.

* * *

Strong Pacific storms came blowing towardthe desert on Thursday. The last Eclipse testhad been approved for Friday, 6 February. Itwas a crucial test–to date, all the flights hadascended no higher than 10,000 feet, but ifyou listened to engineering anecdote,interesting things could start happening ontow at 25,000 feet. Kelly’s concept includedtowing at these altitudes. The team neededto do this experiment.

Winter is always the worst season atEdwards, the pilots say. And this was theEl Niño year. When the engineers,managers, and pilots looked up at the TV

weather report that Thursday, they sawgraphics of a vast cloud cover arriving.The Air Force forecast was rain starting atdawn on Friday, low visibility, and windsgusting to 30 knots. Test flights simplywere not done in these conditions. TheEclipse team was limited to winds of lessthan 15 knots for takeoff, 10 knots for atailwind.98

Casey Donohue, the young Drydenmeteorologist, recalls, “The El Niño frontactually was going northwest to south-east.” He explains that it seemed to himthe lower end of the storm crossingCalifornia would tend to snag on themountains.99

97 The numbering of the flights is somewhat confusing because Forger had flown the F-106 alone (without the C-141) inthe Eclipse (EXD-01) configuration four times in October and early November 1997 to calibrate air data and validatesimulations (see document 1). Then the taxi test on 13 December counted as an Eclipse mission, making the firsttethered flight on 20 December the 5th flight in the EXD-01 configuration. Thus the 5th tethered flight mentioned abovein the narrative was actually the 9th EXD-01 flight. It took place on 5 February 1998, with the last flight (#6) thefollowing day. On the load cell, see Project Manager’s Comments, Fifth Tethered/Release Flight, 5 February 1998(document 30), Bill Lokos’ Structures Report (document 36), and Jim Murray’s Flight Mechanics Report for the sameflight (see document 35), all in Eclipse Flight Report. Dryden’s Mark Nunelee prepared the load cell and Allen Parkerexpeditiously set up the laptop computer.

98 Taking off with a tailwind is generally unacceptable. However, the Eclipse team established a tailwind limit because itwas safer to take off to the East (toward the lakebed for possible emergency landings) and prevailing winds at EdwardsAFB are from the West. Comments of Carol Reukauf on a draft of this study.

99 Casey Donohue, interview by author, 12 July 1999. See also Casey’s Weather Summary for Eclipse EXD-01 Flight10, 6 February 1998 in Eclipse Flight Report (document 49).

Tow rope aftersecond tetheredflight. (NASAphoto EC9844390-24 byCarla Thomas)

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The Eclipse team met Thursday at 3 p.m.It was grim. After Saturday, the Starlifterwas gone. All of the weather forecastservices had agreed on the Friday fore-cast.

At the meeting, Donohue took a deepbreath. Then he said, “There’s going tobe a window.”

After deliberation, the team decidednot to scrap the flight; they would getin their cars and drive out very earlytomorrow; they would see. But wasDonohue right? Forger had a personalcontact with the Air Force weatherservice. He decided to get some up-to-the-second forecasting. He made thephone call.100

Bowers remembers the event–while heand Forger waited for the answer, overthe phone they could hear the Air Forceforecasters laughing. The answer came,but Forger hesitantly interrupted.

“We hear,” he said, “there’s going to be alittle break tomorrow morning.”

“Yeah, there’s going to be a break outnear Hawaii.”

That night, Bowers did not sleep well. Hetypically does not when the excitement ofthe test looms, when he knows he willrise early. The clouds had already ap-peared the evening before. He recalled, “Igot up at 2:30 next morning and wentoutside and looked up and there were starsand I knew we were gonna fly.”101

In a world of metal and instrumentation,the Dryden people seem to take precisionfor granted, but weather is somethingelse. When Bowers told about Donohue’sprediction, he leaned forward in his chair.“He hit it exactly,” says Bowers, gleam-ing in admiration.

The next morning the Eclipse aircrafttook off on Runway 22. It was not perfectweather. There was broken cloud cover.The self-effacing Donohue will try to tellyou that his forecast of winds switchingto the south proved incorrect; hence, theyshould have used another runway, as theyhad on all previous flights. The finalreports list winds at 11 and 12 knots,higher than the tailwind limit of 10 knots.But because they were not directtailwinds, they were within limits.Consequently, the C-141A pulled theF-106 up into the air.

It was an adventure. Typically testflights are not supposed to occur whenvisibility is under three miles. “Youwant to see the ground, everything,”explained an Air Force aviator. ThatFriday, the possibility of maintainingVMC (visual meteorological condi-tions) did not look good. GordonFullerton, called Gordo by many of hisassociates, was chase pilot. Early on inthe project, he had been skeptical aboutsafety issues, but now he volunteered“to go up and take a look around.” Hecame back with the message that hethought the flight should be a go.

The airplanes took off and began toclimb. Farmer remembers the view fromthe cockpit of the Starlifter. He looked upand saw what seemed nearly unbrokendark clouds. He followed Fullerton, whowas leading the way in the chase airplaneto holes in the cloud cover.

“You know this sounds corny,” Farmerexplained–seeming embarrassed as ifhe might hear from the Air Forcejoshers for these remarks. But he didnot stop. “I’ve never seen such a thingbefore or since. It was like magic thatday, the way holes opened up in theclouds and Gordo flew through, and Ifollowed tugging the F-106 along

100 Stucky interviews.

101 Albion Bowers, interview by author, 17 July 1999.

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behind. We were flying through the skylooking for holes in the clouds.”102

They ascended to 25,000 feet. Forgerperformed his maneuvers. The ropecontributed some instabilities, but theF-106 was flyable. He elected to remain ontow for part of the descent, to gather moredata, which he did with speedbrakesdeployed so that their drag would maintainrope tension and keep the airplane stable.He had been releasing recently from towby breaking the frangible link. This time at9,000 feet, he simply released the rope.They would not need the knuckle again.The long line snaked, and on its first whip,cast the knuckle into the desert. WhenForger landed, he was still taxiing on therunway as the first rain began to pepper theconcrete. Strong gusts began tossing windsocks. The El Niño storm had arrived.103

Mike Kelly watched from the flightcontrol room. “This was quite a triumph,”he said. “Here was this project everyonethought was unsafe in the beginning–noone should fly this–and now despiteadverse weather conditions, people hadall this confidence in towing technol-ogy.”104 Cheers broke out across thecontrol room. People clapped and ap-plauded for the many heroes on the team.And Bob Keltner threaded his way acrossthe noisy room to shake the hand of themeteorologist.

* * *

Afterwards, the emphatic triumph of thetow demonstrations made aviation

news.105 The stills and videos taken fromthe NASA Dryden chase airplanesbrilliantly documented what had beenachieved.

The Eclipse project won the Team Projectof the Year Award for 1998 at NASADryden. NASA Administrator DanGoldin sent a note of personal thanks toDryden Center Director Ken Szalai.106

Many of the members of the team willtell you in retrospect that Eclipse was themost rewarding and exciting project theyhave ever worked on. In their offices,their scraps of rope hung as trophiesproudly display this sentiment. “It came,we did it, it went away,” said Jim Murraywith a real sense of accomplishment.107

“I came away with the memory,” said oneAir Force team member, “that if you keepplugging ahead, everything will workout.” Several other team membersechoed this sense of significant lessonslearned. As this history was written, JimMurray had been assigned to apply hisbrilliance to designing an airplaneintended to fly on Mars in 2003. AlBowers moved on to become chiefengineer on the revolutionary BlendedWing Body Project.

With this success behind them, MikeKelly and his staff moved on with theiragenda. They had unfinished business.The Eclipse was merely one step on thepath.For awhile, KST tried to talk the AirForce into letting it have several F-106s.Kelly had an idea for installing a rocketon the F-106. It would be a sub-scale

102 Farmer interview.

103 Pilot’s Flight Test Report, EXD-01 Flight 10—6th (Final) Tethered Flight, 6 February 1998, in Eclipse Flight Report(see document 43).

104 Kelly interview.

105 See, e.g., Bruce A. Smith, “Tow Concept Tested,” Aviation Week & Space Technology (9 February 1998): 93.

106 Note, Dan Goldin to Ken Szalai, 2 April 1998 (see document 54).

107 Murray interview.

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version of the dream, but they wouldactually use the airplane as a commer-cial-satellite launch vehicle. The AirForce refused. At the time this historywas written, at its website KST wasadvertising for people to pay KST$90,000 now in order to be on the list fortourist launches KST had planned for theyear 2001.108

One final and strange event happenedwith the C-141A. Pilot Stu Farmer tellsthe story. He had flown the Starlifter onits sad journey down to the air museumat Dover, Delaware. When the museumstaff brought the C-141A to its finalresting place, they parked it in front of anF-106. Farmer glanced a moment at thefield attendant who seemed unaware ofthe significance (perhaps the irony) ofthe accidental juxtaposition of the two

aircraft. He staredback over hisshoulder at theimage and then didnot say a word butclimbed in the jeepand drove away.109

This unexpectedmeeting of theC-141A withanother F-106perhaps symbol-ized the unknownoutcome of theEclipse project.Would it lead to anew way to launchspacecraft? Asthese lines werebeing written, theanswer was not

clear. The project left its participantswith a sense of accomplishment. Thedata generated might find multipleapplications in the world of aeronauticsand space. But the puzzles and urgencyremained.110

In the end, the issue with the tests wasneither the F-106—its aerodynamicswere known—nor the C-141A, whoseaerodynamics were also known. In theend, the rope was the crux of the matter.

Mike Kelly was clear about that. Heshared what flew through Forger’s headin the decisive moment on take-off, theadvice from the old-timers on the base,an admonition, a remark that was bothjest and truth.

Follow the rope.

108 The URL for the website was http://www.kellyspace.com/

109 Farmer interview.

110 This paragraph is heavily indebted to J.D. Hunley, chief historian at NASA Dryden.

The F-106 takingoff for its flightto Davis-Monthan AirForce Base,Arizona, after theEclipse projectended. (NASAphoto EC9844534-02 byTony Landis)

43

44

Documents

45

46

47

48

Document 2. U.S. Patent Number 5,626,310, assigned to Kelly Space & Technology, Inc., forSpace Launch Vehicles Configured as Gliders and Towed to Launch Altitude by ConventionalAircraft

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

Document 3. Eclipse EXD-01 Flight 5, First Tethered/Release Flight, 20 December 1997,Project Manager’s Comments, Carol A. Reukauf

60

Document 4. Eclipse Pilot’s Flight Test Report, EXD-01 Flight 5—First Tethered Flight, MarkP. Stucky, Eclipse Project Pilot

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

Document 5. Daily/Initial Flight Test Report, C-141A, 61-2775, 20 Dec. 97, Morgan LaVake,Test Conductor

69

70

Document 6. Aerodynamics, Eclipse Flight 5, Al Bowers, Chief Engineer

71

72

Document 7. Flight Controls, Eclipse Flight 5, Joe Gera

73

74

Document 8. Eclipse Pilot’s Flight Test Report, EXD-01 Flight 6—Second Tethered Flight, 21Jan. 1998, Mark P. Stucky, Eclipse Project Pilot

75

76

77

78

Document 9. Daily/Initial Flight Test Report, C-141A, 61-2775, 21 Jan. 98, Morgan LaVake, TestConductor

79

80

81

82

Document 11. Flight Controls, Eclipse Flight 6, Joe Gera

83

84

Document 12. Structures Report, EXD-01 Flight 6, 21 January 1998, Bill Lokos, StructuresEngineer

85

Document 13. Weather Summary, Eclipse, EXD-01 Flight 6, 21 January 1998, Casey Donohue

86

Document 14. Eclipse Pilot’s Flight Test Report, EXD-01 Flight 7—Third Tethered Flight, 23January 1998, Mark P. Stucky, Eclipse Project Pilot

87

88

89

Document 15. Project Manager’s Comments, Eclipse, EXD-01 Flight 7, Third Tethered/Release Flight, 23 January 1998, Carol A. Reukauf

90

Document 16. Daily/Initial Flight Test Report, C-141A, 61-2775, 23 Jan. 98, Morgan LaVake, TestConductor

91

92

Document 17. Aerodynamics, Eclipse EXD-01 Flight 7, 23 January 1998, Al Bowers, ChiefEngineer

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94

Document 18. Flight Controls, Eclipse Flight 7, 23 January 1998, Joe Gera

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96

Document 19. Structures Report, EXD-01 Flight 7, 23 January 1998, Bill Lokos, StructuresEngineer

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Document 20. Weather Summary, Eclipse, EXD-01 Flight 7, 23 January 1998, Casey Donohue

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Document 21. Example of flight test cards, Eclipse-01, Flight No. F7

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100

Document 22. Project Manager’s Comments, Eclipse, EXD-01 Flight 8, Fourth Tethered/Release Flight, 28 January 1998, Carol A. Reukauf

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Document 23. Eclipse Pilot’s Flight Test Report, EXD-01 Flight 8—Fourth Tethered Flight, 28January 1998, Mark P. Stucky, Eclipse Project Pilot

102

103

104

Document 24. Daily/Initial Flight Test Report, C-141A, 61-2775, 28 Jan. 98, Morgan LaVake, TestConductor

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Document 25. Aerodynamics, Eclipse EXD-01 Flight 8, 28 January 1998, Al Bowers, ChiefEngineer

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107

108

Document 26. Flight Controls, Eclipse Flight 8, 28 January 1998, Joe Gera

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110

Document 27. Flight Mechanics, Eclipse, EXD-01 Flight 8, 28 January 1998, Jim Murray

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Document 28. Structures Report, EXD-01 Flight 8, 28 January 1998, Bill Lokos, StructuresEngineer

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Document 29. Eclipse, EXD-01 Flight 8, Weather Summary, 28 January 1998, Casey Donohue

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Document 30. Project Manager’s Comments, Eclipse, EXD-01 Flight 9, Fifth Tethered/ReleaseFlight, 5 February 1998, Carol A. Reukauf

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115

Document 31. Eclipse Pilot’s Flight Test Report, EXD-01 Flight 9—Fifth Tethered Flight, 5February 1998, Mark P. Stucky, Eclipse Project Pilot

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117

118

Document 32. Daily/Initial Flight Test Report, C-141A, 61-2775, 05 Feb. 98, Morgan LaVake,Test Conductor

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120

Document 33. Aerodynamics, Eclipse EXD-01 Flight 9, 5 February 1998, Al Bowers, ChiefEngineer

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Document 34. Eclipse Flight Controls, EXD-01 Flight 9, 5 February 1998, Joe Gera

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Document 35. Flight Mechanics, Eclipse, EXD-01 Flight 9, 5 February 1998, Jim Murray

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Document 36. Structures Report, EXD-01 Flight 9, 5 February 1998, Bill Lokos

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Document 37. Eclipse, EXD-01 Flight 9, Weather Summary, 5 February 1998, Casey Donohue

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Document 38. Eclipse, EXD-01 Flight 9, 5 February 1998, Instrumentation Status Report, TonyBranco, Instrumentation Engineer

126

Document 39. WATR [Western Area Test Range] Support, EXD-01 Flight 9, 5 February 1998,Debra Randall, Test Information Engineer/FE

127

Document 40. EXD-01 NASA 0130, Flight 9, Mark Collard, Operations Engineer

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Document 41. Project Manager’s Comments, Eclipse, EXD-01 Flight 10, Sixth Tethered/Release Flight, 6 February 1998, Carol A. Reukauf

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3130

Document 42. Eclipse F10 Flight Notes, Mark P. Stucky, Eclipse Project Pilot

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Document 43. Eclipse Pilot’s Flight Test Report, EXD-01 Flight 10—6th (Final) TetheredFlight, 6 February 1998, Mark P. Stucky, Eclipse Project Pilot

132

133

134

Document 44. Daily/Initial Flight Test Report, C-141A, 61-2775, 06 Feb. 98, Morgan LaVake, TestConductor

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136

Document 45. Aerodynamics, Eclipse EXD-01 Flight 10, 6 February 1998, Al Bowers, ChiefEngineer

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138

139

140

Document 47. Flight Mechanics, Eclipse, EXD-01 Flight 10, 6 February 1998, Jim Murray

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Document 48. Structures Report, EXD-01 Flight 10, 6 February 1998, Bill Lokos

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Document 49. Eclipse, EXD-01 Flight 10, Weather Summary, 6 February 1998, CaseyDonohue

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Document 50. Eclipse, EXD-01 Flight 10, 6 February 1998, Instrumentation Status Report,Tony Branco, Instrumentation Engineer

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Document 51. WATR [Western Area Test Range] Support, EXD-01 Flight 10, 6 February 1998,Debra Randall, Test Information Engineer/FE

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Document 52. EXD-01 NASA 0130, Flight 10, Mark Collard, Operations Engineer

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Document 53. Eclipse Acronyms and Definitions

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Document 54. Note, Dan Goldin to Ken [Szalai], 2 April 1998

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Document 55. Eclipse Project Pilot Mark P. Stucky’s slides used at briefings

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IndexAerotow, 3-4, 5 ill.Air Force Flight Test Center, 3, 26

418th Flight Test Squadron, 16Air Force Phillips Laboratory, 3, 10Airspeed, see under EclipseAlbrecht, William P., 20Allen, Mike, 30-32Anctil, Don, 9, 10Apollo, 32

B-29, 4B-52, 7

Parachute release hardware, 20Baron, Robert S., 3, 13, 15, 16, 23Boeing Company, 15Boeing 747, 4Bowers, Albion H., 12-13, 23, 30, 32, 34, 36-37, 41, 42

Simulation for the C-141A, 28Branco, Antonio E., 13Brink, Dana, 16, 38Brown, Eric, 4Button, Randy, 37

C-141A transport (Starlifter), 3, 6, 7 ill., 14, 16, 18, 24, 25ill., 29, 33-43, 35 ill., 39 ill.

Petal doors and airspeed, 25Simulation, 28

Canvas, 39Cartland, Barbara, 2Cessna, 4Chase, Dick, 11Clark, William, 13Classical analysis, 31Collard, Mark, 13, 25, 28, 30, 36Convair, 9Cortland Cable, 6CV-990, 7

Dana, William H., 17Deets, Dwain A., 29Donohue, Casey J., 40-42Dope on a Rope, 18Drachslin, Bill, 10, 11Drucker, Ken, 7, 16, 23, 25, 29, 34, 38Dryden Flight Research Center, 1, 3, 7, 8, 9, 16, andpassim

Airworthiness and Flight Safety Review Board,17, 29Configuration Control Board (CCB), 26Critical design review (CDR), 29Culture, 26, 31-32Flight readiness review (FRR), 29Pilots, 9, 18Preliminary design review (PDR), 29

Purpose and hallmark, 17Dymott, Roy, 13, 20

Eclipse, 4-5, 17, passimAirspeed and, 25Eclipse Astroliner, 4-5Flights, 33-42“High tow” vs. “low tow,” 13-14Simulations, 28Use of GPS, 28, 37Various reviews, see under Dryden Flight

Research CenterVortices and towing, 24-25

Edwards Air Force Base, 4, 7, and passimEgypt, 6El Niño, 40, 42EXD-01, 10 n. and see F-106

F-4, 11F-18, 14, 24F-18 High Angle-of-Attack Research Vehicle (HARV), 9,12-13F-106, 3, 9-12, 13-14, 15 ill., 18, 24, 35 ill., 38 & 39 ill.,43 ill.

Afterburner, 12Canopy testing, 26-27, 27 ill.Cockpit display of rope tension, 27Finite element model and stress analysis, 30 ill.,30-32Flights, 33-43Military vs. maximum power, 22Pyros for ejection, 28Simulation, 28Tow configuration (EXD-01), 23Transfer to Dryden, 16

Farmer, Charles Stuart, 7, 16, 34-43Fokker, Anthony, 3, 14“Follow the rope,” 35, 43Frangible link, 20-22Fullerton, Charles Gordon, 17, 41

Gallo, Mike, 14, 17Gentry, Jerauld, 4Gera, Joe, 13, 17, 24, 30Gigant, 4Ginn, Anthony, 11, 20Global Positioning System (GPS), see under EclipseGoldin, Daniel S., 14, 30, 42

Hampsten, Ken, 3, 11Hofschneider, Roy, 6Howell, Homer “Bud,” 23

Ishmael, Stephen, 8

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Kelly, Michael S., 1-3, 4-5, 7-8, 11, 14, 17, 36, 42Kelly Space & Technology, Inc., 1, 3, 19, 20-21, 22-23,26, 30-32, 40, 42

Idea for Eclipse, 2Kick-off party, 14Patent, 3, 5, 6-7, 8

Keltner, Robert, 26, 31, 42Knuckle, 18, 20, 36-37

L-1011, 5Latimer, Kelly, 16, 37-38Learjet, 4LeVake, Morgan, 16, 34Lifting-body program, 4Loads, 20-22, 28, 30-32, 40Lokos, William A., 13, 20, 22, 28, 30

Canopy testing, 26-27Redesign of frangible link, 21

Lord, Mark, 31-32Losey, Lori, 13Lundquist, Gustave, 4

McMurtry, Thomas C., 28Me 163A and –B, 4Me 321, 4 n.Mojave Desert, 1Muroc Army Air Field, 4Murray, James E., 1, 13, 14, 24, 30, 40, 42

Names, importance of, 17NASA Headquarters, 1

Independent Review Team (IRT), 29-30NASTRAN, 31Norlin, Ken, 13

Simulation for the C-141A, 28Nylon, 4, 6, 20, 39

Parachute qualification pallet, 20Pegasus, 2Peters, Todd L., 12, 30-32Phillips Lab, see Air Force Phillips LaboratoryPlested, Bob, 16, 29Propulsion Directorate of Air Force Research Laboratory,3 n.

QF-106, 10, 15 ill., 35 ill., and see F-106

Randall, Debra, 13Reukauf, Carol A., 16, 23-24, 25, 26, 30Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLVs), 2Robinson, Wes, 22-23Ross, James C., 13

Schneider, Edward T., 14Skinner, Ed, 12

Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), 3, 5Smith, Rogers, 4Snapp, Kelly J., 27-28Space, defined, 32Space Shuttle, 2Spitfire, 4Stahl, John, 16Starbuck, Phil, 27Stucky, Mark “Forger,” 8, 11-12, 15, 17, 22, 23, 24, 30,33-42Surovec, Roy, 16Szalai, Kenneth J., 42

Tecson, Art, 16Thomas, Carla, 13Tow rope, 1, 3, 5-6, 21 ill., 36 ill., 38 & 39 ill., 40 ill.

Abrasion tests, 20Attachment and release mechanism, 19 ill., 22Attachment loop, 27-28Simulation, 28

Towing position, see under Eclipse, “high tow” vs. “lowtow”Townsend, Daryl, 18, 27, 33, 37Tracor Aerospace, 6Tracor Flight Systems, Inc., 14-15Trippensee, Gary, 8, 13, 23Tyndall Air Force Base, 10

Vectran®, 6, 20, 27-28, 39Vickers, Archie, 20Videotapes, 13Vortices, see under Eclipse

WACO glider, 4-5Watson, Mark, 16, 26Whitehead, Robert E., 29Williams, Bill, 20Wilson, Bob, 16, 26Wilson, Ronald J. “Joe,” 9, 17

169

Monographs in Aerospace History

Launius, Roger D., and Gillette, Aaron K. Compilers. The Space Shuttle: An Annotated Bibliography. (Mono-graphs in Aerospace History, No. 1, 1992).

Launius, Roger D., and Hunley, J.D. Compilers. An Annotated Bibliography of the Apollo Program. (Mono-graphs in Aerospace History, No. 2, 1994).

Launius, Roger D. Apollo: A Retrospective Analysis. (Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 3, 1994).

Hansen, James R. Enchanted Rendezvous: John C. Houbolt and the Genesis of the Lunar-Orbit RendezvousConcept. (Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 4, 1995).

Gorn, Michael H. Hugh L. Dryden’s Career in Aviation and Space. (Monographs in Aerospace History,No. 5, 1996).

Powers, Sheryll Goecke. Women in Flight Research at the Dryden Flight Research Center, 1946-1995(Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 6, 1997).

Portree, David S.F. and Trevino, Robert C. Compilers. Walking to Olympus: A Chronology of ExtravehicularActivity (EVA). (Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 7, 1997).

Logsdon, John M. Moderator. The Legislative Origins of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958:Proceedings of an Oral History Workshop (Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 8, 1998).

Rumerman, Judy A. Compiler. U.S. Human Spaceflight: A Record of Achievement, 1961-1998 (Monographs inAerospace History, No. 9, 1998).

Portree, David S.F. NASA’s Origins and the Dawn of the Space Age (Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 10,1998).

Logsdon, John M. Together in Orbit: The Origins of International Cooperation in the Space Station Program(Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 11, 1998).

Phillips, W. Hewitt. Journey in Aeronautical Research: A Career at NASA Langley Research Center (Mono-graphs in Aerospace History, No. 12, 1998).

About the Author

Tom Tucker is a writer who has a special interest in topics relating to invention. He is the author of Touch-down: The Development of Propulsion Controlled Aircraft at NASA Dryden (Washington, DC: Monographsin Aerospace History # 16, 1999) and Brainstorm: The Stories of Twenty American Kid Inventors (New York:Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995, revised 1998). His next nonfiction work, “Bolt of Fate: Benjamin Franklinand his Electric Kite Experiment” is due out from Public Affairs Books in the winter of 2001. He haspublished in many periodicals and also has written about baseball, including a baseball short story featuredin Sports Illustrated. He is an instructor at Isothermal Community College in Spindale, NC. He attendedHarvard College and Washington University in St. Louis, earning his B.A. and later an M.A. on a WoodrowWilson Fellowship at Washington University.

170

Braslow, Albert L. A History of Suction-Type Laminar-Flow Control with Emphasis on Flight Research (Mono-graphs in Aerospace History, No. 13, 1999).

Logsdon, John M. Moderator. Managing the Moon Program: Lessons Learned from Project Apollo (Mono-graphs in Aerospace History, No. 14, 1999).

Perminov, V.G. The Difficult Road to Mars: A Brief History of Mars Exploration in the Soviet Union (Mono-graphs in Aerospace History, No. 15, 1999).

Tucker, Tom. Touchdown: The Development of Propulsion Controlled Aircraft at NASA Dryden (Monographs inAerospace History, No. 16, 1999).

Maisel, Martin D.; Demo J. Giulianetti; and Daniel C. Dugan. The History of the XV-15 Tilt Rotor ResearchAircraft: From Concept to Flight. (Monographs in Aerospace History #17, NASA SP-2000-4517, 2000).

Jenkins, Dennis R. Hypersonics Before the Shuttle: A History of the X-15 Research Airplane. (Monographs in Aerospace History #18, NASA SP-2000-4518, 2000).

Chambers, Joseph R. Partners in Freedom: Contributions of the Langley Research Center to U.S. MilitaryAircraft in the 1990s. (Monographs in Aerospace History #19, NASA SP-2000-4519).

Waltman, Gene L. Black Magic and Gremlins: Analog Flight Simulations at NASA’s Flight Research Center.(Monographs in Aerospace History #20, NASA SP-2000-4520).

Portree, David S.F. Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning, 1950-2000. (Monographs in AerospaceHistory #21, NASA SP-2002-4521).

Thompson, Milton O. Flight Research: Problems Encountered and What They Should Teach Us. (Mono-graphs in Aerospace History #22, NASA SP-2000-4522).

Those monographs still in print are available free of charge from the NASA History Division, Code ZH, NASAHeadquarters, Washington, DC 20546. Please enclosed a self-addressed 9x12" envelope stamped for 15 ouncesfor these items.

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