HEADING TOWARD THE HEAVENS : DRYDEN MARKS 50 YEARS OF ACHIEVEMENT.

Byline: Jim Skeen Daily News Staff Writer

Fifty years ago, a handful of engineers from a National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics center in Virginia set up what they thought was going to be a temporary operation beside a dry lake in the Mojave Desert.

The five engineers had come to test the X-1 rocket plane, a joint Army Air Force-NACA program aimed at conquering the ``sound barrier'' - which was then feared to be an insurmountable barrier that would tear apart any aircraft that approached it.

Less than 13 months later, Chuck Yeager, then an Army Air Force captain, became the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound.

It would be the first of many achievements for the high-speed research station that grew into NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, which marks its 50th anniversary Monday.

The X-1 program was also the first concrete example of NACA director of aeronautical research Hugh Dryden's creed - to separate the real from the imagined.

``Our mission, really, is probing the boundaries,'' said Dryden Director Ken Szalai. ``It's a down-to-Earth Capt. Kirk mission.''

The list of the center's achievements in space and aeronautics is long and includes the first flights at Mach 1 and Mach 2, flights to the edge of space in the X-15 rockets, contributions to the Apollo moon missions and to the design of the space shuttle.

The center's future includes flight tests of a prototype of a new spacecraft, tests of a design for a ``lifeboat'' for the international space station, and testing of new technologies to allow high-altitude, slow-flying aircraft to do tasks now performed by satellites, such as military reconnaissance and studying the environment.

``What we do shows up five, 10 years later in aircraft and technology,'' said Roy Bryant, a Dryden researcher.

The X-1 rocket plane program came to Edwards, then known as Muroc Army Airfield, because of its relatively remote location at the edge of the Mojave Desert and its clear flying weather - visibility of 50 miles being common.

``The original guys thought it was going to be a temporary thing,'' said Dale Reed, a NASA engineer from 1953 to 1985. ``They ended up bringing in other X planes here and it became permanent.''

Aerospace historian Richard Hallion, in his book ``On the Frontier,'' describes how the first Muroc NACA members a half-century ago felt about the high desert.

``During the first year of its existence, the Muroc unit experienced a high turnover in personnel; workers quickly split into two groups - those who adjusted to the heat, dust, and grit of the desert, and those who could not stand the environment for more than a few weeks,'' Hallion wrote.

``Many stayed because of job satisfactions not readily apparent. They believed they were participating in a program of national importance that would radically alter the future of development of aviation; they considered it both a great responsibility and an honor to have been selected to work on the program.''

In the summer of 1947, NACA made the decision to make the Muroc station a permanent facility. The decision was made by the agency's director of aeronautical research, Hugh Dryden, for whom the center was named in 1975.

Walt Williams, the Muroc facility's's first leader, was a well-respected engineer who would later go on to become the first technical director of the Mercury space program.

``He was a very strong leader, a very personable guy,'' said Reed, who is now a consultant to Dryden. ``He was a railroad enthusiast. He always had trains at the AV Fair.''

The original NACA station was set up on what is called south base. By the early 1950s, it comprised a Quonset hut office building and a couple of hangars. There was a small barracks at north base for the men, and the women lived in a barracks at south base.

The first women to work for NASA were called ``computers'' - and they acted as human versions of the electronic devices of the same name.

They were mathematicians who crunched the raw flight data into useful numbers on various parameters of the flights, such as air speed and altitude.

``The fellas didn't want to do the calculations. It was tedious work,'' said Betty Scott Love, who grew up in the Antelope Valley and worked at Dryden from 1952 to 1979. ``I found it enjoyable. I was interested in knowing what these airplanes were capable of doing.''

In the late 1950s, the center was moved across the lake bed to its present location near north base. At first it was composed of a main office building, a couple of large hangars and a few, scattered warehouses.

By that time, the original handful of engineers had grown into an operation with about 250 workers.

On Oct. 1, 1957, NACA changed its name to NASA - the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Two weeks later, the first X-15 rocket plane was rolled out. It was the start of what has been deemed by aviation historians as the greatest flight test program ever conducted, bringing fame to the NASA operation at Edwards.

``It made kind of a splash,'' said Bill Dana, a former X-15 test pilot. ``It was our space program at the time.''

From 1959 to 1968, a total of 199 flights were made with the three X-15 rocket planes from Edwards Air Force Base. Dropped from a NASA B-52, the needle-nosed aircraft achieved flights reaching speeds of 4,520 mph and climbed to 354,200 feet in altitude - out at the edge of space.

Program accomplishments include the development of the first full pressure suit for pilot protection in space and the first demonstration of a pilot's ability to function in a weightless environment.

In the 1970s, some of the more spectacular looking flight tests were the landing approaches of the Enterprise, the engineless space shuttle prototype. On five flights, the Enterprise was carried atop a modified Boeing 747 jumbo jet, then released at 22,000 feet.

The flights validated the approach and landing capabilities of the shuttle, as well as automatic flight control and navigation systems.

Through the 1980s, Dryden became the West Coast home for the shuttles, which landed on the same dry lake bed that the X-1 had used decades before.

Throughout its history, Dryden has worked on improving aircraft flight controls, improving aircraft performance and safety.

In a recent program, Dryden engineers developed a system that will allow a jetliner with damaged flight controls to fly and safely land using only its engines to steer. Dryden engineers proved the system first on a F-15 fighter and then on a MD-11 jetliner.

As the 21st century approaches, Dryden now has about 900 government and civilian contractor employees. NASA headquarters is working on a plan to relocate 21 other aircraft and 290 employees from other research centers to Dryden.

While it has grown from a small outpost to a full-fledged research center, Dryden's mission is still the same - to separate the real from the imagined.

``The most significant boundary we are working on is access to space,'' Szalai, the center director, said in a recent interview.

Dryden will play a major role in the development of the X-33, a prototype of a spacecraft designed to replace the space shuttle.

The X-33 is being developed by Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale and is designed to reduce the cost of putting a payload into space from $10,000 a pound to less than $1,000.

``In a sense we're a subcontractor to Lockheed,'' Szalai said.

Dryden will assist in the flight test effort, provide range support for tracking flights in the western United States, and build a flight simulator for the program. The first flight is to be conducted by March 1999.

Dryden will also assist in the development of the X-33 engine by conducting high-altitude flights of the engine prototype aboard its SR-71 Blackbird research aircraft.

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

Photo: (1--color) The space shuttle Atlantis receives post-flight servicing.

(2--color) The X-31 aircraft, on a research mission at the Dryden Flight Research Facility.

(3) The M2-F3 lifting body is pictured during a flight in 1971 after being dropped from a B-52 wing pylon.

(4) ``Our mission, really, is probing the boundaries. It's a down-to-Earth Capt. Kirk mission.''

- Ken Szalai, Dryden director