HISTORIC `LIFTING BODY' LOOKS FOR PLACE TO LAND; M2-F1, BUILT IN '60S, HELPED SHUTTLE PROGRAM.

Byline: Jim Skeen Daily News Staff Writer

The M2-F1 is a Smithsonian artifact looking for a place to call home.

Fresh off of an $80,000, 18-month restoration, the plywood aircraft is temporarily being housed in a hangar at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center.

The M2-F1 belongs to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, but is on loan to Dryden, where it was built and flown in the 1960s.

``They don't have a place to display it at the Air and Space Museum,'' said Dryden historian Dill Hunley. ``It is going to stay in Hangar Bay 3 at the Integrated Test Facility for the next few months until we can figure out a way to display it.''

The M2-F1, the first in a series of odd-looking test aircraft called ``lifting bodies'' that flew at Dryden between 1963 and 1975, had been languishing in one of NASA's hangars before its restoration.

The aircraft's canopy was broken, rainwater had rotted some of its plywood hull, and there was corrosion on wires and the metal framework.

The aircraft was sent off to a specialist, Dick Fisher, a former Lancaster resident and former NASA engineer who now resides in Arroyo Grande.

``Because of the construction it required a lot of hand work,'' said Dick Klein, a NASA operations engineer who oversaw the restoration project. ``It looks like it did when it came out of the factory.''

The M2-F1 was essentially stripped down to its basic parts, Klein said. Corroded metal was replaced, a new canopy installed, plywood replaced and the craft was repainted with the marking it had after its last flight.

Whenever possible, work was subcontracted out to the original parts builders and the original inspector was called in to examine the restoration, Klein said.

The M2-F1 was not well regarded for its looks - researchers called it a ``flying bathtub'' - for its handling qualities. The aircraft did, however, lead to a research program that contributed to the space shuttle program and to two spacecraft programs now in the works.

The list of pilots of the M2-F1 reads like a who's who of test pilots, including six Lancaster Aerospace Walk of Honor inductees - Milt Thompson, Bill Dana, Chuck Yeager, Jerry Gentry, Joe Engle and Fred Haise.

Other pilots to fly the aircraft include Don Mallick, James Wood, Don Sorley and Bruce Peterson.

NASA's lifting bodies were a series of aircraft featuring a blunt-nose, wingless design. The lifting body concept had been tested in the 1950s as a possible shape for nose cones of ballistic missiles, but the concept stayed buried in technical journals until Dale Reed, a Dryden engineer, and test pilot Milt Thompson convinced their superior to proceed with a research program.

The M2-F1 was built for less than $30,000. Dryden workers constructed the aircraft's interior of steel tubes. A sailplane maker in El Mirage built the aircraft's plywood shell.

The first tow tests of the aircraft were conducted with a souped-up Pontiac convertible modified for NASA's use by racing car builder Mickey Thompson's shop in Long Beach. The first tow tests, with the M2-F1 gliding just a few feet off Muroc Dry Lake's surface, were done in the spring of 1963.

``It was a brand new concept,'' said Bruce Peterson, a Lancaster resident and former M2-F1 pilot. ``We approached it very cautiously. We flew barely above the ground just to feel it out.''

The M2-F1 made some 400 car-towed flights, Hunley said.

``It was used as a training device,'' Hunley said of the Pontiac tows. ``Milt insisted they fly it quite a few times behind the Pontiac before the air tows. It got quite a bit of air time behind the Pontiac.''

Later, a C-47 aircraft was used to tow the M2-F1 at higher altitudes. The aircraft made 77 air-towed flights, Hunley said.

The lifting body program aided the design of the space shuttle by convincing Johnson Space Center engineers to abandoned plans for pop-out auxiliary jet engines to power the craft to landings.

The lifting body-design concept is now being used in the development of the X-33, a spacecraft prototype designed to lower the cost of getting satellites into space from $10,000 a pound to $1,000 a pound, and in the X-38, a ``lifeboat'' for the international space station.

``We're seeing applications of what we learned many years ago,'' Peterson said. ``It's going to be the spacecraft of the future. You don't have to carry wings with it like the shuttle. You can carry more payload.''

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PHOTO (color) The M2-F1 was built and flown at the Dryden Flight Res earch Center in the 1960s.