PIECE OF AVIATION HISTORY HEADS EAST DALLAS MUSEUM GETTING SR-71 SIMULATOR FROM DRYDEN FLIGHT RESEARCH CENTER.Byline: Daily News EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE Edwards Air Force Base, U.S. military installation, 301,000 acres (121,805 hectares), S Calif., NE of Lancaster; est. 1933. It is one of the largest air force bases in the United States and has the world's longest runway. -- One of the last vestiges of the SR-71 high-speed flight In high-speed flight the assumptions of incompressibility of the air used in low-speed aerodynamics no longer apply. In subsonic aerodynamics, the theory of lift is based upon the forces generated on a body and a moving gas (air) in which it is immersed. project at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center The Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC), located inside Edwards Air Force Base, is an aeronautical research center operated by NASA. On March 26, 1976 it was named in honor of the late Hugh L. left on a flatbed truck for a new home at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas. Developed in the 1970s to support training of the Blackbird spy plane crews at Beale Air Force Base Beale Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base near Marysville, California, that was established in 1943. The host wing is the 9th Reconnaissance Wing, which includes an operations group, a maintenance directorate, a mission support group, and a medical group. , the SR-71 simulator was upgraded in 1987 and came to Dryden after the Air Force in 1989 decided to retire the Mach 3 jets and three came to Dryden for high-speed research. In 1995 the Air Force reactivated two SR-71s for a second tour of duty under Congressional direction, reclaiming one of the three that had been loaned to Dryden. The simulator remained at Dryden because of the complexity of the move, with NASA NASA: see National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA in full National Aeronautics and Space Administration Independent U.S. and Air Force crews sharing it. Air Force reconnaissance control panels for morning training sessions were swapped out in the afternoons with NASA instrumentation and controls. The Air Force retired its last two SR-71s again in 1997. The last NASA SR-71 flight was in October 1999 for the annual Edwards Air Force Base open house and air show. CAPTION(S): photo Photo: Electronics technician Joe Ciganek was responsible for operation and maintenance of the SR-71 flight simulator while it was at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center. NASA photo |
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