"The AD-1 oblique wing research aircraft was photographed during a wing sweep test flight. The aircraft was flown 79 times during the research program conducted at NASA Dryden between 1979 and 1982."
"Why NASA tested a plane with a pivoting wing"
Jacopo Prisco for CNN; January 27, 2023.
https://www.cnn.com/travel/...ting-wing/index.htmlThe article ends with this:
| | | quote | In the end, the AD-1 program showed potential, but not enough to warrant investing in a complicated system that modern design had rendered superfluous. However, the data gathered during those 79 flights has been useful – and we can’t rule out that it could become useful again sometime in the future.
“I would never say that the concept is never going to come back,” says Gelzer. “But I don’t see the application right now, because we’ve got a way around what we were trying to fix.” |
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