Word: wingless
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...block out the sun, tears of relief and perhaps pride fill the eye. The sense of brute power boring an escape hole through the atmosphere is heightened by a sudden realization that one is being left behind. The earth itself seems to be dropping away as fast as the wingless rocket is accomplishing the completely unnatural act of heaving itself upward and bursting through...
Astronauts call their lunar landing trainer "the Flying Bedstead"-it is a wingless tangle of tanks, tubes and rockets that stays aloft solely on the thrust of its engines. One day last week at Ellington Air Force Base, Astronaut Neil Armstrong, 37, was hovering the contraption a few feet off the ground when it suddenly shot up to 200 ft., pitched sharply down, and rolled to the right. "Better get out of there, Neil," barked Flight Control. Armstrong needed no prompting. He had already yanked the ejection ring and he parachuted to safety as the $2,100,000 craft dived...
Independently launched into orbit by a rocket or carried aloft in a mother spacecraft, lifting bodies will be maneuvered in space with thrusters, much like conventional spacecraft. After they enter the atmosphere, however, the wingless craft will be piloted like gliders to land at existing airports, using their control flaps to maneuver and deriving necessary lift from their aerodynamic shape. Thus the reusable ships could probably become the space age's most utilitarian vehicles...
Suddenly the steep plummeting dive changed to a semblance of flight. Under control of Veteran NASA Test Pilot Milton Thompson, the experimental M2-F2 "lifting body" demonstrated an uncanny ability to maneuver. Wingless and powerless, the 21-ton, 22-ft.-long craft swung through two 90° turns as it dropped through its rapid descent. At the last moment it lifted its nose, lowered its tricycle landing gear and streaked to a spectacular 200-m.p.h. landing on the flatbed of Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards Air Force Base. By successfully executing its unusual 217-second flight, the M2-F2 pointed...
...tail fins and no wings, a rounded belly and a flat top, the experimental craft M2-F2 was rolled out last week by Northrop's Norair division and turned over to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for a series of test flights. M2-F2 is a wingless glider, called the Manned Lifting Body Research Vehicle, designed to be used eventually to ferry astronauts back from space to a dry landing rather than an ocean dunking...