Laminar-flow control is an area of aeronautical research that has a long history at NASA's Langley Research Center, Dryden Flight Research Center, their predecessor organizations, and elsewhere. In this monograph, Albert L. Braslow, who spent much of his career at Langley working with this research, presents a history of that portion of laminar-flow technology known as active laminar-flow control, which employs suction of a small quantity of air through airplane surfaces. This important technique offers the potential for significant reduction in drag and, thereby, for large increases in range or reductions in fuel usage for aircraft. For transport aircraft, the reductions in fuel consumed as a result of laminar-flow control may equal 30 percent of present consumption. Given such potential, it is obvious that active laminar-flow control with suction is an important technology. In this study, the author covers the early history of the subject and brings the story all the way to the mid-1990s with an emphasis on flight research, much of which occurred at Dryden.

In High-Speed Dreams, Erik M. Conway constructs an insightful history that focuses primarily on the political and commercial factors responsible for the rise and fall of American supersonic transport research programs. Conway charts commercial supersonic research efforts through the changing relationships between international and domestic politicians, military/NASA contractors, private investors, and environmentalists. He documents post-World War II efforts at the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics and the Defense Department to generate supersonic flight technologies, the attempts to commercialize these technologies by Britain and the United States during the 1950s and 1960s, environmental campaigns against SST technology in the 1970s, and subsequent attempts to revitalize supersonic technology at the end of the century. High-Speed Dreams is a sophisticated study of politics, economics, nationalism, and the global pursuit of progress. Historians, along with participants in current aerospace research programs, will gain valuable perspective on the interaction of politics and technology.

Two-volume collection of case studies on aspects of NACA-NASA research by noted engineers, airmen, historians, museum curators, journalists, and independent scholars. Explores various aspects of how NACA-NASA research took aeronautics from the subsonic to the hypersonic era.-publisher description.