Following the creation of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1915, a unique flight research operations division was established at the nation's first civilian aeronautics research laboratory, the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. Langley flight research personnel helped the nation's aircraft industry bloom during the Golden Era of aviation throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Langley's flight research then helped win World War II with performance-enhancing modifications to new aircraft. During the cold war, Langley helped the country maintain an edge in aeronautics over its Warsaw Pact rivals. When the space race began, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created in 1958 and Langley's pilots were instrumental in training astronauts. In addition to advancing rotorcraft during the 1960s and 1970s, Langley research pioneered a multitude of military and civil Vertical Short Takeoff and Landing (V/STOL) concepts. During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Langley research developed advancements in general and commercial aviation technologies.

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A detailed, yet highly readable book, On the Shoulders of Titans should be the starting point for all who are interested in the basic history of the Gemini Program. NASA's second human spaceflight program, Gemini laid the groundwork for the more ambitious Apollo program which put astronauts on the Moon.

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.

Full color publication. This document has been produced and updated over a 21-year period. It is intended to be a handy reference document, basically one page per flight, and care has been exercised to make it as error-free as possible. This document is basically "as flown" data and has been compiled from many sources including flight logs, flight rules, flight anomaly logs, mod flight descent summary, post flight analysis of mps propellants, FDRD, FRD, SODB, and the MER shuttle flight data and inflight anomaly list. Orbit distance traveled is taken from the PAO mission statistics.