You may think the phrase "Every big idea has to start small" is just a saying. NASA takes it literally. Engineers can’t just build a revolutionary plane and stick a pilot in it, much as they might want to. So in the 1950s, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration started up a model shop, formally dubbed the Subscale Flight Research Lab.
In a competition for coolest job in the world, this group of talented craftspeople rank pretty high. Even NASA test pilots---the folks flying real planes---stop by the lab to cast envious glimpses of the projects they work on.
The model builders construct a vast range of planes, gliders, and drones, some small enough to fit in your hand, others spreading 20 feet in wingspan. They take the remote controlled aircraft out onto the dry lakebed at NASA Armstrong, in California, and put them through some extreme tests. Sometimes they survive, and often end up pinned to the walls of the lab. Sometimes they don’t.
Everything the engineers learn leads directly into the next generation of air and spacecraft. It was models built by the lab that finally convinced NASA officials that a 'lifting body', wingless aircraft could safely fly. Then they built the Space Shuttle.
In the video above, lab chief Red Jensen gives us a look at what they’re currently up to, from testing backup systems for planes whose pilots lose consciousness, to the futuristic wing shapes that could enable flight on Mars.
