Alifting body is afixed-wing aircraft orspacecraft configuration in which the body itself produceslift. In contrast to aflying wing, which is a wing with minimal or no conventionalfuselage, a lifting body can be thought of as a fuselage with little or no conventionalwing. Whereas a flying wing seeks to maximize cruise efficiency atsubsonic speeds by eliminating non-lifting surfaces, lifting bodies generally minimize the drag and structure of a wing for subsonic,supersonic andhypersonic flight, orspacecraftre-entry. All of these flight regimes pose challenges for proper flight safety.

Lifting bodies were a major area of research in the 1960s and 70s as a means to build a small and lightweight crewed spacecraft. The US built a number of lifting body rocket planes to test the concept, as well as several rocket-launched re-entry vehicles that were tested over the Pacific. Interest waned as theUS Air Force lost interest in the crewed mission, and major development ended during theSpace Shuttle design process when it became clear that the highly shaped fuselages made it difficult to fit fuel tankage.

Advancedspaceplane concepts in the 1990s and 2000s did use lifting-body designs. Examples include theHL-20 Personnel Launch System (1990) and thePrometheus spaceplane (2010). TheDream Chaser lifting-body spaceplane, an extension of HL-20 technology, was proposed as one of three vehicles to potentially carryUS crew to and from theInternational Space Station, but eventually was selected as a resupply vehicle instead. In 2015 theESAIntermediate eXperimental Vehicle performed the first ever successful reentry of a lifting body spacecraft.^[1]

The lifting body had been imagined by 1917, in which year an aircraft with something like a delta wing plan form with a thick included fuselage was described in a patent byRoy Scroggs.^[2] However at low airspeeds the lifting body is inefficient and did not enter mainstream airplane design.^{[citation needed]}

Aerospace-related lifting body research arose from the idea ofspacecraftre-entering the Earth's atmosphere and landing much like a regularairplane. Following atmospheric re-entry, the capsule spacecraft from theMercury,Gemini, andApollo series had very little control over where they landed. A steerable spacecraft with wings could significantly extend its landing envelope. However, the vehicle's wings would have to be designed to withstand the dynamic and thermal stresses of both re-entry and hypersonic flight. One proposal eliminated wings altogether: design the fuselage body to produce lift by itself.

NASA's refinements of the lifting body concept began in 1962 withR. Dale Reed ofNASA'sArmstrong Flight Research Center.^[3] The first full-size model to come out of Reed's program was theNASA M2-F1, an unpowered craft made of wood. Initial tests were performed by towing the M2-F1 along a dry lakebed atEdwards Air Force Base California, behind amodifiedPontiac Catalina.^[4] Later the craft was towed behind aC-47 and released. Since the M2-F1 was aglider, a smallrocket motor was added in order to extend the landing envelope. The M2-F1 was soon nicknamed the "Flying Bathtub".

In 1963, NASA began programs with heavier rocket-powered lifting-body vehicles to be air launched from under the starboard wing of a NB-52B, a derivative of theB-52 jet bomber. The first flights started in 1966. Of the Dryden lifting bodies, all but the unpowered NASA M2-F1 used anXLR11 rocket engine as was used on theBell X-1.^[5] A follow-on design designated theNorthrop HL-10 was developed at NASALangley Research Center.Air flow separation caused the crash of theNorthrop M2-F2 lifting body.^{[citation needed]}The HL-10 attempted to solve part of this problem by angling theport andstarboardvertical stabilizers outward and enlarging the center one.^{[citation needed]}

Starting 1965 the Russian lifting-bodyMikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105 or EPOS (Russian acronym for Experimental Passenger Orbital Aircraft) was developed and several test flights made. Work ended in 1978 when the efforts shifted to theBuran program, while work on another small-scale spacecraft partly continued in theBor program.

TheIXV is aEuropean Space Agency lifting body experimentalre-entry vehicle intended to validate European reusable launchers which could be evaluated in the frame of theFLPP program. The IXV made its first flight in February 2015, launched by aVega rocket.^[6]

Orbital Sciences proposed a commercial lifting-body spaceplane in 2010.^[7] ThePrometheus is more fully described below.

Lifting bodies pose complex control, structural, and internal configuration issues. Lifting bodies were eventually rejected in favor of a delta wing design for the Space Shuttle. Data acquired in flight test using high-speed landing approaches at very steep descent angles and high sink rates was used for modeling Shuttle flight and landing profiles.

In planning for atmospheric re-entry, the landing site is selected in advance. For reusable reentry vehicles, typically a primary site is preferred that is closest to the launch site in order to reduce costs and improve launch turnaround time. However, weather near the landing site is a major factor in flight safety. In some seasons, weather at landing sites can change quickly relative to the time necessary to initiate and execute re-entry and safe landing. Due to weather, it is possible the vehicle may have to execute a landing at an alternate site. Furthermore, most airports do not have runways of sufficient length to support the approach landing speed and roll distance required by spacecraft. Few airports exist in the world that can support or be modified to support this type of requirement. Therefore, alternate landing sites are very widely spaced across the U.S. and around the world. The Shuttle's delta wing design was driven by these issues. These requirements were further exacerbated by requirements that extended the Shuttle's flight landing envelope.

Nonetheless, the lifting body concept has been implemented in a number of otheraerospace programs, the previously mentionedNASA X-38,Lockheed Martin X-33,BAC'sMulti Unit Space Transport And Recovery Device, Europe'sEADS Phoenix, and the joint Russian-EuropeanKliper spacecraft. Of the three basic design shapes usually analyzed for such programs (capsule, lifting body, aircraft) the lifting body may offer the best trade-off in terms of maneuverability and thermodynamics while meeting its customers' mission requirements.

TheDream Chaser is asuborbital andorbital^[8]vertical-takeoff, horizontal-landing (VTHL) lifting-bodyspaceplane being developed bySierra Nevada Corporation (SNC). The Dream Chaser design is planned to eventually carry up to seven people to and fromlow Earth orbit, and the spaceplane is currently planned to be used for delivering cargo to theInternational Space Station under theCommercial Resupply Services program. The vehicle will launch vertically on aVulcan Centaur andland horizontally on conventional runways.^[9]

Some aircraft with wings also employ bodies that generate lift. Some of the early 1930s high-wing monoplane designs of theBellanca Aircraft Company, such as theBellanca Aircruiser, had vaguely airfoil-shaped fuselages capable of generating some lift, with even the wing struts on some versions given widened fairings to give them some lift-generating capability. TheGee Bee R-1 Super Sportster racing plane of the 1930s, likewise, from more modern aerodynamic studies, has been shown to have had considerable ability to generate lift with its fuselage design, important for the R-1's intended racing role, while in highly banked pylon turns while racing.^[10]Vincent Burnelli developed several aircraft between the 1920s and 1950 that used fuselage lift. Like the earlier Bellanca monoplanes, theShort SC.7 Skyvan produces a substantial amount of lift from its fuselage shape, almost as much as the 35% each of the wings produces.

Fighters like theF-15 Eagle also produce substantial lift from the wide fuselage between the wings. Because the F-15 Eagle's wide fuselage is so efficient at lift, an F-15 is able to land successfully with only one wing, albeit under nearly full power, with thrust contributing significantly to lift. In the summer of 1983, an Israeli F-15 staged a mock dogfight with Skyhawks for training purposes, near Nahal Tzin in the Negev desert. During the exercise, one of the Skyhawks miscalculated andcollided forcefully with the F-15's wing root. The F-15's pilot was aware that the wing had been seriously damaged, but decided to try and land in a nearby airbase, not knowing the extent of his wing damage. It was only after he had landed, when he climbed out of the cockpit and looked backward, that the pilot realized what had happened: the wing had been completely torn off the plane, and he had landed the plane with only one wing attached. A few months later, the damaged F-15 had been given a new wing, and returned to operational duty in the squadron. The engineers at McDonnell Douglas had a hard time believing the story of the one-winged landing: as far as their planning models were concerned, this was an impossibility.^[11]

In 2010,Orbital Sciences proposed thePrometheus "blended lifting-body"spaceplane vehicle, about one-quarter the size of theSpace Shuttle, as acommercial option for carrying astronauts tolow Earth orbit under thecommercial crew program.^[7]TheVertical Takeoff, Horizontal Landing (VTHL) vehicle was to have been launched on a human-ratedAtlas V rocket but would land on a runway.^[12]The initial design was to have carried a crew of 4, but it could carry up to 6, or a combination of crew and cargo. In addition to Orbital Sciences, the consortium behind the proposal includedNorthrop Grumman, which would have built the spaceplane, and theUnited Launch Alliance, which would have provided the launch vehicle.^[13]Failing to be selected for a CCDev phase 2 award by NASA, Orbital announced in April 2011 that they would likely wind down their efforts to develop a commercial crew vehicle.^[14]

Design principles of lifting bodies are used also in the construction ofhybrid airships.

TheUS government developed a variety ofproof-of-concept andflight-test vehicle lifting body designs from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s atArmstrong Flight Research Center.^[3] These included:

• M2-F1
• M2-F2
• M2-F3
• HL-10
• X-24A
• X-24B

• Wood, Haise and Engle each made a single car-towed flight of the M2-F1.

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Lifting bodies have appeared in somescience fiction works, including the movieMarooned, and as John Crichton's spacecraft Farscape-1 in the TV seriesFarscape. TheDiscovery Channel TV series conjectured using lifting bodies to deliver a probe to a distant earth-like planet in the animatedAlien Planet.Gerry Anderson's 1969Doppelgänger used aVTOL lifting body lander / ascender to visit an Earth-like planet, only to crash in both attempts. His seriesUFO featured a lifting body craft visually similar to the M2-F2 for orbital operations ("The Man Who Came Back"). In theBuzz Aldrin's Race Into Space computer game, a modifiedX-24A becomes an alternative lunar capable spacecraft that the player can choose over theGemini orApollo capsule.

The 1970stelevision programThe Six Million Dollar Man used footage of a lifting body aircraft, culled from actual NASA exercises, in the show'stitle sequence. The scenes included an HL-10's separation from its carrier plane—a modified B-52—and an M2-F2 piloted byBruce Peterson, crashing and tumbling violently along the Edwards dry lakebed runway. The cause of the crash was attributed to the onset ofDutch roll stemming from control instability as induced by flow separation.^{[citation needed]}

The episode "The Deadly Replay" (season 2 episode 8 aired 9/22/1974) features the HL-10 as a prop of the story.^[16]

• Martin X-23 PRIME
• BOR-4
• Kliper
• Lockheed Star Clipper
• Lockheed Martin X-33
• HL-20 Personnel Launch System
• Dream Chaser (spacecraft)
• Space Rider (spacecraft)
• Prometheus (spacecraft)
• Facetmobile
• Blended wing body
• Flying wing
• MUSTARD
• 1953 Horton "Wingless"http://aerospacelegacyfoundation.com/aviation-history-flying-wings/Archived 2018-01-14 at theWayback Machine
• Arup S-2 1932, Snyder "Arup" (blurs the boundary between "flying wing" and lifting body)
• Burnelli RB-1

• McPhee, John (1973),The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed;ISBN 0-374-51635-9. (Story of theAereon, a combinationaerodyne/aerostat, a.k.a.hybrid airship.)

Wikimedia Commons has media related toLifting body aircraft.

• Lifting Bodies Fact Sheet (NASA)
• NASA Tech Paper 3101:Numerical Analysis and Simulation of an Assured Crew Return Vehicle Flow Field (The math of airflow over a lifting body)
• NASA Photo Collections fromDryden Flight Research Center
  • HL-10
  • M2-F1
  • M2-F2
  • M2-F3
  • X-24A and X24B
  • Short M2-F1 history
  • Some history of lifting body flight
  • Wingless Flight: The Lifting Body Story. NASA History Series SP-4220 1997 PDF

• Lifting bodies
• Aircraft configurations
• Wing configurations

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