Editing Lifting body (section)

==History==
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 by [[Scroggs The Last Laugh|Roy Scroggs]].<ref>[https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?CC=US&NR=1250033A&KC=A&FT=D&ND=3&date=19171211&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_EP# US patent 1,250,033].</ref> However at low airspeeds the lifting body is inefficient and did not enter mainstream airplane design.{{citation needed|date=July 2018}}

[[Aerospace]]-related lifting body research arose from the idea of [[spacecraft]] [[Atmospheric reentry|re-entering]] the Earth's atmosphere and landing much like a regular [[airplane]]. Following atmospheric re-entry, the capsule spacecraft from the [[Project Mercury|Mercury]], [[Project Gemini|Gemini]], and [[Apollo Program|Apollo]] 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.

[[Image:X24.jpg|thumb|250px|right|The Martin Aircraft Company [[Martin-Marietta X-24|X-24]] built as part of a 1963 to 1975 experimental US military program]]

[[NASA]]'s refinements of the lifting body concept began in 1962 with [[R. Dale Reed]] of [[NASA]]'s [[Armstrong Flight Research Center]].<ref name="Reed97" /> The first full-size model to come out of Reed's program was the [[NASA M2-F1]], an unpowered craft made of wood. Initial tests were performed by towing the M2-F1 along a dry lakebed at [[Edwards Air Force Base]] California, behind a [[Hot rod|modified]] [[Pontiac Catalina]].<ref>[http://www.classicalpontiac.com/articles/nasa.html Classical Pontiac and NASA]</ref> Later the craft was towed behind a [[C-47]] and released. Since the M2-F1 was a [[glider aircraft|glider]], a small [[rocket 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 the [[B-52]] jet bomber. The first flights started in 1966. Of the Dryden lifting bodies, all but the unpowered NASA M2-F1 used an [[XLR11]] rocket engine as was used on the [[Bell X-1]].<ref>[http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/FactSheets/FS-011-DFRC.html NASA Dryden fact sheet - lifting bodies]</ref>  A follow-on design designated the [[Northrop HL-10]] was developed at NASA [[Langley Research Center]].
Air flow separation caused the crash of the [[Northrop M2-F2]] lifting body.{{citation needed|date=November 2012}}
The HL-10 attempted to solve part of this problem by angling the [[Port (nautical)|port]] and [[starboard]] [[vertical stabilizer]]s outward and enlarging the center one.{{citation needed|date=November 2012}}

Starting 1965 the Russian lifting-body [[Mikoyan-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 the [[Buran program]], while work on another small-scale spacecraft partly continued in the [[Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105#BOR|Bor]] program.

The [[IXV]] is a [[European Space Agency]] lifting body experimental [[re-entry]] vehicle intended to validate European reusable launchers which could be evaluated in the frame of the [[FLPP]] program. The IXV made its first flight in February 2015, launched by a [[Vega (rocket)|Vega]] rocket.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31421200 |title=Europe's mini-space shuttle returns |work=BBC News |date=11 February 2015 |access-date=12 February 2015}}</ref>

Orbital Sciences proposed a commercial lifting-body spaceplane in 2010.<ref name=osc2011/>  The [[Prometheus (spacecraft)|Prometheus]] is more fully described below.